Professor Elam

Friday March 4, 2011

Tom Friedman offers some insight on the Tipping httphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant for the revolts in the mid east.

It gets down to the comment Marshal McLuhan made when I was in college, the media is the message. As desperately poor people in the mid east can see how others in the world are living they have had enough. No land, no jobs, no opportunity. The same thing happened  in Russia and East Germany in 1989. As people viewed VCR tapes and satellite feeds on how the rest of the world lived, they said, no more and revolted. I had a client return from the Soviet Union and predict the fall in 18 months, he was right. 

How bad was it? Well East and West Germany had the same sort of people but vastly different products. West Germany had Audi Porsche Mercedes, East Germany had the

Trabant

click to read what central planning got the East Germans, this is your health care plan courtesy of the US Govt…..