Italy – Page 4 – artdiamondblog.com

Italy’s Dynastic Capitalism “Is Built Around Loyalty, Not Performance”

“Carlo Altomonte, an economist, says that “Italy’s problem isn’t that we have a lot of debt. It’s that we don’t grow.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) “I know that in the States, all Mediterranean countries get lumped together,” says Carlo Altomonte, an economist with Bocconi University in Milan. “But Italy’s problem isn’t that we have a lot of debt. It’s that we don’t grow.”
. . .
“There is no sense of what a market economy is in this country,” says Professor Altomonte. “What you see here is an incredible fear of competition.”
. . .
FIVE years ago, Francesco Giavazzi needed a taxi. Cabs are relatively scarce in Milan, especially at 5 a.m., when he wanted to head to the airport, so he called a company at 4:30 to schedule a pickup. But when he climbed into the cab half an hour later, he discovered that the meter had been running for more than 20 minutes, because the taxi driver had arrived soon after the call and started charging for (p. 7) his time. Allowed by the rules, but to Mr. Giavazzi, utterly unfair.
“So it was 20 euros before we started the trip to the airport,” recalls Mr. Giavazzi, who is an economics professor at Bocconi University. “I said, ‘This is impossible.’ ”
Professor Giavazzi later wrote an op-ed article denouncing this episode as another example of the toll exacted by Italy’s innumerable guilds, known by several names here, including “associazioni di categoria.” (These are different from unions, another force here, in that guilds are made up of independent players in a trade or profession who have joined to keep outsiders out and maintain standards, as opposed to representing employees in negotiations with management, as a union might.) Even baby sitters have associations in Italy.
The op-ed did not endear Professor Giavazzi to the city’s cab drivers. They pinned leaflets with his name and address at taxi stands around Milan and for the next five nights, cabs drove around his home, honking their horns.
“This is a country with a lot of rents,” says Professor Giavazzi, sitting in his office one recent afternoon, . . . “You need a notary public, it’s like 1,000 euros before you even open your mouth. If you’re a notary public in this country, you live like a king.”
For Mr. Barbera, as is true with every entrepreneur here, the prevalence and power of Italy’s guilds explains much of what is driving up costs. He says he must overspend for accountants, lawyers, truckers and other members of guilds on a list that goes on and on: “Everything has a tariff, and you have to pay.”
. . .
Italians, notes Professor Altomonte, are among the world’s heaviest consumers of bottled water. “Do you know why? Because the water in the tap comes from the government.”
The suspicion of Italians when it comes to extra-familial institutions explains why many here care more about protecting what they have than enhancing their wealth. Most Italians live less than a mile or two from their parents and stay there, often for financial benefits like cash and in-kind services like day care. It’s an insularity that runs all the way up to the corporate suites. The first goal of many entrepreneurs here isn’t growth, so much as keeping the business in the family. For a company to really expand, it needs capital, but that means giving up at least some control. So thousands of companies here remain stubbornly small — all of which means Italy is a haven for artisans but is in a lousy position to play the global domination game.
“The prevailing management style in this country is built around loyalty, not performance,” says Tito Boeri, scientific director at Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti, who has written about Italy’s dynastic capitalism.

For the full story, see:
DAVID SEGAL. “Is Italy Too Italian?” The New York Times (Sun., August 1, 2010): 1 & 6-7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 31, 2010.)

“The clothier Luciano Barbera in his family’s “spa for yarn,” where crates of thread rest for months. Economists fear that such small-scale artisanship cannot sustain Italy’s economy forever.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Environmentalist Antiglobalization “Vandals” Destroy Giorgio’s Corn

“Last week, Giorgio Fidenato, who had planted genetically modified corn, stood amid stalks that had been trampled by antiglobalization activists.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) VIVARO, Italy — Giorgio Fidenato declared war on the Italian government and environmental groups in April with a news conference and a YouTube video, which showed him poking six genetically modified corn seeds into Italian soil.

In fact, said Mr. Fidenato, 49, an agronomist, he planted two fields of genetically modified corn. But since “corn looks like corn,” as he put it, it took his opponents weeks to find his crop.
The seeds, known as MON810, are modified so that the corn produces a chemical that kills the larvae of the corn borer, a devastating pest. Yet while European Union rules allow this particular seed to be planted, Italy requires farmers to get special permission for any genetically modified, or G.M., crop — and the Agriculture Ministry never said yes.
“We had no choice but to engage in civil disobedience — these seeds are legal in Europe,” said Mr. Fidenato, who has repeatedly applied for permission, adding that he drew more inspiration from Ron Paul than Gandhi.
. . .
After Mr. Fidenato’s provocation, investigators did genetic testing to identify the locations of the offending stalks in the sea of cornfields that surround this tiny town. Officials seized two suspect fields — about 12 acres — and declared the plantings illegal. Greenpeace activists surreptitiously snipped off the stalks’ tassels in the hope of preventing pollen from being disseminated.
On Aug. 9, 100 machete-wielding environmental activists from an antiglobalization group called Ya Basta descended on Vivaro and trampled the field before local police officers could intervene. They left behind placards with a skull and crossbones reading: “Danger — Contaminated — G.M.O.”
Giancarlo Galan, who became agriculture minister in April, called the protesters “vandals,” although he did not say he would allow genetically modified crops. But Luca Zaia, the previous agriculture minister and president of the nearby Veneto region, applauded the rampage, saying: “There is a need to show multinationals that they can’t introduce Frankenstein crops into our country without authorization.”
Over the past decade, genetically modified crops have been a major (p. A8) source of trade friction between Europe and the United States.
Both the United States Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Agency say that there is no scientific evidence that eating MON810 corn is dangerous.
. . .
. . . it is not clear that the battle of Vivaro will have a quick victor. Jail time or at least fines are expected for Mr. Fidenato (illegal planting) and Mr. Tornatore (trespassing and destroying private property).

For the full story, see:
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. “In the Fields of Italy, a Conflict Over Corn.” The New York Times (Tues., August 24, 2010): A4 & A8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date August 23, 2010.)

“An ear of corn infested with corn borers. A modified variety is meant to counteract the pest.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Toricelli Experiment Dispoved Aristotlelian Theory that a Vacuum Was Impossible

(p. 8) Florence, in the year 1641, had been essentially the private fief of the Medici family for two centuries. The city, ground zero for both the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, was also where Galileo Galilei had chosen to live out the sentence imposed by the Inquisition for his heretical writings that argued that the earth revolved around the sun. Galileo was seventy years old and living in a villa in Arcetri, in the hills above the city, (p. 9) when he read a book on the physics of movement titled De motu (sometimes Trattato del Moto) and summoned its author, Evangelista Torricelli, a mathematician then living in Rome. Torricelli, whose admiration for Galileo was practically without limit, decamped in time not only to spend the last three months of the great man’s life at his side, but to succeed him as professor of mathematics at the Florentine Academy.
. . .
(p. 9) . . . , Torricelli used a tool even more powerful than his well–cultivated talent for mathematical logic: He did experiments. At the behest of one of his patrons, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose engineers were unable to build a sufficiently powerful pump, Torricelli designed a series of apparatuses to test the limits of the action of contemporary water pumps. In spring of 1644, Torricelli filled a narrow, four-foot-long glass tube with mercury–a far heavier fluid than water–inverted it in a basin of mercury, sealing the tube’s top. and documented that while the mercury did not pour out, it did leave a space at the closed top of the tube. He reasoned that since nothing could have slipped past the mercury in the tube, what occupied the top of the tube must, therefore, be nothing: a vacuum.
. . .
(p. 10) Torricelli was not, even by the standards of his day, a terribly ambitious inventor. When faced with hostility from religious authorities and other traditionalists who believed, correctly, that his discovery was a direct shot at the Aristotelian world, he happily returned to his beloved cycloids, the latest traveler to find himself on the wrong side of the boundary line between science and technology
But by then it no longer mattered if Torricelli was willing to leave the messiness of physics for the perfection of mathematics: vacuum would keep mercury in the bottle, hut the genie was already out. Nature might have found vacuum repugnant for two thousand years, but Europe was about to embrace it.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: italics in original; ellipses added.)

Vatican Made Bellarmine a Saint in 1930, but Still Says Galileo Erred

“A bust of Galileo at the Galileo Museum in Florence, Italy. The museum is displaying recovered parts of his body.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A9) As a heretic he could not be given a proper church burial. But for years after his death, his followers in the circle of the grand dukes of Tuscany pushed to give him an honorable resting place.

Nearly a century later, in 1737, members of Florence’s cultural and scientific elite unearthed the scientist’s remains in a peculiar Masonic rite. Freemasonry was growing as a counterweight to church power in those years and even today looms large in the Italian popular imagination as an anticlerical force.
According to a notary who recorded the strange proceedings, the historian and naturalist Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti used a knife to slice off several fingers, a tooth and a vertebra from Galileo’s body as souvenirs but refrained, it appears, from taking his brain. The scientist was then reburied in a ceremony, “symmetrical to a beatification,” said Mr. Galluzzi.
After taking their macabre souvenirs, the group placed Galileo’s remains in an elegant marble tomb in Florence’s Santa Croce church, a pointed statement from Tuscany’s powers that they were outside the Vatican’s control. The church has long been a shrine to humanism as much as to religion, and Galileo’s permanent neighbors include Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Rossini.
. . .
Even today, centuries after Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the pope’s theological watchdog, had Galileo arrested for preaching Copernicanism, the church has never quite managed to acknowledge that his heliocentric theory is correct. (For his part, Cardinal Bellarmine was made a saint in 1930.)
Pope John Paul II reopened the Galileo case in 1981, and in 1992 issued his committee’s findings: that the judges who condemned Galileo had erred but that the scientist had also erred in his arrogance in thinking that his theory would be accepted with no physical evidence.
. . .
. . . as recently as last fall, at a news conference introducing an exhibition of historic telescopic instruments at the Vatican Museums, the director of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, referred without blinking to “the errors committed by both sides” — indicating both the church and Galileo.

For the full story, see:
RACHEL DONADIO. “Florence Journal; A Museum Display of Galileo Has a Saintly Feel.” The New York Times (Fri., July 23, 2010): A1 & A9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated July 22, 2010.)

Intel’s Computer-on-a-Chip “Was Achieved Largely by Immigrants from Hungary, Italy, Israel, and Japan”

(p. 111) By launching the computer-on-a-chip, Intel gave America an enduring advantage in this key product in information technology–an edge no less significant because it was achieved largely by immigrants from Hungary, Italy, Israel, and Japan. Intel’s three innovations of 1971–plus the silicon gate process that made them the smallest, fastest, and best-selling devices in the industry–nearly twenty years later remain in newer versions the most powerful force in electronics.

Source:

Gilder, George. Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology. Paperback ed. New York: Touchstone, 1990.

If the Medici Had Not Intervened, Galileo “Would Have Been Killed”

(p. D7) The Franklin Institute and its aspiring blockbuster, “Galileo, the Medici & the Age of Astronomy,” are something of an odd couple — a circumstance explained, like so much else, by history.
. . .

Meanwhile, the exhibition leaves provocative questions — about the nexus of church and state, as well as science and faith — unanswered. If Galileo was still a court favorite, and science was so revered in Florence, why weren’t the powerful dukes able to prevent his 1633 trial, heresy conviction, and sentence of house arrest?
Galileo’s patrons did, in fact, intervene on his behalf, Filippo Camerota, vice director of the Institute and Museum for the History of Science and one of the exhibition curators, said in an interview. “If the Medici were not there,” Mr. Camerota said, “he would have been killed.” Good to know.

For the full commentary, see:
JULIA M. KLEIN. “Exhibition; What Galileo Saw.” Wall Street Journal (Tues., APRIL 28, 2009): D7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

More Europeans Leading Stagnant, Stunted Lives

“Gianluca Pompei, Francesca Di Pietro and son, Mario, 2, shopping in Rome. They have cut spending on entertainment.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) LES ULIS, France — When their local bakery in this town south of Paris raised the price of a baguette for the third time in six months, Anne-Laure Renard and Guy Talpot bought a bread maker. When gasoline became their biggest single expense, they sold one of their two cars.
Their combined annual income of 40,000 euros, about $62,500, lands Ms. Renard, a teacher, and Mr. Talpot, a postal worker, smack in the middle of France’s middle class. And over the last year, prices in France have risen four times as fast as their salaries.
At the end of every month, they blow past their bank account’s $900 overdraft limit, plunging themselves deeper into a spiral of greater resourcefulness and regret.
“In France, when you can’t afford a baguette anymore, you know you’re in trouble,” Ms. Renard said one recent evening in her kitchen, as her partner measured powdered milk for their 13-month-old son, Vincent. “The French Revolution started with bread riots.”
The European dream is under assault, as the wave of inflation sweeping the globe mixes with this continent’s long-stagnant wages. Families that once enjoyed Europe’s vaunted quality of life are pinching pennies to buy necessities, and cutting back on extras like movies and vacations abroad.
Potentially more disturbing — especially to the political and social order — are the millions across the continent grappling with the realization that they may have lives worse, not better, than their parents.

For the full story, see:
CARTER DOUGHERTY and KATRIN BENNHOLD. “Squeezed in Europe; For Middle-Class, Stagnant Wages and a Stunted Lifestyle.” The New York Times (Thurs., May 1, 2008): C1 & C8.
(Note: the online version of the title is “For Europe’s Middle-Class, Stagnant Wages Stunt Lifestyle.” )

“Anne-Laure Renard, a teacher, and Guy Talpot, a postal worker, sold one car and bought a bread maker to cut expenses. Prices have risen four times as fast as salaries in France in the last year.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Unhappy Italians: “More Fear than Hope”

"A priest passes an abandoned garage covered with graffiti in Milan. Italy’s malaise, an economic, political, and social funk, was summed up in a recent poll: Italians report themselves to be the least happy people in Western Europe." Source of caption and photo: online verison of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) ROME — All the world loves Italy because it is old but still glamorous. Because it eats and drinks well but is rarely fat or drunk. Because it is the place in a hyper-regulated Europe where people still debate with perfect intelligence what, really, the red in a stoplight might mean.

But these days, for all the outside adoration and all of its innate strengths, Italy seems not to love itself.   The word here is “malessere,” or “malaise”; it implies a collective funk — economic, political and social — summed up in a recent poll: Italians, despite their claim to have mastered the art of living, say they are the least happy people in Western Europe.

“It’s a country that has lost a little of its will for the future,” said Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and a possible future center-left prime minister. “There is more fear than hope.”

. . .

. . .   In 1987, Italy celebrated its economic parity with Britain. Now Spain, which joined the European Union only a year earlier, may soon overtake it, and Italy has fallen behind Britain.

Italy’s low-tech way of life may enthrall tourists, but Internet use and commerce here are among the lowest in Europe, as are wages, foreign investment and growth. Pensions, public debt and the cost of government are among the highest.

. . .

(p. A18) . . .  entrepreneurs complain that they are alone. Politicians offered little help making Italy competitive, and this remains a major impediment to making their gains grow. Businesses want less bureaucracy, more flexible labor laws and large investments in infrastructure to make moving goods around easier.

. . .

. . .   Many worry . . . that Italy may share the same fate as the Republic of Venice, based in what many say is the most beautiful of cities, but whose domination of trade with the Near East died with no culminating event. Napoleon’s conquest in 1797 only made it official.

Now it is essentially an exquisite corpse, trampled over by millions of tourists. If Italy does not shed its comforts for change, many say, a similar fate awaits it: blocked by past greatness, with aging tourists the questionable source of life, the Florida of Europe.

. . .

. . .   “We have reached a point where hoping for some kind of white knight coming in saying, ‘We’ll sort you out,’ is over.”

“We Italians have our destiny in our hands more than ever before,” he said.

For the full story, see:

IAN FISHER "In a Funk, Italy Sings an Aria of Disappointment." The New York Times (Thurs., December 13, 2007): A1 & A18.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Strong Global Support for Free Markets

Source of table: "World Publics Welcome Global Trade — But Not Immigration." Pew Global Attitudes Project, a project of the PewResearchCenter. Released: 10.04.07 dowloaded from: http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=258

(p. A10) WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 — Buoyed and battered by globalization, people around the world strongly view international trade as a good thing but harbor growing concerns about its side effects: threats to their cultures, damage to the environment and the challenges posed by immigration, a new survey indicates.

In the Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of people in 46 countries and the Palestinian territories, large majorities everywhere said that trade was a good thing. In countries like Argentina, which recently experienced trade-based growth, the attitude toward trade has become more positive.

But support for trade has decreased in recent years in advanced Western countries, including Germany, Britain, France and Italy — and most sharply in the United States. The number of Americans saying trade is good for the country has dropped by 19 percentage points since 2002, to 59 percent.

“G.D.P. growth hasn’t been as dramatic in these places as in Latin America or Eastern Europe,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, referring to gross domestic product, the total value of the goods and services produced in a country. “But worldwide, even though some people are rich and some are poor, support for the basic tenet of capitalism is pretty strong.”

For the full story, see:

BRIAN KNOWLTON. "Globalization, According to the World, Is a Good Thing. Sort Of." The New York Times (Fri., October 5, 2007): A10.

Florence in Its Prime: Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”

In my work on the labor economics of the process of creative destruction, I make use of the competition between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi over who would do the bronze door panels. Brunelleschi withdrew, after a "tie" decision from the judges. He then retooled, and bult the marvelous dome that is still one of the world’s architectural marvels.

If Michelangelo’s "David" heads the "must see" list of Renaissance masterpieces for most visitors to Florence, then I suspect "The Gates of Paradise," Lorenzo Ghiberti’s monumental doors of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, rank a close second. The 20-foot-tall portal — 10 exquisitely articulated gilt bronze reliefs of Old Testament scenes, framed by standing prophets, foliage and projecting heads — has mesmerized viewers since its completion in 1452. Michelangelo himself is supposed to have given the doors the name by which they are still known.

. . .

Next year, visitors to Florence will again see "The Gates" restored to their full splendor, permanently installed in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.

For the full commentary, see:

KAREN WILKIN. "Ghiberti’s Doors Are Heavenly Again." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., June 5, 2007): D5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Italy Suffers from a “Growing Spirit of Cynicism and Escapism”

Source of book image: http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/0767914392.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V57219494_.jpg

As anyone can attest who has lived in Italy even briefly, its domestic life can be gracious and sweet. The question is whether this way of life can survive the many urgent challenges enumerated by Mr. Severgnini: an abysmal fertility rate, crushing pension obligations, marginal economic growth, a sclerotic legal system, the flight abroad of the most creative young minds, and a growing spirit of cynicism and escapism.

For the full review, see:

FRANCIS X. ROCCA. "BOOKS; An Italian Challenge; Keeping la dolce vita as modernity spreads." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., September 9, 2006): P8.

The reference to the book:

Beppe Severgnini. La Bella Figura. Broadway, 2006. 217 pages, $23.95.