Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle

Book Description

In Thailand, a $4 billion per year tourist industry is the linchpin of the modernization process called the "Thai Economic Miracle". And what is Thailand's main attraction? Sex for hire. Year after year young women are lured to Bangkok to staff the teeming brothels, massage parlors, and sex bars that cater to male tourists from the United States, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, the Gulf States, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Developed from Lillian S. Robinson's article in The Nation, Night Market traces the historical, cultural, material, and textual traditions that have combined in unique ways to establish sex tourism as an integral part of the developing Thai economy. It explores international sex tourism from the perspectives of economic-development planning, forced labor market choices, international sexual alienation, and textual traditions that have constructed sexual "Other" cultures in Western imagination.

Customer Reviews:

Five Things I Learned from Reading This Book.......2006-12-09

1. Travel is by nature exploitative of the environments and indigenous cultures of the places visited. Best just to stay home.

2. It's irresponsibly hedonistic to desire a good meal, a glass of fine wine or a swim on a tropical beach. Again, it's best to stay home. And at home you should stick to steamed vegetables from your garden, filtered tap water and cold showers.

3. It's possible to write and publish a book that is ostensibly about the anthropology and political economy of Thailand when you are unfamiliar with either discipline (both authors have doctorates in literature) and know little about the country or its language. All you need is a pile of travel guides, vacation brochures and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. If you can spout meaningless pap like "the bar-girl subjectivity" to uncomprehending interview subjects, so much the better. (A better title for this book would have been: "Sexy Thailand: The View from an MLA Convention." In fact how this book ever got published in the first place is beyond me; I guess someone at Routledge thought sex would sell, but that's a matter between the Routledge editors and their own personal deities.)

4. Both that the personal is political and the political is personal. (See work cited by authors: "Riflessioni liguistiche sul personale e sul politico," which, by the way, is one of several works in European languages listed in a bibliography that does not mention even one article in Thai or any other Asian language.)

5. Although western culture has irredeemably objectified, exoticized and fetishized Asian women, it's o.k. for a White American Male (WAM) to marry a "LBFM," but only if she's from a "good" (i.e., wealthy) family, as co-author Bishop says in the book that he has done. Bishop makes his reason for writing the book explicit on page 1, where he says that when he traveled around Thailand with his Thai wife everyone assumed she was a prostitute. At restaurants, Thai men at neighboring tables would make disparaging remarks, and "not even my rebukes in Thai could silence their tongues." He might have tried being diplomatic or even improving his Thai, which the rest of the book proves is a language that he knows barely at all. Instead he co-wrote this book, so much as to say, look, I wrote a book published by a fancy academic press that shows what idiots you all are, so shut up! (If you think this comment is too personal, see number 4, above. And also note that Bishop--who at the time the book was published was "Visiting Assistant Professor" at SMU--now works at a university in Singapore, a city whose expat residents enjoy a lifestyle that more closely approximates that of high colonialism than any other place on earth. At least we can be thankful that he's not writing articles about the "subjectivity" of his domestic help. Although "Night Market" is on his c.v., his list of current research interests does not mention anthropology, economics, sex, or even Thailand.)

Greatly informative.......2003-03-30

Lillian Robinson has explored the "economic miracle" of Thailand with great detail and care. That she is passionate about her subject and cares for the women and girls who are exploited in the Thai tourist sex market is at once refreshing and needed in our culture which increasingly accepts the commodification of women's bodies.

Pseudo-intellectual garbage.......2002-09-02

A lot of hype and nonsense showing how feminists extremists view the night life scene in Bangkok. From their fanatical point of view only. And of course when one of their own disagrees with them, such as, Cleo Oldzer, rather than question themselves, they dump on her. These people remind me of the academics in the play Equus, who had no hope of enjoying life. A very boring book in which they love to babble about "tropes." Well, sweetiepies, trope THIS.

An overblown effort.......1999-12-02

While the subject of this book is very interesting and deserves further study, the authors were very pretensious. The book did offer some new insights into Thai economics and how the tourism and prostituion industries interact, but one gets the feeling the authors wanted to rail against the "Farangs" that travel to the kingdom. Two items particularly irritated me. The first was how the authors referenced documents from a navigator on Christopher Columbus' first voyage to America to describe how foreigners feel about Thai prostitues. How a document written about a voyage before there was a Thailand (or U.S.A. for that matter) pertains to Bangkok massage parlors, I'll never know. The second "documentation" concerned a Thai Air advertisement. The ad featured a stewardess smiling at a white airline traveler. The authors try to convince the reader that this is proof that Thai industries are actively promoting the sex trade. If this is true, nearly every commercial on American television is an active promotion of prostitution in the U.S. There is a need for a serious study of the socio-economic impact of the sex trade in Thailand, but this is not it. This is nothing more than a tirade against prostitution and the foreign travelers who venture to Thailand. How prostitution destroys young Thais is truly a sad story, but the authors should devote a little more effort in researching their subject, rather than blindly grasping at obtuse concepts to prove a predjudicial viewpoint.

At least one 5-star review is an author.......1999-03-05

The turgid, confused prose is a dead give away. So is the overblown praise for this poorly written book. The 5 star review from "the United States of America" has to be one of the authors. If so, then the call for "objective" reviews from a postmodernist is ironic, as well as amusing. Also ironic is the book's theme of exploitation---by relying on a dated, superficial review of scholarly research, as well as sleazy pop culture, the book itself appears to be a work of Western exploitation. Except this time, it's the arrogant academics exploiting prostitutes, rather than their male customers. This harsh, intensely narcisistic diatribe may be good vita fodder, but it is not worthwhile reading.

Night market: sexual cultures and the Thai economic miracle.(Review) : An article from: Journal of Contemporary Asia

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Night market: sexual cultures and the Thai economic miracle.(Review) : An article from: Journal of Contemporary Asia
Brendan Luyt
Manufacturer: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Thailand | Asia | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B00098TMHU
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Contemporary Asia, published by Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers on May 1, 1999. The length of the article is 2755 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Night market: sexual cultures and the Thai economic miracle.(Review)
Author: Brendan Luyt
Publication: Journal of Contemporary Asia (Refereed)
Date: May 1, 1999
Publisher: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers
Volume: 29 Issue: 2 Page: 248

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

IMF Glossary, English-French-Arabic
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IMF Glossary, English-French-Arabic
International Monetary Fund
Manufacturer: International Monetary Fund
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Banks & Banking | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1557755760

Imf Glossary: English-French-Arabic (Manuals & Guides)
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Imf Glossary: English-French-Arabic (Manuals & Guides)
IMF's Bureau of Language Services
Manufacturer: International Monetary Fund
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Money & Monetary Policy | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1557759553

Top Gun: Consulting With an Attitude the Future of It Consulting
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Top Gun: Consulting With an Attitude the Future of It Consulting
Joel K. Baker
Manufacturer: Authorhouse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Consulting | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1403317178

Book Description

Someone finally stands up and tells it the way it is. This funny, insightful book provides a roadmap for consultants, and those that employ them. It explodes myths surrounding consulting and challenges consultants to assess themselves and firms employing them

Book Description

This guide is directed mainly to environmental clubs and organizations, scouts, church groups, schools, service clubs and individuals who wish to earn some extra cash while performing a vital community service.

In the pages of this guide, you will find an array of operational options for recycling centers, techniques for marketing and handling recyclables, and suggestions for making your project competitive and successful. Recycling projects can be and have been successful. You too can help rid of portion of our society of its throwaway mentality if you are determined to implement different recycling options as needs and opportunities arise.

There is no one model way of running a recycling project. With this book, we hope to give you solid information about the most common methods used by community-based recycling organizations, advise you of possible pitfalls, and suggest additional resources for aid in developing your program. Most of all, we want to be encouraging - to let you know that there is no better day than today to begin your project.

Although originally published by the State of Illinois, all but a few paragraphs (on Illinois law) of this book are relevant to any location.

How to run a community recycling center: A resource guide to low-technology recycling in Illinois (Document)
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How to run a community recycling center: A resource guide to low-technology recycling in Illinois (Document)
Anna L Engelhardt
Manufacturer: Illinois Dept. of Energy and Natural Resources
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Recycling | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006Y6S6U

Customer Reviews:

A compelling look at the "thermal underwear" of the psyche.......1999-11-09

"The ego is the thermal underwear of our psyche," writes Howard Rankin in this highly readable, entertaining and yet profound guide to effective communications. "It allows our innermost processes to be kept within, keeping us warm, comfortable and protected from the harsh elements of the outside world..."

"The problem with most of our communication," he continues, "is that it is given and received with too much thermal underwear. We keep the barriers up, not extending ourselves, and not letting the other person in."

The upshot: "If meaningful communication is hard to find, so is meaning...Communication is a spiritual issue. It is spiritual not just in the fact it requires personal extension and understanding, but that it is a prerequisite for articulating the meaning in our lives. Communication skills are therefore the most valuable personal resource."

This book is full of gems like this. As a writer, I particularly enjoyed Rankin's discussion of story-telling. "Human beings are programmed to make sense of the world around them. Uncertainty is far too unsettling for the human mind, and we will go to great lengths to construct explanations, even if they are detrimental to us, rather than put up with the unknown...We are thus programmed to tell ourselves stories for the sake of our sanity. Communication _is_ story-telling."

But perhaps the most useful part of the book -- the section I will return to again and again -- are his 20 suggestions for escaping the "cage" of our own egos. His is a great list, but his message is that we must continually develop -- and experiment with -- our own.

Vault Guide to the Top 50 Consulting Firms, 6th Edition: Management and Strategy (Vault Career Library)
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If you want to be a consultant

Doesn't get better

superb guide with fascinating rankings

superb guide to the leading consulting firms

Highly recommended

Vault Guide to the Top 50 Consulting Firms, 6th Edition: Management and Strategy (Vault Career Library)
Marcy Lerner
Manufacturer: Vault, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Guides | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Case in Point:Complete Case Interview Preparation - 5th edition

Vault Career Guide to Consulting

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Management Consulting: A Complete Guide to the Industry

Vault Case Interview Practice Guide

ASIN: 1581312563

Book Description

This best-selling guide offers an inside look at management consultant careers and the firms that shape the industry.

Customer Reviews:

If you want to be a consultant.......2005-05-05

For individuals exploring consulting positions, this is a must read book. You will learn about corporate culture for the most prestigeous consulting forms in the US. Not all consulting is the same, nor are the firms that employ the top talent. Before you make a move, check the Vault Guide and you will know what to expect. Exellent reference, to the point and worth every penny.

Doesn't get better.......2003-12-03

If you are interested in the Consulting Industry....it doesn't get better than this! This is a great comprehensive guide to the various companies and their focus areas. Great jump start on finding where you belong in the world of consulting.

superb guide with fascinating rankings.......2001-11-01

I found this guide to be immensely helpful in getting the real story - good, bad and ugly - about the leading consulting firms. The book also has a fascinating new poll/ranking of the 50 most prestigious management consulting firms to work for. (As might be expected, the consultants surveyed rated McKinsey as the #1 most prestigious and BCG as #2). I would highly recommend reading this guide.

superb guide to the leading consulting firms.......2001-11-01

I found this guide to be immensely helpful in getting the real story - good, bad and ugly - about the consulting industry and the leading consulting firms. I would highly recommend reading this guide.

Highly recommended.......2001-10-28

I don't normally write reviews, but I just got this book and had to write. The book has detailed insider accounts of life inside every major consulting firm, including its history, areas of specialization, and tips on the hiring and interviewing process. Highly recommended for job seekers and consultants alike.

Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time
Average customer rating:

Getting finances in order used to be a struggle

Here is the help you need in getting your finances organized.

Great step-by-step guidance!

Organize Your Finances and Keep Them That Way!

Finally, an easy to follow book to organize your finanaces!

Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time
Debbie Stanley
Manufacturer: Que
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Budgeting & Money Management | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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Organize Your Home In No Time

Organize Your Office In No Time

Organize Your Work Day In No Time

Organize Your Garage In No Time

Get It Together: Organize Your Records So Your Family Won't Have To (Book with CD-Rom)

ASIN: 0789731797

Book Description

Drowning in a pile of bills, receipts and bank statements and don't know how to swim to the top? Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time will be your lifesaver. Written by a professional organizer and coach for the chronically disorganized, this do-it-yourself guide will show you how to create a fool-proof, easy-to-maintain financial system in a single day. Written in a unique step-by-step, to-do list approach, you will master skills such as tracking income and expenses, bill paying, creating a file system and shopping with efficiency. Then, learn to take all of your new skills and apply them to creating a savings plan, a budget and graphs to illustrate spending habits and debt details. When it comes to your finances, if the choice becomes sink or swim, let Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time help you swim.

Download Description

According to the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) only 46% of Americans have a budget or financial plan, though 78% of those surveyed intend to update or create a plan in the coming year. A common reason cited by consumers for the lack of budgeting or financial planning is that it takes too much time to get organized. In addition the CFA reports that the number of Americans worried about their personal finances has increased dramatically over the past year, as much as 17% depending on age and income bracket. CFA Press Release 5/13/03.For many people lack of information on their personal financial situation leads to increased worry and bad decision making - it is hard to find your way around in the dark. Debbie Stanley, a professional organizer, has written Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time as a step-by-step guide to turning the spotlight on your finances. By following the book's to-do lists and practical organization advice anyone can take a cluttered, messy pile of receipts, bank statements, bills, insurance policies, and tax papers and turn it into a foolproof, easy-to-maintain financial system in a single day. After mastering skills like tracking income and expenses, balancing accounts, bill paying, taming the incoming mail pile, creating a file system, learning how to shop faster and better, the reader will be able to graph valuable information like spending habits, debt details, net worth as well as create a savings plan and budget.

Customer Reviews:

Getting finances in order used to be a struggle.......2007-01-25

This book was very helpful. If you take it step by step as in the book you will be organized in no time at all. I love how it is written step by step. Worked great for me. Now I am ready to face 2007 financially organized.

Here is the help you need in getting your finances organized........2006-05-15

Whether you have been managing your personal finances for years, or you have just left home and have no idea where to start when it comes to managing your finances, you will benefit from this book. Stanley's approach to teaching the reader how to manage their finances is fun, exciting and motivating. The ideas in this book are practical and easy to implement. They are easy-to-follow and are adaptable to various situations and varous personalities.

Great step-by-step guidance!.......2004-11-03

Because the books contains consise "To-Do lists" as well as flagged reminders of key organizing principles, it is easy to take the information from the book and apply it to each reader's own situation. Working as a professional organizer, I was able to utilize the information from the book to help my clients become less overwhelmed with all of their papers and stick to an organized bill paying system that works for them.

Organize Your Finances and Keep Them That Way!.......2004-10-27

This is an excellent guide that offers practical solutions to get your finances organized and keep them that way. Debbie Stanley's shining personality stands by the reader throughout the entire book as she offers a myriad of solutions to today's financial challenges. Her focus is on creating an organized, efficient financial system that works for you rather than you working for your system. The author emphasizes that even financial items need homes in order to manage financial clutter. Debbie offers recommendations for setting up financial files, automatic bill payment, financial software, daily mail, paper flow systems, and yes, even shopping excursions! The concept of being "organized enough" is stressed throughout as a pleasant reminder to keep it simple. This book is loaded with helpful tips, visuals and resources to help you save money, time, and frustration by creating a customized, efficient personal finance system. It's a "must have" book if you are ready to organize your personal finances and keep them that way!

Finally, an easy to follow book to organize your finanaces!.......2004-10-11

This book is great! I would have never guessed that a book on organizing finances would be fun to read, but this one is! It is easy to follow and is presented in a way that makes it quite simple to customize your own systems. In addition to all the wonderful financial advice (some which I did not even realize that I needed to know!), there is plenty of advice on organizing other area's of your life. For example, dealing with non-financial paper and clutter like magazine articles and catalogs. My favorite is the "room-by-room" files. They work awesome!
Every young person or couple just starting out should have this book! I'll be giving it for bridal shower gifts from now on!

Average customer rating:

Read this book to improve your productivity
A must read for easy to do solutions!
you NEED this book

Organize Your Work Day In No Time
K.J. McCorry
Manufacturer: Que
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Time Management | Skills | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Success | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

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ASIN: 0789733331

Book Description

Do ever you feel like you live at the office instead of your house? Do your coworkers see you more often than your spouse? Take back your workday and your life! Organize Your Work Day In No Time will show you how to use your work time more efficiently through simple time management and organization techniques. Author and professional organizer K.J. McCorry will show you how to organize paper and electronic files, deal with e-mail overload, use contact software to its full potential and structure and easy-to-follow action less to become more efficient while you're at work. You will also have access to downloadable shopping lists, worksheets, to-do lists and other helpful information to help you get and stay organized. Get more done in less time and get more time at home and away from work with the expert help of Organize Your Work Day In No Time.

Customer Reviews:

Read this book to improve your productivity.......2005-06-21

K.J. McCorry covers everything you need to know about organizing your work day, beginning with deciding how you'd like to spend it. The electronic organizing information is essential--manage Outlook better, organize your email files, use your electronic calendar. Loaded with easy to implement how-to's and easy to understand instruction, this book will help you put things where they belong so you can find them again. It will help you save that useless time spent hunting for things!

With this book, you can form a new organizing habit in 21 days by tackling things in "small chunks".

Best tip: Train your mind to clean up before you move on to another task.

A must read for easy to do solutions!.......2005-05-17

What a great book! Whether you are an organized or disorganized person, you will be able to find useful and practical information in this book. There are so many factors that can affect our workday and this book addresses them. From paper and electronic filing systems to managing e-mail overload, the tips and time savers takes the unmanageable and makes it manageable. If you are looking for an easy to read and easy to implement book that deals with the real day to day issues, I suggest you read this book.

you NEED this book.......2005-05-03

My favorite chapters are "Improving your relationship with Email",
"Creating the Perfect File System" and
"Using your Contact Software to Its Full Potential"

I am going to start with the email chapter and see if i can't get rid of some of these 1,000 emails in my inbox-ughhhh

This book caught my eye because my work style is very disorganized.
My email clutters up, my contacts are not in any categories and I am so tired of dealing with all the paper work by the time 5 p.m. comes that I am too tired to go home and clean anything at all.

I really need this book. I hope I can follow through with all these suggestions.
I have decided to take one chapter a month.

Amazon

Is Microsoft truly a classic monopoly, whose aggressive pursuit of markets for Internet browsers and operating systems is harmful to consumers and worthy of government intervention? Or has it actually been a victim of aggressive rivals (led by Sun, Novell, Oracle, and IBM) who called in high-level favors to keep Bill Gates & Company out of the lucrative market for network servers? Richard McKenzie, a noted economist with the University of California at Irvine and the author of more than 20 books, is convinced of the latter. He advances a formidable argument on that behalf in Trust on Trial, which maintains "the Microsoft case has shown--and not for the first time--how politics can taint the antitrust enforcement process." Starting with copies of major U.S. antitrust laws, McKenzie shows how cases such as this eventually may affect consumers in both the short and long term. With some people unconditionally opposed to anything out of Redmond, of course, his thesis won't convince everyone the government proceedings are a sham. But even many of Microsoft's detractors should concede that he makes a compelling point, particularly with his overriding contention that the process is usually political. "More than Microsoft is now on trial: trust in antitrust enforcement is on trial," he says. --Howard Rothman

Book Description

An incisive argument proving that current rules of business competition are rendered obsolete by the dynamics of information-age companies.

Trust on Trial, a hard-hitting examination of competition in the modern marketplace, tackles the monopoly issue head-on. Through the lens of the Microsoft case, the first large-scale antitrust proceedings of the digital age, it challenges the efficacy of modern antitrust enforcement. While testing the appropriateness of new economic assumptions-from network effects to lock-ins-it forces us to ask whether nineteenth-century antitrust law, combined with twentieth-century enforcement norms, is applicable to the twenty-first-century problems of business organizations.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating View of Microsoft Propaganda.......2002-02-10

Mr. McKenzie's piece on the Microsoft monopoly is amusing if factually biased and tendered towards Microsoft.

Considering all legal disputes in regards to Microsoft's guilt are a moot point, the nature of this works is to try the legal system to deflect attention from Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior. These circumstances lead one to wonder what the class status of a lawbreaker is such that it can argue that it is in fact the law that is incorrect, not the behavior.

This title is a fascinating lobbying piece and a valid historical reference of Microsoft Propaganda in the Antitrust Years.

obviously biased analysis.......2001-06-27

As an attorney with a background in antitrust law, I was anxious to find a book that could cut through all the hype surrounding the Microsoft case. McKenzie approaches the case with an obvious axe to grind in favor of Microsoft; now, that's okay, as long as he still makes rational arguments. But his argumentation reads like a law school student trying to prove his antitrust professor wrong. I will give just one example--he argues that Microsoft isn't a "monopolist" because they "only" control 90% of the market. Anyone familiar with antirtrust law knows that the term "monopoly" need not be taken literally, and that market power can be exercised by a firm controlling far, far less than 90% of a market. Such spurious argumentation make you wonder if Bill Gates didn't subsidize this book.

Richard McKenzie: Trust on Trial.......2001-03-08

As an economist specializing on public policy, I have found the Microsoft case fascinating enough to have plowed through the economists' testimony in the case, the briefs from DOJ and Microsoft, the judge's findings, and a bit of the interpretive writings.

Mc Kenzie proved an excellent guide. My assessment is that the government totally failed in establishing the critical premises that Microsoft had a monopoly and predatory practices were a plausible strategy. The government's case on these points barely existed, and its lead expert contracticed himself and his prior writings. In contrast, Microsoft's expert economist present a coherent argument about why Microsoft should not be considered a monopolist and why the charges of predation were invalid. The government sought to hide this deficiency by concentrating on the tertiary point that Microsoft was aggressive. The government's experts and the judge got so steamed up about the appearances that they forgot the fundamental economic point the aggression without monopoly is useless.

The judge showed no understanding of the economcs and was not particularly astute about what any experience computer user knows. For example, he swallowed the government nonsense about the difficulties of downloading. (If it were so difficult, this site would not be as good as it is. )

McKenzie's careful, economically sound review of the case gives a perspective sadly lacking in the journalistic accounts that I have seen (including the press and magazine articles that were the basis for two of the three available journalistic accounts).

McKenzie, in particular, concentrates on the germane issue of why Microsoft should not be considered a monopolist out to overcharge consumers. He shows that the case really is one of rivals, unable to compete in the marketplace, running to Washington for aid. The book is a readable introduction to these critical economic points. It tells how the case developed and what the underlying economics are. People wanting a treatment of what really matters in the case should skip the journalists and try McKenzie. He is evidence that technical problems that journalists fear to treat can be made understandable.

The Government's case is baseless and destructive.......2000-07-30

This book by Professor McKenzie shows how baseless and destructive the Government's antitrust case against Microsoft is. He shows that the case is harming the economy, consumers, and the stock market. Significantly, in 1998 the Government lost the primary part of the case that it is now pursuing against Microsoft, the combining of a brower with the operating system. Those of us who use computers know that Microsoft has continually made the process easier throughout the years.

The Government's case is certain to fail, and will only serve to help elect George Bush, because of its devastating impact on the world's single most important company, and the American stock market. With friends like Joel Klein, Al Gore doesn't need any enemies.

David W. Lee Edmond, Oklahoma

good ideas, not enough followup.......2000-07-12

This book makes many correct arguments, but too often does not flesh them out sufficiently. This is especially frustrating because the meat is there to be had; the DoJ's case IS absurd. McKenzie could have used more input from someone well-versed in computers.

An example: McKenzie mentions Jacksons "application barrier to entry", but doesn't bring up the obvious reasons why that particular argument falls flat on its face. Applications are not magic beans that can detect the underlying OS and only run on approved ones. They are just data that you feed to an OS, like you feed "data files" to applications. So it is entirely plausible to create an application which takes other applications as data. A straightforward extension of this idea is creating a program on, say, Macintosh that can execute Windows programs -- and in fact such programs already exist. This renders the "application barrier" nonexistent, and the entire monopoly charge right with it. But McKenzie missed this entire line of argument.

And, of course, there is Java, which is essentially the same idea. The Judge seems aware of Java's "platform independence capability" but he is too technically ignorant to see that this undermines his entire applications barrier premise. Sadly, McKenzie is, too.

Still a book worth reading, though.

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