Let Nature make the decision for us
Steve Keen revisits Meadows (1972) Limits to Growth and reposes their three decison alternatives: All the evidence available to us, however, suggests that of the three alternatives—unrestricted growth, a self-imposed limitation to growth, or a nature-imposed limitation to growth—only the last two are actually possible. (Meadows, Randers et al....
Relevance of Marx
The 200 year birthday of Karl Marx ocuured on May 5th, 2018. Stuart Jeffries considers Marx relevance today and finds that what makes Marx worth today is his still resonant diagnoses of capitalism - that is, how globalisation works -today! “In place of the old wants,” Marx and Engels wrote,...
Washington Consensus
The ‘Ruling Paradigm’ of the neoliberal era emerged in the late 1980s / early 1990s (check) under the label of ‘The Washington Consensus’. The Ruling World Power (the U.S.) thread it’s preferred principles down the neck of it’s satetites and dependends. So the World was to be governed. The Financial...
Nudging
‘Nudging’ is a recent fad from within behavioural economics. The aim of the nudge approach is both to test non-coercive alternatives to traditional regulation and to enhance cooperation between the public and the private sector. A nudge refers to “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in...
Chinese Enlightenment
China has just completed it’s 19th National Congress of the Communist Party - where ritual and dogma combine with introspection and strategy. Xi has taken on undisputed leadership - almost alongside Mao, and stronger than Deng (‘the reckless capitalist roader’). An entirely new body of “Xi Jinping thought” has been...
Where do we go from the End of the Road?
The pioneering capitalists in California aims for the stars. The space industry is now driven by private companies, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX. This may be a sign of Earthly Capitalism meeting The End of the Road (on Earth). The Question coming up on the horizon is obviously: Where does Capitalism...
Decline of the Dollar
Fifty years ago the US was the world’s main creditor nation. Today it is the world’s main debtor nation. Yanis Varoufakis explains the turnaround in his Global Minotaur book. The Economist observes that the US is an unusual borrower with Net Debts, but Big Returns. Since 1989 foreigners...
Integrity of Money
Mirek Fatyga comments on a Project Syndicate piece by Antonio Goglia , AUG 26, 2017: Guarding the integrity of money is the most fundamental responsibility of governments. Governments abandoned this responsibility through financial deregulation, both of derivatives markets and plain banking. Derivatives markets created a system of largely fraudulent...
Diversity is Strength
Economics is in for revision. In a way economics as we know it - i.e. neoclassical - is a fake science. Fake due to the fact that all the simplifying assumptions makes the bright logic irrelevant for most practical purposes. One of todays ‘revisionists’ is Steve Keen, who reminds us...
Entropy Theory of Value
Mathematical systems describing financial instability may be classified as dissipative systems, i.e. a structure characterized by the spontaneous appearance of symmetry breaking (anisotropy) and the formation of complex, sometimes chaotic, structures where interacting particles exhibit long range correlations. In those branches of mathematics called dynamical systems and ergodic theory,...
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