Editorial

Editorial

Meet the Mavericks

Kenneth Boulding, Howard Odum, Hazel Henderson, E.F. Shumacher, Herman Daly … the profession of economics has always been home to renegade thinkers. It has long been torn asunder by violent theoretical conflict. But for the last few generations, Milton Friedman’s neoclassical paradigm has enjoyed a relatively unchallenged reign.

Editorial

Fresh Perspectives

In this section of the book and website we feature essays and manifestos by dissenters and mavericks from the front lines of the battle to overthrow the neoclassical paradigm.

Editorial

Paradigm Lost

We are a colony of maggots, feeding off nature’s bloated corpse while economic policy makers soothe our troubled minds with lies. Not to worry, they tell us, things will get better – we’re making progress – the key is more liquidity, more stimulus, more credit, more consumption, more growth.

It’s time call their bluff.

Editorial

A Preface to the Student

You are entering economics at a critical juncture. The inability of economists to incorporate externalities into their models and to account for phenomena such as species extinction, resource depletion and global warming – not to mention the financial meltdown that blindsided them all – has turned the profession into a target for derision and ridicule.

Editorial

Fulfillment Paradox

We consume three times more than our grandparents – why aren’t we happier?

Happiness

On a Tuesday morning in June, a Vancouver man named Salim and his beloved decided to get married. They tracked down a minister and a few hours later in Choklit Park, realized they needed a witness. I was crossing the street when I saw three people waving me over. “Sorry, I’ve got a meeting,” I said, when they asked me to help. “It will take five minutes,” the minister assured me.

Editorial

Veiled Reality

Mystery is not something negative that has to be eliminated.

Veiled Reality

Clotheline – Stacey Gardner

I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to quell my metaphysical leanings by training my mind to observe and deduce. Shining the light of reason into the darkest corners of my mind and soul, I’ve chased away ambiguities and replaced them with facts. I think it was Hegel who said that if you look at the world rationally, the world will look rationally back at you. I desperately want to live in a rational world: one composed entirely of black and white.

Editorial

Apocalypto-Nihilism

Three fatal system errors and three mass “aha!” moments.

Apocalypto-Nihilism

Post Krieg, 2009 – Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

Imagine our global system disintegrates. Hunkered down in scattered pockets of survival, people try to adapt to the savage new landscape: scavenging for bits of food and water and defending themselves against marauding bandits. Imagine the recriminations and the finger-pointing as this dark age dawns … the gut-wrenching autopsy of our murdered way of life. What picture of blame would emerge? What were our fatal system errors and who among us was responsible for making them?

Editorial

The Logic Freaks of Neoclassical Economics

The old-school practitioners completely missed the meltdown ... is it time to paradigm shift them out of power?

The Logic Freaks of Neoclassical Economics

Editorial

Aesthetic Pollution and the Soul of Design

Just as farmers are the keepers of land, we designers are the keepers of mindscape. We must nurture it and care for it and make sure that there will always be wilderness, diversity and freedom there.

De Stijl, Bauhaus, constructivism and Dada … Heartfield, Dumbar and Kalman … Design has long stood at the forefront of aesthetic and political change. But after the Second World War we became entangled in the thicket of consumer capitalism and lost our way.

Editorial

Revolutionary Spirit

"Young people in the West are pissed off as they stare into an increasingly empty and precarious future ..."

Revolutionary Spirit

In May 1968, the Situationist-inspired Paris riots set off a chain reaction of refusal against consumer capitalism.

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