Getting away with it

Artigo de Paul Krugman e Robin Wells na NY Review resenhando a literatura sobre a guinada conservadora da equipe econômica da administração Obama.

Getting away with it (NYR)

What was going on? The answer gets to the heart of the disappointments—political and economic—of the Obama years.

When Obama was elected in 2008, many progressives looked forward to a replay of the New Deal. The economic situation was, after all, strikingly similar. As in the 1930s, a runaway financial system had led first to excessive private debt, then financial crisis; the slump that followed (and that persists to this day), while not as severe as the Great Depression, bears an obvious family resemblance. So why shouldn’t policy and politics follow a similar script? But while the economy now may bear a strong resemblance to that of the 1930s, the political scene does not, because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are what once they were. Coming into the Obama presidency, much of the Democratic Party was close to, one might almost say captured by, the very financial interests that brought on the crisis; and as the Booker and Clinton incidents showed, some of the party still is. Meanwhile, Republicans have become extremists in a way they weren’t three generations ago; contrast the total opposition Obama has faced on economic issues with the fact that most Republicans in Congress voted for, not against, FDR’s crowning achievement, the Social Security Act of 1935.

Mukherjees no IEA (USP)

O casal de historiadores indianos Arditya e Mridula Mukherjee falarão terça (26/06) no Instituto de Estudos Avançados da USP, como parte do encontro "Democracias de Alta Densidade: Brasil e Índia".  O evento contará com transmissão ao vivo: IEA .

Ardytia é célebre por sua luta contra leituras "revisionistas" do passado colonial indiano e por demonstrar como a exploração britânica da Índia sustentou não apenas o início da revolução industrial inglesa mas também o desenvolvimento social e humano na Grã Bretanha nos últimos dois séculos séculos.  

Ardytia Mukherjee - How Colonial India Made Modern Britain

This essay is based on the basic premise that at the heart of colonialism lay surplus appropriation from the colony to the metropolis or the colonisers. (It was neither a “fit of absent-mindedness” nor the desire to take on “the White Man’s Burden” to “civilise” and “modernise” the “child” people of the colonial countries which led to or sustained colonialism.) The precise form that the process of surplus appropriation took and what constituted  the surplus differed  widely over time, the  level of development of capitalism in the colonising country and the nature of the colony in terms of its natural endowments. To fix the colonial process in only one image – for example, that of the colony being  a  market  for  the manufactured  goods  of  the  metropolis  and the supplier of raw materials to the metropolis – is to miss the enormous range of ways in which colonial surplus appropriation actually evolved historically. As we shall see, surplus could be transferred in the form of labour, commodities (not necessarily only primary goods but could also be manufactured goods) or even knowledge in the, so-called, post-industrial “knowledge society” depending on which was the key factor of production at a point of time.

Arneson e Freeman sobre "Free Market Fairness"

Mais comentários sobre o livro recente de Tomasi Free Market Fairness:

Richard Arneson - Free Market Fairness: Rawls or Mill?

Samuel Freeman - Can economics liberties be basic liberties?


E uma apresentação de Tomasi no Cato Institute: Individual liberty, free markets and peace

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 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. 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.

Gardner sobre "A ideia de Justiça"

John Gardner publicou uma resenha sobre o livro de Amartya Sen "A ideia de Justiça":


The Idea of Justice - Legal Research Papers Series (June 2012)

This is a critical notice of Amartya Sen's 2009 book The Idea of Justice. As well as conveying the flavor of the book, I try to untangle two different interpretations of Sen's central contrast between 'transcendental institutionalists' and 'realization-focused comparativists'. I also raise some doubts about Sen's conceptualization of his project: is the book really about justice at all?

Philip Pettit sobre Justiça e Democracia

Duas conferências de Philip Pettit na Goethe Universität (projeto Normative Orders):

Distinguing Justice from Democracy

- Lecture I: "Republican Justice and Democracy"

- Lecture II: "Prioritizing Justice and Democracy"

Justice is not the only virtue of political institutions; legitimacy is just as important. And it is democracy, not justice, that establishes institutional legitimacy. Or at least this is so, on a republican conception of democracy. Political institutions may be more just and less democratic, less just and more democratic. So which value is the more important? In a political theory addressed to citizens as the makers of institutions, democracy enjoys an important priority.

Joseph Raz: "Death in our Life"

O filósofo Joseph Raz disponibilizou sua Annual Lectures for the Society for Applied Philosophy, sobre a eutanásia, em seus aspectos morais e legais. 

Death in our Life

Would widespread acceptance of a right to voluntary euthanasia lead to widespread changes in attitude to life and death? Many of its advocates deny that seeing it as a narrow right enabling people to avoid ending their life in great pain or total dependence, or a vegetative state. I argue that the right cannot cogently be conceived as a narrow right, confined to very limited circumstances. It is based on the value of having the normative power to choose time and manner of one’s death. recognition will be accompanied by far reaching changes in culture and attitude, and these changes will enrich people’s life by enabling themto integrate their death as part of  their lives 

John Tomasi: "Free Market Fairness"

O blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians (sim eles existem) está promovendo uma rodada de discussões sobre o livro recente de John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness. Elizabeth Anderson contribuiu com o texto "Recharting the Map of Social and Political Theory: Where is Government? Where is Conservatism?".

Tomasi’s map of social possibilities confuses government with the state and the capitalist economy with the market.  A more illuminating map would identify government with any organization in which some people systematically issue authoritative commands, backed up by penalties, to others.  It would then distinguish liberal democratic from authoritarian governments, and public governments (states) from private governments such as firms.  Tomasi’s defective social map generates a flawed map of political theories.  He describes market democracy as an icebreaker between two frozen coasts of political theory: libertarians and classical liberals on one side, “high” liberals on the other.  This map omits the conservative coast.  Conservatism, the historic enemy of liberalism, stands for social hierarchy and authoritarianism—arbitrary, discretionary, secret, unaccountable government. 

Social Justice, Free Market Style, John Tomasi (Public Policy Research 2012)