Archive for the ‘ Capitalism ’ Category
The last three months have been the worst ever for home foreclosures, a third of a million. No wonder the Dow is over 10,000 and Goldman-Sachs is enjoying peak performance. [ READ MORE ]
The NYTimes has an article on the boutique-y chain stores opening up in limited geographical areas (i.e., neighborhoods) in Brooklyn. The idea is more like the development of an open-air brandname mall than franchise replication. Rather than sell the same good or service elsewhere, the store owner diversifies into related niches in the same area, [ READ MORE ]
So Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theories now position Frances Fox Piven as the conduit from Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives to Obama and the liberal left…uh…sorry, the “radical left fringe”. [ READ MORE ]
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The Boston Globe has a short piece on Minsky’s theory of capitalism and finance. It reports Minsky’s argument that instability is inherent to capitalism, that stability encourages reckless behavior that precipitates collapse, and that a critical solution to a crisis is a “bubble up” approach in which anyone who wants to work is provided a [ READ MORE ]
The Star has an article reporting on the increasing challenges to Richard Florida’s ideas in Toronto. I’m on vacation, but a couple of good quotes: “Richard Florida’s exotic city, his creative city, depends on ghost people, working behind the scenes. Immigrants, people of colour. You want to know what his version of creative is? He’s the [ READ MORE ]
I’m getting closer and closer to getting moving again on the dissertation. Sienna’s still demanding most of our time, as we try to figure out how to meet her needs. But it seems as though we’re beginning to be able to anticipate them and thus can begin turning back to our own needs. Hence, the [ READ MORE ]
The NYTimes has a story today on the decline of Bend, Oregon as immigrants from California discover that their quest for a better life has run aground in the current economic storm. Along the lines of Richard Florida’s destination cities for the economically productive, these families sold (or tried to sell) their houses in California [ READ MORE ]
In contrast to the preceding post, WIRED’s editor-in-chief has a column that suggests that on the business side of things, the crisis has revealed the vulnerability and growing inflexibility of industry giants and that going forward production is likely to fragment into “pop-up shops” (my term, not his). To all the usual reasons why small companies [ READ MORE ]
[Lost the original version of the post, so here is the central argument.] The NYTimes reports that states and towns are beginning to cooperate and share expenses in the face of the fiscal crisis. This implies that under conditions of scarcity, government scales upward to reduce risk and cost. [ READ MORE ]
The NYTimes has this article about the island of Hime. [ READ MORE ]
This is a compelling time series map of employment gain and loss over the last five years. The effect of Katrina is apparent, and the downturn of the current crisis is downright dismaying. [ READ MORE ]
So we celebrated the doctoral anointing of Mr. Show-tay last evening. Amidst the discussions, Dr. Show-tay argued that if I wanted to push for a non-capitalist social organization,the onus was on me to provide examples of success. I accepted that responsibility, but I shouldn’t have. It certainly is a responsibility, but the other side, I [ READ MORE ]
I spent the weekend at the Left Forum. It was my first time, and it turned out to be a most curious developmental experience. After an exhausting Saturday, I felt lost and out of place. I’d been to panels on dialectical thinking (with Bertell Ollman, who was delightful), prison reform (with Robert Hillary King, one [ READ MORE ]
In contrast to DM’s recent caution regarding the use of organicist metaphors for the urban, I came across this article on the biology of cities. The rather interesting original articleemploys two concepts from biology and ecosystems science (economies of scale in size and metabolism and population growth equations) to show three things. First, the physical [ READ MORE ]