"

Inequality which is so much the characteristic of modern society reflects power rather than justice. [ p.139 ….]

The distribution of income [….] reflects the relative power of different groups in society. [p.147 ….]

The rate of profit reflects relative power in our society, as well as the technical capabilities of factories and the success or otherwise of recent waves of investment. [p.157]

"

Steve Keen / Debunking Economics Ed.2 

"[T]errorism cannot be stopped by addressing symptoms and not the cause. Violence is bred by injustice, poverty, inequality and other violence. This lesson was learnt very painfully in the first half of the twentieth century, at a cost of some 80 million lives. Of course, a full belly and a fair hearing won’t stop a fanatic; but they can greatly reduce the number who become fanatics."

A Short History of Progress | Ronald Wright | p126

Market economy: advantages and disadvantages

A market economy has several important advantages and several major disadvantages:

Among the advantages, are the following:

1. Competition … leads to increased efficiency and more innovation (new and/or cheaper products)
    
2. Greater variety of consumer goods (for those who have the money to buy them)
   
   
3. Most people work harder
   
   
4. Increased foreign investment (driven by profit)
   
   
5. Reduced size, power, and cost of the state bureaucracy
   (as various activities that are usually associated with the public sector are taken over by private enterprises)
   
   
6. Many people quickly acquire the technical and social skills and knowledge needed to function in this new economy;
   
   
7. Large parts of the society take on a bright, merry and colorful air as everyone busies himself trying to sell something to someone else.

Among the disadvantages, are the following:

1. Needs of people who can’t afford things go unmet
   Distorted investment priorities (profits are what matters) 
   Wealth gets directed into what will earn the largest profit and not into what most people really need (so public health, public education, and even dikes for periodically swollen rivers receive little attention) (a large percentage of machinery of all kinds [and housing] lie idle) 
    
2. Worker exploitation
   Since the harder, faster, and longer people work—just as the less they get paid—the more profit is earned by their employer (with this incentive and driven by the competition, employers are forever finding new ways to intensify exploitation);
   
   
3. Social and economic inequality 
   (the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer);
   With such a gap between the rich and the poor, egalitarian social relations become impossible (people with a lot of money begin to think of themselves as a better kind of human being and to view the poor with contempt, while the poor feel a mixture of hatred, envy and queasy respect for the rich);
    
4. Disproportional political influence
   Those with the most money use it to help themselves make still more money;
    
5. Corruption
   Those with a lot of money can bribe officials putting those without the money at a severe disadvantage;
   
   
6. Economic crimes
   People try to acquire money illegally when legal means are not available (and sometimes even when they are);
   
   
7. Low social benefits and welfare
   (since such benefits are financed at least in part by taxes, extended benefits generally means reduced profits for the rich; furthermore, any social safety net makes workers less fearful of losing their jobs and consequently less willing to do anything to keep them);
   
   
8. Ecological degradation
   (since any effort to improve the quality of the air and of the water costs the owners of industry money and reduces profits, our natural home becomes increasingly unlivable);
   
   
9. Distorted social relations
   People of all classes begin to misunderstand the social relations and powers that arise through the operations of a market economy as natural phenomena with a life and will of their own (money, for example, gets taken as an almost supernatural power that stands above people and orders their lives, rather than a material vehicle into which people through their alienated relations with their productive activity and its products have poured their own power and potential; and the market itself, which is just one possible way in which social wealth can be distributed, is taken as the way nature itself intended human beings to relate to each other, as more in keeping with basic human nature than any other possibility. As part of this, people no longer believe in a future that could be qualitatively different or in their ability, either individually or collectively, to help bring it about. In short, what Marx called “ideological thinking” becomes general);
   
   
10. Promotes anti-social attitudes and emotions
    (people become egotistical, concerned only with themselves. “Me first”, “anything for money”, “winning in competition no matter what the human costs” become what drives them in all areas of life. They also become very anxious and economically insecure, afraid of losing their job, their home, their sale, etc.; and they worry about money all the time. In this situation, feelings as well as ideas of cooperation and mutual concern are seriously weakened, where they don’t disappear altogether, for in a market economy it is against one’s personal interest to cooperate with others);
    
    
11. Governments must be positive (difficult to mention problems)
    (it is more conducive to stability to feed people illusions of unending economic growth and fairy tales of how they too can get rich. Exaggerating the positive achievements of society and seldom if ever mentioning its negative features is also the best means of attracting foreign investment. With so much of the economy depending on “favorable market psychology”, the government simply cannot afford to be completely honest either with its own people or the rest of the world on what is really happening in the country);

(Source: nyu.edu)

"Western “participatory democracy” is defective in at least three ways. It is anti-intellectual (politicians are condemned if they are too “professorial”). It is short-sighted, to the detriment of future generations. And, if democracy is applied in multiethnic societies, it can lead to discrimination and even violence against minorities."

(Source: thedailybeast.com)

"Now, one does not have to be a believer in total equality, whatever that may mean, to be able to see that the existence of inordinately rich people in any society today is a very great evil. Some inequalities of wealth and income are no doubt ‘natural’ and functionally justifiable, and there are few people who do not spontaneously recognise this. But here again, as in all human affairs, it is
a matter of scale. Excessive wealth, like power, tends to corrupt. Even if the rich are not ‘idle rich’, even when they work harder than anyone else, they work differently, apply different standards, and are set apart from common humanity. They corrupt themselves by practising greed, and they corrupt the rest of society by provoking envy."

E. F. Schumacher | Small is beautiful

(Source: ee.iitb.ac.in)

"The demands made by tools on people become increasingly costly. This rising cost of fitting man to the service of his tools is reflected in the ongoing shift from goods to services in over-all production. Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries; it takes the form of educational, medical, and administrative therapies. Education turns out competitive consumers; medicine keeps them alive in the engineered environment they have come to require; bureaucracy reflects the necessity of exercising social control over people to do meaningless work. The parallel increase in the cost of the defense of new levels of privilege through military, police, and insurance measures reflects the fact that in a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy."

Tools for Conviviality | Ivan Illich

(Source: clevercycles.com)

Dependency Theory

According to [dependency theory developed by Gui Bonsiepe], underdevelopment in peripheral (poor) countries is a consequence of development in the central (wealthy) countries. Economic, cultural and psychological pressures force a dependant relationship between the centre and periphery.

To give an example in economic terms, the periphery—under the control of elites and bourgeois classes—export cheap primary goods and benefit exclusively from profits by importing luxury goods from the centre. Central countries benefit from the cheap supply of raw materials and markets in which to sell their goods. In this state of perpetual dependency, the underdevelopment of the periphery would continue indefinitely.

Dependency is also reflected in the process of industrialization whereby the centre would establish a production base in the periphery which exploited cheap labour and resources, required expensive imported inputs and did not reinvest its profits or transfer knowledge into the local economy (Rapley 2007, p. 25). A technological dependency also existed if the majority of a countries technology came from foreign sources, for example through the reliance on imported capital equipment, one-way technology flows and low numbers of patents.

Industrial design in the peripheral countries acquired a mainstream European or American image which was inappropriately oriented towards sales promotion and durable consumer products for an affluent minority, while ignoring basic needs of the poor who couldn’t afford, or have any need for socially irrelevant products. Also, foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) operating within the periphery withheld technical skills and capacities from local industries, thereby preventing local autonomous technological development, local Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) were no more inclined to facilitate technological innovation.  

(Source: bopinc.org)

"

[C]ars, as operated now, are inefficient. This inefficiency is blamed on the fact that modern vehicles are designed for private ownership, not for the public good. In fact, modern personnel transport is inefficient not …. because these vehicles are now owned by their drivers. It is inefficient because of the obsessive identification of higher speed with better transport. Just as the demand for better health at all costs is a form of mental sickness, so is the pretense of higher speed.

…. But when a society commits itself to higher speeds, the speedometer becomes an indicator of social class. Any peasant could accompany Làzaro Càrdenas on horseback. Today only his personal staff can accompany a modern governor in his private helicopter. In capitalist countries how often you can cover great distances is determined by what your can pay. In socialist countries your velocity depends on the social importance the bureaucracy attaches to you. In both cases the particular speed at which you travel puts you into your class and company. Speed is one of the means by which an efficiency-oriented society is stratified.

Fostered addiction to speed is also a means of social control.

"

Tools for Conviviality | Ivan Illich

(Source: clevercycles.com)

"Not only has the redefinition of learning as schooling made schools seem necessary, it has also compounded the poverty of the unschooled with discrimination against the uneducated."

Tools for Conviviality | Ivan Illich

(Source: clevercycles.com)

"At present people tend to relinquish the task of envisaging the future to a professional élite. They transfer power to politicians who promise to build up the machinery to deliver this future. They accept a growing range of power levels in society when inequality is needed to maintain high outputs. Political institutions themselves become draft mechanisms to press people into complicity with output goals. What is right comes to be subordinated to what is good for institutions. Justice is debased to mean the equal distribution of institutional wares."

Tools for Conviviality | Ivan Illich

(Source: preservenet.com)