Short Answer about Politics - Coursework Example

Short Answer Name: Institution: Date: Short Answer Financialization The sequence of formation, crisis and climax of neoliberalism is interpreted as an era in history of the rise and fall of such international and social configurations like hierarchies among classes. Neoliberalism is a phenomenon that is multifaceted and it is as a result of an entire set of converging historical determinants hence it is not easy to tell its beginnings. The earliest expressions can be traced to the post World War II era when the basic characteristics of the postwar world and economy were defined. Other changes like the challenges surrounding the dollar crisis in the early 1970s like the floatation of the exchange rates, or the enacted policies put in place in the course of dictatorships in Latin America during the 1970s can be regarded as early manifestations (Dumile). Neoliberalism was witnessed in the United States and United Kingdom at the end of 1970s and later in the continental Europe and eventually around the globe. The greater concentration of income among the privileged minority was a significant hallmark of the new social order. National accounting frameworks attest to the fact that a huge and increasing fraction of capital income in the United States comes from outside America. The new configuration regarding income distribution was the results of various converging trends. Much pressure was put on the mass of salaried workers that assisted in restoring profit rates from their low sides of the 1970s and end their downward trend (Whalen, 2008). The opening of capital and trade frontiers paved the way to huge investments in parts of the world where existing social conditions permitted for high returns hence generating income flows in favour of the upper classes in the United States. Free trade put pressure on workers as a result of competition from countries where the labour costs were low. Extreme levels of expansion and sophistication of financial mechanisms were attained after 2000 giving room for huge incomes in the financial sectors as well as in rich households. The crisis eventually revealed that a huge percentage of these flows of income were based on false profits following an overvaluation of securities. The political conditions due to the United States’ dominance in the decades before the crisis are well documented (Dumile). Two main factors are the collapse of the Soviet Union and the weakness portrayed by Europe as one single political entity. The economy of the United States is the world largest in the world with regard to gross domestic product (GDP) with commanding leadership in realms like innovation and research as well as in financial mechanism and production. Consequently the dollar is recognized as the international currency. In determining the financial and real trends in contemporary capitalism the components of class as well as international hegemonies have interacting effects. The dawn of the 20th century was characterized by the emergence of institutional frameworks of capitalist relations (Volcker, 2012). The role of assigning workers by their functional relational relation to capital is made more challenging by the increasingly complex division of labour in functions. The analysis is further made complicated further by the changes that have occurred in the structure of corporations’ ownership. The impacts of privatization, cross-ownership, and vertical integration have rendered useless the traditional divisions between secondary, primary, and tertiary sectors and between the private and public sectors of the economy together with subsectoral categories developed by government statisticians. Digitalization Digitalization is changing the world. Cyber-revolution is bringing about a different level of change one that is characterized by a huge discontinuity. It is not mere social or cultural references that divide the natives from their pre-digital counterparts, but major phenomenological understanding. There is a lot of debate concerning the way technology is transforming the relationship of the younger generation to the traditional cultural forms and it gets heated when it comes to the question of the future of journalism. The internet has freed the world from the stifling grip of the conservative, top-down mass media model, changing consumers into producers and placing citizens on the same level with the powerful (Taylora). Young people are encouraged to lend credence to both views, in the first case they are portrayed as agile and empowered connoisseurs who, objecting to passively consume news products extended to them from high, persist on contributing to the conversation and secondly they are illustrated as pliant as well as ill-informed mistaking what occurs to the interest them for what is really significant (Hawsu). The pro-democracy demonstration that happened in Egypt in 2011 shows the power of the digital revolution since social media was used to mobilize the protestors. The emerging media landscape reflects what digital natives want. The digital world has opened new avenues for entrepreneurs. New spread faster than before and people access information without necessarily relying on mainstream media. Digital technology disrupts the modes of knowing and the institutions that previously supported them providing information flow to which any individual can contribute hence empowering people who were passive readers and opening a new era of information gathering (Taylora). New-media thinkers are prompt to demonstrate the shortcomings within traditional news-gathering organizations and they have numerous sources to draw on. The blunders committed by the mainstream media only prove the need for a robust and vibrant watchdog press. The powers are hardly fretting at the prospect of the fall of accountability journalism. The corporate titans and political leaders would prefer to conduct their work away from the inquiring eyes. The solution to the failure of journalism is more and better journalism. The seed of decline of accountability media were sowed many years ago. When the internet came about, newspapers responded with cost-cutting techniques aimed at driving up profits such as firing writers, editors, fast-checkers, photographers and removing other expenses regarding news-gathering. Immediately when content started being freely circulated online, the sales print started to decline and advertising rates dropped into a free fall (Bhagwati, 2005). Publications started to experience the paradox of shrinking profits while the audiences grew tremendously. In the year 2012 digital readership grew while print advertising revenue losses were bigger than digital gains by a ratio of 10:1. The Guardian and its sister publication the Observer in the UK lost about $50 million in revenue while their online audience on the other hand exploded. Web-based advertising can never make up for the losses for the case of most publications (Hawsu). Whereas digital ad market is doing very well, digital ad sales for newspapers have flat-lined since 2006. Online world has accelerated churnalism’s rapid speed. People are accustomed to video streams, instant updates, live blogging and tweeting. Climate Change Climate change has been continuing unabated for a long time with devastating outcomes. If the world continues on the current path of permitting emissions to rise every year, climate change will affect everything about this world. Many cities are likely to be drowned, ancient cultures will be destroyed by seas and there is a high possibility that the future generation will spend a great part of their lives recovering and fleeing from vicious storms as well as extreme droughts. Not doing anything about the current way of life will definitely bring about these eventualities. A country like Bolivia is dependent on glaciers for its irrigation and drinking water and those white-capped mountains that can be seen from its capital are turning brown and gray at a very alarming rate (Kleinn). Since countries like Bolivia have done really nothing to send emissions up, they are in a position to regard themselves as climate creditors owed technology support and money from large emitters to deal with the hefty costs with disasters related to climate change and develop a green energy path. Millions of people in least developed countries, small islands, and vulnerable communities in India, Brazil and China and other parts of the world are paying for a problem that they do not contribute. A Marshall plan for the earth is needed to deal with the problems of climatic change and global warming. If China has to match the United States with regard to car ownership, there would be 1.1 billion more vehicles in use. The vehicles might be clean in the sense that Chinese can afford catalytic converters for the tailpipes but they would produce more carbon dioxide yearly than the entire world’s transportation system. A report by the UN in 2002 showed that China consumed as much as seafood per capita as Japan currently does, it would need 100 million tons of fish all alone. This is above the total of the world’s current catch which is very large that many fisheries are being pushed towards extinction (Mckibbenb). China already consumes more steel that the United States and it has overtaken the US in coal and grain consumption. While the prices of commodities rise owing to the Chinese growth and American over-consumption, the first to pay a heavy price are the poor people from other places in the world. For instance, African countries spend about 80% of their export earnings on importation of oil. Auto-centered throwaway, fossil-fuel based economy cannot support China is every respect. If it is not practical for China then it is not practical for India which has an economy that is growing at 7 percent yearly and a population that is estimated to surpass that of China by 2030 (Maosheng & Running, 2010). The planet is already experiencing challenges of one America as manifested in the erratic and extreme weather, rising temperatures, and the melting ice caps. Grasslands have disappeared as a result of capitalism the manner in which forests disappeared under Mao in China. Deserts increase hundreds of kilometers yearly, and the dust storms of May and April are now a common Beijing season likened to spring and fall. Social Movement The candor of the cables that were released by WikiLeaks did more for Arab democracy as compared to decades of backstage U.S. diplomacy. The cables revealed among other things that the United States was not going to support Tunisian dictator Ben Ali to the end and the corruption in the regime was common knowledge. Facebook, Twitter and WikiLeaks and new media helped the Arab spring in 2011 (Solnitr). The revolution in Egypt was started by a young woman with a Facebook account and a passionate conviction. Women usually find great roles in revolution simply because the rules fall apart and anyone has agency to act. Liberty leading the masses in Egypt was a young woman in black hijab. When a revolution occurs people suddenly find themselves in a transformed state of mind as well as of nation. The prevailing rules are suspended as people get engaged with each other in new ways and come up with new sense of possibility and power. Social movements have been used to push a cause of action by people in the world. The 21st century demonstrations possess two main variants. In one variant participants gather up in a symbolically public place where using speech and action they demonstrate their collective attachment to a well-outlined cause like in the Homer Style where some protests showed solidarity with lost soldiers in Iraq (antiwar) while the other group expressed pro-war sentiments. In another variant, they proceed using public thoroughfares giving similar displays of attachment (Tillyc). Often multiple columns converge from various places for the same symbolically powerful destination. In some circumstances counterdemonstrators come up to advocate for an opposing view and challenge other demonstrators’ right to the spaces in question. Usually troops or police station themselves around the place of assembly or along the line of match. Troops or police are often used to bar demonstrators from accessing important spaces, monuments, buildings, or persons. Demonstrators are separated from counterdemonstrators to avoid confrontations or violence. Like the case in Homer onlookers or spectators usually show their approval or disapproval of the cause being supported by the demonstrators (Tillyc). The spectators join the discussions during the lunchtime arguments or through letters to the editor in newspapers. Street demonstrations are a form of 21st century form of political struggle or social movement. In Latin America in the one decade, people and communities have been breaking with the past ways of organizing their communities and themselves, as well as their relationship to institutional authority and power. Decisions are made within the hands of the people, and being accomplished democratically and collectively (Sitrinm). Various and new forms of non-representative democracy are being formed as people organize. From the new democratic processes people are talking about new relationships, new collective selves, new protagonists, subjects and social subjects. The new relationships are a break from the relationship of oppression and domination, a break with alienation as well as capitalist means of production relations and value production. People have united have taken over workplaces to run then in common; they created alternative forms of healthcare and education, and have taken over land to grow crops for feeding communities (Sitrinm). This is a new value relationship as well as rejection of capitalist means of relations. References Dumile Hawsu Kleinn Mckibbenb Sitrinm Solnitr Taylora Tillyc Volcker, P. (2012). Unfinished business in financial reform, International Finance, 15 (1): 125-135. Whalen, C. (2008). Understanding the credit crunch as a Minsky moment, Challenge, 51 (1): 91-109. Bhagwati, J.N. (2005). In defense of Globalization, New York: Oxford University Press Maosheng, Z. & Running, S.W. (2010). Drought-induced reduction in global terrestrial net primary production from 2000 through 2009, Science 329 (5994): 940–3. 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The role of assigning workers by their functional relational relation to capital is made more challenging by the increasingly complex division of labour in functions. The analysis is further made complicated further by the changes that have occurred in the structure of corporations’ ownership. The impacts of privatization, cross-ownership, and vertical integration have rendered useless the traditional divisions between secondary, primary, and tertiary sectors and between the private and public sectors of the economy together with subsectoral categories developed by government statisticians.

Digitalization Digitalization is changing the world. Cyber-revolution is bringing about a different level of change one that is characterized by a huge discontinuity. It is not mere social or cultural references that divide the natives from their pre-digital counterparts, but major phenomenological understanding. There is a lot of debate concerning the way technology is transforming the relationship of the younger generation to the traditional cultural forms and it gets heated when it comes to the question of the future of journalism.

The internet has freed the world from the stifling grip of the conservative, top-down mass media model, changing consumers into producers and placing citizens on the same level with the powerful (Taylora). Young people are encouraged to lend credence to both views, in the first case they are portrayed as agile and empowered connoisseurs who, objecting to passively consume news products extended to them from high, persist on contributing to the conversation and secondly they are illustrated as pliant as well as ill-informed mistaking what occurs to the interest them for what is really significant (Hawsu).

The pro-democracy demonstration that happened in Egypt in 2011 shows the power of the digital revolution since social media was used to mobilize the protestors. The emerging media landscape reflects what digital natives want. The digital world has opened new avenues for entrepreneurs. New spread faster than before and people access information without necessarily relying on mainstream media. Digital technology disrupts the modes of knowing and the institutions that previously supported them providing information flow to which any individual can contribute hence empowering people who were passive readers and opening a new era of information gathering (Taylora).

New-media thinkers are prompt to demonstrate the shortcomings within traditional news-gathering organizations and they have numerous sources to draw on. The blunders committed by the mainstream media only prove the need for a robust and vibrant watchdog press. The powers are hardly fretting at the prospect of the fall of accountability journalism. The corporate titans and political leaders would prefer to conduct their work away from the inquiring eyes. The solution to the failure of journalism is more and better journalism.

The seed of decline of accountability media were sowed many years ago. When the internet came about, newspapers responded with cost-cutting techniques aimed at driving up profits such as firing writers, editors, fast-checkers, photographers and removing other expenses regarding news-gathering. Immediately when content started being freely circulated online, the sales print started to decline and advertising rates dropped into a free fall (Bhagwati, 2005). Publications started to experience the paradox of shrinking profits while the audiences grew tremendously.

In the year 2012 digital readership grew while print advertising revenue losses were bigger than digital gains by a ratio of 10:1. The Guardian and its sister publication the Observer in the UK lost about $50 million in revenue while their online audience on the other hand exploded. Web-based advertising can never make up for the losses for the case of most publications (Hawsu). Whereas digital ad market is doing very well, digital ad sales for newspapers have flat-lined since 2006.

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