Writings on economy, commons, language and other things
Jonathan Rowe Accounting for the Commons, from Business Ethics magazine.
It was late in the afternoon, the big hearing was the next morning, and the chief counsel of the US Senate subcommittee realized that no one had written an opening statement for the chairman.
So I, law student and intern, got the job. The hearings were on the Penn Central Railroad, which was the Enron of the late ’60s, and I really cut loose. Why not? Weren’t there wise staffers on the floors above me in the Dirksen Building who would turn my excesses into polished Senate prose?
Of all the sources of unintended consequences, war probably is the greatest. The forces set in motion rarely stop where the participants expect. The Civil War helped spawn the large industrial corporation and Jim Crow. World War I gave rise to Hitler, and World War II to the Soviet Bloc. On the positive side, the latter also helped produce the civil rights movement, as black GIs who risked their lives for their country did not take kindly to the second-class status that awaited them on their return.
An invasion of Iraq isn’t likely to be exempt from this recurring pattern. As James Baker III, secretary of state under the first President Bush, acknowledged recently, “War can create dynamics that are difficult to predict and control [and] this is particularly true in the Middle East.”
Several months ago a professor at the University of North Carolina published research that turned beliefs about the economy upside down. Health improves, he said, as the economy shrinks. And as the economy declines, deaths, smoking, obesity, heavy drinking, heart disease and some kinds of back problems all decline as well.
‘Sounds unlikely’, said a New York Times correspondent. And indeed it is, at least by standard reckonings. We all know that an expanding economy makes us better off. Or do we? Another study, from the UK, found that shopping, which is the driving force of the entire economy and which is supposed to make people feel good, can actually make us depressed. ‘For significant numbers, dissatisfaction is now part of the shopping process,’ one of the authors wrote. (As though we needed a study to tell us that.)
Ever since the recent election there has been hand-wringing and recrimination on the Democratic side. They need to move to the center. They need bold new themes. They don’t have a clear agenda. Their agenda is too cautious. It is too far left.
The Democrats were indeed a sorry sight, with their calcified issues – Social Security, prescription drugs – and tired scripts produced by battle-weary political consultants.
In the water law of the Western United States there is a strange concept of waste. The West is the most arid region of the country. Water is precious. Yet … More
Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth
by David Bollier
$26.00, Routledge,
260 pages, 2002
When our times finally come to rest in the history texts, I think they will be called the Age of Enclosure—the age of privatization. It is a time when everything has become a commodity, and everything is for sale.
The opinion establishment was in raptures over the resulting money gush. Now that the party’s over, they pine for a return. Yet as the concept of the market comes to define all human experience, so too does the market’s central paradox: the way it creates scarcity even as it produces abundance.
Several months ago a professor at the University of North Carolina published findings that turned beliefs about the economy upside down. Health improves, he said, as the economy goes down. When the economy declines, to a point at least, deaths, smoking, obesity, heavy drinking, heart disease and some kinds of back problems all decline as well.
“Sounds unlikely,” said the New York Times. And indeed it is, by the standard reckonings at least. We all know that an expanding economy makes us better off — or do we? Another study, this one in England, found that shopping, which is the drive train of the entire economy, and which is supposed to make people feel good, actually can make them depressed. “For significant numbers, dissatisfaction is now part of the shopping process,” one of the authors said. (As though we needed a study to tell us that.)
I was surprised that Todd Gitlin chose to scold congressional Democrats for trying to tackle TV violence (“Imagebusters: The Hollow Crusade Against TV Violence,” Winter 1994). His insights regarding the media are astute, as usual. But his arguments against congressional action are mostly beside the point, and his superior and disparaging tone is not helpful. Gitlin dismisses concern about TV violence as a middle-class neurosis, a revival of the “iconophobia” that arose early in the century with the arrival of motion pictures. He ridicules senators addressing this issue as inferior intellects who aren’t up to facing real issues like gun control.
Well, so what if the people who raised the issue early in the century happened to be middle class? The question is whether they were onto something, which they were. Similarly, what difference does it make that some advocates of action on TV violence are not strong on gun control? Regrettably, Gitlin gets so stuck in the disparagement mode that he never gets to the real issue: Are there ways to deal with violence in the media that do not compromise free speech, do not give more power to government censors or expert panels, but rather give more power to parents and citizens generally?
Words are a form of magic. They conjure thought out of the confusion of experience, and they form the lens through which we see the world. Politics is largely a contest over words – over a version of reality. Those whose words prevail, rule; and those who rule choose the words.
Nowhere is this more evident than in economics. Though couched in the trappings of science, economics is basically a word game. Define anything produced as a “good,” and the debate is over before it starts. Who wouldn’t want more “goods?” Define “growth” to mean simply an increase in monetary expenditure, and you can claim economic “progress” even if much of that expenditure results from “goods” that are not so good – the obesity and medical bills arising from junk food, for example.