Yule Heibel's Library tagged capitalism →  View Popular, Search in Google

More like this, please (I say this as an ethical atheist, btw). William Deresiewicz nails it:
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There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself.
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nyt william_deresiewicz capitalism economy ethics morality

Fascinating analysis by complex systems theorists of what looks like a super-connected cluster or network of power: 147 corporate entities (mostly banks), connected to one another, and therefore a kind of global Achilles Heel (nexus of instability, versus stability). And also likely resistant to regulation or change...?
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So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.
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new_scientist banks corporations networks clustering capitalism

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We find ourselves at a point in the world where the main tool to measure economic success and progress — Gross Domestic Product, or GDP – is outdated. Do we need a new set of rules for our economy to effectively begin to measure real, productive growth? Umair Haque, author of “The New Capitalist Manifesto” and director of the Havas Media Lab, believes it’s critical to the future of our country and our global economy.
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Includes audio/ interview.

audiocasts interview umair_haque capitalism economy socialcritique dylan_ratigan

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If you accept my notion that it's time to update productivity to encompass not merely how much toxic mass produced junk we churn out, faster--but to reflect whether or not said junk actually makes a difference to how meaningfully well our lives are lived--then perhaps a next-generation BLS's job isn't merely computing labor productivity, but socio-productivity as well--and making the figures public every month, quarter, and year. If it were to do that, I'd bet our economy would spin on it's very axis: the numbers we use to track its health, gauge its performance, and that Wall St uses to (mis)allocate our hard-won capital would all be dramatically altered--the informational structure of incentives would shift, and the great gears of prosperity might find a newer, more, well, productive, rhythm--because we'd optimizing not just for the greatest amount of industrial age junk to line the bleak exurban shelves, but for groundbreaking, socially useful breakthroughs.
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prosperity productivity economy umair_haque capitalism

Can't sell copies of anything anymore if it's easy to make copies. So what's left? "[Kevn Kelly] sees the solution to this conundrum hinging on being able to identify qualities that themselves can’t be copied and believes we must do this from the perspective of a user. Kelly refers to these as “generatives” - things that are better than free."

psfk kevin_kelly capitalism economics web_2.0

Haque makes a case similar to "Natural Capitalism"'s - if you capitalize what's currently expended (as a negative externality, say), you attach "real" value to it.

Some interesting points/ questions, too:
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Capital deepening is the foundation of next-generation value creation. Why is capital deepening so important? The reason that capitalism can destroy the world is that most of the world doesn't exist in an economic sense. And so when we capitalize rainforests, endangered species, community, the foregone opportunities of the poor, our own well-being - then they will finally have value: they can finally be priced, and so the fatcats of the world won't be free to destroy them with impunity.
(...)
Today's so-called capitalists are anything but: mostly, they're charlatans, impostors, and poseurs. But today's most radical innovators are revolutionary, ironically enough, because they are learning to be genuine capitalists once again - capitalists in the 21st century sense of the word. They are discovering how to create value by growing new resources composed of social, natural, human, and cultural capital. By doing so, they are pumping new blood into capitalism's failing heart.
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The bit on capital being a consensus is also thought-provoking.

umair_haque capitalism economics

I posted this to my Facebook "notes" already, but it's such a great piece it needs to go on Diigo and the blog, too.

A must-read, especially for "the rest of us," analysis and commentary from Rebecca MacKinnon on what it was like at the July 08 FutureBrainstorm Tech conference at Half Moon Bay in California...

Among the things MacKinnon discusses, there's the question of what might happen to internet freedoms in some (engineered or actual) post i-9/11 "event".

And of course there's the matter of "benevolent dictators," which her title already alludes to. The "benevolent dictators are the guys currently running the major internet apps / venues. Reading MacKinnon's article, I was reminded of early "cradle to grave" type paternalistic capitalists -- for example, the people who ran Beverly, Mass.'s United Shoe Machinery Corporation, the first-ever company named in anti-trust suits way back in the very early years of the 20th (!!) century. Notably, not all mid- to late-19th and early-20th century capitalists fit the bill of the caricatured "Robber Baron" -- some were "benevolent." (Or paternalistic.) But when push came to shove, it didn't last.

Neither will this model?

rebecca_mackinnon web_2.0 capitalism business democracy socialcritique