Economics fails not merely to account for biophysical limits to growth but to account for actual and potential alternative provisioning systems. Instead, talk of ‘the economy’ makes an implicit ontological claim that there is only a singular form of modern economy: the capital accumulating, price-making market economy. Economics has then become limited to a discussion of market capitalism and how it can be maintained in light of its evident failings. Hence, a new critical orthodoxy has arisen that seeks to maintain ‘business as usual’. Recognising that there is considerable potential for alternatives to current economic systems is a first step beyond this orthodoxy. Economics must go much further to become a science of social ecological provisioning that recognises and provides for diverse alternatives to be actualised.
The bottom line is how alternative economies as ethical social provisioning systems can be made to work, how current economic and political structures operate to prevent change to such systems and how we get from here to there.
Real-World Economics Review Blog
Alternative provisioning systems
Alternative provisioning systems
Clive Spash and Clíodhna Ryan and RWER issue 106
The lead story today is about Xi Jinping’s speech at the opening of a study session at the Central Party School. Xi said that the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics not only follows the objective laws of modern financial development but also has distinctive characteristics that are suitable for our country’s national conditions. It is fundamentally different from the Western financial model. We must strengthen our self-confidence and continue to explore and improve in practice to make this path wider and broade…
"With Chinese characteristics" means primarily is controlled by the Communist Party. While this sounds nefarious to Western ears in capitalist countries, what is means is that the party tasked with representing the needs of the people is in control of the commanding heights of the economy, which includes finance. The implies that the capitalist class cannot control the commanding heights and thereby the provisioning system, as it capitalist countries under the command of the ownership and managerial classes, with "democracy" being a veneer over the control of the donor class through campaign finance and lobbying.
Tracking People's Daily
Manoj Kewalramani
The path for financial development with Chinese characteristics is different in nature from the mode of Western financial development.
Ginger River Review
Jiang Jiang, Giustino Jiao, and Yiting Zhang
I apologize for the length and somewhat arbitrary nature of the following, it is an accumulation of thoughts as I react to the notion expressed by an acquaintance that the term “neoliberalism” has little to no explanatory power for the development of American policy since the Johnson years …
The Radford Free Press
Peter Radford
But what about the resource side? Where did all this money go? Why, for example, can the Lebanese Armed Forces, not the wealthiest military in the world, have a dozen Brigades deployed on operations, as well as numerous independent regiments, whereas the British, with their massively greater resources and a larger Army, would be pushed to deploy two? And in this, the British are the norm, rather than the exception.
The paradox has no one single cause, but is probably due more than anything else to the move since the 1980s towards managing defence as budgets, rather than programmes. Let me expand on that slightly gnomic statement. In the private sector, it is accepted that companies can and will manipulate their financial statements to inflate their profits and minimise their losses where possible. It’s also accepted that there is a distinction between the financial picture (a company makes increased profits by selling off assets) and the reality (it is doing so in a desperate attempt to avoid going out of business.) In a world where only profits and the share price matter, it is at least a coherent strategy for the short term. If you think about it, it’s also a ridiculous strategy for the public sector, since what matters, and what the voters want, is output for the long term. But from the 1980s onwards, beginning in Britain and spreading rapidly, the idea of managing the defence programme in terms of budgets, and the “efficient” spending of money took over. This meant, in effect, abandoning the previous pattern of managing programmes for capability output, and managing them instead according to budgetary limits. And as time passed, the poisonous theories of management consultants about “efficiency” began to seep into the public sectors of a number of countries....
Trying to Understand the World
Michael Hudson
Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson
"With Chinese characteristics" = same old authoritarianism, same old corruption.
ReplyDeleteSocialism is dead. Abandoning globalism is the best we can do.