Madness is doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (SLBP)
posted by vivelame on Jul 9, 2009 - 29 comments

"The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." [more inside]
posted by philip-random on Jul 6, 2009 - 76 comments

Not ones for subtlety, the Death of Environmentalism guys (previously) are at it again with a Manifesto for a New Environmentalism. Their Apollo Alliance is getting early support from both Clinton and Obama. But it's not the only "new environmentalism" out there. There's this New Environmentalism, while others would include both market-based approaches among the the idols of old environmentalism.
posted by salvia on Sep 20, 2007 - 22 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

Frederic Bastiat, described by Joseph Schumpeter nearly a century after Bastiat's death as, "the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived." A great proponent of free markets, his works show a fastidious devotion to the Vienna School of economic thought. His Petition to Candlemakers demonstrates both his satirical wit and an understanding of the failings of isolationist economic policies (cf Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act). Lorenza Garreau writes, "Every day he crushed a fallacy -- killed it by ridicule and by turning on it the bright light of logic."
posted by geoff. on May 14, 2007 - 17 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