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from Peter Radford “Formation is the vanishing of being into nothing, and the vanishing of nothing into being” Hegel loved his dialectics.  But it isn’t just contrasts that illuminate reality.  It is connections also. Connections matter.  Single things are interesting.  Perhaps even intriguing.  But it is the way in which things connect that leads us to the better understanding of our surroundings and of ourselves. Our modern world rests largely on a web of technology that mediates our...

I was going to follow up my post on Labor’s tax and expenditure policies (effectively identical to LNP) with one on climate, pointing out the remaining difference – Labor’s 2019 proposal for a vehicle fuel efficiency target. Given that Morrison had tangled himself up with his backflip on electric vehicles after snarking about “abolishing the weekend” this seemed like one policy that would survive. But Albanese never misses a chance to disappoint, and it’s been reported he’ll dump...

Kindle $8.00US UK DE FR ES IT NL JP BR CA MX AU IN Paperback $22.00US UK DE FR ES IT JP CA Contributors: Richard Parker, Richard B. Norgaard, James K. Galbraith, Lukas Bäuerle, William E. Rees, Jayati Ghosh, Richard C. Koo, Neva Goodwin, Max Koch, Jayeon Lindellee, Johanna Alkan Olsson, Katharine N. Farrell, John Komlos, Clive L. Spash, Adrien O.T. Guisan, Andri W. Stahel, Jamie Morgan, Edward Fullbrook If you feel that there is nothing new or liberal about neoliberal economics, and...

from Dean Baker Former New York Times reporter Donald McNeil had an interesting Medium piece on how antitrust law could be impeding the development of effective treatments for COVID-19. McNeil argued that COVID-19 treatments that were developed by Pfizer and Merck, and are now in the final stages of testing, may work best when taken together. He argues that this may be the case because the drugs use two fundamentally different mechanisms for attacking the virus. By using the two in...

Σύντροφοι και συντρόφισσες, καλησπέρα Για τον Κώστα Δεν θα πω πολλά. Άλλωστε στον Κώστα δεν άρεσαν οι υπερβολές και οι έπαινοι όσο τον αφορούσαν. Διακατεχόταν από αυτή την υποδόρια και ταυτόχρονα ευγενική ειρωνεία που κρύβει πίσω της την ουσιαστική σεμνότητα ενός ανθρώπου αφιερωμένου στο σκοπό της επανάστασης. Είναι σαν να έλεγε «ας αφήσουμε τις περιττές φιοριτούρες και ας επικεντρωθούμε σε αυτό που είναι το βασικό». Σε μιά εποχή που η ήττα πλημμύρισε την Αριστερά και το...

from Lars Syll  For more than 20 years, economists were enthralled by so-called “rational expectations” models which assumed that all participants have the same (if not perfect) information and act perfectly rationally, that markets are perfectly efficient, that unemployment never exists (except when caused by greedy unions or government minimum wages), and where there is never any credit rationing. That such models prevailed, especially in America’s graduate schools, despite evidence to...

In September 2021, a Dutch judge decided, in a case of the FNV Union against Uber, that Uber drivers are employees, not dependent or independent contractors. Meaning, on the micro level, that these employees in one stroke were entitled to more money, more protection and more rights. In the macro-conceptual framework of the International Labour Organization (ILO) this means that they shifted from a somewhat informal status to a formal status (see below). While it shows up, in the...

I was puzzled by Anthony Albanese’s Budget reply speech in May this year, which put forward only one alternative policy, a “$10 billion social housing fund”, which proved on inspection to be an off-budget piece of spurious financial engineering that, if all went well might generate $500 million a year for housing. The government already has four or five similar funds and of course the much larger Future fund. What puzzled me was that Albanese’s response seemed to fall between two...

The New Yorker is running a profile of the anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar. Reading it, I was unconvinced by the implied response to the obvious objection, “if life is so bad, why not kill yourself”, namely that suicide is painful in itself and causes pain to others. I searched a bit, and discovered that, not only had Harry Brighouse covered the book at Crooked Timber soon after it came out, but I had made the same objection in comments[1], which I’ll reproduce for...