Friday 29th of March 2024

of the inequalities of economic fiddles...

russell brand

This in response to an article by Victoria Rollison as a comment on Russell Brand and Helen Razer complaining Russell has no economic qualifications or such...

First, Victoria, let's mention that it is Helen Razer (not Razor) though Razer can be quite cutting like a razor but she can be very wrong as well as being entertaining in her wrongness. 

Second, if economics were a proper science, the world would be a place easier to manage — or should be a far better place. But like politics, economics is only AN ART FORM, that is to say a human construct which does not explain anything of what we should see but, like religions, give us a variety of dogma about what we should believe or do — albeit a few fanciful religious dictums that are iffy at best, especially in relation to the natural environment and to the vagaries of "human nature".

Economics and nature have not been well integrated so far. When the cost of nature (degradation and destruction thereof) is fully incorporated in economics we could actually see some real progress into taming the ugly beast that economics is.

Our illustrious Joe Hockey has been a claimant of "not being an economist"... That's his right but a lousy status in his position. He is no treasurer as well, but this is beside the point. He is a gigantic FAILURE in the job (with his cunning mate Cormann), a lousy dangerous treasurer not so much because he is an idiot, but because the failure to look at the social implications of his budget is ACTUALLY PART OF the neo-fascists trickery to make us swallow crap, at any cost. Joe's are crappy economic fiddles designed to favour the rich at the detriment of the poor...

Few people understand full-blown economics. Not even bankers apart from local fiddles and selling moneys to make a profit, relatively. 

"Economics" is a social structure of exchange value that mixes greed, compassion, thieving and protection, as well as "duty and rights". 

Various echelons of the social construct will be greedy, compassionate, thieving and protective in degrees usually in line with political colour, In reality everyone is relatively encouraged to try and pull the blanket towards themselves and "consume" till one becomes in debt beyond the eye-balls. At the low echelons, there will be petty thieves, while in the rich community, the thieving is subtly determined by clever laws (usually devised by the rich) that encourage a form of robbery through various mechanism of tax avoidance, trust funds and consumerism forcing. 

Nothing is fixed. The government deficits and private deficits are always in a precarious illusionary balance. The economic capitalistic system depends on unfettered growth (imbalance towards rich excess), which is good to a point for returns on "investments" but highly detrimental to nature pass a certain point (We passed this point a long time ago — in 1850 thereabout). 

We're soon arriving at a massive crunch time in regard to our economic influence on the climate of this planet. But the rich do not want to see this because it would require trimming their excess of fat. 

Nobody agrees as to which point economics are good or bad, because the differential between poor and rich is also part of the flimsy equation, in which the temptation of greed is used to make poor people work harder for less, while the rich line their pockets by "speculation" (gambling) or by controlling the toil of others. 

Thus the political system has had to devise "safety valves" to minimise revolt from the "peasants" or the "ordinary folks" — us... The economic system provides such safety valves in social "welfare" in which some moneys are given to the poor while supposedly being taken from the rich who always complain the poor are loafing. Other safety valve is hoping people are "comfortable" enough in their acquirement of goods, despite being in debt-shit (cleverly designed to keep the poor underfoot).

Relatively, welfare has nothing to do with loafing but in the availability of work and of "employment". 

The capitalist system hates full employment. There is a six per cent unemployment rate written in the basic system as to stop wages growth, while the price of cash is designed to grow nonetheless by the "gambling" on investments and the "flogging" of workers. 

Thus workers always fall behind. Welfare gives them a bit of comfort. Many rich people would prefer to see workers more like slaves than employees with rights, while demanding the workers value their "duty" towards the employers.

Presently, the economic budget given to us by the rat's arse Tony Turdy is more than awful. Tony Turdy lied to get elected. Now his budget is slanted towards the rich making more cash — while the poor might save three candle sticks on electricity bills to great fanfare, but have to pay a lot more on health and education. If you believe Tony Turdy (and his sidekick Clive Palmer) you have rocks in your head.

Obviously, the cunning neo-fascist capitalists like Turdy Tony have no heart and though I believe they understand the damage they are doing to the community, they don't care — a bit like psychopaths. They figure enough people will be greedy and try to become greedier, to sustain the neo-fascist views about greed, with "minimal" protection for the poor... 

Our present Abbott Turdy neo-fascist capitalist regime gives us shit sandwich. 

So, Russell Brand can do good by shaking the old farts in our heads and stir our illusionary mediocre bourgeois comforts. That Helen Razer does not think Brand could do any good is her own opinion. People like Russell Brand have a profile that can help shape average public opinion against the present crop of crummy politicians. Russell Brand can also discover better actions on the journey as well. This could be a good start and as well, help us defeat the likes of the powerful merde-och media that pushes greed and thieving ahead of compassion and protection — while showing a hatred of "rights".

Brand may find that things are not as easy as they look in the long run, but good on him for trying or showing he cares — and tough titties to Razer, who, by the way, understand economics like a box of tacks on a seat. 

Should enough people realise that climate change is not a furphy, despite Tony Turdy and his annoying supporters at the merde-och press, we would soon not be in need of enforcement to fix climate change. It would happen by the will of the people, for the people. Australia was on the right track for a while (with a long way to go mind you). With Lying Turdy in charge, we've gone massively backwards. 

But fear not, petals, soon the weather will guide us very quickly towards HAVING TO DO SOMETHING URGENTLY, like understanding the science of global warming and throwing Tony Turdy and his mignons out of the Australian psyche. This would have nothing to do with compassion nor enforcement for enforcement sake's but by becoming scientifically intelligent. We can do it. I have hope more people will become scientifically intelligent and thus drop illusions alla Tony Turdy like the shit they are, into a fathomless cesspit.

If you think you can change public perception for the better, well Russell go. Russell go and lead the masses with a little more flair, than the unfair negativity of a Razer, who despite her cleverness is too cynical for being good....

 

Gus Leonisky

Your local economist

-------------------------

 

A great example of these mixed feelings is my current love-hate relationship with Russell Brand. I guess it’s not really fair to say hate, because I don’t feel the same way about Brand as I do about Abbott. Let’s just say love and frustration. I really respect Brand’s moral stance on the danger of growing wealth inequality. His possible bid to become London’s Lord Mayor is probably inspired by his campaign to reduce unaffordability of housing in London, where he grew up on a council estate. Helen Razor [sic] suggests that if Brand wants to be a politician, he should learn a thing or two about economics. But to be fair, when he says he can’t get his head around economics, he may be joking, or he may be making the very fair assessment that current orthodoxies about supply and demand economics are a function of a capitalist system that favours the very few over the rest of us. In that, Brand definitely has a point. Brand is not just any celebrity who decides to talk about politics – he is eloquent, intelligent, passionate, knows his stuff, and is incredibly charismatic – all great qualities of a leader (or politician if you want to call a spade a spade). And his values align very closely with mine. On top of this, he promoted Australia’s March in March to his 8 million twitter followers. Also, his YouTube show The Trews is truly hilarious.

read more: http://victoriarollison.com/2014/10/29/the-anti-politicians-are-not-helping/

 

the worst of the worst...

worst of the sorst

on the high road with russell...

 

Russell Brand has stepped into the political arena and is being made to pay a heavy price for it. Ever since his first and by now legendary Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman a year ago, the comedian and entertainer has come under attack from all and sundry, with words such as 'irresponsible', 'naive', self aggrandising', 'incoherent', and even 'bumhole' being thrown at him like verbal hand grenades.

His second and recent Newsnight interview with Evan Davis has resulted in a similar furore, uniting voices of the left, right, and right-on in condemnation. No matter how you cut it this is a remarkable feat for one leather-trousered comedian and entertainer.

Indeed such is the level of anger and indignation levelled at Russell Brand for 'daring' to publicly articulate his disenchantment with the status quo, with the political and economic system, and worse daring to write a book with the provocative titleRevolution, you would think he'd just committed some heinous crime. The criticism that has attached to him over his reinvention as a political activist, writer and campaigner says more about those throwing barbs than it does about him, however, echoing perhaps Oscar Wilde's assertion that, "Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities".

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-wight/russell-brand-politics_b_6046774.html

 

There are limits as to that last Oscar Wilde's genius quote... When we ridicule Tony Abbott, he is no genius and we're no mediocrities... He is just a lying lying lying toad who got in a position of power because he was supported to the hilt by his mate Rupert... who played Rudd against Gillard as well... Turdy Tony and Murdoch are swines with low scientific intelligence. 

 

dancing with the full russell...

I've had an incredible week since I spoke from the heart, some would say via my arse, on Paxman. I've had slaps on the back, fist bumps, cheers and hugs while out and about, cock-eyed offers of political power from well intentioned chancers and some good ol' fashioned character assassinations in the papers.

The people who liked the interview said it was because I'd articulated what they were thinking. I recognise this. God knows I'd love to think the attention was about me but I said nothing new or original, it was the expression of the knowledge that democracy is irrelevant that resonated. As long as the priorities of those in government remain the interests of big business, rather than the people they were elected to serve, the impact of voting is negligible and it is our responsibility to be more active if we want real change.

Turns out that among the disenchanted is Paxman himself who spends most of his time at the meek heart of the political establishment and can't summons up the self-delusion to drag his nib across the ballot box. He, more than any of us is aware that politicians are frauds. I've not spent too much time around them, only on the telly, it's not pleasant; once you've been on Question Time and seen Boris simpering under a make-up brush it's difficult to be enthusiastic about politics.

The only reason to vote is if the vote represents power or change. I don't think it does. I fervently believe that we deserve more from our democratic system than the few derisory tit-bits tossed from the carousel of the mighty, when they hop a few inches left or right. The lazily duplicitous servants of The City expect us to gratefully participate in what amounts to little more than a political hokey cokey where every four years we get to choose what colour tie the liar who leads us wears.

I remember the election and Cameron didn't even get properly voted in, he became prime minister by default when he teamed up with Clegg. Clegg who immediately reneged (Renegy-Cleggy?) on his flagship pledge to end tuition fees at the first whiff of power.

When students, perhaps students who had voted for him, rioted they were condemned. People riot when dialogue fails, when they feel unrepresented and bored by the illusion, bilious with the piped in toxic belch wafted into their homes by the media.

The reason these coalitions are so easily achieved is that the distinctions between the parties are insignificant. My friend went to a posh "do" in the country where David Cameron, a man whose face resembles a little painted egg, was in attendance. Also present were members of the opposition and former prime minister Tony Blair. Whatever party they claim to represent in the day, at night they show their true colours and all go to the same party.

Obviously there has been some criticism of my outburst, I've not been universally applauded as a cross between Jack Sparrow and Spartacus (which is what I'm going for) but they've been oddly personal and I think irrelevant to the argument. I try not to read about myself as the mean stuff is hurtful and the good stuff hard to believe, but my mates always give me the gist of what's going on, the bastards. Some people say I'm a hypocrite because I've got money now. When I was poor and I complained about inequality people said I was bitter, now I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm beginning to think they just don't want inequality on the agenda because it is a real problem that needs to be addressed.

It's easy to attack me, I'm a right twerp, I'm a junkie and a cheeky monkey, I accept it, but that doesn't detract from the incontrovertible fact that we are living in a time of huge economic disparity and confronting ecological disaster. This disparity has always been, in cultures since expired, a warning sign of end of days. In Rome, Egypt and Easter Island the incubated ruling elites, who had forgotten that we are one interconnected people, destroyed their societies by not sharing. That is what's happening now, regardless of what you think of my hair or me using long words, the facts are the facts and the problem is the problem. Don't be distracted. I think these columnist fellas who give me aggro for not devising a solution or for using long words are just being territorial. When they say "long words" they mean "their words" like I'm a monkey who got in their Mum's dressing up box or a hooligan in policeman's helmet.

As I said to Paxman at the time "I can't conjure up a global Utopia right now in this hotel room". Obviously that's not my job and it doesn't need to be, we have brilliant thinkers and organisations and no one needs to cook up an egalitarian Shangri-La on their todd; we can all do it together.

I like Jeremy Paxman, incidentally. I think he's a decent bloke but like a lot of people who work deep within the system it's hard for him to countenance ideas from outside the narrowly prescribed trench of contemporary democracy. Most of the people who criticized me have a vested interest in the maintenance of the system. They say the system works. What they mean is "the system works for me".

The less privileged among us are already living in the apocalypse, the thousands of street sleepers in our country, the refugees and the exploited underclass across our planet daily confront what we would regard as the end of the world. No money, no home, no friends, no support, no hand of friendship reaching out, just acculturated and inculcated condemnation.

When I first got a few quid it was like an anaesthetic that made me forget what was important but now I've woken up. I can't deny that I've done a lot of daft things while I was under the capitalist fugue, some silly telly, soppy scandals, movies better left unmade. I've also become rich. I don't hate rich people; Che Guevara was a rich person. I don't hate anyone, I judge no one, that's not my job, I'm a comedian and my job is to say whatever I like to whoever I want if I'm prepared to take the consequences. Well I am.

My favourite experiences since Paxman-nacht are both examples of the dialogue it sparked. Firstly my friend's 15-year-old son wrote an essay for his politics class after he read my New Statesman piece. He didn't agree with everything I said, he prefers the idea of spoiling ballots to not voting "to show we do care" maybe he's right, I don't know. The reason not voting could be effective is that if we starve them of our consent we could force them to acknowledge that they operate on behalf of The City and Wall Street; that the financing of political parties and lobbying is where the true influence lies; not in the ballot box. However, this 15-year-old is quite smart and it's quite possible that my opinions are a result of decades of drug abuse.

I'm on tour so I've been with thousands of people every night (not like in the old days, I'm a changed man) this is why I'm aware of how much impact the Newsnight interview had. Not everyone I chat to agrees with me but their beliefs are a lot closer to mine than the broadsheets, and it's their job to be serious. One thing I've learned and was surprised by is that I may suffer from the ol' sexism. I can only assume I have an unaddressed cultural hangover, like my adorable Nan who had a heart that shone like a pearl but was, let's face it, a bit racist. I don't want to be a sexist so I'm trying my best to check meself before I wreck meself. The problem may resolve itself as I'm in a loving relationship with a benevolent dictator and have entirely relinquished personal autonomy.

Whilst travelling between gigs I had my second notable encounter. One night late at the Watford Gap I got chatting to a couple of squaddies, one Para, one Marine, we talked a bit about family and politics, I invited them to a show. Then we were joined by three Muslim women, all hijabbed up. For a few perfect minutes in the strip lit inertia of this place, that was nowhere in particular but uniquely Britain, I felt how plausible and beautiful The Revolution could be. We just chatted.

Between three sets of different people; first generation Muslims, servicemen and the privileged elite that they serve (that would be me) effortless cooperation occurred. Here we were free from the divisive rule that tears us apart. That sends brave men and women to foreign lands to fight their capitalist wars, that intimidates and unsettles people whose faith and culture superficially distinguishes them, that tells the comfortable "hush now" you have your trinkets. It seemed ridiculous that refracted through the power prism that blinds us; the soldiers could be invading the homeland of these women's forefathers in order to augment my luxurious stupour. Here in the gap we were together. Our differences irrelevant. With no one to impose separation we are united.

I realised then that our treasured concepts of tribe and nation are not valued by those who govern except when it is to divide us from each other. They don't believe in Britain or America they believe in the dollar and the pound. These are deep and entrenched systemic wrongs that are unaddressed by party politics.

The symptoms of these wrongs are obvious, global and painful. Drone strikes on the innocent, a festering investment for future conflict.

How many combatants are created each time an innocent person in a faraway land is silently ironed out from an Arizona call centre? The reality is we have more in common with the people we're bombing than the people we're bombing them for.

NSA spying, how far-reaching is the issue of surveillance? Do you think we don't have our own cute, quaint British version? Does it matter if the dominant paradigm of Western Capitalism is indifferent to our Bud Flanagan belief in nation? Can we really believe these problems can be altered within the system that created them? That depends on them? The system that we are invited to vote for? Of course not, that's why I won't vote. That's why I support the growing revolution.

We can all contribute ideas as to how to change our world; schoolboys, squaddies, hippies, Muslims, Jews and if what I'm describing is naive then you can keep your education and your indoctrination because loving our planet and each other is a duty, a beautiful obligation. While chatting to people this week I heard some interesting ideas, here are a couple.

We could use the money accumulated by those who have too much, not normal people with a couple of cars, giant corporations, to fund a fairer society.

The US government gave a trillion dollars to bail out the big five banks over the past year. Banks that have grown by 30% since the crisis and are experiencing record profits and giving their execs record bonuses. How about, hang on to your hats because here comes a naïve suggestion, don't give them that money, use it to create one million jobs at fifty grand a year for people who teach, nurse or protect.

These bailouts for elites over services for the many are institutionalised within the system, no party proposes changing it. American people that voted, voted for it. I'm not voting for that.

That's one suggestion for the Americans; we started their country so we owe them a favour now things are getting heavy.

Here's one for blighty; Philip Green, the bloke who owns Top Shop didn't pay any income tax on a £1.2bn dividend in 2005. None. Unless he paid himself a salary that year, in addition to the £1.2bn dividend, the largest in corporate history, then the people who clean Top Shop paid more income tax than he did. That's for two reasons – firstly because he said that all of his £1.2bn earnings belong to his missus, who was registered in Monaco and secondly because he's an arsehole. The money he's nicked through legal loopholes would pay the annual salary for 20,000 NHS nurses. It's not illegal; it's systemic, British people who voted, voted for it. I'm not voting for that.

Why don't you try not paying taxes and see how quickly a lump of bird gets thrown in your face. It's socialism for corporate elites and feudalism for the rest of us. Those suggestions did not come from me; no the mind that gave the planet Booky Wook and Ponderland didn't just add an economically viable wealth distribution system to the laudable list of accolades, to place next to my Shagger Of The Year awards.

The first came from Dave DeGraw, the second Johann Hari got from UK Uncut. Luckily with organisations like them, Occupy, Anonymous and The People's Assembly I don't need to come with ideas, we can all participate. I'm happy to be a part of the conversation, if more young people are talking about fracking instead of twerking we're heading in the right direction. The people that govern us don't want an active population who are politically engaged, they want passive consumers distracted by the spectacle of which I accept I am a part.

If we all collude and collaborate together we can design a new system that makes the current one obsolete. The reality is there are alternatives. That is the terrifying truth that the media, government and big business work so hard to conceal. Even the outlet that printed this will tomorrow print a couple of columns saying what a naïve wanker I am, or try to find ways that I've fucked up. Well I am naïve and I have fucked up but I tell you something else. I believe in change. I don't mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don't mind giving my life to this because I'm only alive because of the compassion and love of others. Men and women strong enough to defy this system and live according to higher laws. This is a journey we can all go on together, all of us. We can include everyone and fear no one. A system that serves the planet and the people. I'd vote for that.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/05/russell-brand-democratic-system-newsnight

jingle capitalistic bells

from David Mitchell

Global capitalism, as a system, simply doesn’t work. Russell Brand’s new book provides the proof. As does my new book. And the hundreds of other new books that are just out. And the Sainsbury’s advert. And all the current adverts for booze and perfume, chocolates and jewels, supermarkets and computer games. The gaudy, twinkly proof is going up all around us as the last of the leaves come down. It’s called Christmas.

On the face of it, Christmas seems like the most naked celebration of capitalism – and by “naked”, I mean the opposite: wrapped, adorned, decorated and sparkling. It might be dressed sexy but, by God, it’s dressed. Or perhaps by Satan. Or Santa. Or Setanta. Which is doubtless doing a Christmas deal on festive football with the opportunity to treat someone special to a banquet of motor racing in the new year. This is capitalism warmly enveloped by fur and wool and silk and diamonds. It’s retail at its most meretricious. Shopping as goddess and whore, love expressed with money and love bought.

But the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy is not really the callous manifestation of the free market that it seems. At the core of our midwinter festival is something fundamentally irrational, an urge a robot would never understand: a need to make merry, to paint the town glittery, to lavish one another with food and gifts purely because it’s got so dark. The sun has gone away and our fears are bubbling to the surface, so we have to dispel them with a big slug of the hard stuff. We must celebrate even though there’s nothing to celebrate. Nothing auspicious has happened other than our continued survival. Yet every winter, since long before Jesus was even a supernova-sized glint in his Father’s ineffable eye, we have a mad party to keep ourselves sane.

This huge quantity of panic buying must be an even more troubling spectacle for those who believe in efficient markets than it is for pious Christians. To people who have faith that the world can heal itself through the unfettered interaction of economically rational individuals, and that, if capitalism were allowed to operate freely, there would be no more slumps and bubbles because the invisible hand of the market would guide everything to its rightful price, the seasonal rush must seem like an orgy of blasphemy.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/23/dont-prick-christmas-bubble-keeping-capitalism-alive

a permanent revolution...

The other influence is perhaps more surprising: the first Gulf war that followed Ba’athist Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which shocked him and his colleagues at the école. “It was a very strong event, because sometimes we say that governments cannot do much against tax havens, they’re too powerful. And suddenly we’re able to send 1 million troops 1,000km away from home to give back the oil to the emir of Kuwait. I was not sure this was the right redistribution of wealth.”

The west’s general relationship with the Middle East – “the most unequal region in the world”, he says – is one that troubles him, not least because it exposes grotesque inequalities. “Take Egypt: the total budget for education for 100 million people is 100 times less than the oil revenue for a few dozen people in Qatar. And then in London and in Paris we are happy to have these people buying football clubs and buying apartments, and then we are surprised that the youths in the Middle East don’t take very seriously our democracy and social justice.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/22/we-need-a-wealth-tax-thomas-piketty-2014s-most-influential-thinker

die Wissenschaft der Demokratie...

 

by Martha C. Nussbaum

 

Radical changes are occurring in what democratic societies teach the young, and these changes have not been well thought through. Eager for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be fulfilling Rabindranath Tagore’s dire prediction ― they will produce generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements:

 

History has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the ... commercial man, the man of limited purpose. This process, aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion and power, causing the upset of man’s moral balance, obscuring his human side under the shadow of soul-less organisation.

 

The humanities and the arts are being cut away, in both primary/secondary and college/university education, in virtually every nation of the world. Seen by policy-makers as useless frills, at a time when nations must cut away all useless things in order to stay competitive in the global market, they are rapidly losing their place in curricula, not to mention in the minds and hearts of parents and children.

And yet I would insist that the connection between liberal arts education and democratic citizenship must not be ignored. In order to make my argument, which is focused on the needs of citizenship, I must begin by simply stating what I take the goal to be. Let me stipulate, then, that: what we want is a nation that is not just a gain-generating machine, but one in which the people make laws for themselves, expressing their autonomy and their equality in so doing. Let me also stipulate that: this nation takes equality seriously, giving all citizens equal entitlements to a wide range of liberties and opportunities, and guaranteeing to all at least a threshold level of a group of key material entitlements. (Apparent in my statement of these goals should be the outline of the “capabilities” or “human development” approach that my work in political philosophy has pursued.)


What qualities of mind, what skills, would a nation need to produce in its citizens in order to achieve and sustain a system of this sort? It is perhaps more vivid to begin from the negative ― as Aristotle always does, in writing about the virtues. What qualities of mind would we need to produce if we were focused only on economic growth, and took that to be the indicator of what it is for a nation to advance, or to improve its quality of life? After all, this is the dominant idea of development to this day in development economics, although increasingly under challenge.

The goal of a nation, says this model of development, should be economic growth: never mind about distribution and social equality; never mind about the preconditions of stable democracy; never mind about the quality of race and gender relations; never mind about the improvement of other aspects of a human being’s quality of life such as health and education. Proponents of this model sometimes like to claim that the pursuit of economic growth will by itself deliver the other good things I have mentioned: health, education, a decrease in social and economic inequality.

By now, however, examining the results of these divergent experiments, we have discovered that the old model really does not deliver the goods as claimed. Achievements in health and education, for example, are very poorly correlated with economic growth. Nor do political liberty and religious freedom track growth. So producing economic growth does not mean producing democracy, and it certainly does not mean producing democracies that show respect for the liberty and conscience of all citizens.

What sort of education does the old model of development suggest? Education for economic enrichment needs basic skills, literacy and numeracy. It also needs some people to have more advanced skills in computer science and technology, although equal access is not terribly important: a nation can grow very nicely while the rural poor remain illiterate and without basic computer resources, as India has discovered. Pure models of education for economic growth are difficult to find in flourishing democracies, since democracy is built on respect for each person, and the growth model respects only an aggregate. However, education systems all over the world are moving closer and closer to the growth model, without much thought about how ill-suited it is to the goals of democracy.

Now let’s look at the other model of the goal, the “human development” model. According to this model, what is important is what opportunities ― or “capabilities” ― each person has, in key areas ranging from life, health and bodily integrity to political liberty, political participation and education. This model of development recognises that each and every person possesses an inalienable human dignity that ought to be respected by laws and institutions. A decent nation, at a bare minimum, acknowledges that its citizens all have entitlements in these and other areas, and devises strategies to get people above a threshold level of opportunity in each.

If a nation wants to promote that type of humane, people-sensitive democracy ― one dedicated to promoting opportunities for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to each and every person ― what abilities will it need to produce in its citizens? At least the following seem crucial:

  • the ability to deliberate well about political issues affecting the nation, to examine, reflect, argue and debate, deferring neither to tradition nor authority;
  • the ability to think about the good of the nation as a whole, not just that of one’s own local group, and to see one’s own nation, in turn, as a part of a complicated world order in which issues of many kinds require intelligent transnational deliberation for their resolution;
  • the ability to have concern for the lives of others, to imagine what policies of many types mean for the opportunities and experiences of one’s fellow citizens, of many types, and for people outside one’s own nation.

Before we can say more about education, however, we need to understand the problems we face on the way to making students responsible democratic citizens who might possibly implement a human development agenda.

The internal ‘clash of civilisations’

What is it about human life that makes it so hard to sustain egalitarian democratic institutions, and so easy to lapse into hierarchies of various types ― or, even worse, projects of violent group animosity, as a powerful group attempts to establish its supremacy? Whatever these forces are, it is ultimately against them that true education for human development must fight: so it must, as Gandhi put it, engage in a kind of clash of civilisations within each person, as respect for others contends against narcissistic aggression.

The internal clash can be found in all modern societies, in different forms, since all contain struggles over inclusion and equality, whether the precise locus of these struggles is in debates about immigration, or the accommodation of religious, racial and ethnic minorities, or sex equality, or affirmative action. In all societies, too, there are forces in the human personality that militate against mutual recognition and reciprocity, as well as forces of compassion and respect that give egalitarian democracy strong support.

What, then, do we know by now about forces in the personality that militate against democratic reciprocity and respect?

Deference to authority

To begin with, we know that people have a high level of deference to authority. Psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that experimental subjects were willing to administer a very painful and dangerous level of electric shock to another person, so long as the superintending scientist told them that what they were doing was all right ― even when the other person was screaming in pain (which, of course, was faked for the sake of the experiment). Solomon Asch, earlier, had shown that experimental subjects are willing to go against the clear evidence of their senses when all the other people around them are making sensory judgments that are off-target: his very rigorous and oft-confirmed research shows the unusual subservience of normal human beings to peer pressure.

Both Milgram’s work and Asch’s have been used effectively by Christopher Browning to illuminate the behaviour of young Germans in a police battalion that murdered Jews during the Nazi era. So great was the influence of both peer pressure and authority on these young men, Browning shows, that the ones who couldn’t bring themselves to shoot Jews felt ashamed of their weakness.

Allure of dominance

Still other research demonstrates that apparently ‘normal’ people are willing to engage in behaviour that humiliates and stigmatises if their situation is set up in a certain way, casting them in a dominant role and telling them that the others are their inferiors.

One particularly chilling example involves school children whose teacher informs them that children with blue eyes are superior to children with dark eyes. Hierarchical and cruel behaviour ensue. The teacher then informs the children that a mistake has been made: it is actually the brown-eyed children who are superior, the blue-eyed inferior. The hierarchical and cruel behaviour simply reverses itself: the brown-eyed children seem to have learned nothing from the pain of discrimination.

Perhaps the most famous experiment of this type is Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, in which he found that subjects randomly cast in the roles of prison guard and prisoner began to behave differently almost immediately. The prisoners became passive and depressed; the guards used their power to humiliate and stigmatize. (Although, I must say that I believe this experiment was badly designed in a number of ways, and is thus less than conclusive: for example, Zimbardo gave elaborate instructions to the guards, telling them that their goal should be to induce feelings of alienation and despair in the prisoners.)

Fear of contamination

Other research on disgust, on which I’ve drawn in my book on the role of disgust in social inequality, shows that people are very uncomfortable with the signs of their own animality and mortality: disgust is the emotion that polices the boundary between ourselves and other animals. In virtually all societies, it is not enough to keep ourselves free from contamination by bodily waste products that are, in the language of psychologists, “animal reminders.” Instead, people create subordinate groups of human beings who are identified as disgusting and contaminating, saying that they are dirty, smelly, bearers of disease and so forth. There is a lot of work done on how such attitude figure in antisemitism, racism, sexism and homophobia.

Similarly, when people are ashamed of need and helplessness, they tend to want to enslave others. As the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted in his book on education, all small children want their parents to be their slaves, and this tendency, unchecked by education, is a huge impediment to democracy.

Anonymity and de-personalisation

What else do we know? We know that these forces take on much more power when people are anonymous or not held personally accountable. People act much worse under shelter of anonymity, as parts of a faceless mass, than they do when they are watched and made accountable as individuals. (Anyone who has ever violated the speed limit, and then slowed down on seeing a police car in the rear-view mirror, will know how pervasive this phenomenon is.)

We also know that people behave badly when nobody raises a critical voice: Asch’s subjects went along with the erroneous judgment when all the other people whom they took to be fellow experimental subjects (and who were really working for the experimenter) concurred in error; but if even one other person said something different, they were freed to follow their own perception and judgment.

Finally, we know that people behave badly when the human beings over whom they have power are dehumanised and de-individualized. In a wide range of situations, people behave much worse when the ‘other’ is portrayed as like an animal, or as bearing only a number rather than a name.

Cultivating compassion

In thinking how we might help individuals and societies to win what I’ve referred to as the internal clash of civilisations in each person, we would do well to think about how these tendencies can be used to our advantage.

For the other side of the internal clash ― and this part, I think, Gandhi got brilliantly right ― is the child’s growing capacity for compassionate concern, for seeing another person as an end and not a mere means. One of the easiest ways to regain lost omnipotence is to make slaves of others, and young children initially do conceive of the other humans in their lives as mere means to their own satisfaction. But as time goes on, if all goes well, they feel gratitude and love toward the separate beings who support their needs, and they thus come to feel guilt about their own aggression and real concern for the well-being of another person.

As concern develops, it leads to an increasing wish to control one’s own aggression: the child recognises that its parents are not its slaves, but separate beings with rights to lives of their own. Such recognitions are typically unstable, since human life is a chancy business and we all feel anxieties that lead us to want more control ― including control over other people. But a good development in the family, and a good education later on, can make a child feel genuine compassion for the needs of others, and can lead it to see them as people with rights equal to its own.

The capacities that undergird human development

With these observations under our belt, I would like to propose that there are three values that are central to decent global citizenship.

Critical thinking

The first is the capacity for Socratic self-criticism and critical thought about one’s own traditions. As Socrates argues, democracy needs citizens who can think for themselves, rather than deferring to authority, who can reason together about their choices rather than simply trading claims and counter-claims.

Critical thinking is particularly crucial in this era of communicative congestion and of political polarisation through increasingly strident media. We will only have a chance at an adequate dialogue across political boundaries if young citizens know how to engage in dialogue and deliberation in the first place. And they will only know how to do that if they learn how to examine themselves and to think about the reasons why they are inclined to support one thing rather than another ― rather than, as so often happens, seeing political debate as simply a way of boasting, or getting an advantage for their own side. When politicians bring simplistic propaganda their way, as politicians in every country have a way of doing, young people will only have a hope of preserving independence and holding the politicians accountable if they know how to think critically about what they hear, testing its logic and imagining alternatives to it.

Students exposed to instruction in critical thinking learn, at the same time, a new attitude to those who disagree with them. They learn to see people who disagree not as opponents to be defeated, but, instead, as people who have reasons for what they think. When their arguments are reconstructed it may turn out that they even share some important premises with one’s own “side,” and we will both understand better where the differences come from. We can see how this humanises the political ‘other’, making the mind see that opposing form as a rational being who may share at least some thoughts with one’s own group.

It is possible, and essential, to encourage critical thinking from the very beginning of a child’s education ― both through a content that emphasises argumentative skills and through a pedagogy aimed at making children independent.

What about higher education? Here there are opportunities to teach logical analysis and critical reasoning in a much more formal and systematic way. In his 1867 inaugural address as Rector of St. Andrews University, John Stuart Mill argued that any decent university education must make sure that the “principles and rules of sound thinking” are learned. They are best learned, he argues, by the required study of logic and of philosophical arguments. Mill assigned particular value to Plato’s dialogues, which teach the student “to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism, letting no fallacy, or incoherence, or confusion of thought, slip by unperceived” ― a disposition invaluable, he held, for the survival of republican institutions.

In my 1987 book Cultivating Humanity, I supported Mill’s recommendation, after studying a wide range of United States college and university curricula. It’s particularly notable that all the Jesuit universities require two full semesters of philosophy for precisely Mill’s reasons, and I have urged all to emulate them. As Singapore and China have realised, this ability is valuable even were our goal simply economic growth. It is indispensable, however, if what we want is democracy. We now have experimental evidence to corroborate Socrates’s diagnosis: human beings are prone to be subservient to both authority and peer pressure; to prevent atrocities we need to counteract these tendencies, producing a culture of individual dissent.

As I’ve already pointed out, Asch found that when even one person in his study group stood up for the truth, others followed, so that one critical voice can have large consequences. By emphasising each person’s active voice, we also promote a culture of accountability. When people see their ideas as their own responsibility, they are more likely, too, to see their deeds as their own responsibility.

Understanding difference

The second key ability of the modern democratic citizen, I would argue, is the ability to see oneself as a member of a heterogeneous nation, and world ― understanding something of the history and character of the diverse groups that inhabit it.

Knowledge is no guarantee of good behaviour, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behaviour. Simple cultural and religious stereotypes abound in our world ― for example, the facile equation of Islam with terrorism ― and the first way to begin combating these is to make sure that from a very early age students learn a different relation to the world. Students should gradually come to understand both the differences that make understanding difficult between groups and nations, and the shared human needs and interests that make understanding essential, if common problems are to be solved. This understanding of the world will promote human development only if it is itself infused by searching critical thinking, thinking that learns to question and scrutinise historical evidence and to think independently about what the evidence supports.

In curricular terms, these ideas suggest that all young citizens should learn the rudiments of world history, a grasp of the basic workings of the global economy, and a rich and non-stereotypical understanding of the major world religions. They should then learn how to inquire in more depth into at least one unfamiliar tradition, in this way acquiring tools that can later be used elsewhere. At the same time, they ought to learn about the major traditions, majority and minority, within their own nation, focusing on an understanding of how differences of religion, race and gender have been associated with differential life-opportunities. Finally, everyone should learn at least one foreign language well: seeing that another group of intelligent human beings has cut up the world differently, that all translation is interpretation, gives a young person an essential lesson in cultural humility.

Again, all of this must begin in schools, but John Stuart Mill urged that it needs to be carried further by a more sophisticated study of the world at the university level ― and I agree. Mill focused on international law, but we should cast our net more widely, thinking about religion, the global economy and, crucially, history.

Narrative imagination

The third ability of the citizen ― closely related to the first two ― is what I would call the narrative imagination. This means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have. Learning to see another human being, not as a thing, but as a full person is not an automatic achievement: it must be promoted by an education that refines the ability to think about what the inner life of another may be like ― and also to understand why one can never fully grasp that inner world, why any person is always to a certain extent dark to any other.

It is hard to do either critical thinking or historical study well without this ability. This was argued well by the great novelist Ralph Ellison. In a later essay about his novel Invisible Man, he argues that debates about race in the United States are crude and ineffectual because of an imaginative failure on the part of white society, who cannot really form a complex imaginative picture of African-American lives. A novel such as his can at least assist students in this task. Thus it can become “a raft of perception, hope, and entertainment” on which American culture could “negotiate the snags and whirlpools” that stand between us and our democratic ideal.

Ellison’s novel, of course, takes the “inner eyes” of the white reader as its theme and its target. The hero is invisible to white society, but he tells us that this invisibility is an imaginative and educational failure on their part, not a biological accident on his. Through the imagination we are able to have a kind of insight into the experience of another group or person that is very difficult to attain in daily life ― particularly when our world has constructed sharp separations between groups, and suspicions that make any encounter difficult.

This part of education is one that it is particularly crucial to begin early, but, once again, it is crucial to continue it later, through a more sophisticated study of literature and the arts. Mill’s inaugural address develops this theme, too, arguing that a type of “aesthetic education” at the university level is crucial to the refinement of the imagination, and thus to intelligent citizenship. He notes that England resists this idea in a way that both Scotland and the continental nations do not. He attributes this failing to a combination of Puritanism with the commercial mentality.

A world worth living in

Democracies have great rational and imaginative powers. But they also are prone to some serious flaws in reasoning, to parochialism, haste, sloppiness and selfishness. Education based mainly on profitability in the global market magnifies these deficiencies, producing a greedy obtuseness and a technically trained docility that threaten the very life of democracy itself, and that most certainly impede the creation of a decent world culture.

If the real clash of civilisations is, as I have argued, a clash within the individual soul, as greed and narcissism contend against respect and love, all modern societies are rapidly losing the battle, as they feed the forces that lead to violence and dehumanisation and fail to feed the forces that lead to cultures of equality and respect.

If we do not insist on the crucial importance of the humanities and the arts, they will drop away, because they don’t make money. But what they do is far more precious than that: make a world that is worth living in, filled with people who are able to see other human beings as full people, with thoughts and feelings of their own that deserve respect and sympathy, and nations that are able to overcome fear and suspicion in favour of sympathetic and reasoned debate.

Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She is the author of many books, including Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the HumanitiesHiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the LawPolitical Emotions: Why Love Matters for JusticeThe Monarchy of Fear and (with Saul Levmore) Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/martha-nussbaum-education-for-democracy/...

 

 

 

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Not everyone is "democracy ready". As we have demonstrated time and time again on this site, "greed, god and guns" interfere with the notion of democracy. Artistic "revolutions" are often absorbed into the main stream or kept as amusing clowns in drawers like odd socks or sad difficult entities, in prison. The recent raids on journalists exposing shenanigans by governments show that we're not ready for open democracy, but that we're swimming in secrecy alla Big Brother 1984. 

the persecution of heroes must stop...

a compote of rotten liars...

when male philosphers are less than human towards their fellow female "with fake news"...

 

the long hand...

 

what did we tell you?... in and do not forget to vote against scummo's troops, to save the ABC...

 

"The Age of Deceit"

 

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http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/36378

 

 

And many more articles and comments...

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Oh SH*T, These Companies Will OWN YOUR HOUSE In 5 Years!!

 

 

Wall Street has purchased hundreds of thousands of single-family homes since the Great Recession and by 2030 will control a staggering 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes. You really will own nothing but with skyrocketing rents, it’s unlikely that you will be happy about it.

 

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Australia is in the grip of a housing crisis, hit by rising rents and falling vacancy rates.

Built-to-Rent is a form of rental housing relatively new to Australia.

A newly released Ernest & Young report, commissioned by the Property Council of Australia, says that support for build-to-rent housing could result in an additional 150,000 homes over the next 10 years.

However, some experts are concerned over the accessibility of build-to-rent properties for middle- and low-income earners.

Here's what you need to know.

What is build-to-rent?

Build-to-rent housing is when a property is held in single ownership and professionally managed. As an example, the developer builds it and instead of selling off the units individuallykeeps the property to rent out.

The idea is, it provides tenants with the flexibility of renting with the security of home ownership, because the property is held for the long term.

How it looks abroad

'This type of housing is common in the UK and other European countries, as well as in North America," Professor Hal Pawson from the UNSW City Futures Research Centre says.

More than 6.3 million apartments have been developed in the United States since 1992, although in the US it's known as "multi-family housing".

In the UK, more than 150,000 have been built or are under construction since 2012.

But it is still relatively new in Australia.

The nation's vacancy rate in February was a tight 1 per cent, CoreLogic figures show.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-07/what-are-solutions-to-australias-housing-crisis-build-to-rent/102143802

 

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