Not without my phone: The only thing the world wants to buy from Russia are raw materials. This will now put the country in a precarious position.
Image: EPA
Russia is the big loser of globalization: Instead of investing in technology, the elite invested in luxury consumption. Now the country has nothing the world wants to buy except raw materials. A guest post.
“Here is our response to the American sanctions! We are not afraid of you! We’ll live without your nice pretty stuff!” This tweet commenting on a video of a Russian father and his son destroying an iPad with a hammer in protest at Apple’s withdrawal from Russia and recording it with an iPhone features an important aspect of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and a source of his drive for territorial expansion. In 1991, Russia didn’t just lose an empire. The country set out to become the biggest loser of the second globalization.
In 1984, Jesse Jackson’s first presidential campaign targeted Reagan’s protectionist Buy American Act of 1982. During a debate, he asked the audience who in the hall owned a Japanese video recorder, which was the latest in consumer electronics at the time. Many raised their hands. Then Jackson asked who had an American cruise missile. Jackson’s argument was clear: American industrial production during the Cold War was focused on armaments. Japanese consumer electronics, on the other hand, represented what the market demanded and the direction the economy should take. After the end of the Cold War, America adapted quickly. Partly through the takeover of defense technology – the internet is based on the military’s Arpa-Net – brands like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Netflix have established themselves as world leaders in information technology and the consumer-oriented platform economy.
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