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Photo:EOCA's Spring 2020 Newsletter
Time to reflect…
Every move you make, every breath you take leaves its mark on our world
Crisis after Crisis
The remarkable characteristic of our chaotic and crisis riddled world today is their deepening and continuity
Crisis after Crisis: Financial Crisis. Credit and Banking Crisis. Environmental and Ecological Crisis. Biodiversity Crisis. Epidemic and Pandemic Crisis. Housing Crisis. Health and Well-being Crisis. Education Crisis. Spiritual and Moral Crisis. Trust and Trusting Crisis. Indifference Crisis. Fake, Fake News and Faking Crisis. Reality Crisis. Populism and Fascism Crisis,...all of them leading ours to be a generalized "time of crisis."
At a time of profound crises there must be an opportunity for new vision, new understanding and new thinking. There is a desperate need for new practical ways of relating in an increasingly interdependent global community: a time to re-introduce spirituality, ethics, civility, kindness, humanity and the common good into the debate on globalisation, economics, politics, business, education, international relation and much more.
Surely the time is now to rise and challenge the falsehood and the inhumanity of the ideology that since the early 1980s has cheated and humiliated us by monetising all aspects of our lives, and has stopped us from knowing what it means to be human:
I am a Transformed and Reformed Economist: My Journey and My Story
‘From 1980 onwards, for the next twenty years, I taught economics in universities, enthusiastically demonstrating how economic theories provided answers to problems of all sorts. I got quite carried away by the beauty, the sophisticated elegance, of complicated mathematical models and theories. But gradually I started to have an empty feeling.
‘I began to ask fundamental questions of myself. Why did I never talk to my students about compassion, dignity, comradeship, solidarity, happiness, spirituality – about the meaning of life? We never debated the biggest questions. Who are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going to?
‘I told them to create wealth, but I did not tell them for what reason. I told them about scarcity and competition, but not about abundance and co-operation. I told them about free trade, but not about fair trade; about GNP – Gross National Product – but not about GNH – Gross National Happiness. I told them about profit maximisation and cost minimisation, about the highest returns to the shareholders, but not about social consciousness, accountability to the community, sustainability and respect for creation and the creator. I did not tell them that, without humanity, economics is a house of cards built on shifting sands.
‘These conflicts caused me much frustration and alienation, leading to heartache and despair. I needed to rediscover myself and real-life economics. After a proud twenty-year or so academic career, I became a student all over again. I would study theology, philosophy and ethics, disciplines nobody had taught me when I was a student of economics and I did not teach my own students when I became a teacher of economics.
‘It was at this difficult time that I came to understand that I needed to bring spirituality, compassion, ethics and morality back into economics itself, to make this dismal science once again relevant to and concerned with the common good.’- Excerpts from my comments on a Financial Times editorial
See also: My lecture at London School of Economics
Calling all academic economists: What are you teaching your students?
A Businessman and an Economist in Dialogue for the Common Good
The Broken Economic, Social, Spiritual Model
(First published as an email to the GCGI members in May 2011)
Photo:edie.net
“Do you remember that Margaret Thatcher, the so-called Iron Lady!! She told the Brits that she was going to put the “Great” back into the “Great” Britain. Do you remember? Then, she told us this can only happen if we accept and implement the “Washington Consensus”, the so-called dreaded neo-liberalism. She told us that there was no alternative. She told us we will all prosper and develop more fairly and equitably. She won election after elections. Everything was privatised, deregulated, self-regulated. Industry, manufacturing, (the real economy) was destroyed. Instead, the banks and the bankers were encouraged to rule the world. The economists with no principles and values were “bought” and the business schools, such as Harvard and Columbia were showered with money to act as “Cheerleaders” for the dreaded neoliberalism (see the Inside Job for evidence). Communities were dis-mantled and dis-organised. We were told that there is nothing as a society and community. We are all in it just for ourselves, we were told. Destructive competition at the expense of life-enhancing cooperation, collaboration and dialogue was greatly prompted. We were told to say no to love, kindness, generosity, sympathy and empathy and say yes to selfishness, individualism and narcissism, as these values will fire the engine of capitalism and wealth creation! In short, the hell with the common good, we were encouraged to believe.
We were brained-washed. Our other Prime Ministers repeated her nonsense and have carried on her footsteps. It is now over 30 years since the neo-liberalism experiment in Britain. Are we any “Greater” than we were in 1979? Are we any fairer or more equitable? The country is nearly bankrupt, with public and private debt at unprecedented levels, with greatest levels of poverty and wealth disparity ever. The house of neo-liberal capitalism is now at its nadir of decadence.”
You see, all those interested in life’s bigger picture, have been saying the same, over and over. The neo-liberals are not in touch with humanity. They will prostitute all in the interest of profit maximization, cost minimization, highest return to the shareholders, and the biggest and juiciest bonuses for the CEOs and their lackeys.”
The Age of Perpetual Crises and Coronavirus Pandemic
Photo:outerlimitsradio.com
‘When all of this is over, the world won’t be the same.’
But, the Challenge Is: How to Make the World a Better Place?
Times of upheaval are always times of radical change. Some believe that the current global crisis, the Coronavirus pandemic, is a once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future. Others fear it may only make existing injustices worse.
I wish to be a voice of hope and optimism: This crisis can change our world for the better, should we have the wisdom to see the path
What kind of actions would it take for the optimists’ vision to materialise?
I am sure there are many answers to this timely question. Below are my offerings:
Ten Steps to a Better World and a Better Life
We, the people, all around the globe, are slowly realising that our planet, our lives, and more are in desperate need for new measures to evolve humanly, environmentally, economically and politically towards a more cooperative, peaceful and respectful sense of interdependency.
While the urgency is being felt on all levels, too many feel disempowered with the potential to spark a change, make a difference or even perceive an ounce of hope for the future.
The task isn’t small. Indeed, the task is so great that there is only one way to succeed, and that is, all of us, coming together in the spirit of the common good, to empower and enable each one of us to become self-directed, and active in defining this time in the world as opportunity for positive change and healing and for the true formation of a culture of peace by giving thanks, spreading joy, sharing love, seeing miracles, discovering goodness, embracing kindness, practicing patience, teaching tolerance, encouraging laughter, celebrating diversity, showing compassion, turning from hatred, practicing forgiveness, peacefully resolving conflicts, communicating non-violently, choosing happiness and enjoying life. Carpe Diem!
Neoliberalism's excesses belong in the dustbin of history. What's next is up to us
Photo:chinadaily.com
1- Throw away this single-minded ideology and replace it with a more balanced logic, laying the foundations for a better, more equitable world
Death and Destruction on Brothers’ Road to Serfdom
Neoliberalism destroys human potential and devastates values-led education
2- Replace the selfishness and hatred of neoliberalism with Kindness
Kindness to Heal the World- Kindness to Make the World Great Again
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”
What if Universities Taught KINDNESS?
3- Replace the hopelessness of neoliberalism with Hopefulness
Crisis after crisis and the crucial voices of hope
How to defeat hatred and fear: Don't Despair Walk On
4- Replace the delusional and destructive neoliberal education with inspirational values-led Education
The Value of Values: Values-led Education to Make the World Great Again
Brexit, Trump and the failure of our universities to pursue wisdom Details
To All Striking Academic Colleagues in Britain: Turn the Strike to a Force for the Common Good
The Journey to Sophia: Education for Wisdom
Detaching Nature from Economics is ‘Burning the Library of Life’
5- Replace the devastated neoliberal economy with Economy as if People Mattered
Is Neoliberal Economics and Economists 'The Biggest Fraud Ever Perpetrated on the World?'
My Economics and Business Educators’ Oath: My Promise to My Students
What might an Economy for the Common Good look like?
6- Throw away the fake neoliberal ‘teachers’ and let nature to be your wisest Teacher
On the 250th Birthday of William Wordsworth Let Nature be our Wisest Teacher
Why should we all become mother nature and sacred earth guardians
To Heal the World and People We Need to Save the Commons from Plunder
7- Throw away materialism and consumerism, ‘Black-Friday’ sales mentality, and opt for simplicity, simple living and be grateful for who you are, what you are and what you have
In Praise of Frugality: Materialism is a Killer
There is more in less: The Evolution of Simplicity
Simplicity: it’s our true guide to a better life
The beauty of living simply: the forgotten wisdom of William Morris
Black Friday, Brexit and Trumpian Values: Deadly forces taking over our world, controlling our minds
Thanksgiving vs. Black Friday: Where is the Gratitude?
Memento mori, Memento vivere and the Madness of Black Friday
In Praise of ‘Enoughness’ and 'Lagomist' Economy
8- Throw away hatred and desire for revenge Remember and Forgive: Forgiveness is the Greatest Gift You Can Give Yourself
Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Pursuit of the Global Common Good
Good Friday Agreement and the Spirit of Forgiveness and Reconciliation
9- Overcome Fear and Embrace Hope: Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors
Coronavirus Crisis and Mounting Debt: Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors
10- and finally, let us begin our Journey to Healing, and enjoy togetherness, family, friends and community. Ours should not be a caravan of despair, but the flame of love and hope
Walk with the wanderers
Sing and dance with the worshipers
Proclaim the memory of those who have taken their leave
Wrap the despairing and the broken in the arms of love and community
And hold the hands of all of us who have broken our vows and call us back—again and again—to the covenant and work of justice, humility, and steadfast faithfulness.
For this we are here together today. So, my friends, come, yet again; come let us be together.
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This Crisis Has Exposed the Absurdities of Neoliberalism.
How do neoliberal governments act in emergency situations when the interests of the private sector top their agenda?
President Donald Trump talks to reporters before signing the coronavirus stimulus relief package in the Oval Office at the White House, on March 27, 2020. Photo and more
First, Lest We Forget Again!
Neoliberalism: Lessons Learned from a Failed Ideology
Capitalism for the 99% and Socialism for the 1%
Bailout for the Rich and Virus for the Rest of Us
Death and Destruction on Brothers’ Road to Serfdom
Is Neoliberal Economics and Economists 'The Biggest Fraud Ever Perpetrated on the World?'
'The Neoliberal Plague'*
‘For those who aren’t familiar with Albert Camus’ The Plague, disparate lives are brought together during a plague that sweeps through an Algerian city. Today, by way of the emergence of a lethal and highly communicable virus (Coronavirus), we— the people of the West, have an opportunity to reconsider what we mean to one another. The existential lesson is that through dread and angst we can choose to live, with the responsibilities that the choice entails, or just fade away.'
“The Plague” and author Albert Camus. Photo:(Vintage/ Everett/Shutterstock)
For Times of Extremity, Albert Camus Prescribed Modest Virtues
What Albert Camus’s “The Plague” can teach us about life in a pandemic.
'Through the virus, a new light is being shone on four decades of neoliberal reorganization of political economy. The combination of widespread economic marginalization and a lack of paid time off means that sick and highly contagious workers will have little economic choice but to spread the virus. And the insurance company pricing mechanism intended to dissuade people from overusing health care (‘skin in the game’) means that only very sick people will ‘buy’ health care they can’t afford.
Market provision of virus test kits, vaccines and basic sanitary aids will, in the absence of government coercion, follow the monopolist’s model of under-provision at prices that are unaffordable for most people. The most fiscally responsible route, in the sense of assuring that the rich don’t pay taxes, is to let those who can’t afford health care die. If this means that tens of millions of people die unnecessarily, markets are a harsh taskmaster. (3.4% mortality rate @ 2X – 3X the contagion rate of the Spanish Flu @ 4 X 1918 population).
If this last part reads like (Ayn) Randian social theory as interpreted by a budding sociopath in the basement of his dead parent’s crumbling tract home, it is basic neoliberal ideology applied to circumstances that we can see playing out in real time. According to Ryan Grim of The Intercept, Bill Clinton eliminated the ‘reasonable pricing’ requirement for drugs made by companies that receive government funding. This has bearing on both commercially developed Coronavirus test kits and vaccines.
The Damning Impact of a Toxic Philosophy on America: The Tragedy of Ayn Rand
Leaving aside technical difficulties that either will or won’t be resolved, how would any substantial portion of the 80% of the population that lives hand-to-mouth be effectively quarantined when losing an income creates a cascade effect of evictions, foreclosures, starvation, repossessions, shut-off utilities, etc.? The current system conceived and organized to make desperate and near desperate workers labor with the minimum of pay and benefits is a public health disaster by design.
While the American response to the Coronavirus threat seems to be less than robust, there was a near instantaneous response from the Federal Reserve to a 10% decline in stock prices. The same Federal Reserve that has been engineering a non-stop rise in stock prices since Wall Street was bailed out in 2009 knows perfectly well how narrowly stock ownership is concentrated amongst the rich— it publishes the data. It quickly lowered the cost of financial speculation as the cost of Coronavirus tests and a vaccine— and the question of who will bear them, remain indeterminate.
If priorities seem misplaced, you haven’t been paying attention. The statistics on suicides, divorces, drug addiction and self-destructive behavior that result from the loss of employment were understood and widely published by the early 1990s, at the peak of that era’s round of mass layoffs. Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger.
The Broken Economic Model and the Inhumanity of the Lost Decade of Austerity
People’s Tragedy: Neoliberal Legacy of Thatcher and Reagan
Neoliberalism and the rise in global loneliness, depression and suicide
The brutality of the logic used by the Obama administration in constructing the ACA, Obamacare, is worthy of exploration. The premise behind the ‘skin in the game’ idea is neoliberalism 101, developed by a founder of neoliberalism, economist Milton Friedman, to ration health care. The basic idea is that without a price attached to it, people will ‘demand’ more health care than they need. That from a public health perspective, oversupplying health care is better than undersupplying it, is ignored under the premise that public health concerns are communistic. (Read Friedman).
The Destruction of our World and the lies of Milton Friedman
Economic Growth: The Index of Misery
But how likely is it that people will ‘demand’ too much healthcare? The starting position of Obamacare was that the American healthcare system provided half the benefit at twice the price of comparable systems. Through the ‘market’ pricing mechanism that existed, the incentive was for people to avoid purchasing healthcare because it was / is wildly overpriced. Not considered was that through geographical and specialist ‘natural monopolies,’ health care providers had an incentive to undersupply health care by providing high-margin services to the rich.
Furthermore, why would a healthcare system be considered from the perspective of individual users? In contrast to the temporal sleight-of-hand where Obamacare ‘customers’ are expected to anticipate their illnesses and buy insurance plans that cover them, the entire premise of health insurance is that illnesses are unpredictable. Isn’t the Coronavirus evidence of this unpredictable nature? And through the nature of pandemics, it is known that some people will get sick and other people won’t. Not known is precisely who will get sick and who won’t.
While there are public health emergency provisions in Obamacare that may or may not be invoked, why does it make sense in any case to require that people anticipate future illnesses? Such a program isn’t health care and it isn’t even health insurance. It is gambling. Guess right and you live. Guess wrong and you die. Why should we be guessing at all? Prior to Obamacare, health insurance companies gamed the system with life and death decisions. In true neoliberal fashion, Obamacare randomized the process as health insurers continue to game the system.
As I understand it, the public health emergency provision in Obamacare might cover virus testing and the cost of a vaccine if one is ever found. Great. What about care? How many readers chose a plan that covers Coronavirus? How many days can you go without a paycheck if you get sick or are quarantined? Who will take care of your children and for how long? How will you pay your rent or mortgage? Who will deliver groceries to your house and how will you pay for them? How will you make the car payment before they repossess it and how will you get to work without it if you recover?
The rank idiocy— and the political content, of the frame of individual ‘consumers’ overusing health care quickly devolves to the fact that some large portion of the American people can’t afford to go to the doctor when they need to. Even if they can afford the direct costs, they can’t afford the indirect costs. When Obamacare was passed, the U.S. had the worst health care outcomes among rich countries. Ten years later, the U.S. has the worst healthcare outcomes among rich countries. And medical bankruptcies are virtually unchanged since Obamacare was passed.
The reason for focusing on Obamacare is it is the system through which we encounter the Coronavirus. In the narrow political sense of getting a health care bill passed, Obamacare may or may not have been ‘pragmatic.’ In a public health care sense, it is a disaster decades in the making. The problem wasn’t / isn’t Mr. Obama per se. It is the radical ideology behind it that was posed as pragmatism. Mr. Obama’s success was to get a bill passed— a political accomplishment. It wasn’t to create a functioning healthcare system.
The otherworldly nature of neoliberal theory has led to a most brutal of social philosophies. Mr. Obama later put his energy into lengthening drug company patents to give drug companies an economic advantage provided by the government. Economist Dean Baker has made a career out of hammering this general point home. Michael Bloomberg benefited from government support for both technology and finance. His fortune of $16 billion in 2009 followed stock prices higher to land him at $64.2 billion in 2020.
Donald Trump inherited a large fortune that likewise followed stock and Manhattan real estate prices higher. Both he and Mr. Bloomberg could have put their early fortunes into passive portfolios and received the returns that they claim to be the product of superior intelligence and hard work. Analytically, if the variability of these fortunes tracks systemic, rather than personal, factors, then systemic factors explain them. The same is true of most of the great fortunes of the epoch of finance capitalism that began around 1978.
The point of merging these issues is that they represent flip sides of the neoliberal coin. In a broad sense, neoliberalism is premised on economic Darwinism, the quasi-religious (it isn’t Darwin) idea that people land where they deserve to land in the social order. This same idea, that systemic differences in economic outcomes are evidence of systemic causes, applies here. However, differences in intelligence, initiative and talent don’t map to systemic outcomes, meaning that concentrated wealth isn’t a reward for these.
The ignorant brutality of this system appears to be on its way to getting a reality check through a tiny virus. Unless the Federal government figures this out really fast, most of the bodies will be carried out of poor and working class neighborhoods like mine. Few here have health insurance and most health care providers in the area don’t take the insurance they do have. More than a day away from work and many of my neighbors will no longer have jobs. Evictions are a regular state of affairs in good times. There are no resources to facilitate a larger-picture response.
Liberalism, of which neoliberalism is a cranky cousin, lives through a patina of pragmatism until the nukes start flying or a virus hits. Getting healthcare ‘consumers’ to consider their market choices follows a narrow logic up to the point where none of the choices are relevant to a public health emergency. One I plus another I plus another I doesn’t equal us. The fundamental premise of neoliberalism, the Robinsonade I, has always been a cynical dodge to let rich people keep their loot.
The mortality rate and contagion factor recently reported for Coronavirus (links at top) place it above the modern benchmark of the Spanish Flu of 1918 in terms of potential lethality. What should make people angry is how the reconfiguration of political economy intended to make a few people really rich has put the rest of us at increased risk. These are real people’s lives and they matter.
Finally, for students of neoliberalism: there is no conflation of neoliberalism with neoclassical economics here. Milton Friedman, one of the founders of neoliberalism through the Mont Pelerin Society, produced a long career’s worth of half-baked garbage economics. On the rare occasions when he wasn’t helping Chilean fascists toss students out of airplanes in flight, he was pawning his infantile theories off on future Chamber of Commerce and ALEC predators. His positivism was already known to be a farce when he took it up. Here is a primer that explains why it is, and always will be, a farce.’
*The above piece by Rob Urie was first published in CounterPunch on 6 March 2020.
Read more articles by Rob Urie
‘When all of this is over, the world won’t be the same.’
But, the Challenge Is: How to Make the World a Better Place?
I am sure there are many answers to this timely question. Below are my offerings:
My Six Steps to a Better World and a Better Life
Neoliberalism's excesses belong in the dustbin of history. What's next is up to us
We, the people, all around the globe, are slowly realising that our planet, our lives, and more are in desperate need for new measures to evolve humanly, environmentally, economically and politically towards a more cooperative, peaceful and respectful sense of interdependency.
While the urgency is being felt on all levels, too many feel disempowered with the potential to spark a change, make a difference or even perceive an ounce of hope for the future.
The task isn’t small. Indeed, the task is so great that there is only one way to succeed, and that is, all of us, coming together in the spirit of the common good, to empower and enable each one of us to become self-directed, and active in defining this time in the world as opportunity for positive change and healing and for the true formation of a culture of peace by giving thanks, spreading joy, sharing love, seeing miracles, discovering goodness, embracing kindness, practicing patience, teaching tolerance, encouraging laughter, celebrating diversity, showing compassion, turning from hatred, practicing forgiveness, peacefully resolving conflicts, communicating non-violently, choosing happiness and enjoying life. Carpe Diem!
Photo:modernlifeblogs.com
1- Throw away this single-minded ideology and replace it with a more balanced logic, laying the foundations for a better, more equitable world
Death and Destruction on Brothers’ Road to Serfdom
Neoliberalism destroys human potential and devastates values-led education
2- Replace the selfishness and hatred of neoliberalism with Kindness
Kindness to Heal the World- Kindness to Make the World Great Again
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”
3- Replace the hopelessness of neoliberalism with Hopefulness
Crisis after crisis and the crucial voices of hope
How to defeat hatred and fear: Don't Despair Walk On
4- Replace the delusional and destructive neoliberal education with inspirational values-led Education
The Value of Values: Values-led Education to Make the World Great Again
Brexit, Trump and the failure of our universities to pursue wisdom Details
To All Striking Academic Colleagues in Britain: Turn the Strike to a Force for the Common Good
The Journey to Sophia: Education for Wisdom
5- Replace the devastated neoliberal economy with Economy as if People Mattered
Is Neoliberal Economics and Economists 'The Biggest Fraud Ever Perpetrated on the World?'
My Economics and Business Educators’ Oath: My Promise to My Students
What might an Economy for the Common Good look like?
6- and finally, throw away the fake neoliberal ‘teachers’ and let nature to be our wisest Teacher
On the 250th Birthday of William Wordsworth Let Nature be our Wisest Teacher
Why should we all become mother nature and sacred earth guardians
To Heal the World and People We Need to Save the Commons from Plunder
- Details
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
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A deserted Rome: ‘We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time.’-Photo: Daily Mail
A letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future
The acclaimed Italian novelist Francesca Melandri, who has been under lockdown in Rome for almost three weeks due to the Covid-19 outbreak, has written a letter to fellow Europeans “from your future”, laying out the range of emotions people are likely to go through over the coming weeks.
Photo: Spiegel
‘I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.