The Failure of the Free Market and Democracy

The Failure of the Free Market and Democracy PDF Author: Daniel Ritter
Publisher: Serpent's Tail
ISBN: 1782836500
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this wide-ranging but accessible overview, economist Daniel Ritter examines the changing circumstances that have led to the economic decline of the West and the rise of populism. He looks at the effects of globalisation and how increasing mechanisation has fuelled discontent, the collapse of existing communities, and a sense of disenfranchisement. The fault, he argues, lies not with advances in technology, or a lack of growth, but in rising inequality and an over-reliance on the free market. Examining the West's situation in a global context, both in relation to the rise of China and the ascendancy of private interest groups, he claims that the free market has failed, and with it representative democracy, arguing that we must 'update our very notions of work and reward' if we are to survive the current crisis. Informed, lucid and strongly argued, Ritter's compelling analysis is a must-read for anyone concerned to discover the origins of our current economic and political malaise, and its possible solutions.

The Failure of the Free Market and Democracy

The Failure of the Free Market and Democracy PDF Author: Daniel Ritter
Publisher: Serpent's Tail
ISBN: 1782836500
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this wide-ranging but accessible overview, economist Daniel Ritter examines the changing circumstances that have led to the economic decline of the West and the rise of populism. He looks at the effects of globalisation and how increasing mechanisation has fuelled discontent, the collapse of existing communities, and a sense of disenfranchisement. The fault, he argues, lies not with advances in technology, or a lack of growth, but in rising inequality and an over-reliance on the free market. Examining the West's situation in a global context, both in relation to the rise of China and the ascendancy of private interest groups, he claims that the free market has failed, and with it representative democracy, arguing that we must 'update our very notions of work and reward' if we are to survive the current crisis. Informed, lucid and strongly argued, Ritter's compelling analysis is a must-read for anyone concerned to discover the origins of our current economic and political malaise, and its possible solutions.

Losing Social Intellect

Losing Social Intellect PDF Author: Salih Reisoglu
Publisher: Salih Reisoglu
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the last two decades, Free Market Economy and Democracy came to the brink of collapse. These systems will continue to stand at the edge of the hill unless their fundamental flaw is dealt with. Unfortunately, while the issues of secondary importance are freely discussed, it is a taboo to mention the elephant in the room: the social intellect threshold for the society for the proper functioning of Free Market Economy and Democracy is rising every passing day, while the Social Intellect of the society is not. The freedom to choose does not have much of a meaning if the society does not have the ability to choose. When the society gets naive enough to be manipulated to make choices that transfer economic and political power to concentrated interest groups who serve their own interests at the expense of the society, Free Market Economy and Democracy fail to serve their functions. Losing Social Intellect analyses why Social Intellect is weakening, how this shakes the foundations of the western social order, and what can be done to cure these troubles before the western economic and political systems are ruined.

Free Market Fairness

Free Market Fairness PDF Author: John Tomasi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158142
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
A provocative new vision of free market capitalism that achieves liberal ends by libertarian means Can libertarians care about social justice? In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, Tomasi presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. Unlike traditional libertarians, Tomasi argues that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy. At the same time, he encourages egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives. In place of the familiar social democratic interpretations of social justice, Tomasi offers a "market democratic" conception of social justice: free market fairness. Tomasi argues that free market fairness, with its twin commitment to economic liberty and a fair distribution of goods and opportunities, is a morally superior account of liberal justice. Free market fairness is also a distinctively American ideal. It extends the notion, prominent in America's founding period, that protection of property and promotion of real opportunity are indivisible goals. Indeed, according to Tomasi, free market fairness is social justice, American style. Provocative and vigorously argued, Free Market Fairness offers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice—one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.

The Myth of Democratic Failure

The Myth of Democratic Failure PDF Author: Donald A. Wittman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226904238
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
In The Myth of Democratic Failure, Donald A. Wittman refutes one of the cornerstone beliefs of economics and political science: that economic markets are more efficient than the processes and institutions of democratic government.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism PDF Author: Shoshana Zuboff
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610395700
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 658

Get Book Here

Book Description
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy PDF Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674062191
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 409

Get Book Here

Book Description
Following up on his timely and well-received book, A Failure of Capitalism, Richard Posner steps back to take a longer view of the continuing crisis of democratic capitalism as the American and world economies crawl gradually back from the depths to which they had fallen in the autumn of 2008 and the winter of 2009. By means of a lucid narrative of the crisis and a series of analytical chapters pinpointing critical issues of economic collapse and gradual recovery, Posner helps non-technical readers understand business-cycle and financial economics, and financial and governmental institutions, practices, and transactions, while maintaining a neutrality impossible for persons professionally committed to one theory or another. He calls for fresh thinking about the business cycle that would build on the original ideas of Keynes. Central to these ideas is that of uncertainty as opposed to risk. Risk can be quantified and measured. Uncertainty cannot, and in this lies the inherent instability of a capitalist economy. As we emerge from the financial earthquake, a deficit aftershock rumbles. It is in reference to that potential aftershock, as well as to the government's stumbling efforts at financial regulatory reform, that Posner raises the question of the adequacy of our democratic institutions to the economic challenges heightened by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis and the government's energetic response to it have enormously increased the national debt at the same time that structural defects in the American political system may make it impossible to pay down the debt by any means other than inflation or devaluation.

Missing Intellect in Economics and Politics

Missing Intellect in Economics and Politics PDF Author: Salih Reisoglu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the last two decades Free Market Economy and Democracy came to the brink of collapse. Neither of these systems can survive unless their fundamental structural problems are dealt with. Unfortunately, while the issues of secondary importance are freely discussed, it is a taboo to mention the elephant in the room: the social intellect threshold for the society for the proper functioning of free market economy and democracy is rising every passing day, while the social intellect of the society is not. Missing Intellect in Economics and Politics aims to reveal the vital but inadequately recognized aspects of Free Market Economy and Democracy that are either flawed in principle, or unknowingly or deliberately misapplied in practice. Then, it offers potential solutions that will enable these systems to survive in an environment that is getting ever more complex day by day. The book covers a wide but interconnected range of topics, including ?Fair Competition as the strongest driver of the society's welfare ?the weakening Social Intellect of the society relative to the rising complexity of the world ?Concentration of Power and Cheating in both economics and politics, ruining the welfare of the society?Agency Problems and Information Asymmetries being central to the malfunctioning of the economic and political systems ?Democracy, stability, fair representation and legitimacy, and the new heterogeneous society?the failure to establish a real separation of powers, and the rise of autocracies within democracies?the lack of competition in politics ?a proposal for a new Advanced Democratic System Missing Intellect in Economics and Politics shows the reader how to think on macro economic and political issues, rather than what to think on them. Therefore, its content is not bound by any specific society, place or time, but is applicable in different occasions to reveal different but valid solutions.

Freedom in the World 2018

Freedom in the World 2018 PDF Author: Freedom House
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538112035
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.

Freedom Manifesto

Freedom Manifesto PDF Author: Steve Forbes
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307951596
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 611

Get Book Here

Book Description
From Steve Forbes, the iconic editor in chief of Forbes Media, and Elizabeth Ames coauthors of How Capitalism Will Save Us—comes a new way of thinking about the role of government and the morality of free markets. Americans today are at a turning point. Are we a coun­try founded on the values of freedom and limited gov­ernment, as envisioned by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Or do we want to become a European-style socialist democ­racy? What best serves the public good—freedom or Big Government? In Freedom Manifesto, Forbes and Ames offer a new twist on this historic debate. Today’s bloated and bureau­cratic government, they argue, is anything but a force for compassion. Instead of assuring fairness, it promotes favoritism. Instead of furthering opportunity, it stifles economic growth. Instead of unleashing innovation and material abundance, its regulations and price controls create rigidity and scarcity. Not only are Big Govern­ment’s inefficient and ever-expanding bureaucracies ill-equipped to deliver on their promises—they are often guilty of the very greed, excess, and corruption routinely ascribed to the private sector. The only way to a truly fair and moral society, the authors say, is through economic freedom—free people and free markets. Throughout history, open markets have helped the poor and everyone else by unleashing unprecedented creativity, generating wealth, and raising living standards. Promoting trust, generosity, and de­mocracy, economic freedom has been a more powerful force for individual rights, self-determination—and hu­manity—than any government bureaucracy. Freedom Manifesto captures the spirit of a new movement that is questioning old ideas about the mo­rality of government and markets for the first time since the Great Depression. Going beyond the familiar explanations and sound bites, the authors provide a fully developed framework of “first principles” for a true understanding of the real moral and ethical distinctions between more and less government. This timely and provocative book shows why free markets and liberty are the only way to a better future and a fair and humane society.

Democracy The God That Failed

Democracy The God That Failed PDF Author: Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780138793579
Category : Social policy
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The core of this book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from monarchy to democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both. Its methodology is axiomatic-deductive, allowing the writer to derive economic and sociological theorems, and then apply them to interpret historical events. A compelling chapter on time preference describes the progress of civilization as lowering time preferences as capital structure is built, and explains how the interaction between people can lower time all around, with interesting parallels to the Ricardian Law of Association. By focusing on this transformation, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, and the growth of the mega-state. In underscoring the deficiencies of both monarchy and democracy, the author demonstrates how these systems are both inferior to a natural order based on private-property. Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers. Having established a natural order as superior on utilitarian grounds, the author goes on to assess the prospects for achieving a natural order. Informed by his analysis of the deficiencies of social democracy, and armed with the social theory of legitimation, he forsees secession as the likely future of the US and Europe, resulting in a multitude of region and city-states. This book complements the author's previous work defending the ethics of private property and natural order. Democracy - The God that Failed will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political economy, and political philosophy."--Provided by publisher.