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(Crosspost from my Substack blog, where post includes links and images)> I don’t think I’m the only one to notice that Marc Andreesen’s ‘Techno-Optimist Manifesto’ has a curiously dated feel, as if the author had been cryogenically frozen around the time he cashed out of Netscape. Two points particularly struck me. First, there his paean to market processes, which are represented as “Willing buyer meets willing seller, a price is struck, both sides benefit from the exchange or...

Jamie Morgan: To a member of the public it must seem weird that it is possible to state, as you do, such fundamental criticism of an entire field of study. The perplexing issue from a third party point of view is how do we reconcile good intention (or at least legitimate sense of self as a scholar), and power and influence in the world with error, failure and falsity in some primary sense; given that the primary problem is methodological, the issues seem to extend in different ways from...

Με μεγάλη λύπη έμαθα για τον πρόσφατο ξαφνικό θάνατο του Aleksandr Buzgalin. Μόλις πριν από λίγες εβδομάδες συζητούσε ζωηρά για τη Μαρξιστική Πολιτική Οικονομία στο πρόσφατο φόρουμ της Παγκόσμιας Ένωσης Πολιτικής Οικονομίας και σχεδίαζε δυναμικά τη μελλοντική πορεία. Ζεστός και εξαιρετικά ευγενικός και ταυτόχρονα πνευματώδης και αταλάντευτος στις απόψεις του, ο Aleksandr είχε μια εμπνευσμένη παρουσία σε όλα τα διεθνή φόρουμ που τον έχω συναντήσει. Ο θάνατός του είναι μια μεγάλη...

Alexander Vladimirovich Buzgalin: In memoriam It is with great sorrow that I learned about the recent sudden death of Aleksandr Buzgalin. Just a few weeks ago he was vibrantly discussing Marxist Political Economy at the recent forum of the World Association of Political Economy and energetically planning the way forward. Warm and extremely polite and at the same time witty and unwavering in his views, Aleksandr had an inspiring presence in all international fora that I have met...

My latest in the Conversation. I’m linking to my Blogstack, please advise if this works for you. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Initial claims on the cusp of turning lower YoY  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims dropped below 200,000 last week for the first time since January, and not too far from the 50+ year low of 182,000 set in September one year ago. Specifically, they declined -13,000 to 198,000. The four-week average declined -1,000 to 205,750, the lowest since February. Contrarily, with the usual one-week lag, continuing claims rose 29,000 to 1.734...

from Blair Fix Economists are not known for their literary imaginations. Flip through any economics textbook and you’ll find a barrage of terms like the ‘Philips curve’ and the ‘Fisher effect’. The jargon is simple enough — empirical relations are usually named after the person who discovered them. But this convention is neither descriptive nor fun. The exception to this vanilla naming practice is a pattern called the ‘Great Gatsby curve’.1 It’s named after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous...

It is easy to think that those of us who favor a two-state solution are utopian dreamers.  The mantle of realism seems to rest naturally on those who insist on standing tough against a Palestinian state.  But this simple dichotomy has never been accurate, and the realist case for a renewed effort to achieve a stable peace between Israel and the Palestinians is getting stronger every day.  Seeking peace may well lead to failure, but the alternative...

2024 WEA Online Conference. CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 80 YEARS LATER – the relevance of the issues raised by Schumpeter   On the WEA Conference website, you can find all the details for submissions and participation: https://schumpeter2024.weaconferences.net/ Starting from Schumpeter’s book, this WEA Online Conference, led by Arturo Hermann and Maria Alejandra Madi, would promote an open debate on how these concepts of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy characterise our...

from Lars Syll With any phenomenon of interest, understanding its nature or essential properties allows us to relate to, or interact with, it in more knowledgeable and competent ways than would otherwise be the case … A surprising number of social theorists, when embarking on substantive analyses, pay almost no attention at all to insights bearing on the nature of these (or any other) factors. Instead, the preferred option is to select the types of methods, procedures or tools to be...