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, May 17, 2010

Rethinking the Political Economy

from The Economic Populist. This blogger lampoons much of the mythology of capitalist (aka "free market") doctrine to show that this current system is not god given, but designed by man, or at least, those people in the owning class.
 The  Volcano God of Economics is all-powerful. If he rains hot lava and ash upon us in the form of job losses and depression it is because we have angered him with our welfare, child labor laws, environmental regulations, and worker safety laws. We must make sacrifices to appease him.

The Volcano God of Economics says nothing can stop globalization. There is no alternative. Besides, globalization is good for you, in the same way that suffering develops character.
 If you doubt the words of the Volcano God of Economics then not only are you damned forever, but it only shows that you don't know economics. How could you know economics, because economics is unknowable to mere mortals.
At least that is way that economics is presented to us by its High Priests of Economics. The place that the High Priests worship is at The Temple, also known as the Federal Reserve. It would be dangerous for us to look inside The Temple because we would not understand what we are seeing.