Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies Review

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(More customer reviews)I am an eager student of business models and strategies, especially of those formulated for organizations involved in e-business. For that reason, this book's subtitle ("Web Globalization Strategies") caught my eye but I did not know quite what to expect as I began to read it. In the Introduction, Yunker explains precisely what the book is -- and is not -- about. Here is a brief excerpt:
"We live in a world of many languages, many cultures, and many countries, yet we all share one Internet. Initially, English dominated the Internet because English speakers dominated the Internet. Today, more than half of all Internet users are not native-English speakers.
"Want to increase your potential online audience by 200 million people? Create French, Italian, German, and Spanish web sites. Add Japanese and Chinese, and you'll gain another 200 million -- without opening a single international office. Web globalization will open your organization to virtually unlimited opportunities, but also many risks. This book offers guidelines and suggestions for bridging the borders between languages, cultures, countries, and ultimately, people."
Yunker carefully organizes his material within seven Parts, with Part VII ("Appendices") consisting of an in-depth glossary and reference section. He also provides a listing of country codes, language codes, and character sets as well as a chart which explains the significance of various colors around the world. In Parts I through VI, Yunker answers questions which include:
* What are the basics of Web globalization (e.g. lingo and key concepts) to "get a taste" for navigating the multi-lingual Internet?
* What are some of the most common mistakes which organizations make when taking their Web sites global? How and why? Which lessons can be learned from these mistakes? How can other organizations avoid those mistakes?
* What does the Web workflow consist of? What are the key participants? What about costs, especially hidden costs? Why are "internationalization" and "localization" the two foundations of globalization?
* How to select and then manage translators or a translation services provider? How to maintain quality throughout the process? What will be required of copy writers to credit and edit text(s) for a global audience?
* Why is designing for one country much easier than designing for many countries? What is involved when creating and then managing multilingual content? How can cultural and technical obstacles affect Web design?
* Why is it prudent to promote a Web site one country at a time? What is necessary to understand about multilingual search engines, portals, and domain names?
There are six "hands-on" chapters which explain, step-by-step (hand-by-hand?) how to translate a Web site into eight different languages. "Files are also available to download so that you can follow along on your own. By the end of the book, you will have created a web page with a potential reach of more than two billion people." Yunker also includes what he calls seven "Spotlights": a probing analysis of each of several real-world case studies based on Monster.com, L.L. Bean, the Social Security Administration, FedEx, Burton Snowboards, Befrienders International, and FIFA World Cup, respectively. These case studies alone are well worth much more than the cost of the book.
By including in this review the brief excerpt from the Introduction, I hope I have suggested for which decision-makers in which organizations this book will be most valuable, indeed invaluable. Perhaps without intending to do so, Yunker has written a book which will also be of substantial value to those who provide various services to those organizations, services such as consulting, legal, accounting, insurance, logistics, transportation, and fulfillment. These service providers will also need to formulate appropriate web globalization strategies of their own to accommodate the strategies of their client organizations.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability (1999) and Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed (2001) which Nielsen co-authored with Marie Tahir; Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2000); Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton's Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites (Second Edition, 2002); Carla O'Dell's If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice (1998); and Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak's Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (1997).
I also highly recommend this book to those who are associated with an organization now involved in or considering global e-learning initiatives. They are strongly encouraged to read, also, Allan J. Henderson's The E-Learning Question and Answer Book: A Survival Guide to Trainers and Business Managers (2002).

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Companies know that globalizing their web sites will produce exponential revenue growth - Web Globalization Strategies: Beyond Borders tells web developers how to do it. By 2003, the US will account for less than one-third of the worldwide Internet user-base of 602 million. This book illustrates step-by-step measures to take to globalize any web site for almost any country in the world, while presenting spotlights on real companies who have globalized their sites and the benefits they've received.Most executives know they want to reach a global market but have no idea what obstacles they face. The web globalization process is complex, constantly evolving, and the languages themselves can be highly intimidating. This book will provide the reader with the understanding and "best practices" necessary to successfully manage a Web globalization strategy. Crammed with useful facts, tips, and ideas, this book will offer step-by-step advance on every aspect of web development, both technical and non-technical. Offers practical, in-depth information on such hard-to-research topics as online revenue models, online marketing options, site traffic analyses, usability testing, community building, legal issues, cost projections, and project management.

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The Cultural Logic of Computation Review

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(More customer reviews)David Golumbia does not like computers. Toward the end of The Cultural Logic of Computation, after lumping computers and the atom bomb into a single "Pandora's Box" of doom, he observes:
"The Germans relied on early computers and computational methods provided by IBM and some of its predecessor companies to expedite their extermination program; while there is no doubt that genocide, racial and otherwise, can be carried out in the absence of computers, it is nevertheless provocative that one of our history's most potent programs for genocide was also a locus for an intensification of computing power."
This sort of guilt by association is typical of The Cultural Logic of Computation. Much of the the book focuses on political issues that don't bear on "computation" in the least, such as a tired attack on Thomas Friedman and globalization that adds nothing new to Friedman's already-long rap sheet. Golumbia spends ten pages criticizing real-time strategy games like Age of Empires, complaining:
"There is no question of representing the Mongolian minority that exists in the non-Mongolian part of China, or of politically problematic minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs, or of the other non-Han Chinese minorities (e.g., Li, Yi, Miao). A true Hobbesian Prince, the user of Age of Empires allows his subjects no interiority whatsoever, and has no sympathy for their blood sacrifices or their endless toil; the only sympathy is for the affairs of state, the accumulation of wealth and of property, and the growth of his or her power."
The critique could apply just as easily to Monopoly, Diplomacy, Stratego, or chess.
His actual excursions into technical issues are woefully uninformed. A surreal attack on XML as a "top-down" standard ends with him praising Microsoft Word as an alternative, confusing platform and application. He hates object-oriented programming because...well, I'm honestly not quite sure.
"Because the computer is so focused on "objective" reality--meaning the world of objects that can be precisely defined--it seemed a natural development for programmers to orient their tools exactly toward the manipulation of objects. Today, OOP is the dominant mode in programming, for reasons that have much more to do with engineering presumptions and ideologies than with computational efficiency (some OOP languages like Java have historically performed less well than other languages, but are preferred by engineers because of how closely they mirror the engineering idealization about how the world is put together)."
Golumbia also associates "geeks" with "straight, white men," insulting 19th century programmer Ada Lovelace, gay theoretician Alan Turing, and the vast population of queer and non-white programmers, linguists, and geeks that exists today.
Beyond the technological confusions, Golumbia's philosophical background is notably defective. The book is plagued by factual errors; Voltaire is bizarrely labeled a "counter-Enlightenment" thinker, while logicians Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege somehow end up on opposite sides: Russell is a good anti-rationalist (despite having written "Why I Am a Rationalist"), Frege is a bad rationalist. (He also enlists Quine and Wittgenstein to his leftist cause, which I suspect neither would have appreciated.) He thinks Leibniz preceded Descartes. He misappropriates Kant's ideas of the noumenal and mere reason.
So it is not simply the technological material that is the problem. The quality of even the academic, philosophical portions of the book is dismaying, and the general lack of evidence and citation is egregious.
For contrast, Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software (Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture) (Routledge) is an excellent and rigorous examination of some of the political and social issues around software and software development, strong on both the technical and philosophical fronts. I would urge anyone looking at Golumbia's book to read it instead.

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Advocates of computers make sweeping claims for their inherently transformative power: new and different from previous technologies, they are sure to resolve many of our existing social problems, and perhaps even to cause a positive political revolution.

In The Cultural Logic of Computation, David Golumbia, who worked as a software designer for more than ten years, confronts this orthodoxy, arguing instead that computers are cultural "all the way down"—that there is no part of the apparent technological transformation that is not shaped by historical and cultural processes, or that escapes existing cultural politics. From the perspective of transnational corporations and governments, computers benefit existing power much more fully than they provide means to distribute or contest it. Despite this, our thinking about computers has developed into a nearly invisible ideology Golumbia dubs "computationalism"—an ideology that informs our thinking not just about computers, but about economic and social trends as sweeping as globalization.

Driven by a programmer's knowledge of computers as well as by a deep engagement with contemporary literary and cultural studies and poststructuralist theory, The Cultural Logic of Computation provides a needed corrective to the uncritical enthusiasm for computers common today in many parts of our culture.
(20090731)

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The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations (Wiley Professional Advisory Services) Review

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(More customer reviews)Having read an advance copy of Vinnie Mirchandani's The New Polymath, I have to say that it is a riveting read. It's SuperFreakonomics for us technophiles. Because, for better or worse, The New Polymath (who can be thought of as a modern Leonardo da Vinci) must also be an IT guru ... as it is information technology that is paving the way for a new generation of polymaths that have access to unprecedented levels of information across disciplines.
Rather than tell you that this fresh and inviting (Benjamin Fried, CIO Google) book is filled with incredible examples of passionate entrepreneurs (Marc Benioff, CEO [...]), that I am inspired by this book (Maynard Webb, CEO LiveOps), or that Mirchandani is one of the few technology analysts to realize that technology doesn't come in neat bundles anymore (Thomas H. Davenport, President's Chair Babson College), I'm going to talk about The New Polymath's ten rules for success which pop out at you if you read between the lines.
Why? One of the Polymath's chronicled in Vinnie's masterful manuscript is Brian Sommer, technology consultant extraordinaire of TechVentive and renowned ZDNet blogger, who asks "where are the 10 commandments for technology" as he struggles with the challenges of cyberethics that few dare to address. It's a good question, and one that I believe we are not yet ready to answer. Which leads me to ask, "how do we get there"? Well, the first step is to obviously become learned, and successful, polymaths well equipped to ask, and debate, the question. To this end, we need a guide ... a guide that, if you dig deep, is found within Vinnie's terrific tome. To get you on your way, and to inspire you to (pre) order your own copy of The New Polymath, I give you:
The New Polymath's Ten Starting Rules for Success
(because, in reality, there are more than ten ... but these are the biggies).
(01) 1-1-1
Adopt [...] 1-1-1 model: 1 percent employee's time; 1 percent equity; 1 percent product donation. A true Polymath operates in his community, not out of it, and makes a difference.
(02) 80 for 20
Aim for solutions that deliver 80% of the value of previous solutions for only 20% of the price. A new Polymath is about true innovation, not overstated renovation.
(03) Invisible UI
If your product requires a manual, it's not a product at all. A true Polymath produces solutions with UIs so seamless and so obvious that no manual is needed.
(04) Traceability
Every component can be traced back to the source ... even if it's software. (And if it is software, every data element can be traced back to the source.)
(05) Keep Score
Polymaths are responsible and drive for sustainability ... to the point where they keep track of how well they are doing and how much better their inventions are compared with predecessor technology. If it's not more environmentally friendly (and more cost effective, because true green keeps more green in your wallet), it's not revolutionary.
(06) Semantics
It's the age of "big data", and to make sense of it all, we need to find the data that is relevant to us.
(07) Decisions, Not Data
Because, in the end, the entire point of finding the semantically relevant data is to enable us to make better decisions than we could before.
(08) Adopt the "Shamrock" It's Lucky for a Reason
A "shamrock" organization, as envisioned by Charles Handy, is one that encompasses "core management, a long-term but contractual talent pool, and a transient, flexible workforce". We are in the age of networked person, who is used to working on the move, and tomorrow's polymath's will be flexible at the core.
(09) TiaS
Technology-is-a-Service. A Polymath moves beyond SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and TaaS (Technology-as-a-Service) and embraces the concept that, like power and water, information technology must be delivered only as a service in the world of tomorrow. Just like the utilities deliver our power and water, tomorrow's technology enterprises will deliver our apps, data, and information on-demand as that is what is needed for businesses to truly reach the next level of operations, as technology is not the core competency of most businesses that make use of it today.
(10) The Turing Oath
Brian Sommer notes that we need a Hippocratic Oath for technology, and I agree. We all need to agree to respect and uphold the privacy of our users and their data to the utmost above all else. And I'm calling that the Turing Oath, after Alan Turing who gave us the first test to determine whether a machine had reached intelligence (and, would thus, need to be instilled with ethics from the get go ... and, hopefully, the the three laws of robotics.)
I strongly encourage you to read Vinnie's groundbreaking debut into the world of publishing (other than his prolific blogging over the years over on Deal Architect and New Florence. New Renaissance.) and do what it takes to become The New Polymath. The world of tomorrow needs you, and in fact, so does the world of today. If, like the polymaths chronicled in this book and Nathan Myhrvold (who was the cloth the new polymaths chronicled in the book were cut from), I encourage you to join the Humanitarian Technology Challenge. The world needs you!
This review was originally published on Sourcing innovation at:
[...]

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Praise for The New Polymath"Bravo! In a work that's fresh and inviting, Mirchandani shares withus his case studies in innovation and creativity. It's no small ironythat the 'IT revolution' has created a technology industry that all tooeasily falls back on bromides and received wisdom. Mirchandani inspiresus to return to IT's roots, with the transformative power that comesfrom putting technology innovation in service to business and society."--Benjamin Fried, CIO, Google, Inc. "At DeVry Education, we are focused on the next-generationworkforce that will build the Polymath enterprises of tomorrow. So,it's good to see the book touch on such a wide range oftechnologies--from cloud computing to emerging medicine--that are shapingour curriculum. We are always looking for innovation, including onlineclasses and instructional labs, and this book has got us thinking innew directions."--Daniel Hamburger, President and CEO, DeVry Inc. "In this fascinating book, Mirchandani, himself an example ofthe new breed of Polymaths that he defines, brings into a sharp focusexactly what has been achieved by those who have the remarkable abilityto combine and mix technology elements. An excellent read on multiplelevels: to learn from; to be entertained by; and most of all, to leaveyou wondering what you could personally achieve."--Andy Mulholland, Global Chief Technology Officer, Capgemini "A brilliant read. In order for individuals and companies tofully maximize new century opportunities--and stay abreast of aconstantly morphing technological frontier--Mirchandani not only givesexamples of the Polymath framework, but concrete evidence forsuccessful leveraging. Thanks to technology, we can all be Polymaths ifwe open our minds to the possibilities. Consider this book your guide--Ithink da Vinci would be proud."--Linda Avey, cofounder, 23andMe

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Global Business Leadership Review

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(More customer reviews)
This book, critical to effective leadership in this borderless world, begins with this truism: "The greatest challenge facing leaders in this era of globalization is working effectively through cultural barriers to achieve business goals and objectives." Simply said, but not simply done. As an international businessman with over forty years of success in Asia, Europe, and most recently in Russia, I can vouch for the critical importance of this rather intangible challenge to the businessman's success abroad. And that goes for the American in China or the Indian in Russia, or the Brazilian in the U.S. Technology has both accelerated and exasperated the issue. What Dr. Wibbeke accomplishes in this book is both simply put, and also well based and documented on the experience of many others. The author breaks the challenge in to five categories: Change, Capability, Care, Communications, Consciousness, Context, and Contrasts, leading to an interculturally competent leader. This helps separate and identify the solutions. At the end of each chapter there is a summary called "The Bottom Line"- I like that. This book is written for all of us, certainly the international business man or anyone working outside his or her native borders. It is also a valuable text book for the university business school with good case studies, such as the one on eBay in Japan. This book is indispensable, stating both the problems and the solutions.
Frederick R. Andresen, Author, "Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia."


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Global Business Leadership discusses the urgent issues facing global business leaders and presents seven strategies found necessary for successful intercultural business ventures. It provides business professionals and students with insight into the failure of businesses to prepare leaders for stepping into complex cultural contexts. The Geoleadership Model developed by Dr. Wibbeke is applied to global business situations using cases taken from leading companies such as Google and eBay. The book uses a case study format to present salient issues related to intercultural leadership and then principles of the model are applied to the case in discussion format. The concepts of care, communication, consciousness, change, capability and others are analyzed in relation to how each concept is seen in different parts of the business world. Each chapter concludes with a "bottom line" example of how each Geoleadership concept directly affects business results.Global Business Leadership also provides instruction about entry into cultural contexts, negotiating, preventing and managing cultural-based local-global conflict, and preparing global leaders to increase intercultural awareness and sensitivity. Dr. Wibbeke founded and managed the leading Internet website (Web of Culture) for cross-cultural information on the Internet and shares such global experiences with other would-be globetrotters.* A goal-directed approach following adult learning principles and case studies to immerse the student in the learning context * Research specifically targets intercultural experts worldwide and focuses on the leadership competencies necessary for business leaders in the era of globalization. * Discusses the urgent issues facing global leaders and presents strategies necessary for successful intercultural business ventures--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Blind Men and the Elephant: Demystifying the Global IT Services Industry Review

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(More customer reviews)A very clear, concise, and easy-to-read book that lays out the origins, current state and the challenges facing Global IT services. This book is a must read for people who buy IT services, sell IT services, deliver IT services and also for those who have more than a passing interest in Global IT. The authors present an unbiased view of the industry, how the different parties involved have created the successes (some accidental), the challenges, and some future scenarios (four-seeable futures), without introducing the reader to new jargon. In the process the authors pepper the book with industry trivia, some more welcome (origin of IBM) than others (full name of FIAT, the auto company). They do a great job of presenting the realized value and the larger unrealized potential of IT services transforming businesses. The authors certainly deliver what they set to achieve (as outlined in "About this book"). There are many takeaways from this book that some may call "common sense." And, that would be a shame because it is not that common.
I wish the authors had spent a little more time on how the different parties involved in Global IT services have contributed to the challenges and the unrealized potential. I also think it would have been better if the authors had expanded/ shown preference for at least one or two of the four future scenarios they layout even though they clearly say they are not out to predict the future. In addition, areas like software-as-service and vertical specific products could have benefited from more discussion.
Overall, `Blind Men and the Elephant: Demystifying the Global IT Services Industry' is a great introduction for anyone interested in Global IT services or entering it as a participant and a good summary for all those who are in it.

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In just a few decades since its birth, the global IT industry has grown to a trillion dollars. It continues to transform society and business, as perhaps no other industry has, and yet remains one of the least understood industries in the world. Behind the facade of geekiness and technophobia lies a set of organizations that are routinely given the power to fundamentally reshape many facets of our lives, and in the process create lucrative sources of financial rewards for those investing in it. This book explains what consultants and IT Services firms do. It examines the industry s surprisingly captivating history, and in doing so, explains why the industry does things the way it does and what motivates the different players within it. The book tries to answers basic questions such as: Why is it that those fundamentally affected by the industry have little idea about how this industry has managed to have such a hard-hitting impact globally? How has this industry managed to reach the unique statues it enjoys around the world today, with literally millions from all corners of the world aspiring to enter it? What is it about this industry that has caused it to evolve so differently as compared to other fields? Perhaps most importantly, where could it, and the rest of us, go next? Drawing vivid comparisons from everyday life and other industries, this book makes complex concepts accessible to the general reader, giving them for the first time an in-depth insight into the IT industry, how it works, how it affects all of us, and where it is likely to catapult us in this century. Written in a lucid style by renowned IT professionals, this book is a must read not only for management and engineering students, IT professionals, managers, and technocrats, but also for anyone keen to have the mysteries of the computer age unraveled.

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Globalization, Second Edition: A Critical Introduction Review

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(More customer reviews)This is not a bad text; it simply overviews many on the main themes in contemporary globalization studies. It examines; production, security and insecurity, governance and knowledge.
However anyone looking for something comprehensive should probably look elsewhere and note that this is very light on social theory and heavy on your typical `globalization began in 1987' tagline. It could easily to retitled as introduction to global processes, but it a place to start nonetheless.


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This is a systematically revised and updated new edition of a highly-acclaimed text which was an immediate bestseller on courses around the world. The second edition takes a broader perspective giving increased coverage of other dimensions of globalization alongside its core focus on the rise of supraterritoriality which the author argues is globalization's most distinctive feature.

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Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making Review

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(More customer reviews)I grew up in the 1970's studying multinational corporations and inter-locking directorates, reading Richard Barnett's Global Reach, and so on. I am also familiar with the $60,000 a year special database that charts the top dogs and every membership, association, investment, etc.
The two major deficiencies in this book that left me disappointed are:
1. Does not name names nor show network diagrams such as you can pull from Silobreaker.com (Factiva is not even close).
2. Shows no appreciation for past research and findings. This is a current overview, closer to journalism than to authorship or research.
The book earns four stars instead of three for two reasons:
1. There is a very subtle but crystal-clear sense of goodness, ethics, and "good intention" or "right thinking" by the author. As diplomatic as he might be, he clearly sees the insanity of Exxon refusing to think about anything other than maximizing petroleum while externalizing $12 in costs for every $3.50 gallon that they sell--they did NOT "earn" $40 billion in profit this past year--they essentially stole it from the population at large and future generations).
2. Each chapter has a serious point or series of points, and I especially liked the author's constant presentation of tangible numbers on virtually every page.
Having said all that, I will list two books below that I found more interesting than this one, and then list a few notes that made it to my flyleafs.
Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make--and Spend--Their Fortunes
Notes from the book:
6,000 top people (in total of 6 billion, I think that's .0001--the author, who's no doubt better at math, says each is 1 in a million)
Top 1,000 rich own as much or earn as much as the bottom 2.5 billion poor.
Early on he says he decided not to do a list because it changes. I believe him, but I was truly disappointed to not find a lot of meat in this book--it has facts, anecdotes, a story line, but one does not get the "feeling in the fingertips" or the raw feel.
Early on he reviews and dismisses conspiracy theories, and returns to this in the final chapter where he reviews the Masons, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, all in a cursory manner (for example, there is no table, a single page would do, of top Skull and Bones power figures today).
Power is shifting away from Nations. This is true. The author focuses on those who have money and live globally. He is not focusing on those who control their own spending, global assemblages. For that see
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems
Human interactions are the glue connects the superclass members--corridor meetings that take place on the periphery of "big events" where the important stuff is not the event, but the encounters--Davos, World Cup, Grand Prix, Allen & Co, Geneva Auto Show, Winter Olympics, the Chinese meeting on Hainan Island (the Boao Forum).
Corporate/Finance the top of the barrel, 2000 top organizations control $103 trillion in assets, do $27 trillion in annual sales.
Access/time is the most precious asset, one reason the Gulf Stream is really a solid indicator of top of the top--it provides time saved, mobility, flexibility, privacy, security, work en route, sleep well, etc.
The author tells us he is focusing on influence, not just wealth or accomplishments, but very candidly, while the book is coherent and there is nothing wrong with its facts or sequence of observations, one simply does not come away with a clear picture. This is like a verbal description of a trip around the world, which it is, but without the photos, smells, tastes, etc. It also avoids any substantive (as opposed to discreetly moral "in passing" commentary) attention to costs and consequences--a balance sheet showing choices being made (e.g. by Exxon) and who benefits, who loses, would no doubt terminate this author's welcome on the fringes of the super-elite as it would be devastatingly negative.
20-50 people control any given sector, worldwide
In the book the author seeks to discuss six central issues:
1. Nature of the superclass power
2. Link if any (ha ha) between concentrated wealth and the five billion at the bottom of the pyramid
3. Whether the superclass calls into question the sufficiency of our global legal and governance institutions
4. Whether the division in interests between the rich and the poor will be the central conflict of our time
5. Would we choose this superclass?
6. How is the superclass evolving
General conclusions:
Markets not working fully, need some non-market "controlling authority"
Elites are not taking responsibility for the poor in their own countries
Meritocracy is no longer--same merit, one becomes a billionaire from connections, the other a mere millionaire
Private equity is where its at in terms of starting salaries in the $300,000 range.
Globalists versus nationalist
Anti-globalists include leaders of Iran, Russia, and Venezuela
Tottering institutions--International Monetary Fund may not be funded by countries much longer
Global military-to-military relations work, political-diplomatic do not, and the money is mis-spent (billions here and there, and no money for spare parts to keep air forces flying, much cheaper good will spending)
Criminal elite a part of this (read Moises Naim's book Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy
USA has a power vacuum in that both the President and Congress have taken power that is not theirs and abused it, but the US voter has ceded power by failing to understand and deliberate on the issues.
He surprises me by bing familiar with General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Two coolest sentences in the book for me:
"Most dangerous mind-altering substance on earth is oil."
"Cost is simply not caring." (Corporations that enrich dictators while ignoring the billions whose commonwealth is being stolen). For more on this evil and how the USA supports 42 of 44 dictators, see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
There is nothing in this book, published in 2008, on Sovereign Wealth Funds, nor does the author focus on dictators and "royalty" as part of the superclass. As Lawrence Lessig has noted, end corruption, end scarcity, begin a true harvesting of the common wealth for the common good. Right now we are all where "Animal Farm" put us--fodder for the wealthy.
The publisher's choice of ink colors for the jacket flaps and rear cover is terrible, those portions of the book are difficult to read.
The book is over-sold: "draws back the curtain on a privileged society." Not really. This is a solid book of facts that is as close to bland and generic and inoffensive as one can get--but then, that was probably the author's intent since he wants to be able to see these people again.....
See also
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
For a direct opposite of this book, seek out books on Collective Intelligence, Wisdom Councils, World Cafe, Social Entrepreneurship, All Rise, Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and so on. We live in interesting times.


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