when i read stiglitz' book, globalization and its discontents, in 2003, it opened my eyes... that was the first year i worked in international development and i was witnessing first-hand a lot of different dynamics that i was trying to make sense out of... sitting in a former communist country and watching the mad scramble to shift to a market economy would have simply been undecipherable chaos for me if i had not had stiglitz as a guide... i was left with a deep impression of a profoundly moral person of great intellect who was nonetheless gifted in making hugely complex forces understandable in ways that upheld what i had come to believe was basic common sense... i'm pleased to see him still out in front as a rational, moral force at a time when the quasi-religious ideology of capitalism is collapsing under its own weight...
this is an excerpt from a daily beast article quoting stiglitz from his latest book, from cairo to wall street: voices from the global spring...
If no one is accountable, the
problem must lie in the economic system. This is the inevitable
conclusion and the reason that the protesters are right to be indignant.
Every barrel has its rotten apples, but the problem, as MIT Professor
Susan Silbey has written, comes when the whole barrel is rotten.
Much of what has gone on can only be described by the words moral deprivation. Something wrong had
happened to the moral compass of so many of the people working in the
financial sector. When the norms of a society change in a way that so
many have lost their moral compass—and the few whistle-blowers go
unheeded—that says something significant about the society. The problem
is not just the individuals who have lost their moral compass but
society itself.
What
the protests tell us is that there was outrage and that outrage gives
hope. Americans have always had an idealistic streak, reflected both in
the instruction in schools and in political rhetoric. Kids read the
Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal,” and they read
the words literally, all men, white and black, and they believe
them. They recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which promises “justice for
all,” and they believe it.
[...]
The political system seems to be
failing as much as the economic system, and in some ways, the two
failures are intertwined. The system failed to prevent the crisis, it
failed to remedy the crisis, it failed to check the growing inequality,
it failed to protect those at the bottom, and it failed to prevent the
corporate abuses. And while it was failing, the growing deficits
suggested that these failures were likely to continue into the future.
Americans,
Europeans, and people in other democracies around the world take great
pride in their democratic institutions. But the protesters have called
into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy
is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices
have to be meaningful. The politicians have to listen to the voices of
the citizens. However, increasingly, and especially in the United
States, it seems that the political system is more akin to “one dollar
one vote” than to “one person one vote.” Rather the correcting the
market’s failures, the political system is reinforcing them.
[...]
[P]rotesters are asking for so little: for a chance to use their skills,
for the right to decent work at decent pay, for a fairer economy and
society. Their requests are not revolutionary but evolutionary. But at
another level, they are asking for a great deal: for a democracy where
people, not dollars, matter; and for a market economy that delivers on
what it is supposed to do. The two demands are related:
unfettered markets do not work well, as we have seen. For markets to
work the way markets are supposed to work, there has to be appropriate
government regulation. But for that to occur, we have to have a
democracy that reflects the general interests, not the special
interests. We may have the best government that money can buy, but that
won’t be good enough.
i will put stiglitz' argument into my own words... i believe he's making a case for a return to the concept of the common good, a concept i believe has been under constant assault by the social darwinian mindset of our super-rich elites... we can't get back to it fast enough to suit me...
Labels: Cairo, capitalism, common good, Declaration of Independence, democracy, global spring, globalization, Joseph Stiglitz, moral deprivation, Pledge of Allegiance, protestors, social darwinism, Wall Street
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