Re: Michael Malone : Regulating Destruction

Patrice:
 
You might be reading both too much and too little into this Malone
Op-Ed in the WSJ.
 
Too much -- Malone was invited to write this as yet another WSJ
bashing of regulation. They do this all the time. So what?
 
Too little -- The reason why there are so few IPOs nowadays is that
the Internet Bubble is over and is not coming back. This has nothing
to do with "regulation." This is a cyclical change that follows a
well-documented pattern, which is best described by Carlota Perez in
her "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital."
 
This is relevant for nettime in many ways. Most obviously, the rise   
of nettime in the 90's was totally a Bubble phenomenon.               
 
Who cares about the "Californian Ideology" today? <g>
 
And as we discussed in Ljubljana in 1997, the distinction between
"industrial" and "financial" capital is worth noting. In the current
phase of this "long cycle," finance is secondary to industry -- just
as it always is after the "crash." Today, IBM is much more important
than CSFB. Microsoft is more important than Morgan Stanley.
 
As perhaps the only nettimer who sits astride these two aspects of the
modern economy, I would only note that very little commentary on the
list takes a careful look at either finance or industry -- or economic
cycles. "Capitalism," as it is typically discussed hereabouts, is a
pretty useless category.
 
Happy New Year!
 
Mark Stahlman
New York City