I know I have it and that I've read it though I'll be damned if I can find it right now or even, with any clarity, remember what it said. It was three years ago, after all.
However, a few months ago I also picked up a book at a used bookshop, "The Mind and the Market" by Jerry Z. Muller. It deals with how various heavy thinkers such as Voltaire, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Marx and Hegel thought about economics and its place in society. The message in general is that how the economy was dealt with had to fit the prevailing philosophical, religious and political views of the time. I would suggest that things are different now. We live in a world that has collapsed into itself and where things that once happened in far off places now intrude into our own back yards. In my view, economics, far from being linked to philosophy or religion, tries to make some rational sense of what is going on, but in a compressed world in which what happens in China can affect us as much as what happens next door. I may comment more if I can find Saul's book. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Spencer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 8:09 PM Subject: [Futurework] The Collapse of Globalism > > To the extent that "globalism" is a significant factor work work, this > should be on-topic. > > I just found John Ralston Saul's 2005 book, _The Collapse of Globalism > and the Reinvention of the World_ [1] on the remainder shelf for a couple > of bucks. (I guess I should get out more if the remainder shelf is > the first I've heard of a new book by our former First Gentleman. :-) > > Has anybody (or everybody) else already seen and read this? If so, > I'd like to hear comments. > > Browsing it in the store, when I saw that it had a chapter entitled A > Short History of Economics Becoming a Religion, I was sold. I've > observed before (possibly on this list) that one of the chief targets > of 1950s rhetoric opposing "godless communism" was the allegation that > communism made economics the foundation of civilization. Get labor, > production, capital, resources, trade and bookkeeping all tidied up > and and we'll enter the Eternal Golden Age. And of course, loyal > Americans (Canucks, Brits et al.) knew that there's more, way more, to > civilization than the least common denominator of economics. > > Fast forward to the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet empire. > Then George Bush (41) is talking about "free markets and free men", in > that order and the current dogma, spoken or unspoken, has become that > free markets, unregulated trade and unrestrained capital flows will > resolve all the world's ills and lead to democracy, liberty, wealth > and [drumroll] the Eternal Golden Age [rimshot]. > > Anyhow, I haven't quite gotten to that chapter yet -- I find Saul a > source both of fulminating ideas and insights and of rather hard to > follow prose -- but I'd welcome others' comments on the book. > > It would be nice to believe the the role of ordinary people (vs. that > of global "investors") has been upgraded from biomass to something more > closely resembling citizenship. > > > - Mike > > > [1] Viking Canada/Penguin, 2005, ISBN 0-670-06367-3 > > -- > Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. > /V\ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )\ > http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
