We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, January 25, 2010

Stiglitz pinpoints 'moral' core of crisis

by Henry C. K. Liu from Asia Times website. As I see it, the only moral imperative of capitalism is to maximize the accumulation of private wealth. The system does that very well. As much as I admire the insights of Liu, I think he, and other liberals, totally miss this principle. You simply can't argue social system values when you have a system that is informed by private values. And his hero, Professor Stiglitz, was in Clinton's administration which radically pushed capitalism forward into its globalization phase.