by Geonomist
Fri Nov 13th, 2009 at 12:49:02 PM EST
The End of Poverty? (www.theendofpoverty.com), A movie produced by the Schalkenbach Foundation (www.schalkenbach.org) Premiers in New York today at the Village East Cinema and will be in many more American cities in the coming weeks. (Not sure about the European schedule but check the web site.)
Philippe Diaz, the director, takes apart the global capitalistic system, as you have probably never seen done before. The sheer matter-of-fact criminality of the whole enterprise could not be made plainer than in this movie. Comparisons to Michael Moore's Capitalism come to mind but with more concrete statements of changes we need to make both personally and collectively.
by Geonomist
Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 05:15:22 AM EST
From the diaries. Geonomist's introduction to ET and most of the text posted below the fold. -- Jérôme
The neo-liberal, so-called "free market " philosophy utterly permeates, and dominates, the U.S. political-economic discourse. To listen to almost any U.S. news or current events show, particularly dealing with economic issues is to engage with a specially created language designed to force the listener to reach certain conclusions. In this corrupted language (and accompanying world-view) several stock truths just always present themselves as obvious.
1) Government in service to ordinary people is evil and incompetent.
2) "Lower taxes", or lower wages, or possibly both can solve all economic problems.
3) "Investment" is a magic elixir and must always have first priority for public policy.
4) The poor are to blame for systematic poverty and nothing can really be done about poverty.
5) Everything would be fine if government would just leave "industry" alone.
6) "Private Property" is so obviously sacred that even asking for a definition makes the asker deeply suspect.
7) People who don't accept 1-6 might be well intended, but they are really just stupid and making things worse.
The corruption of our language is no accident.
