Below are three brilliant articles and one interview that help understand geopolitics at the beginning of 2024. In my view, they should be read by anyone interested in the geopolitical situation & should be required reading for students of international relations and international political economy: US Foreign Policy is a Scam Built on Corruption, Jeffrey […]
Read More »We have always had the crazy
On this day when we like to review the whacky, crazy crap that has happened, here is something that fits. Though, not from last year. It is easy to see how conspiracy develops when learning of such past. It’s not just the uneducated that create the nuttiness. It is not just the lack of knowledge that will lead oneself down the rabbit hole. We seem to have a knack for creating institutional lunacy from the application of deference. Add some...
Read More »There is no economy which exists apart from the ecologies which sustain it
from Peter Newell and RWER issue 101 All wealth in the end is ecological. Economists contend that growth can continue indefinitely because they measure growth in terms of economic value rather than material throughput (Jackson and Victor 2019). Yet we diminish natural wealth and undervalue its exhaustion at our peril. Even in a highly financialised and service oriented economy, where direct connections to patterns of resource extraction and consumption are sometimes less observable,...
Read More »Merry Xmas, Happy Holidays !
To all my readers. Best wishes for the festive season and for a better 2024 Share this:Like Loading...
Read More »The 9th principle. Meticulous administration.
No Christmas celebration on this blog this year. But a story about communities: the Commons of Buren and Hollum on the Waddensea island of Ameland. Commons have been studied by Elenor Ostrom. Studying Commons is of prime importance: we only have one earth. Reading Ostrom makes one optimistic. One of the things she mentions is the age of commons. Often, they survived centuries. Commons, which invariably voluntarily set limits on the use of resources, are sustainable. The Ameland Commons...
Read More »new and special issue of RWER
Please click here to support this open-access journal and the WEA real-world economic review issue no. 106 download whole issue Special IssueHow can we construct an economics consistent with the biophysical limits to economic growth? Invitation 3 PART I – PARTIAL ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION Economics as if ecology matteredPeter Newell 5 An economic theory compatible with life processes and physical lawsJames Galbraith 13 Supporting well-being over time: Six kinds of capital required in a...
Read More »Something about prices (IV). Gift exchange prices.
Not all prices are market exchange prices. I’ve been writing about administered prices (here and here) and ‘commons’ prices (here). In January, I hope to make a first small step towards a badly needed periodic table of prices. Today a new element, Gift Exchange Prices. Gifts are like the Greeks. They come in many varieties. But always, something is transferred from somebody to somebody, even when there often is no market price or even transfer of ownership. There might be a transfer of...
Read More »‘Progressive’ Labor is dead — supporting stage three tax cuts is pointless
My latest piece in Crikey, responding to Bernard Keane’s argument that Labor should stick with the Stage 3 tax cuts. Also available at my Substack blog Share this:Like Loading...
Read More »COP28 deal confirms what Australia already knows: coal is out of vogue and out of time
That’s the title for my latest piece in The Conversation, reposted at my Substack blog. Comment here or at Substack. Share this:Like Loading...
Read More »Why did you ask me a rhetorical question
A warning (for comments I guess). I really like to answer rhetorical questions. The answers are quite long. I can semi remember one. Being clever (as he often is*) Matthew Yglesias asked how and when the Democratic Socialists became bitter adversaries of the Social Democrats, which is odd since both phrases are translations of the same polysyllabic German word. I happened to know the approximate answher (I didn’t recall the exact date which turns...
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