One thing the historical record makes abundantly clear is that Adam Smith and his laissez-faire buddies were a bunch of closet-case statists who needed brutal government policies to whip the English peasantry into a good capitalistic workforce willing to accept wage slavery.
Yasha Levine's
detailed review of historian Michael Perelman's
The Invention of Capitalism.
posted by clarknova
on Apr 7, 2012 -
35 comments
A nation of outlaws. A century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States.
posted by Kirth Gerson
on Aug 27, 2007 -
18 comments
Orion Magazine hosts a two-part essay on the environmentalism movement's attempts to fit within free market capitalism, and the problems therein. Part one,
The Idols of Environmentalism, focuses on the cross purposes of capitalism and environmentalism, and the apparent impossibility of the two working together. In part two,
The Ecology of Work, the focus is on the human impact of the work and consumption culture.
posted by knave
on Apr 29, 2007 -
27 comments
INTERNET AS HYPER-LIBERALISM: By the limitations of common sense and consensus. Sometime wacky ideas can help us look at things much clearer than a technical manual description of them by rational and well argued people. Paul Treanor is a one-of-a-kind writer. don't try to argue with him about being wrong. he does not believe in communication and therefore there is no CONTACT link anywhere on his site. He writes and lives in Amsterdam, Holland.
posted by sundaymag
on Jan 10, 2006 -
52 comments
Newsfilter: Russian Government (by market control of
Gazprom company) reduces flow of natural gas to
Ukraine. According to a
NYT article "Russia is now asking for $220 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas, up from $50 now" ending soviet-era years of subsidized price. Yet Russia is still
subsidizing other countries (selectively applying free market ?) while
Pravda blames Ukraine politicians rhetoric. Pay or not paying,
Gazprom accuses Ukraine of tapping into some of the gaslines (apparently
80% of Russian
gas export pass trough pipes in Ukraine). Europe doesn't like not having is gas shipped as Ukraine agreed to the
Energy Charter Treaty.
Why should we care ? Shock waves in free market have global effects, meaning you'remore likely to pay energy more...and it's winter.
posted by elpapacito
on Jan 1, 2006 -
42 comments
Out of the desert, out of Africa: In war-torn Eritrea, former atomic physicist demonstrates radical new vision of
Free-Market environmentalism. "...Imagine
a farm where water is never in short supply and each crop leaves the soil more fertile. Now imagine that farm offering a solution to....global warming, declining water tables, loss of arable land,
collapsing fisheries, and shrinking biodiversity. Finally, imagine that farm making money....Carl Hodges, an atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, no longer imagines such a farm.
He's built one....
Seawater Farms, a joint venture with the government of Eritrea on the Red Sea, is the
first commercial-sized saltwater farm in the world....."
posted by troutfishing
on Jul 6, 2003 -
18 comments
The New Gilded Age and its Discontents. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz began explaining why markets fail long before Enron and WorldCom rose, exploded and crashed. But not many people wanted to listen during the boom-boom '90s; Stiglitz was even fired from his position as chief economist at the World Bank after he repeatedly criticized the organization's free-market obsessions.
posted by Ty Webb
on Jul 3, 2002 -
8 comments
