Post Global Recession, Startups Are Capitalism's "New Frontier"
Hundreds of thousands of Asian university graduates in both the the U.S. and China are opting for startups and business ventures, not finance or industries, as the path to riches.
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CLARINArgentinaEconomySourcesCountries
Jorge Castro
BUENOS AIRES — Half of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were born in India, while 40% of university students on the U.S. West Coast are Asian. Why is this significant? Because technological frontiers are changing in this advanced phase of capitalism, and the economy now revolves on an axis that incorporates Asia and the U.S.
The new economy has also given rise to an emerging labor division that supercedes global production chains, and it's fueled by the autonomous creativity of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs inside the U.S. and Asia, — predominantly, but not exclusively, China.
This technological frontier means new patterns of capitalist accumulation, beyond the transnational production processes and global money movements that have developed over the past 20 years. The protagonists in those processes have traditionally been multinational companies (88,000 of them in 2014) and their affiliates and partners (600,000).
But since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the world has seen the rise of an extraordinary impulse toward decentralized and bottom-up innovation, in which advanced technologies are being adaptated and modified. The new entrepreneurs — more than 4.6 million in China last year alone, generally between 25 and 34 years old — exist in a sophisticated digital culture, innovating through a constant process of reciprocal imitation and exchange of ideas.
There are an estimated 290,000 Chinese university students in the United States this year, and since 1978 the number of graduates has exceeded three million. Given the West Coast's concentration of Asian university students, it's unsurprising that 16.2% of high-tech U.S. patents issued last year were in the names of people living in Asian countries. That's double what it was in 2000. In many ways, Silicon Valley is more closely linked these days to Bangalore and Shenzhen than to U.S. cities.
This level of innovation among Chinese entrepreneurs is a deliberate investment choice. Every year, about eight million university students graduate in China, which spends $250 billion through 2,409 universities — 25 of them world-class institutions. It has gone from having no PhD graduate in hard sciences in 1978 to having 25% more than the U.S. last year.
The United States is an exceptional country. The leaders of the new global frontier become global actors (Apple, Amazon, etc.). In fact, the defining trait of American society is its openness to the world, and the world responds by turning toward it. Last year the country received four million migrants, and the U.S. population born abroad today is 56 million, the highest figure since the country's inception. It is a compressed version of a global society.
What we're experiencing is the exponential growth of information turned into knowledge. The quantitative has become qualitative.
Information is a kind of energy, and its derivatives are initative and ability to act. This is the core of the human phenomenon, as French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin argued. The new technological frontier is not so different from the way one Argentine president perceived local U.S. democracy in 1847: "something wild, anarchic, full of life."
Clarin is the largest newspaper in Argentina. It was founded in August 1945 and is based in Buenos Aires.
wagner group
Wagner's MIA Convicts: Where Do Deserting Russian Mercenaries Go?
Tens of thousands of Russian prisoners who've been recruited by the Wagner Group mercenary outfit have escaped from the frontlines after volunteering in exchange for freedom. Some appear to be seeking political asylum in Europe thanks to a "cleared" criminal record.
Soldier wearing the paramilitary Wagner Group Logo on their uniform.
Source: Sky over Ukraine via Facebook
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Anna Akage
Of the about 50,000 Russian convicts who signed up to fight in Ukraine with the Wagner Group, just 10,000 are reportedly still at the front. An unknown number have been killed in action — but among those would-be casualties are also a certain number of coffins that are actually empty.
To hide the number of soldiers who have deserted or defected to Ukraine, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is reportedly adding them to the lists of the dead and missing.
Some Wagner fighters have surrendered through the Ukrainian government's "I Want To Live" hotline, says Olga Romanova, director and founder of the Russia Behind Bars foundation.
"Relatives of the convicts enlisted in the Wagner Group are not allowed to open the coffins," explains Romanova.
"They assure families that soldiers died in Ukraine, but in fact, many coffins are empty, and some 'dead' are in fact in Ukrainian captivity."
Risk of desertion
The price of desertion for both Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin is not only the loss of soldiers at the front. If there are not enough conscripts — and based on the ongoing "hidden" mobilization and rumors that renewed mass conscription is scheduled for February 2023, this is a real concern — then the war machine will need to be replenished with more convicted criminals and those drawn by the promise of money.
But even more dangerous for Russia is that many deserters, both in Ukrainian captivity and those who have escaped abroad, talk about the situation at the front, and about the ongoing challenges with supplies and command of Russian troops.
In Samara, southwestern Russia, special forces detained the head of the Council of Mothers and Wives, who was headed to Moscow, as a messenger bearing complaints from conscripts. She is accused of discrediting the Russian army.
The PMC (Private Military Company) Wagner Center logo on a new building in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Maksim Konstantinov/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire
Rapists, murderers, thieves
Some conscripts have managed to seek asylum abroad. Romanova describes the case of a prisoner sentenced to 23 years in a strict penal colony for the brutal murder of four people, including two children, who was able to travel to Turkey because his case was "cleared" by Wagner.
This case is not unique: murderers and rapists, often with guns in their hands, are at large.
The number of crimes involving weapons and ammunition in Russia has increased by almost 30% in the last 10 months, reports the Russian edition of RBC. The Kursk and Belgorod regions, which border Ukraine, are at the top of the list.
"There are also those convicts who ran back home. All of them are criminals, rapists, murderers, thieves — and probably armed," says Olga Romanova. "They hide in small Russian cities, and you certainly can't expect them to be better citizens after being at the front."
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