Giddens: We live in a world that has moved ‘off the edge of history’ at the same time as it remains deeply embedded in it. By this I mean that today we face risks that no other civilisation has to deal with – such as climate change, the massive growth in world population, or the existence of nuclear weapons. Some of these risks are existential: they are threats to the very continuity of the industrial order as it spreads across the face of the earth. We cannot say which are the ‘most threatening’, since the true level of risk is by definition unknown. There is no past time series to go on as there are with more traditional risks.
At the same time we have opportunities, as collective humanity, that go massively beyond what was available in previous ages, not just for material advancement but for the spiritual enrichment of our lives. I call this a ‘high opportunity, high risk society’ – in which it is almost impossible in advance to know what the relation between these two factors will turn out to be. This problematic relationship is today an elemental part of the human condition. This is not a post-modern world in the sense in which that term is usually used – to refer to the dissolution of reason and of potentially universal values. Rather, a battle is being fought almost everywhere between such values and sectional divisions of various sorts.
Economic Sociology and Political Economy
Labinot Kunushevci Interviews Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics 1997–2003, and now Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology
"Responsible capitalism" would include honest accounting, one should hope.
ReplyDeleteInstead, the liabilities of the banks, credit unions, etc. for fiat toward the non-bank private sector (i.e. the rest of us) are largely a sham since, except for grubby, unsafe, inconvenient physical fiat, aka "cash", the the non-bank private sector (i.e. the rest of us) are NOT ALLOWED TO USE THEIR NATION'S FIAT!
So fix the accounting or be doomed to ultimate failure wrt to implementing "responsible capitalism."
But who wants to fix the accounting among Progressives? None that I know of.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteThe point you make is beyond the comprehension of most "progressives". Progressives spend most of their time repeating fashionable words, like progressive, sustainable, inclusive, etc etc.
If I've got you right, you're saying that banks are in the privileged position (which they've obtained by bribing and cajoling clueless politicians over the years) of being able to create or print money: something non-banks cannot do to any great extent. The solution, as advocated by Milton Friedman and several other leading economists, is to ban private money creation. Then, when the economy needs more money so as to fund stimulus, the state creates it, and banks and non-banks compete for that money on an equal footing.
Any special privileges for banks there amounts to a subsidy of banks, and there's no excuse for that.