"Consumers are poor substitutes for citizens." Benjamin Barber
"In a nutshell, the governing impulse of the consumer is "I want". The governing impulse of the citizen is "we need".
Mutual respect does not imply uncertainty or skepticism about the good; it implies, instead, a certain higher-order good, a vision of the citizen as an active searcher for what has worth, whose sincere engagement in that search should be allowed to unfold in freedom, even if it should lead to what seems to be error -- unless it inflicts manifest harm on others." (Martha Nussbaum, in Ethics of Consumption)
In Republic.com and Republic.com 2.0, Cass Sunstein distinguishes between "consumer sovereignty" and "political sovereignty". For Sunstein, consumer sovereignty takes preferences and priorities as given, as matters of personal taste that are neither amenable to, nor in need of, public justification. The main question for consumer sovereignty is whether consumers are getting what they want, and it often draws on market research to manipulate them into thinking so. If we believe in consumer sovereignty, we are likely to think that freedom consists in the satisfaction of private preferences -- in the absence of restrictions on individual choices. (p.45)
Political sovereignty, by contrast, "does not take individual tastes as fixed or given. It prizes democratic self-government, understood as a requirement of 'government by discussion,' accompanied by reason-giving in the public domain." (p.40) Within the political sphere, decisions have impact beyond the purely individual, and decisions need to take into account the potential impact on others.
Read MoreCritics of contemporary copyright and patent laws as a propertization of ideas, see a second enclosure movement at work today. They see the extension of property rights over ideas, traditional cultures, scientific discoveries, as well current attempts at regulating content on the internet as encroachment on the commons of ideas. The push for longer-lasting rights and the extension of patents and copyrights into new areas is seen as a "land grab" by the powerful, to the detriment of cultural creativity and the contemporary "yeomanry" of independent web publishers. (such as this website).
The granting of patents on the human genome, for example, is indicative of an extension of intellectual property over areas previously thought to be the common heritage of mankind and uncommodifiable. Patents have been taken out on Yoga, on traditional herbal medicines, and away from the cultures that developed these public goods. Critics of this extension of property rights consider ideas and cultures as commons. Furthermore, they point out that ideas are non-rivalrous (as opposed to limited resources such as land). In a rivalrous resource, my use of it competes with yours. (a ham sandwich, for example) In a nonrivalrous resource, my use of it does not inhibit yours. (eg. the alphabet) This is the definition of a public good -- once it's there, everyone can use it) and a pure public good is also one that is non-excludable, that is, it is impossible to exclude any individuals from consuming the good.
Read MoreAt the beginning of its history, philosophy separates tekhné from épistémé, a distinction that had not yet been made in Homeric times. The separation is determined by a political context, one in which the philosopher accuses the Sophist of instrumentalizing the logos as rhetoric and logography, that is, as both instrument of power and renunciation of knowledge. (ref to Francois Châtelet, Platon, in Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, p.1) (is this a reference to Plato's Phaedrus?)
Read More“Monopoly exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.” (Milton Friedman)
Monopoly price refers to the price profitably above cost that a firm with monopoly power can charge. That power is often developed through restraints on trade. "I believe, Sir, that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad....” Thomas Babington Macaulay, speech to the British Parliament, 1841.
The history of Standard Oil is one of the great stories of monopoly power and its confrontations with antitrust regulation, lawsuits, and “muckraking” journalism. I
Read MoreHow long can we sustain the unsustainable?
The rapid increase in the world's population as a whole, the presence of many people that live below the level of any equitable living standards, the emergence of large and rapidly developing economies such as India's and China's, and the profligate model of the American lifestyle (and to a slightly lesser extent, the Western European) have all contributed to concern over the "carrying capacity" of the planet. How many people can obtain adequate amounts of clean water, food, and shelter, let alone automobiles, computers, and a constant supply of consumer goods? The environmental group Bioregional.com calculates that if everyone on earth adopted the British lifestyle, it would require three planets to support. The American lifestyle would require seven planets, but we still only have one. Will wars and catastrophes be the only way to know when those limits have been reached?
The growing awareness of environmental consequence, and the sense that "we can't go on this way" without serious adverse consequences for future generations underlies the development of the term sustainability. The expression was first put into widespread political use by the United Nation's World Commission on the Environment and Development, which issued a report in 1987 known as the Brundtland Report, named after its chairperson, Gro Harlem Brundtand, the former prime minister of Norway.
Although it draws on scientific study and environmental forecasts, the concept of sustainability is a political and moral term, like justice or freedom, and the history of sustainability as as much social, political, and economic as it is environmental.
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