Post by midcan5 on Aug 4, 2014 6:13:26 GMT -5
"Free economic transactions are supposed to benefit both the buyer and the seller, so why not allow prostitution, vote buying, pay-to-immigrate, selling ad space on your house or body, and premium versions of everything for those willing to pay more? Sandel thinks that these practices are degrading even if uncoerced, and argues that classical liberalism–by trying to maintain neutrality on philosophical questions like “what is the good?”–doesn’t have the resources to prevent rampant and undesirable commodification."
www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2014/07/26/ep98-michael-sandel/
www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374533652/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8
"Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital.... However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive "dirty" work to Third World societies. Finally , the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents "service" as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one's own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are with the exception of the high-technology sector descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services." p360 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep' by Jonathan Crary "A timely and important polemic that demonstrates how capitalism makes us willing connivers in our own sleeplessness" www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/22/24-7-late-capitalism-ends-sleep-jonathan-crary-review
Additional Reading List:
'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal' Kim Phillips-Fein
'The Unconscious Civilization' John Ralston Saul
'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives' Sasha Abramsky
'The Betrayal of the American Dream' Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele
'The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin' Corey Robin
'To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise' Bethany Moreton
'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' Carl Sagan
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Abraham Lincoln (Marxist ?)
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes / E. Austin G. Robinson, As quoted in Michael Albert, Moving Forward: Programme for a Parlicipatory Economy (Edinburgh: AK, 2000)
www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2014/07/26/ep98-michael-sandel/
www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374533652/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8
"Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital.... However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive "dirty" work to Third World societies. Finally , the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents "service" as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one's own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are with the exception of the high-technology sector descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services." p360 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep' by Jonathan Crary "A timely and important polemic that demonstrates how capitalism makes us willing connivers in our own sleeplessness" www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/22/24-7-late-capitalism-ends-sleep-jonathan-crary-review
Additional Reading List:
'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal' Kim Phillips-Fein
'The Unconscious Civilization' John Ralston Saul
'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives' Sasha Abramsky
'The Betrayal of the American Dream' Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele
'The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin' Corey Robin
'To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise' Bethany Moreton
'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' Carl Sagan
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Abraham Lincoln (Marxist ?)
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes / E. Austin G. Robinson, As quoted in Michael Albert, Moving Forward: Programme for a Parlicipatory Economy (Edinburgh: AK, 2000)