Featured Article
Takings, Givings and the Tragedy of the Petulant Me
Of all the whiners and complainers that beset the politics of this country, the “property rights” lobby is surely among the most self-dramatizing. I’m not talking about people who have a normal concern about their property – who don’t want people using their windows for target practice or making bonfires in their yards. I’m talking about people who regard just about every restriction upon their property as a “taking” of it; and who demand compensation from the taxpayers, while they rail at the impending totalitarian state.
What such people lack in maturity and wisdom, they have in money or moneyed enablers. The result has been a raft of ballot measures that would turn “takings” dogma into law. The first to pass was Measure 37 in Oregon, a state that was a pioneer in land use laws. Not coincidentally, the state today is green and clean, downtown Portland is thriving, and sprawl has been remarkably contained. Measure 37 pretty much dismantled that system. Now kindred ones are on ballots in Montana, Idaho, and Washington State.
Commons
Pre-Distributive Economics and Sufficiency for the Long Haul
Part I: Inequality, The Iatrogenic Spiral, and Systemic Diminishing Returns The problem is that the explosive growth of the global economy has not brought a corresponding increase in global well … More
The Missing Sector
Enlarging Our Sense of “the Economy”
Meet Us at the Zocalo
We humans like to gather, and to be around other people in informal and unstructured settings. For time out of memory, places in which to do so were built into … More
Economic Indicators
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Looking Backward: Economics and the Cult of Yesterday
GDP and productivity don’t measure what’s really going on in the economy—or in people’s lives. Jonathan Rowe on measuring what matters.
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The Gross Domestic Product
Testimony of Jonathan Rowe Co-director of the West Marin Commons Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, Trade and Tourism March 12, 2008 … More
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Is Happiness a Commons?
Gunnar Myrdal, the late Swedish economist, once noted the strange tendency of his profession to barricade itself against human reality. In true sciences, such as biochemistry and physics, hypotheses are … More
Economics
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Pre-Distributive Economics and Sufficiency for the Long Haul
Part I: Inequality, The Iatrogenic Spiral, and Systemic Diminishing Returns The problem is that the explosive growth of the global economy has not brought a corresponding increase in global well … More
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The Missing Sector
Enlarging Our Sense of “the Economy”
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Looking Backward: Economics and the Cult of Yesterday
GDP and productivity don’t measure what’s really going on in the economy—or in people’s lives. Jonathan Rowe on measuring what matters.
About
Jonathan Rowe was a writer who wrote about the commons, diseconomy, economics, economic indicators, corporations, and many other subjects.
Jonathan was an editor at the Washington Monthly magazine and a staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor. He contributed to Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, American Prospect, Adbusters, and a host of other publications.