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Rating: 
Summary: When does a virtual state monopolize the use of force?
Review: Rosecrance feels that China and India and a few other places are about to become mere body countries -- body and head are his terms --manufacturing goods for head countries, such as the US, which will specialize instead in services.His argument sounds to me suspiciously like the old fungible commodities / surplus value contrast, once used to characterize The Developing World and rationalize its economic subjection to The Developed World: the low profit margins in the former's economic activities ultimately made them prey to the high profit margins in the latter's -- Celso Furtado and many others torpedoed this idea long ago. I also find it difficult to accept that China and India et al. willingly will don the old Latin American latifundia role of becoming merely offshore manufacturing and assembly sites for US and European managerial / owner consumers. There will be resistance to this, not least from all the US and European - educated hitech entrepreneurs who now are back home in Bangalore and Shanghai setting up startups: there are some very bright folks among them, and they are not entirely ignorant of the economic history which Rosecrance blithely assumes away in his book. So there may be more conflict than Rosecrance postulates -- _will_ be, if the US and Europeans use their current economic and political muscle to force their current world market capitalism views on the Chinese and Indians and others. President Clinton is trying this out this week (11/22/99) in Florence on the Europeans, and some among even them are balking. The very old international law view that the essential function of The State is the monopolization of the use of force -- somebody's got to do it -- could come back into fashion, then. Rosecrance also assumes away this conflict issue: he thinks that Developed and Developing, locked into a happy dance of mutual economic dependence, somehow never will find anything to fight about, or at least will see personal loss in fighting. This begs the question of inequality, the fatal flaw in Mercantilism and Colonialism and a number of other World Economic Orders which foundered long before Rosecrance's Virtual Statism is going to founder. I expect myself that Chinese computer design and Indian software design, and the _local_ finance and management of same, all are going to be pretty good, actually -- and those people will fight to create and keep their comparative advantages in these and other economic areas. Trade is merely warfare by peaceful means -- an equation which easily becomes reversed under stress. The Virtual State is a good idea, but Rosecrance's formulation of it is not: the new flows of goods and services have been analyzed by others -- the issues which Rosecrance derives from this novelty are old, and their resolution is very old and not at all virtual. This is a simplistic book, uninformed by economic history. Rosecrance preaches to the choir in the US, but his ideas will play differently overseas.
Rating: 
Summary: very thought provoking
Review: This book brought me to the recognition of a number of features current in our society and business world, and helped me to put a number of puzzling events in perspective. Just the idea that land is now less important in the economic world itself is an important revelation. I think everyone in the investment community, as well as the academic area of the author, should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: very thought provoking
Review: This book brought me to the recognition of a number of features current in our society and business world, and helped me to put a number of puzzling events in perspective. Just the idea that land is now less important in the economic world itself is an important revelation. I think everyone in the investment community, as well as the academic area of the author, should read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but lacking empirical research
Review: This book has been written from what the scholars of International Relations would call "Pluralist - Liberalist" perspective. The argument in the book about the "head" and "body" nations is convincing but it is not adequate to fail to acknowledge the realist interpretation. It is easy to see that it is too early to predict that the trade relations between states will undermine the security interests as the states perceive them. And a big negative for the book is the lack of empirical research.
Rating:
Summary: Good but lacking empirical research
Review: This book has been written from what the scholars of International Relations would call "Pluralist - Liberalist" perspective. The argument in the book about the "head" and "body" nations is convincing but it is not adequate to fail to acknowledge the realist interpretation. It is easy to see that it is too early to predict that the trade relations between states will undermine the security interests as the states perceive them. And a big negative for the book is the lack of empirical research.
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