June 2011
9 posts
2 tags
Subverting the Economic Story
This story from Yes! Magazine about how ordinary Americans are getting around an unfair economy, which is based on a new book by Lisa Dodson called The Moral Underground.
Andrew, a manager in a large food business in the Midwest, told me about the moral dilemma of employing people who can’t take care of their families even though they are working hard. This was something that he couldn’t...
6 tags
Science and Economics
In the book, I talked about how over the last few decades, science has moved from what was called academic science to industrialized science, where one of the things that happens is that basic research, which used to be the foundation of science, is put aside in favor of applied research.
In his book The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus, the famous explorer Jacques Cousteau summed up the...
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Review via So Many Books
Thanks to Stefanie at So Many Books for a solid review of Monoculture, especially from the point of view of a soon-to-be librarian (given that I talked about changes affecting libraries in the book).
Some interesting conversation in the comments too. Take a look!
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The Economic Value of Public Broadcasting
Today, the CBC reported the results of an economic impact study it had commissioned by Deloitte and Touche, in an attempt “to measure the value of having a publicly funded broadcaster in Canada.” The results? CBC was worth $3.7 billion to the Canadian economy in 2010.
This kind of blatant economic argument for a public service is the same kind of attempt to secure public funding...
4 tags
The Economic Story and the Environment
Earlier this year, the U.S.-based Pew Environmental Group released a report that said Canada’s boreal forest provides “about $700-billion in ‘services’ to the world every year.”(The U.S. is weighing in because Canada’s wetlands are considered a global conservation priority.)
That number includes “nearly $180-billion for the annual amortized value of...
7 tags
A Parallel Structure: ProPublica and Independent...
When the economic story spreads into media (which it has, though I didn’t get a chance to cover that in the book), the news becomes about giving the customer what it thinks he or she wants and less about what a democratic citizen might need to know in order to function effectively in a democratic society. The news becomes about attracting eyeballs in order to build the biggest...
7 tags
Products that increase efficiency
When you see the rise of the economic story, products for sale in the market don’t always mean what you think they mean. Take Red Bull, for example. It’s a drink, right? So what it tastes like matters, right? Um, not exactly.
The success of Red Bull defies logic in one important regard: It doesn’t taste very good. The amber-colored elixir’s taste has been...
5 tags
Patenting Words
In one of its last issues, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that the magazine ENTREPRENEUR is busy suing entrepreneurs for using the word “entrepreneur” in their own businesses.
Since the early 1980s, EMI has sued or threatened to sue scores of businesses and organizations it claims infringed its trademarks. EMI won’t provide a tally of its targets, but it almost always...
3 tags
The Value of Nature
A couple of days ago, the BBC provided a great example of the monoculture with this headline: “Nature ‘is worth billions’ to UK”.
The article highlights a major report commissioned by the government, the National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), noting that the “UK’s parks, lakes, forests and wildlife are worth billions of pounds to the economy.” The report is...
