Michael Sandel: The Moral Limits of Markets
Since I imagine many of you are staying indoors even more than usual on a winter Saturday due to the nasty weather in the Northeast and Midwest, I though a video double-header was in order.
Read more...Category Archives: Social policy
Bill Moyers Talks with Thomas Cahill About the People’s Pope
In this segment, Thomas Cahill, author of the Hinges of History series and former director of religious publishing for Doubleday, discusses how Pope Francis is upsetting both conservatives in the Catholic Church and the public generally through his stress on traditional Christian values.
Read more...Should Taxpayers Subsidize Insuring Homeowners Against Climate-Change-Induced Flood Damage?
The problem of who should bear the costs of climate-change-induced rises in flood frequency in coastal communities is difficult even before throwing in the not-trivial problem that is it also highly politicized.
Read more...Ilargi: Everything Better Is Purchased At The Price Of Something Worse
Yves here. While I suspect the general thesis of this post will appeal to many readers, I’m bothered by the use of “price” and “purchase” to describe the idea that progress is not linear and in many respects may add up to less in terms of satisfaction than we’d like to believe.
Read more...Solomonic Judgment vs. Sophists, Economists and Calculators
Yves here. This essay achieves the difficult task of working through some of the implications of Arrow’s impossibility theorem, which might alternatively be called “the inescapability of politics theorem” in an accessible manner. In fact, one of the conclusions that the author Raphaële Chappe focuses on is that how well a society “does politics” matters, that the structure and health of institutions matter. Thus it’s perverse that economics, which readers of this blog understand full well is really political economy, has virtually no interest in questions of governance (the closest it comes is in principal/agent and game theory and information asymmetry).
Read more...Was Scrooge a Neoliberal?
A Christmas Carol is often mistakenly charged with creating our contemporary, festive, largely secular Christmas. And while that may have been one of Dickens’ motives, a bigger one is more obvious: that of better treatment of children and the working poor.
Read more...Patrick Durusau: A Salinas Card
The Supreme Court delivers an ugly holiday surprise.
Read more...Amar Bhidé on How Following Hayek Leads to Regulating Banks Like Utilities, Looking Askance at Liquidity and Securitization
I highly recommend this short interview by John Authers of the Financial Times with Amar Bhidé, a professor at Tufts, in which he argues that a proper reading of Friedrich Hayek would lead to considerable skepticism about whether most of the changes in finance over the last three decades actually represent progress.
Read more...Yes Virginia, Obama and the Democrats Are Mussolini-Style Corporatists, Just Like the Republicans
Reader dSquib flagged a “bizarre” article by Mike Konczal in the New Republic titled, “Corporatism” is the Latest Hysterical Right-Wing Accusation: The secret history of a smear.” dSquib seemed quite perplexed that anyone would deem calling Obama a corporatist, which as we’ll demonstrate is patently true, a smear.
Read more...Market Participation, aka Shopping, as a Toll of Neoliberalism: Obamacare as Case Study
Why Obamacare illustrates a big hidden cost of neoliberalism: that you are required to shop, and shopping is work.
Read more...Law And Disorder In Spain
As in so many Western countries these days, the social, political and economic landscapes in Spain are shifting at a startling rate. In the last two weeks alone the Rajoy government has announced one draft law and passed another that threaten to radically redraw the country’s system of law and order.
Read more...Gaius Publius: `Liberalism Doesn`t Carry the Critique of Capitalism that Progressivism Does`
I’ve been fascinated lately with the meaning of the terms “liberal” and “progressive.” It’s clear that what we now call “liberalism” is really a variant, a side branch of the real thing, and should be more properly named “FDR liberalism” or “social liberalism.”
Read more...“Can Societies Be Commodities All the Way Down?”
Get a cup of coffee while you settle down to watch this video of Nancy Fraser discussing the crisis as a joint problem of ecological, financial, and social systems.
Read more...Is Krugman Running on Brand Fumes? (TransPacific Partnership Edition)
It may seem a bit de trop to take on a Paul Krugman blog post yet again, but the reason for focusing on his post yesterday on the TransPacific Partnership is less for its substance and more as a political zeitgeist indicator.
Read more...Bill Moyers: The Great American Class War, Plutocracy Versus Democracy
Moyers describes how the social contract in America is being dismantled in order to further enrich what he calls a “mercenary class”.
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