Re: Podobnik, future conflicts and all

It was illuminating to read G.Kohler's paper on unequal exchange, which
I downloaded further to your posting.

Two things come to mind, and I wonder if you can help.

1 - After the paper was published, have there been any attempts at
refutation, and if yes, along which arguments?

2 - Is there a linkage between this unequal exchange and the trend in
commodity prices?

Regards,
Petros Haritatos
www.athenian.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Tausch, Arno <Arno.Tausch@bmags.gv.at>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Date: &Pgr;&agr;&rgr;&agr;&sgr;&kgr;&egr;&ugr;&eeacgr;, 25 &PHgr;&egr;&bgr;&rgr;&ogr;&ugr;&agr;&rgr;&iacgr;&ogr;&ugr; 2000 12:25 &mgr;&mgr;
Subject: Podobnik, future conflicts and all


>Very interesting. Although I absolutely share the concern of most of
you
>about continental Europe, the recent turbulences in Germanys  right
wing,
>and the developments in other countries, whose developments I criticize
as
>much as most of you do (you will understand what I mean and feel, ok),
there
>is serious reason to fear that conflicts in the world system will erupt
>along the present unequal exchange axis and not along the old WWII
>constellation. Since Gernot Kohler and I are involved in writing a
joint
>book on the political economy of global exploitation, I began to look
again
>and again at those revealing tables in the World Tables of Unequal
Exchange
>Paper written by Gernot. Did you all notice, that China according to
Gernot
>is THE VICTIM of unequal exchange (350 billion $)? That does not say
>anything excusing on their terrible human rights record. But China,
>Indonesia and Mexico head the list of the victims of unequal exchange,
while
>Japan, the USA, Germany and France are the top dogs. These massive
phenomena
>will create, my hypothesis goes, terrible conflicts, all the more so
since
>China by any standards is not a democracy in the western sense, it has
a
>military force, prepared to go to combat, a massive navy build-up
(always a
>sign of global power projections) and we quantittative scholars should
start
>to look at Gernot's magnificent tables also from a conflict research
>perspective. How much, for example, do changes along Gernots Tables
explain
>changes in conflict intensity, both nationally and internationally?
>Generations of good Ph.D. work could be written on such models, and it
is up
>to you, colleagues around the world, to start such research and publish
it
>in Journals like Journal of Peace Research and Journal of Conflict
>Resolution and to run your world events and interaction surveys, your
world
>handbooks of political and social indicators, your high-speed
computers, SAS
>software etc at full speed to create quickly scholary knowledge on
these
>explosive issues, knowledge that serves also to act in favour of global
>peace and global Keynesianism. Certainly, such Ph.D. work at major
>Universities in North America would be more relevant than much of the
stuff,
>printed in many of our journals today. The primitive but pervasive
>hypothesis is that unequal exchange leads to instability, conflict and
war.
>
>Kind regards Arno Tausch
>