MB Civic

Newberry ..

the reality is that control of a few key pieces of capital, knowledge, and resource, dominate over all the others. It was Derrida who quipped that two things would never be viritual: oil and Jerusalem, everyone wants the real thing. In this he encapsulated the problem: control over the keys to the mechanized economy and control over the brand equity of the “game itself” are the basis of all power .. Oil was called by Yergin “The Prize” and it exhibits a unique power because of its property of both creating fungible labor, and portability .. oil’s power is that it allows people to avoid paying money to people they compete with. It is a trade off of rents .. everything in the West had to be turned into a rent, and that stream of rents had to match against the rents of oil. To make up the difference between what we sell, and what we buy – and that gap is oil, and oil in drag in the form of cheap exports, we must sell capital and “services,” which includes education, and finance. Enter Intellectual Property, and the role of academia

something to ponder .. read more