“Involuntariness” is the usual answer. Indeed, classical liberalism takes the most basic framing of a social question as: “consent or coercion?” In this view, democracy is characterized as government “with the consent of the governed” so slavery and non-democratic government were both condemned for the lack of consent. This common condemnation of slavery on the [...]
Archives for February 2010
Evaluations versus Peer-to-Peer Social Learning
There are such strong debates about evaluations in the field of economic development that it sometimes seems like a civil war. I would like to suggest that there is a rather different way to approach this problem that renders the debate about evaluation rather secondary and ill-posed. The real alternative to some imagined “scientific evaluations” to foster social learning is peer-to-peer networks of the doers facing similar problems and searching for solutions.
The fatal flaw in finance theory: Capitalizing “goodwill”
The fatal flaw at the root of today’s post is really what might be called “the fundamental myth” about the current property system, namely that the market-contractual role of being the residual claimant in a productive opportunity is treated as a “property right” that is currently owned by some legal party (e.g., the corporation having the contractual role) and that may be bought and sold as well as capitalized into the party’s current valuation.
Development or just poverty reduction?
Many of the debates about foreign aid and development assistance seem to pivot on different visions of the goal: development or just poverty reduction.