Info, news & debate
System change
Is democracy obsolete, and can we ever achieve it as long as we have to keep feeding ‘the beast’?
In the West, there’s a word that usually accompanies ‘democracy’, and that word is ‘liberal’. Liberal democracies – that’s what we have in the West. That’s liberal, as in liberty / freedom; and that’s certainly what classical liberalism stood for in its infancy.
How to misrepresent Adam Smith: review of P. J. O’Rourke’s ‘On the Wealth of Nations’
I don’t know if you’re familiar with P. J., but he’s an excellent writer, and he’s extremely, acerbically funny. With this book, as with his Give War a Chance, several times he made me spit my tea out and have to stop to wipe tea off the page.
Is modern life a mistake?
I was back recently in my old stomping ground of Bicester in Oxfordshire – it was not a happy visit.
Why we’d be better off living like the Saxons (with a few mod cons)
If you spend your life trying to promote low-impact living, you sometimes get asked the most ridiculous questions. More than once I’ve been asked something along the lines of: ‘you want to take us back to the Middle Ages, don’t you?’
Is a Permaculture world achievable, and if so, why are we moving in the opposite direction?
Every species has to live in harmony with nature, and humans are no exception. The alternative is gruesome and very short-term. Our ultimate and most valuable treasures are the soil and the sea. They provide all our food
Ecology as theology: religion must oppose the destruction of nature
The vast majority of the world’s population subscribe to a religion. According to Pew Research, although the number of people unaffiliated with a particular faith will increase by 2050, as a percentage, this group will fall from 16% now to 13% in 2050
What are the roots of right and left thinking, and can we unite left and right against corporate power?
Why do people who consider themselves ‘left-wing’ seem to embrace a raft of policies that appear unrelated? For example, if you’re of the left, and you believe in (say) progressive taxation, why should that also mean that you believe in gun control, or
Monopoly and capitalism: why you’ll lose at both if you try to play nice
Monopoly is obviously based on capitalism, but the biggest difference between Monopoly and real-life capitalism is that Monopoly is just a game. Whatever happens in the game, it doesn’t mean that in real life
Review of ‘Extinction: A Radical History’ by Ashley Dawson
I tend to look out for new books on extinction – I think species extinction is the clearest indicator of what’s happening to ecology, and the thing that will precipitate its collapse unless we stop it.
Dear Fidel Castro…
I believe that you were a great man – whatever you did, you did because of passion and integrity, not because of a thirst for money or power. But you had the wrong plan.
What good might come from a Trump presidency?
Donald Trump says that when men get together in locker-rooms (or on buses), they ‘talk like that’ with each other. But they don’t – I have male friends, and if one of them talked to me ‘like that’, it would be the end of our friendship.
The US presidential election is a circus, and the sooner we realise that power lies elsewhere the better
As Adam Curtis recently explained, governments are no longer for deciding how we live, or for building a better society – they have slowly morphed into institutions for managing the affairs of the finance sector.
Review of Adam Curtis’s new movie ‘Hypernormalisation’
Adam Curtis has a new movie out – Hypernormalisation, about how, due to ‘perception management’, what we see as ‘normal’ is anything but – and you can see it for free on BBC iPlayer.
Reimagining progress: what we can learn about ‘lean thinking’ from indigenous communities
Here’s a living example of a ‘lean’ economy (outlined by David Fleming in our last blog post), and how you can help to preserve it. The ‘unlean’ economy is encroaching onto the territory of the Kichwa and Sapara communities in the Ecuadorean Amazon, in the form of large oil corporations, and will destroy their communities, as …
David Fleming’s ‘Lean Logic’ and ‘Surviving the Future’, and why they’re important
I attended the launch of two books at Daunt Bookshop in Chelsea on Wednesday evening. David Fleming died in 2010, and now his friend Shaun Chamberlin has edited his magnum opus, Lean Logic, and Chelsea Green have published it.
Revisiting my old university economics textbook – how did I ever fall for this nonsense?
I haven’t opened my old university economics textbook (Economics, by David Begg, Stanley Fischer and Rudiger Dornbusch) since the 1980s, so I was curious to see how I would respond to what I was taught 30 years ago.
Moving forward without the EU: clouds & silver linings
I think we all have stories about mad conversations we’ve had about Brexit since the referendum (or is it just me?). I was called a racist, for example, for suggesting that the UK is nowhere near the top of the league of ‘most xenophobic countries’, and I’ve been amazed by the vitriol this has stirred …
Why global capital fears Brexit
Despite its admirable qualities, the authors urge people not to lose sight of the fact that the “the main impetus behind the European Economic Union was the desire of big business to compete with the US” in economic terms.
The EU referendum from an environmental perspective: are you willing to be challenged?
Almost all of my friends, and people whose opinions I respect, are intending to vote ‘Remain’ on Thursday. Here are the four main reasons I hear:
Re-thinking liberalisation – to counter corporate takeover
‘Liberalisation’ – sounds like a good thing, right – like ‘freedom’? It’s rarely named or explained, but underpins the trade agenda and ‘globalisation’. It allows corporations to become mega-transnationals.