GEOG 352: Day 4

1. GEOG 352: Day 4 Chapter 2

2. Housekeeping Items • Social Sciences is hosting a pizza social next Wednesday from 11:30 to 1:30 in Building 355, Room 211. • We need to sign people up for presentations today. • Any questions about the major assignment (which is up on the web site)? • We need to finish up Chapter 1 first.

3. Last time I quoted from Crocodile Dundee G’day, mate!

4. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • Pretty challenging chapter! Lots of names and discussion of historical movements and concepts. Any immediate responses? • On the first couple of pages, they describe the triumph of what many have called “neo-liberalism,” which will be familiar to those of you in Global Studies – a belief in the value of unregulated markets and minimal governmental interference that became popular under Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

5. Neo-Liberalism’s Hall of Fame

6. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • They contrast the notion that “greed is good” and free markets should prevail over all with what E.P. Thompson has called the moral economy– conceptions and practices of economic activity where values other than greed predominated, values such as reciprocity, mutual care, restraint, and so on. • To be fair, in the largely pre-industrial societies in which these forms of moral economy were alleged to have existed, there was much about the economy that was not “moral”: the feudal exploitation of serfs and tenants, the exploitation of slave labour, the colonial exploitation of indigenous populations. • To get a sense of a moral economy, think of how Walmart operates, or not….

7. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • European historian, Karl Polanyi, described a process whereby people were dis-embedded from the land and from their communities as “the great transformation.” • A good example is the Highland clearances in which Scottish tenant farmers (“crofters”) were driven off the land to make way for sheep. Many found their way to Canada and the U.S., and some of us are descended from them. • This is related to what the authors describe as the enclosure of the commons. Is this process still happening today.

8. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • To be fair, why was the welfare state scaled back drastically in most developed countries, apart from ideological shifts? • Root of the word economics is oikos(resources) and nomos(household). oikonomia is management of the resources of the household for the benefit of all. • What are some examples of the moral economy at work in the past? They would argue they include religious prohibitions on usury, the guild system, and one could add the ancient Hebrew practice of “Jubilee.” One might also include, more recently, co-ops and farmers’ marketing boards.

9. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • In the 1500s, the British crown crushed most of the guilds. • Moreover, throughout Europe and elsewhere, peasants and farmers rebelled against inequities in land ownership and even against the notion of private property itself. • In the aftermath of the English Revolution of 1648, the Diggers – a protest group near London, under the leadership of Gerard Winstanley – squatted land and began handing it out and farming it in common

10. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • (See also the lyrics to “The World Turned Upside Down” by Leon Rosselson and popularized by Billy Bragg.)

11. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • Thomas Spence took over Winstanley’s ideas, which had been published in a book, and founded a society to help create land trusts to foster land reform. • After his death in 1814, Welsh industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen took over the cause and promoted co-operative villages. He also created a model community for textile workers – New Lanark – in Scotland.

12. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • His ideas helped inspire the Chartist movement. In order to get the vote, workingmen had to own land, and this was a scheme to collectively purchase land. Eventually, the government shut the movement down. However, under the influence of Owen consumer and workers’ cooperatives were established, beginning with the Rochdale Co-op and their principles used remain to this day. • John Stuart Mill, a leading economist, helped shepherd legislation through parliament in the mid-1800s authorizing mutual aid societies and co-operatives, and advocated land nationalization.

13. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • John Ruskin, famous art critic and philosopher of economics, and Octavia Hill set up non-profit housing associations in the slums of London at around the same time. • The authors also talk about the single tax idea of Henry George and others. It was implemented in some parts of the U.S. and was almost passed in Great Britain in 1910, with the support of Winston Churchill. • The basic idea is that land would be taxed, but not buildings and improvements. In theory, tenants would not be affected, but it’s hard to know if that would work in practice. It would discourage speculation on idle land, and ensure that increases in land value would, in part, be recouped for the wider public benefit.

14. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • The authors also raise the issue of corporate charters. Originally, corporations could only operate under very specific constraints, where set by monarchs or by states. In the U.S., corporations that misbehaved often had their charters to operate revoked. This provided some social control over the private sector and a guarantee of social responsibility. • Gradually, all restrictions were eliminated. In Canada, corporations are still bound by certain rules, but the provinces have no right of interference. In the U.S. corporations are “persons” and have freedom of speech. In Canada, they do not.

15. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • Corporations have become more and more powerful globally: • Over half of the top economies in the world are corporations • Top 500 corporations account for almost 70% of global trade • Top 200 employ .82% of the total global labour force, but constitute 28% of world GDP • Poor countries lose approximately $2 billion a day as a result of unjust trade, 14 times the amount of aid they receive. • We’ve gone from tight limits on interest rates to unlimited rates in the U.S. and Britain. (Adam Smith advocated a maximum of 5%.)

16. Chapter 2: Wealth vs. Commonwealth • They also talk extensively – and somewhat confusingly – about banks, money, and alternatives to conventional finance. Main points include: • That we now have a money system that is mostly created out of thin air. • That national banks used to create money that was largely interest-free. • Alternatives experimented with include ‘building societies,’ depreciating money (called “stamp scrip” in the U.S.). • Interest-free money (including JAK in Denmark), and here on the Island: LETS.