Sunday Posts

We have grown up with the 'Tragedy of The Commons' programmed in our brains.  If something is common property, no one cares for it - we have taken it for granted. It is because the way incentive systems are believed to work. If something is everyone's property, no one in particular has the responsibility for its upkeep; and yet the person who gets there first and uses it to the maximum, gains most. So a common forest is overfell, common pond is overfished, common field is overgrazed. And, on the other hand, property rights really protect the productive capacities of the resources, and creates common good. How convenient! This looks like common sense that can be so easily proved empirically. We know it from our instincts - from overeating at the buffet or binging at happy hours - that costs for using something makes us more responsible. And, we came to accept the conclusions that followed from this idea: That everyone is better off when the natural resources are pr...

'Liberal' is a bad thing, something to be ashamed about these days. If you are one, like me, your views are likely to be dismissed to be some kind of a Hippie opinion that does not seem to matter. Why not, indeed, because 'capitalism' (with the attendant label of 'neo-liberal') seemed to have decisively won? It takes guts to say that standing in the middle of the greatest financial disaster of a lifetime. It takes arrogance to make such a proclamation when the system we have brought more miseries to more people than the World Wars and Dictators ever did. And, perhaps, it takes ignorance, self-induced ignorance of the charmer who has fallen in love with his own words and being charmed himself. This is, I shall claim, a break point. 'Liberal' got a bad name just at the point of its greatest triumph - when civil rights were finally firmly established and street revolutions got under way to change the society. Liberalism's defining year may hav...

We live in an age of market fundamentalism. That is, live by an assumption that the markets are cure all, and as long as we free everyone's hand to buy and sell at whatever price one chooses, everyone will get the best deal by the magical work of the invisible hand. This doctrine is being pushed everywhere: In an age where the sovereign states live in mortal fear that George Soros may pull their money and bankrupt them overnight if they don't toe the line, markets are made to penetrate every sphere of our life, in education, health care, environment, relationships and even births and deaths. The idea of the markets has become hegemonic, so widespread that one can not see its edges and question its limits; indeed, questioning the merits of the markets is seen as blasphemous and unusual. However, still the criticisms of markets are emerging. First, that this represents a fairly narrow view of human race, that it is driven by self interest, despite many evidence on the contra...

Industrial age has long ended, the pundits proclaimed, and we live in the information age. Indeed, the world in perspective is downtown LA, not some remote areas of Congo, where some farming tools, if they could be afforded, would be a good idea. However, once the proclamation is printed in books legitimised by top publishers' logos and the authors credentials longer than their names, it must be believed. Further, that idea is already in vogue and typing these words on a remote computer hooked in some network, I seem to be voting affirmative with my action. However, one question remains though: It seems that history has indeed accelerated a bit too fast, and this information age, or network economy or whichever name one calls it, is precariously close to catastrophe just after it has barely began. Call it the revenge of Congo, where children who would consider themselves lucky to have a decent meal a day and would not miss anything if the Information Age ends tomorrow: However...

Crisis is inherent in Capitalism. In fact, the only good thing about capitalism is the ability to create such crisis and wash away the old and the inefficient, some people will say. This is indeed cruel system, which runs counter to natural human instinct of sympathy for the weak and the old and the like, but it is its self-healing nature, rather than its ability to create a better way of life, has kept it going when other competing systems have failed. As we are in the middle of another, worldwide, crisis, such thoughts are indeed reassuring. Many people may yet again jump out to pronounce capitalism dead, but we have been there before. Every crisis over last 150 years have been seen as Capitalism's final crisis, and every time it has emerged relatively unscathed, and looked like a stronger system, only to absolve in another crisis in a few years time.  Indeed, just like the doomsday preachers, there are others who saw the end of history at the upturns that ended recessio...

Despite all the ongoing conversation about Capitalism 2.0, and my enthusiastic participation in this, I am not sure we are done with the kind of neo -classical lessaiz - faire capitalism that dominated our thinking and policy-making for last thirty years. This crisis was a big shock, and the very fact that it was a big shock was a big surprise to a number of economists and social thinkers, because they have been predicting such a breakdown for a number of years. But, I would argue that this is still not a big enough crisis to force a fundamental rethink about the economic system. When I asked to write about the recession with a futurist perspective about a year back by an independent magazine, I ended up comparing this crisis with the great war of 1914. The First World War was a brutal, long war and forced the whole world to rethink the assumptions about the Golden Age, but it was still unfinished business. Despite its terrible human consequences, it was not big enough. It was just a ...

Capitalism has failed. Or, so it seems, standing in the middle of the worst post-war economic crisis. It is not about the house prices, which have started turning upwards, or the stock markets, which have recovered some time back. Precisely to the point, Capitalism has failed people. For all the talk of economic recovery, the unemployment is stubbornly high in many places. Carefully crafted careers have been wrecked, families lost their homes and a lost generation has been created. Capitalism as a system indeed failed all these people. The funny thing is that it was always expected to fail. Despite all the hopes that we have finally beaten recession, economists knew all along that such cyclical changes are ingrained in capitalism. In fact, some of them actually celebrate it - creative destruction is what it is called. This is Capitalism's mechanism of wiping out the old and the inefficient, and create new efficiencies and businesses. The theory is - with progress, societies create...