Myths of the Global Market
Superb summary of how the Global Market destroys life from the New Internationalist. Required reading for anyone still believing in conventional economics and economic growth.
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Superb summary of how the Global Market destroys life from the New Internationalist. Required reading for anyone still believing in conventional economics and economic growth.
Saturday, 11 August 2007
3 responses to Myths of the Global Market
Useful account by Peter Barnes of how economics could work for both people and planet available as free download:
http://onthecommons.org/files/Capitalism_3.0_Peter_Barnes.pdf
Thanks Graham – that’s an excellent read – highly recommended. I see it as very complementary to Transition Town type initiatives when challenged that their impacts can only be local. This kind of Trusteeship strikes me as much more likely to be implemented than something like TEQ’s and would give the national and international impact and control that is needed. We shall see – or maybe I’m just feeling positive this morning!
I’m sorry guys but I have only read three pages and I’m already convinced this is tripe of the highest order.
“When capitalism started, nature was abundant and capital was scarce; it thus made sense to reward capital above all else. Today weâre awash in capital and literally running out of nature. Weâre also losing many social arrangements that bind us together as communities and enrich our lives in nonmonetary ways. This doesnât mean capitalism
is doomed or useless, but it does mean we have to modify it. We have to adapt it to the twenty-first century rather than the eighteenth.And that can be done.”
Here is a man patently committed to the concept of Private profit and private ownership of the means of production. The competition between producers, whether of manufactured goods or ‘services’ and scales of economy inherent in the capitalist mode of production will always mean an exploitation of labour and unfortunately the capacity for reform of this system either in an economic sense or in a practical sense has long since past. The acme of Global Capitalism as manifest by the actions of the USA and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan serve as a far better indication of where this system is headed than the work of a relative few if well-meaning liberals as exemplified by the author. The point is here that he is not talking about a radical overhaul of the system to deliver a planned economy that manages resources intelligently and delivers societies requirements, but is in fact more of the status quo on a smaller scale – that is always short-lived as this is inherently flawed thinking because it doesn’t deal with questions of competition and growth which are inherent in this economic system – with a token gesturing to social need. Only much bolder and long-term actions that deliver a different economic and political system – a qualitative change – will offer the future on a mass scale that is necessary for the future of humanity, I think.