Jan122024

Who or What Will Do What Must Be Done?

Uncategorized

Who or What Will Do What Must Be Done?

EDITORIAL, 9 Oct 2023

#817 | Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service

In a previous editorial (What Must Be Done TMS 11 Sep 2023), I made the point that public discourse may not manifest underlying objective facts that play a key role in causing it.

For example, something that I am calling an objective fact, namely the objective need to spend public money to compensate for a chronic insufficiency of effective demand, may put wind in the sails of a belligerent discourse that vilifies a foreign power as an enemy and calls for a costly military intervention.  This paradox appears in a different light if it is considered that the logic of the system implies that increasing public debt one way or another is required.    Until there is a different system with a different logic it is the way to save jobs and to allow continuing, as distinct from stopping, producing for the purpose of selling. read more

Jan122024

What Must Be Done

Uncategorized

What Must Be Done

EDITORIAL, 11 Sep 2023

#813 | Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service

Videos produced by The Drawdown Project –a project that appears to be well-funded and to have the support of some (but not enough) powerful institutions—outline what must be done to prevent more climate catastrophes worse than the catastrophes already happening.  The main staff members of the project, including the narrator of the videos (Jonathan Foley) are climate scientists.  What must be done for the most part is in some measure already being done, but it is now done on too small a scale to stop or to reverse humanity´s lockstep march toward self-destruction. read more

Feb262020

Un Concepto de Economía Solidaria: Organización Ilimitada

Economy • necessary conversations

By Howard Richards

 

Presentación: el abordaje hacia una economía solidaria

En un sistema de laissez-faire el nivel de empleo depende en gran medida de lo que se llama el estado de la confianza. Si se deteriora la confianza, cae la inversión privada. Sigue una caída de la producción y del empleo (este resultado se genera directamente y también a través del efecto secundario del impacto de la caída de los ingresos sobre el consumo y sobre la inversión). Esto da a los capitalistas un poderoso control indirecto sobre las políticas públicas; hay que evitar cuidadosamente todo lo que pueda sacudir su confianza porque causaría una crisis económica. Pero una vez que el gobierno aprenda el truco de incrementar el empleo por sus propias compras, este poderoso mecanismo de control pierde su eficacia. Por eso los déficits presupuestarios necesarios para llevar a cabo la intervención del gobierno se representan como peligrosísimos. La función social de la doctrina de “disciplina fiscal” es asegurar que el nivel de empleo dependa del estado de confianza (Kalecki, 1943: 322-331)

Mi recomendación es pensar la economía solidaria como la matriz cultural -o, dicho de otra manera, como la ideología o la filosofía- de una economía cuya meta es atender a las necesidades de cada quien en armonía con la naturaleza, desplegando una pluralidad ilimitada de medios para lograr su meta.  La economía debe servir a las personas,  no las personas a la economía, y debe ser el “bienvenido a todos”. realizado en la práctica.  La economía solidaria no debe ser el sector de la pobreza, viviendo de las migas que restan cuando el sector privado ya ha agotado sus mercados,  ya no encuentra más inversiones rentables y, por lo tanto, no genera más empleo; y, tampoco, cuando el sector público ha agotado el poder recaudador del fisco y ya carece de medios para ampliar la red de protección social. No tan sólo los pobres, sino todos los seres humanos debemos ser solidarios y con mayor razón los empresarios, los políticos, y los que viven de las rentas de sus patrimonios sin trabajar.

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Sep72019

Moral (and ethical) realism

philosophy • Uncategorized

ABSTRACT
This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues that human needs should be met; and that they should be met in harmony with the environment. Realism should include respect for existing cultures and the morals presently being practiced – with reasonable exceptions. Dignity must come in a form understood and appreciated by the person whose dignity is being respected. It is also argued that naturalist ethics are needed to combat liberal ethics, not least because the latter supports today’s inflexible and dysfunctional institutions. In arguing for these positions, reference is made to the naturalist realist ethics of Georges Canguilhem, C.H. Waddington, John Dewey
and David Sloan Wilson, all of whom embed the social order in the natural order. read more

Jun142019

The Swedish Model as Programmed for Failure

Economy • necessary conversations

By Howard Richards

Chapter Seven [1]

Chapter Overview

  1. Introduction
  2. Social Structure Revisited
  3. The Swedish Model
  4. Bounded Social Democracy
  5. Achieving Growth as a Constraint
  6. Some Swedish Model Achievements
  7. The Government as Employer of Last Resort
  8. The Decline of the Swedish Model
  9. Assar Lindbeck’s Critique of the Swedish Welfare State
  10. Conclusions: Some Challenges for Unbounded Organization in the Light of the Decline of the Swedish Model
  11. Green New Deals
  12. Introducing a Community Approach in the Swedish Model Context
  13. Toward Making Growth (i.e. Finance) and Globalisation Governable
  14. More on Governability in the Financial Services Sector

 

[1] Our thanks to Dean Björn Åstrand of Karlstad University in Sweden for his helpful comments

 

See PDF/Download

 

Aug212018

Markets on the Margins: Mine Workers, Job Creation and Enterprise Development

Economy

By Kate Philip (2018)

This book provides an eyewitness account of South Africa’s unsuccessful efforts to end mass unemployment and mass poverty.  But it is more than an eyewitness account.  It is a participant observer account.  The author is a scholar-activist who has been deeply involved in thinking through the economic rationale, designing and implementing key programmes and projects.   She is equally at home in the Union Buildings in Pretoria, and in remote country villages.

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May292018

Building Community in the Crash of 2001

necessary conversations

Juan Regache: In October of 2001 Argentina was in crisis.  I had to close my business.   There were no customers.    I had fixed costs I could not avoid –wages, taxes, rent, utilities.

Howard Richards: October of 2001 was two months before the complete collapse of the economy on December 14, 2001, when bank accounts were frozen and nobody could access their savings or write checks.  What kind of business did you have ?

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