Writing in defence of politics and, indeed, politicians is always a potentially risky pastime. The overwhelming public perception of politics is so cynically negative that anyone who speaks out in favour of those who take on public office is immediately the subject to suspicion (mostly of “being ambitious” or, more kindly, of “being niave”). And, […]
A Country is Not a Company by Paul Krugman, (Harvard Business School Classics, 2009) is a brief essay that highlights the fallacy behind the notion that success in business automatically provides individuals with the insight necessary contribute advice towards the management of a national economy. A country is not a big corporation. The habits of […]
Something different this week, because, some days, it feels like I’m living through a terrible remake of the 1980s directed by Uwe Boll… The Redskins are a celebration of hope and pride. Amidst all the dross of the music scene, all the kajagoogoo-gaga imbecility and whinging shite, there’s, like, only a handful of bands that […]
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism by George A Akerlof and Robert J Shiller (Princeton University Press, 2010) starts with the argument that traditional economic models based on rational actors and perfect markets cannot explain the economic crisis we currently face and cannot point us in […]
Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale by Debra Satz is a work of political philosophy that critiques the assumptions that underlie much modern economic theory and the implications of those assumptions in the application of markets to real world problems. Satz starts from the principle that markets have their value and their place […]
Despite the garish cover and silly title, John Quiggin’s Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us (Princeton University Press, 2010) is a book with a serious and timely intent – to rescue our societies from the disastrous effects of right-wing economic orthodoxy. Quiggin begins by quoting Keynes’ contention that practical men “are usually […]
The Cost of Inequality: Three Decades of the Super-Rich and the Economy (Gibson Square, 2011) by Stewart Lansley is an interesting book that seeks to build on recent works, such as Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level, by arguing that the case for a more equal distribution of national wealth isn’t just ethical and social […]
This week I have been reading Sparta: The Body Politic (The Classical Press of Wales, 2010, editors Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson), which contains a number of interesting essays on ancient Sparta but the one that really got me thinking was “Gynecocracy: How Women Policed Masculine Behaviour in Archaic and Classical Sparta” by Thomas J […]
I originally wrote a post attacking the household analogy for American debt on July 30, 2011. It remains one of the most frequently visited posts on the site. Yesterday Chris posted a lengthy (and sometimes angry) response. I wanted to reply to his points seriously and at length but it was uncomfortable doing that in […]
I’m a bit late to getting around to David Estlund’s Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, 2008) but it’s a major work of political philosophy. It is very much in the American tradition of political philosophy strongly influenced by John Rawls’s political liberalism. Estlund defends the core of that project and makes the case that […]