the natural philosophy of greed

More insights from Naomi Klein, as to why greed has become the only game in town:

Thanks a million, Ayn Rand, for setting the greedy free
The trickle-down theory beloved of Greenspan and his ilk is less a philosophy than a handy excuse for avarice

Now she should talk that greed thing through with her agent and publisher, because I would have bought her book if it wasn't so bloody expensive ... :) Oh well, I'll just wait for the paperback.


PS (July 2010) Seeing that this page seems to pop up frequently when people google for the terms "philosphy + greed", I'm thinking of adding some value to it. While I haven't studied the philosophy of greed as such, I have written a (tongue in cheek) piece about the thermodynamics of greed. Specifically, I find it puzzling that, while the third law of thermodynamics states that overall disorder must increase, so all "sorting" activities must be paid for by creating random mixtures elsewhere, the economy tends to be driven by forces that make rich people richer and poor people poorer, so reduces entropy. That piece was published in German in Nachrichten aus der Chemie in April 2007 and will feature in my next German book due to appear in 2011. Might do an English version for the blog, watch this space.

shocking stuff

I raved about Naomi Klein's book The shock doctrine last week. Now here's a review of the book:

The end of the world as we know it.

Very depressing stuff all that.

shock doctrine

I've read an interesting extract from Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine. Her thesis is that the current brand of neoliberal / globalized capitalism thrives not so much on freedom but on disasters which create a "clean slate" and often suspend democratic process and human rights, giving the swift commercial operator a unique chance to move in.

Click Shock Doctrine for extracts, an interview with the author, and more.

PS: In other news, while I was looking for the shock doctrine page, I found the Guardian headline: "Buying sex could become a crime"

I couldn't help thinking that this would make a large number of marriages illegal ...