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the RBOCS are coming!
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 20:31:08 -0500
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 17:22:53 -0800 To: farber () central cis upenn edu (David Farber) From: Richard J Solomon <rjs () farnsworth mit edu> Reply-To: In our forthcoming book -- The Gordian Knot -- we* describe how J. P. Morgan ensconced all the feuding magnates (Vanderbilts, Forbes, Goulds, & lesser lights) on his boat in 1885 in Long Island Sound, and refused to let them off until they settled the railroad/telegraph (19th Century convergence ) wars. One of the results was the formation of AT&T to counterbalance Gould s rapacious Western Union. But less than 4 years later the deals fell apart and the Feds had to form the ICC to keep these turkeys from eating each other for lunch. Infrastructure was too important for mere robber barons. This pattern of deal making, and deal failure, repeated itself every quarter century or so, each time yielding greater and tighter governmental regulation than before; the deals never held and the greedy just got more vicious, shooting themselves in the foot, not to mention squishing the much maligned public weal. The real capitalist wave that the crystal gazers like to deny is known in economic circles as Kontratieff long-waves. Look it up. Start with Schumpeter s Business Cycles. Stalin murdered Kontratieff for suggesting that Communism, too, must follow the damned capitalist sinusoidal waves of history. Schumpeter had to escape the Nazis. So it goes with ideologues. Perhaps the Third Wave is just another sinusoidal ripple. It might even be an hysterisis loop. So Howard Baker is the new J. P. Morgan? I thought Wiley was angling for the position. Maybe he doesn t have a big enough boat. And how long with this deal last? Richard * Russell Neuman, Lee McKnight, Richard Solomon, MIT Press, 1995. (releasable for distribution if you want)
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- the RBOCS are coming! David Farber (Jan 18)