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The term fascism is tossed about without much reflection these days. Conservatives talk of Islamofascism even while decrying as class warfare any reference in similar terms to their own extreme right wing stuff. Some left-liberals count almost anything the right does as fascism. None of this has much to recommend it. This kind of ranting […] It is still fashionable today to ridicule the report the late Donella Meadows and her associates at MIT prepared for The Club of Rome, “The Limits to Growth” and successor reports. Yet it is patent nonsense and an affront to common sense to pretend that economic growth, the fundamental basis of modern capitalism, can continue […] What BP is really doing. This is a cautionary post. It is not a cautionary tale, something made up to illustrate a point. Rather it is constructed out of information gleaned from public sources. Conventional wisdom holds that competition is the only and best way to provide abundance for all. Pursuit of profit results somehow […] In his Introduction to a new translation of Aristotle’s Politics, published in 1912, William Ellis pointed out that: The Greek doctrine that the essence of the state consists in community of purpose is the counterpart of the notion often held in modern times that the essence of the state is force. The existence of […] While congress congratulates itself on passing health care “reform” I seethe with anger. A few days ago when it was announced that agreement had been reached on this bill, I received mail from my health insurance company informing me of a 60 percent increase in my premium and that of my wife. Cost control? Sixty percent in one year? […] Speaking of “Small is Beautiful” (as I did in my last post), readers would do well to revisit E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 work on “Economics as if People Mattered” (1).” But first, this about Jared Diamond. In an Op-Ed piece “Will Big Business Save the Earth” (2) Diamond belies his own thesis of a few […] The contrast could not have been more stark in the side-by-side Op-Ed pieces in today’s (December 7, 2009) New York Times. James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (but writing only for himself) writes eloquently of the folly of the proposed “Cap and Trade” (Hansen terms it “Cap and Fade”) rules for supposed reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Sitting cheek-to-jowl, as it were, to Hansen’s piece is Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman’s diametrically opposed opinion on the same subject. Krugman asserts that Cap and Trade is a market-based solution to the ills of excessive atmospheric carbon emissions. […] It amazes me that the rich are still stealing from the poor (that is, the taxpayers) and although some do notice, they are nevertheless getting away with it. In today’s (9 Apr 09) New York Times (All the news we see fit to print) a front page article is headlined “Small Investors May Be Enlisted […] The uproar about bonuses awarded to AIG employees would be hilarious were it not so troubling and pathetic. It is almost emblematic of the refusal of virtually all, government, politicians, pundits, citizens, all, to see what is staring them in the face. The solution to all this, at least for the short run (the next […] The current economic scene can be considered a dress rehearsal for what is coming in the not too distant future. And unlike what’s happening today, the situation in the future will be irreversible. The situation leading to this “bailout” is fixable, at least according to the rules of today. |
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