Is A Completely Clean Solution To Global Warming Possible?

The latest issue of Scientific American says "yes." An article in the November issue by Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A Delucchi, "Sustainable Energy," argues that by 2030 100% of all global energy demand could be supplied by wind, water, and solar. This would even involve a reduction in power demand globally from 12.5 terawatts to 11.5 tw, as we would replace inefficient internal combustion engine autos and fossil fuel using airplanes with hydrogen technologies, the hydrogen obtained from electrolysis of water, using clean electricity sources to do so. 51% would come from wind, with 3.8 million wind turbines, 40% from solar, and the rest from water, including most tidal and waves, with some geothermal thrown in as well. While admitting that costs are still a bit too high for the solar components, they argue that the wind and water parts are already competitive economically with existing tech, with only some further improvements in transmission capability needed to really do it.

They do admit some caveats. In particular some rarer metals will be pushed to the limit unless there are some further tech breakthroughs: silver for solar cells, neodymium for gear boxes on wind turbines (mostly located in China), tellurium and indium for thin film solar cells, lithium for electric car batteries (half of world supplies in Bolivia and Chile), and platinum for hydrogen fuel cells. They note that nuclear has high carbon output in building the plants, but agree it does not once they are built (although other problems). I think there are other problems, with listening to local environmentalists here going on again over the weekend against wind turbines, reminding me that there will be lots of opposition to much of this, even if it is cost effective (and if it is not cost effective, just forget China or India signing on at all). But, it certainly makes for a nice vision just prior to the Copenhagen conference on global warming.

Quick and Easy; Cheap and Cheerful

At the late Sandwichman's insistence, Dean Baker has stopped burying his lede:

The Obama administration came out with its first set of numbers on the jobs impact of its stimulus package. It's pretty much along the lines of what was predicted. To date, the package has created close to one million jobs. That is good news, but in an economy with more than 15 million unemployed workers, it is not nearly good enough. We need to do more, much more.

Fortunately, there is an easy and quick way to begin to get these unemployed workers back to work. It involves paying workers to work shorter hours. The mechanism can take the form of a tax credit to employers. The government can give them a tax credit of up to $3,000 in order to shorten their workers' hours while leaving their pay unchanged. The reduction in hours can take the form of paid sick days, paid family leave, shorter workweeks or longer vacations. The employer can choose the method that is best for her workers and the workplace.

Changing the Subject: Beyond Wishful Thinking

John Dryzek, Professor of Social and Political Theory at the Australian National University, wrote an article published 13 years ago titled "Foundations for Environmental Political Economy: The Search for Homo Ecologicus." Dryzek's article speaks directly to the central concern of my own book: to identify an alternative economic actor to Homo economicus. A copy of the article was one of only two supplementary sources I brought with me to Saturna Island two weeks ago when I went to (nearly) complete the first draft.

While waiting for the ferry, I retrieved the article from my bag to pass the time. There, on page 29, I was surprised to find that I had several weeks earlier scrawled "OSTROM!" in the margin. My ferry trip to Saturna took place the afternoon of the day her Swedish Bank Prize ("Nobel") was announced. So the name in the margin suddenly took on an unexpected resonance. Serendipitously, Dryzek's interpretation (at least) of Elinor Ostrom's work on common-pool resources dovetails quite nicely with what I'm trying to achieve in The Gift of Prosperity. It also addresses Brenda's and Carl Rogers's call for a "new kind of person."

Dryzek himself is critical of the results of eco-philosophical efforts to specify the features of this new kind of person. He cites E.F. Schumacher, Theodore Roszak and others. "The ecophilosophical house is an attractive dwelling," he writes, "but nobody has any idea how to build it." Dryzek's sketch of an alternative relies not so much on positing an ideal as on searching for precedents. It is in Ostrom's Governing the Commons that he finds the rudiments of that "alternative, beyond wishful thinking." In Gift I believe I take this alternative a crucial step forward, addressing human labor as a Common Pool Resource. Waged work is, after all, the primary source of income for an immense portion of the earth's inhabitants.

Mischievously, I've decided to call this labor-as-CPR, "The Lump" or, more formally, the lump of labor. My rehabilitated lump of labor, however, is not a fallacious belief in a fixed amount of work to be done. That is grammatically awkward anyway. My new lump is about a finite amount of labor that it is prudent (and sustainable) for workers collectively to offer on the market at any given time. I think a case can be made that this new lump is not that different from what workers traditionally had in mind long before the economists, journalists and propagandists raised the lump-of-labor fallacy banner as a gesture of ridicule and disdain.

Jerry Brown: California Gubernatorial Front Runner, yes, but ...

Here is an interesting piece about how he operates

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/politicians/articles/?storyId=30658

London Calling

Tuesday Nov 3rd 7-9pm

The Centre for Environment & Sustainability (UWO) presents: Dr. Peter Victor –
"Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster"

Venue: Middlesex College Room 110

Growth, expansion, greater wealth – these have long been the standard policies of governments and business. But is growth effective in eliminating world poverty, solving unemployment, protecting the environment and contributing to individual happiness? What would happen to world economics if we had a no growth policy? Dr. Peter Victor will address these issues and others in his upcoming lecture as part of the E&S Special Lecture Series. An economist and Professor in Environmental Studies at York University, Dr. Victor has worked on environmental issues for nearly 40 years. Dr. Victor was one of the original founders of ecological economics and was the first President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics.

A reminder: Dr. Victor will be the guest author for E&S Reads – 10:30 to Noon, Nov. 3, 09 – Kresge Building Room 106. This is an excellent opportunity for a intimate discussion with the author. Copies of "Managing Without Growth" are available in the Bookstore.

Everyone is welcome to both events.
Presented by: The Centre for Environment and Sustainability, The Global and Ecosystem Health Interest Group at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and The McConnell Family Foundation.

A revolution is not a change in management. It is a change in man.

Forty years ago many writers and thinkers and poets (and even economists) talked of a revolution that was coming. The 'Age of Acquarious', the 'Limits to Capitalism', 'The Greening of America', the 'New World New Mind', the 'Limits to Growth' and 'The End of Certainty' etc.

One of these writers, Carl Rogers [1], wrote about the increasing disbelief in the democratic process in the early 1970s. He also stated unequivocably 'that a revolution was coming', not 'a gun carrying army with banners, not in manifestos or declarations, but through the emergence of a new kind of person, thrusting up through the dying, yellowing, putrefying leaves and stalks of our fading institutions.'

This new kind of person, Rogers wrote, would have the following traits:

** deep concern for authenticity against the climate of half-truth, exaggeration, scandal, sensation and double talk, or talk without meaning at all;

** an opposition to all highly structured, inflexible and impersonal institutions;

** fundamental indifference to material comforts and rewards, although accustomed to affluence [2];

** deep desire for close personal associations, not confined to the old 'familiar areas', with all others excluded;

** a rejection of national and racial discrimination;

** deep distrust of science and established truth with is so much in the 'head' that in fact it suppresses truth;

** strong desire for self-knowledge including dreams, mediation, mysteries and psychic phenomena, and for feeling and understanding rather than 'knowledge' which seems to have no real social value;

** a feeling of closeness to nature, an identification with it, and a desire to act in no way against it;

** an awareness of living in an ever-changing process in which he or she is vitally alive and willing to risk;

** a trust in one's own experience as a validation of life.

Unfortunately governments and political parties have continued to enforced authoritarian and capitalist hegemonies around the world. They "themselves need transformation almost as much as most of the people who elect them, or comprise them. That hegemony is central in control, bureaucratic in form, relying upon leadership, and embarassed at the very idea of liberation" wrote the ousted left-wing radical of the Australian Whitlam Labor Government, Jim Cairns. [3]

Rogers and Cairns were writing words as a silent plea for the world to find the individual and group strength to counter the zero sum game of imperialism, corporatism, and the coups and wars that go with it. Their predicament was dire and so eloquently put in a song by Simon and Garfunkel:

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share
Noone dare
disturb the sound of silence

Fools said I
you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you ...
Take my arms that I might reach you

But my words like silent raindrops fell...[4]

Decades earlier George Orwell appeared to mirror this message when he wrote despairingly that "Traditions are not killed by facts."

[1] 'The Man and His Ideas', Richard I Evans (ed), EP Dutton and Co Inc New York, 1975. As quoted by Jim Cairns (former Australian Deputy Prime Minister in the early 1970s) in 1976 book entitled 'Oil in Troubled Waters'.

[2] "An important question here is whether affluence is needed to produce the new, emerging person." wrote Jim Cairns

[3] Jim Cairns.1976. 'Oil in Troubled Waters'. Page 151.

[4] Lyrics in the song: 'The Sounds of Silence'. Sung by Simon and Garfunkel

Dismantling the Economy

During the New Deal, the government left a legacy of buildings, parks, and public spaces. Gray Brechin deserves great credit for documenting this achievement.

http://livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu/

In contrast, the U.S. is engaged in wasteful spending on war and bailouts that will leave a pitifully small legacy. What king of legacy will Obama leave?

I remember when the United States was going to prosper as an information economy, based on the premise that we are either the smartest or the best educated in the world. To ensure success in achieving this vision, the country is engaged in a massive defunding of education. California, of course, is the leader in this respect.

Presumably, imposing requirements multiple choice tests and scripted teaching in the poor neighborhoods will be all we need, once we can break the teachers' unions.

In line with the steady undermining of information in the information economy, the University of California is making some questionable choices. Here is one that has not been widely publicized:

California is contemplating a $10 billion bond to finance a massive statewide water project. One would assume that the state would want to have access to as much information for guidance in such matters.

Yet the University of California is getting ready to mothball its valuable Water Resources Center Archives, which a Sacramento Bee article observed, "For decades it has served as a shrine for engineers, lawyers and academics working to understand and improve the management of water, California's most precious resource." The problem is that the school cannot afford the $230,000 annual cost, probably equal to a couple of superfluous vice presidents.

Weiser, Matt. 2009. "UC Archives on Water Imperiled." Sacramento Bee (26 October): p. B 1.
http://www.sacbee.com/378/story/2281137.html

Workers' Ownership and Management and Work Sharing

If indeed, as the kurzarbeit evidence from Germany suggests, work sharing or other methods of reducing work hours during a recession preserves jobs, then it should be of interest what sorts of economic systems and organizations might lead to more of this. One form that has long been suggested as having this character is worker managed and worker owned firms, more conventionally called "cooperatives." The literature on this is simply huge, and a good summary can be found in John P. Bonin, Derek C. Jones, and Louis Putterman, "Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Producer Cooperatives: Will Ever the Twain Meet?" Journal of Economic Literature, 1991, 31, pp. 1290-1320. Indeed, in such enterprises owner-manager-workers are more likely to share the pain of a fall in demand by a shared cutback. These firms also tend to show greater short-term productive efficiency through flatter managerial hierarchies and the worker-owners monitoring each other for shirking.

The literature also cites possible disadvantages, perhaps a tendency to be reluctant to hire more worker-owners, possible tendencies to engage in ignoring externalities and trying to gain monopoley power, and so on. With a few exceptions, such as the Mondragon cooperatives, these firms rarely become very large, with financing a big issue. A few countries have tried to encourage them, but by and large they remain scarce in most economies, a vision, but not much of a widespread reality.

Issue Lab

Issue Lab:

Job Sharing: Tax Credits to Prevent Layoffs and Stimulate Employment

Contributing Organization(s): Center for Economic and Policy Research

Author(s)/Creator(s): Dean Baker

The unemployment rate is expected to average 10.2 percent for 2010, 9.1 percent for 2011, and 7.3 percent for 2012. With this in mind, this Issue Brief describes a job sharing tax credit, designed to provide a quick and substantial boost to the economy. It would use tax dollars to pay firms to shorten the typical workweek, while keeping pay constant. This should cause employers to want to hire additional workers. A rough estimate of the impact of this tax credit is between 1.3 and 2.7 million jobs created.

Comprehensive Assessment

foothillsmike October 17th, 2009 at 2:49 pm:

It is my thought that the typical work week should be reduced from 40 hours.

James K. Galbraith October 17th, 2009 at 2:52 pm In response to foothillsmike:

Sacre bleu! The French tried this.

I haven’t seen a comprehensive assessment, but I don’t think that it worked very well as employment policy. It does change patterns of social life … but it’s not very clear that Americans want to spend more time at home.

Well, here's a comprehensive assessment.You may not agree with the author's conclusions but Anders Hayden gives sources so you can dig deeper if you're not satisfied.

Drawing on existing survey and economic data, supplemented by interviews with French informants, this article examines the 35-hour week’s evolution and impacts. Although commonly dismissed as economically uncompetitive, the policy package succeeded in avoiding significant labor-cost increases for business. Most 35-hour employees cite quality-of-life improvements despite the fact that wage moderation, greater variability in schedules, and intensification of work negatively impacted some—mostly lower-paid and less-skilled—workers. Taking into account employment gains, the initiative can be considered a qualified success in meeting its main aims.

But there are two sides to every story: the comprehensive assessment and the relentless media boilerplate that creates an impression of what the truthy truth might be. So below is a reprise of my arrangement of sentences from 17 articles over 12 years in The Economist that tell people what to think without them actually having to do the thinking.

Only So Much Work to Go Round

This idea cannot withstand a nanosecond of thought.

The idea that a fixed quantity of work exists, to be parcelled out among workers, is the so-called lump-of-labour fallacy. It is depressing that supposedly responsible governments continue to pretend to be unaware of the old 'lump of labour' fallacy: the illusion that the output of an economy and hence the total amount of work available are fixed.

The notion that there is a fixed amount of work to be shared out, so that shorter hours for all must mean more jobs, is widely derided by economists as the 'lump of labour' fallacy. The idea of the 35-hour week, derided by many economists as the 'lump-of-labour fallacy', is that if employees work less, companies, spurred by tax concessions, will hire more. Although mocked by economists as a prime example of the 'lump-of-labour' fallacy – the idea that there is only so much work to go around – the government claims that it had created 240,000 jobs by the end of 2000. But to conclude from this that overall employment will decline is to succumb to the lump-of-labour fallacy: the long-disproved idea that there is only a fixed amount of output (and hence work) to go round.

France's own Frédéric Bastiat had pointed out two centuries ago that there is no limit to the work that needs doing. Debunking the 'lump of labour fallacy' before it was even given that label, he suggested that to parcel out the limited amount of work available, people should be required to use only one hand, or even to have a hand chopped off. But -- the lump of labour fallacy strikes again -- the amount of work to be done is not fixed. The quantity of work is not fixed: such a notion is known to economists as the 'lump-of-labour' fallacy.

The lump of labour fallacy also lies behind paranoia about jobs being 'stolen' by low-wage countries. The accusation that migrants steal jobs is a version of the 'lump of labour' fallacy -- that there is only so much work to go around. In effect, export pessimism involves a fallacy of its own -- a 'lump-of-trade' fallacy, akin to the idea of a 'lump of labour' (whereby a growing population is taken to imply an ever-rising rate of unemployment, there being only so many jobs to go round).

This is a classic lump-of-labour fallacy (the idea that there is a fixed quantity of work and that if you take a job it is at my expense). Economists call this the 'lump-of-labour' fallacy. Economists call this the lump of labour (or sometimes the lump of output) fallacy.

The lump of labour fallacy is often to blame for confusion about whether productivity growth (due to more efficient working practices or to new technology) is a good or bad thing. Luddism is also commonly linked to the lump-of-labour fallacy in economics, which first-year students are taught to refute and according to which, as the demand for labour is fixed in the short run, labour-saving machinery is bound to 'kill jobs'. But the assumption that this results in fewer jobs rather than more output (and hence more goods, and more job-stimulating demand, in a beautifully virtuous circle) is based on an economic fallacy known as the 'lump of labour': the notion that there is only a fixed amount of output (and hence work) to go round.

If new technology or foreign competition do lead to net job losses it will not be because the lump of labour has become a fact rather than a fallacy, but because labour is not sufficiently mobile between sectors and regions, or because relative wages have failed to adjust. Nearly all of these mistakes boil down in the end to the most enduring of all economic fallacies: the idea that there is only so much output to be produced, or capital to be invested. (Europe is currently preoccupied with the 'lump of labour' version of this mistake, see page 18.)

A recent piece accused conservatives of embracing the 'lump of labour fallacy', the mistaken claim that there is a fixed quantity of work which governments must strive to allocate equitably. Hmm. Are those arguments entirely incorrect? Yes, entirely. The first is a myth. In fact, the paper he cited did not commit the lump of labour fallacy.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Every sentence in the above article came from one of the 17 Economist articles published over the past 12 years deriding the chimerical lump-of-labour fallacy. The article used all sentences in those articles that included the phrase "lump of labour" and used each sentence only once.


Bibliography

"Cranks and Proud of It." Economist, 1/20/96, Vol. 338 Issue 7949, p86, 2p
"Eat Your NAFTA." Economist, 11/13/93, Vol. 329 Issue 7837, p15, 2p

"The End of Work?" Economist, 9/28/96, Vol. 340 Issue 7985, Supplement p19, 3p

"Europe Hits a Brick Wall." Economist, 4/5/97, Vol. 343 Issue 8011, p21, 3p

"Everyone Cross." Economist, 2/5/00, Vol. 354 Issue 8156, p47, 2/3p

"Frederic Bastiat." Economist, 7/21/01, Vol. 360 Issue 8231, p64, 1p

"Grinding the Poor." Economist, 9/29/01, Vol. 360 Issue 8241, Special section p10,

“Labours lost.” Economist, 6/15/02, Vol. 363 Issue 8277, p78, 1p

“Myths and reality.” Economist, 2/28/04, Vol. 370 Issue 8364, p53, 2/3p

"One Lump or Two?" Economist, 11/25/95, Vol. 337 Issue 7942, p67, 2p

"One Lump or Two?" Economist, 10/25/97, Vol. 345 Issue 8040, p17, 2/3p

"The One-handed Economist." Economist, 11/15/03, Vol. 369 Issue 8350, p62, 1p

"Room for Improvement." Economist, 3/16/02, Vol. 362 Issue 8264, p69, 3p

“Sharing the burden.” Economist, 11/13/93, Vol. 329 Issue 7837, p18, 2p

"Short Measure." Economist, 1/31/98, Vol. 346 Issue 8053, p79, 1/2p

"Thirty-five Hours of Misery." Economist, 7/17/04, Vol. 372 Issue 8384, p13, 2p

"A World without Jobs?" Economist, 2/11/95, Vol. 334 Issue 7901, p21, 3p.

Since When Was Reductio A One-Way Street?

A self-styled "libertarian" clown (judging by the blog roll) plays reductio ad absurdum with my post, some questions on unemployment for economists. He's only playing with half a deck, though. The first mistake he makes (and it's a doozy) is to equate asking people questions with telling them to "shut the fuck up". On the contrary, when I ask a question, I'm actually inviting someone to speak.

The second mistake is to twist my point about the non-representation of the unemployed in forums on unemployment into a demand that only the unemployed should have a voice.

Based on those two total distortions, "Angus" proceeds to imagine some "logical extensions" of my argument, reductio ad absurdum: "Only the uninsured should have a voice in the health care debate." "Only soldiers should make our military decisions."

We'll no, Angus, that's not how you do a proper reductio. To do it right you must begin from your debate opponent's actual premise to show why his or her argument is absurd. If you first distort the premise, you've demonstrated nothing but your intellectual dishonesty and/or your incompetence.

So let me ask you a question, Angus, is it also your position that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 denied the right to vote to white folks because it upheld the right of African Americans to vote? That's how you do an actual reductio ad absurdum and not a phony one based on glibly distorting your opponent's position.

Having A Kazurbeit With The Sandwichman

So, as part of semi-peacefulness around here, I shall join Sandwichman (and Milkshakeman?) in munching on some of that stuff at the greasy spoon truck stop, particularly the German food, taking a bite of their policy of shortened work hours during the recession known as kazurbeit, of which I do not know all the details. However, I am prepared to say that whatever those details, the apparent evidence suggests that during the past year, Germany has had a relatively low impact of its recession, as measured in decline of GDP, on its unemployment rate. I shall simply present some numbers below, without further comment beyond noting that state governments in the US have also been following something like this with the furlough policy, and also to note that this is something both neoclassicals and Austrians would like, not to mention advocates of cooperatives, as it involves preserving jobs by cutting wages. So, I am going to show for several countries, their 2009 decline in GDP as reported in the 10/10 Economist, along with the Sept. 2008 unemployment rate, and the most recently available unemployment rate (oh, and keep in mind that France largely gave up its limited work hours approach in 2005).

Country 2009 GDP decline Sept. 08 UR Recent UR

Germany -4.9 8.0 8.2 (Sept. 09)
France -2.1 7.9 9.9 (Aug. 09)
UK -4.4 5.5 7.9 (July 09)
US -2.9 6.1 9.8 (Sept. 09)
Netherlands -4.0 2.5 5.0 (Aug. 09)
Switzerland -1.7 3.4 4.1 (Sept. 09)

Rosser's Closet Sandwichman

Over at Mark Thoma's place the real Barkley Rosser channels the late Sandwichman:

"Ah, so much for the aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function! And we were all getting so used to applying it to everything in sight."

Are Those $250 Social Security Checks Just Pandering to Seniors?

David Leonhardt tries to make this case and he would have been well advised to start with this:

The original Social Security legislation had not included an inflation adjustment, which meant benefits did not keep up with the cost of living. A decade later, Ms. Fuller’s checks were worth about 40 percent less in real terms than when she started receiving them. Congress finally increased benefits in 1950 and then continued to do so in fits and starts, sometimes faster than inflation, sometimes slower and usually in an election year. President Richard M. Nixon and a Democratic Congress brought some order to this process in 1972, by automatically tying the benefits to the movement of an inflation index in the previous year. The changes were part of the transformation, during the middle decades of the 20th century, in how this country treated the elderly. In the 1930s, they had little safety net and frequently struggled to meet their basic needs. Four decades later, they were the only group of Americans with guaranteed health care and a guaranteed income. All in all, it was certainly for the good. But by the 1970s, you could start to see the early signs of excess. In their bill, Mr. Nixon and Congress included a little bonus: the increase in Social Security payments could never be less than 3 percent, no matter what inflation was. In the 1980s, Congress reduced the floor to zero — meaning that benefits would be held constant if prices fell — but the principle remained the same: heads, it’s a tie; tails, Social Security recipients win.

The argument would be that even with a zero nominal increase, Social Security recipients see an increase in real income during a period of deflation. Yes – there are the caveats about whether the CPI properly captures the cost of living for seniors especially if the relative price of drugs increases. But why did Mr. Leonhardt start his discussion by talking about the depressed economy and who would be most likely to consume any checks that the government may wish to extend?

If you wanted to help the economy and you had $14 billion to bestow on any group of people, which group would you choose: a) Teenagers and young adults, who have an 18 percent unemployment rate. b) All the middle-age long-term jobless who, for various reasons, are not eligible for unemployment benefits. c) The taxpayers of the future (by using the $14 billion to pay down the deficit). d) The group that has survived the Great Recession probably better than any other, with stronger income growth, fewer job cuts and little loss of health insurance. The Obama administration has chosen option d — people in their 60s and beyond.

Let’s think about the macroeconomic impact of a $14 billion one-time transfer payment in terms of a life-cycle model of consumption. This would be equivalent to a one-time increase in household wealth with the impact effect on consumption being equal to the increase in wealth divided by the number of remaining years of life for the individual receiving the check. If a young person were given $250, he would likely save most of it. If the $250 were given to the elderly instead, then more of the transfer payment would be consumed. Mr. Leonhardt seems to be unhappy with the President’s proposal but his reasoning here seems to be very confused.

Bigness in Capitalism

In 1976 the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Jim Cairns, wrote:

"....outside Australia, the 'economic crisis', the 'oil-food crisis', or 'inflation' whatever it is called is seen to be capitalist and third-world wide, deep seated, crucial, and to be a depression, not just inflation. Finally, there is acceptance that conventional economic thinking cannot deal with it. It looks like the end of an era, but why has it come?

There are, it seems, two main reasons*. First, there is the development of bigness in capitalism. Capitalism was once a very large number of small factories, shops, farms and other production units. Yet now in the USA, and it is little different in Australia, some 2 percent of the companies control about 50 percent of 'gross national product' in some way or another....The other main reason for the end of the era is the fact that the thrid world for a time could raise the price of raw materials and food it supplies to corporate capitalism...."[1]

A few years ago "fifty of the world’s one hundred largest economies [were] multi-national companies and not countries." [2]

When a private company grows to a size exceeding that of nations how can its vast resources not be viewed as social property? After all, the technology that these huge transnational corporations use has been "assembled with direct subsidies, tax write-offs, and other benefits traceable to the public treasury. The social capital of the nation - its air, water, and mineral treasure - has been expended in the process." [3]

Some observers may see (in addition) that many, if not most, of the risks taken by these global 'enterprises' are also, in fact, 'social'. Recent evidence of this is the hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP bailout money given to the large banks and the trillions of dollars that have been added to the US Federal Reserve’s balance sheet at huge social cost.

Part of this huge windfall for the big banks has been put into the acquisition of smaller banks by banks "too large to fail." The result is [even] more financial concentration."… [4]

And so it goes. For how much longer can we remain prisoners of economic labels and false dichotomies. 'Private enterprise' versus 'socialism'.

Corruption thrives in societies where the lines between 'private' and 'public' are blurred. 'Bigness' provides the open invitation.

[1] Jim Cairns 'Oil in Troubled Waters' Widescope International Publishers Pty Ltd, Camberwell Victoria. 1976. pp 133-134

[2] “No Nonsense Guide to Globalisation” p55. As quoted in:
THE MONEY –GO –ROUND
GLOBALISATION AND THE DESTRUCTION OF FARMING
SUSAN ATKINSON
www.agribusinessaccountability.org/pdfs/276_Money-Go-Round.pdf

[3] Richard J Barnet and Ronald E Muller, 'Global Reach - the power of the multinational corporations' 1974. page 374

[4] Assistant Secretary to the Treasury blasts economic policy, misleading data
October 7, 12:07 PMLA County Nonpartisan ExaminerCarl Herman
http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m10d7-Assistant-Secretary-to-the-Treasury-blasts-economic-policy-misleading-data

* A useful summary is provided by Geoffrey Barraclough in 'New York Times Review' 27 June 1974, 23 January 1975, 7 August 1975.