Michael Sandel: what money can’t buy
Michael Sandel: what money can’t buy Continue reading Michael Sandel: what money can’t buy
Tag: fairness
Taking notes 29: Abundance and Apocalypse
by Steven Miller Somewhere in the ‘90s, world production crossed the historic line into Economic Abundance. Humans now produce, through the global economy, so much wealth every year that it is no longer necessary for anyone to be impoverished. The UN has long held that the world produces enough food to end hunger forever; the problem is how it is distributed. This is essentially based on ability to pay. The reality of Economic Abundance is carefully censored and hidden, because it immediately raises the fact that people today have the capacity and the tools to — if they wished — … Continue reading Taking notes 29: Abundance and Apocalypse
A critique of Capital (3): Toward a moral economy
by Sanjay Perera
We return to the idea of general equilibrium and the transcendent nature of it espoused by economists and the problems ensuing from this. Another normative aspect to this for economists, in terms of what good a state of equilibrium can produce is highlighted by the so-called Pareto criterion. Continue reading A critique of Capital (3): Toward a moral economy
A critique of Capital (2): The metaphysics of economics
by Sanjay Perera
From the perspective of the Kantian critique the problem with the synthetic idea of general equilibrium is that it fast becomes a transcendent one. Continue reading A critique of Capital (2): The metaphysics of economics
A critique of Capital (1): The problem with economics
by Sanjay Perera
In the introductory lines of a textbook on economics are these words: “Are Marxists correct in arguing that only vast expenditure on arms saves the capitalist countries from a return of mass unemployment? Or have we now learned…how to avoid forever such devastating situations? Why, then, in the late 1970s, did unemployment in Britain, the United States and several other countries reach the highest levels ever attained since the Great Depression of the 1930s?” Continue reading A critique of Capital (1): The problem with economics
Taking notes 15: Sad Cyprus
If it has not already, then the world should be taking note of the curious and disturbing situation that is developing in Cyprus. The latest is that some resolution has come to pass in which Cyprus can remain in the Eurozone and deposits over 100,000 euros, not guaranteed by EU governments, will be expropriated to help resolve the debt issue. Most of those who will be affected by this appear to be Russians who have deposited billions in Cyprus. But it does appear that we have what amounts to a never-ending Eurozone crisis where the savings of ordinary Cypriots (small … Continue reading Taking notes 15: Sad Cyprus
Criminalizing dissent and punishing Occupy protesters
by Henry A. Giroux Military-style command and control systems are now being established to support “zero tolerance” policing and urban surveillance practices designed to exclude failed consumers or undesirable persons from the new enclaves of urban consumption and leisure. — Stephen Graham Young people are demonstrating all over the world against a variety of issues ranging from economic injustice and massive inequality to drastic cuts in education and public services.1 In the fall of 2011, on the tenth anniversary of September 11, as the United States revisited the tragic loss and celebrated the courage displayed on that torturous day, another … Continue reading Criminalizing dissent and punishing Occupy protesters
Beyond May Day: From ritual to resistance
by Jeff Shantz Perhaps few recurring events show the great disparity that exists between activist subcultures and broader working class and poor communities in North America than the May Day celebrations that happen each year (with a few exceptions). Despite its proud origins in working class movements of resistance, and its resonance in the mass struggles of the 1930s, May Day in Canada and the US has become little more than a historical commemoration among certain subcultures, an opportunity to (once again) unfurl black flags and distribute pamphlets (largely to one another). For the most part May Day events are … Continue reading Beyond May Day: From ritual to resistance
Taking notes 3
There are many lines that need to be crossed for things to be made better. For some it is daunting and means ‘crossing the Rubicon’. Recently, it was the attempt to cross the ‘Buffett line’ (or impose the ‘Buffett rule’) which the corporate-owned American congress stopped Obama from doing. The US is predictably prevented from even a token stance of doing what is right by its political system that actively stymies the interests of the people. It has lost the chance to ensure that those making over a million dollars annually pay a minimum effective tax rate of at least … Continue reading Taking notes 3
Fighting neo-liberalism with education and activism
by Dave Hill This is a revolutionary period in world history. The collapse of finance capitalism, the bankers’ bailouts across the globe, the continuing bankers’ bonuses, and the intrinsic problems of finance capitalism have, under current `bourgeois’ parliamentarist rule, resulted in ordinary families, workers and communities,`paying for the crisis’. All this, while the national and international capitalist classes and organisations impose austerity capitalism on a reeling public and public educational, social, health and welfare systems. This `austerity capitalism’ has led to an eruption of discontent-against political, economic and financial dictatorship, through the Arab Spring, the indignados in Spain, the Occupy … Continue reading Fighting neo-liberalism with education and activism
Philosophers for Change 