Paul Krugman and Richard Layard have published a short manifesto for economic sense. It’s worth a read.
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A manifesto for economic sense
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Monthly Archives: June 2012
Call for ‘Hard Cash’ proposals
Further to the email that has been round the CPPE list, here is a call for proposals/submissions* for the edited book ‘Hard Cash’ that myself and Stephen Dunne will be compiling over the next few months:
As you’ll see from the attached file, we’re planning to kick the whole thing off formally in the Autumn with a CPPE-hosted workshop at ULSM at which those participating can outline what they intend for their contribution, play with ideas, get feedback and/or snarf the biscuits.
In addition to putting this on the blog. we’ll also be targeting particular individuals that we might want to encourage to contribute. If anyone knows of anyone doing deeply funky money-related stuff that we might not already know about, please let us know and we’ll get on to them. We have a few names already, but more are very welcome.
Angus and Stephen
* the Chapter titles included in the call have all been proposed already, but are at varying stages of development – hence we have anonymised them. They’re just here for guidance. And yes, we’ve cleaned at least one of them up a bit so that no “members” get put off by vulgarity. We know how sensitive you all are…..
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Resistance at the airport and 305 people are dismissed…
Nowadays, there is an ongoing protest at the busiest airport of Turkey. The issue is to protect the right to strike as airline employees. Some of the Turkish Airlines employees who were organized under a trade union had protested the potential change in the laws and regulations about banning the right to strike for airlines employees. The law is approved at the parliment by the impact of the majority government party, and following the enactment of the law, immediately 305 employees are dismissed by the management. They are still trying to maintain their protest at the airport, but it is mentioned that to be at the airport is also forbidden.
I put aside the arguments regarding the democratization of Turkey which is another discussion whether conservatives might bring much more democracy. My concern is about why this seemingly recent protest reminds us the old story. I totally respect to resistance and protest of airlines employees, and I totally support the constitutional right to strike, however I cannot escape why we know about the end of this struggle from the beginning. There might be easy answers regarding the impact of being organized under a trade union as employees, but my concern is about why not this time there would not be any change as was in the history. Or why again the same dissapointing result of dismissing 305 people.
These people who are dismissed are well educated and they are also valuable for Turkish Airlines, and they used to have a constitutional base but now they do not have a job and it is obivous they need support. I also know people personally they feel that they have to work and they are avoiding to be part of such protests. Then, here comes the question? How should these people defend their right? By losing their jobs, by sacrificing some amount of people for the majority?
In the end, we may come up to the point of thinking Althusser regarding laws and regulations as the ideological apparatus, and we might also remember Steinbeck (in dubious battle), however we cannot come to a point for further alternative ways of organizing the struggle whilst remembering the occupy movements. To act altogether or to lose altogether is the dilemma standing in front of us, and I wonder about possible alternatives how to include such employees for such a struggle. The rigid position of protesting in a developing country is another complexity required to be considered. Thus, how should we think of transformative ways of protesting and resistance even the laws are against the basic rights?
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The Neoliberal Commons?
By strange coincidence – on the same day that CPPE is hosting the ‘Organising the Commons’ workshop – a colleague from Florida State, Phil Steinberg sent me a forthcoming paper on the so-called ‘Seasteading’ movement. It is well worth a read.
What initially sounds like a interesting alternative lifestyle thing (and, indeed, seems to have been inspired by experiences (some pharmacological in origin) at the Burning Man Fesitival), turns out to be the libertarian super-rich trying to occupy the marine commons with permanent or semi-permanent floating enclaves. One of the leading players in the ‘movement’ is Patri Friedman – Milton Friedman’s grandson and inheritor of the neo-liberal torch. As this might suggest, the ‘seasteadings’ are little more than mini tax-havens, though the opportunity to take mind-altering substances without the intervention of the legal minions of the state also seems to be a major motivation behind them. Despite the Ayn Rand-inspired techno-babble and explicit anti-statism, however, it could hardly be more obvious that these people are in fact simply trying to set up their own states in which they will be king (they’re nearly all male!). Indeed, the front page of The Seasteading Institute’s website even has a link to a short film suggesting flag designs for these new ‘non-states’.
Most of the proposals for seasteadings are no more than pipe-dreams at present, but in case anyone was wondering what ‘organising the commons’ might look like in practice, depressingly this might be it!
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Running with metaphors: economy as household
Paul Krugman has a nice summary of his experiences in the UK promoting his new book at the NY Times. He points out how austeritarians tend to think that the private sector and public sector are in competition with each other for capacity and to equate the problems of the economy with problems of a household. As Krugman points out this is a pretty silly way of approaching the current problems of the UK economy. However, I think it’s also worth running with this metaphor.
The line goes like this: the public sector is unproductive work and the private sector productive work, we’ve overspent on the public sector and now we need to tighten our belts and devote more energy to the private sector. I think you can map these on the to household nicely in terms of housework against paid employment. Yes, if you spend all your time doing housework you won’t have time to go out and earn a living but cutting back on housework is not the best way to find a job. It will make the house a mess though.
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