“We here show how the magic of editing history can be achieved by introducing the concept of the space-time cloak.”
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Archive Plumbers
Using data mining techniques such as the NSA likely deploys upon current communications, a new approach in the social sciences is taking root...
Science: Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books
Jean-Baptiste Michel et al
Abstract
We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of ‘culturomics,’ focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.
An in depth plumbing exercise...
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey
Science: Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books
Jean-Baptiste Michel et al
Abstract
We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of ‘culturomics,’ focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.
An in depth plumbing exercise...
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
To the shores of Tripoli...
From President Thomas Jefferson,
To the Congress of the United States of America
The State of the Nation
December 8, 1801
...To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer.
I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean, with assurances to that power of our sincere desire to remain in peace, but with orders to protect our commerce against the threatened attack. The measure was seasonable and salutary. The Bey had already declared war. His cruisers were out. Two had arrived at Gibraltar. Our commerce in the Mediterranean was blockaded and that of the Atlantic in peril.
The arrival of our squadron dispelled the danger. One of the Tripolitan cruisers having fallen in with and engaged the small schooner Enterprise, commanded by Lieutenant Sterret, which had gone as a tender to our larger vessels, was captured, after a heavy slaughter of her men, without the loss of a single 1 on our part. The bravery exhibited by our citizens on that element will, I trust, be a testimony to the world that it is not the want of that virtue which makes us seek their peace, but a conscientious desire to direct the energies of our nation to the multiplication of the human race, and not to its destruction. Unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense, the vessel, being disabled from committing further hostilities, was liberated with its crew.
The Legislature will doubtless consider whether, by authorizing measures of offense also, they will place our force on an equal footing with that of its adversaries. I communicate all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstances of weight.
I wish I could say that our situation with all the other Barbary States was entirely satisfactory. Discovering that some delays had taken place in the performance of certain articles stipulated by us, I thought it my duty, by immediate measures for fulfilling them, to vindicate to ourselves the right of considering the effect of departure from stipulation on their side. From the papers which will be laid before you you will be enabled to judge whether our treaties are regarded by them as fixing at all the measure of their demands or as guarding from the exercise of force our vessels within their power, and to consider how far it will be safe and expedient to leave our affairs with them in their present posture...
+
Some two hundred and ten years later...
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett Says President Obama’s Unilateral Choice to Order U.S. Military Force Against Qadhafi is an Affront to Our Constitution
To the Congress of the United States of America
The State of the Nation
December 8, 1801
...To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer.
I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean, with assurances to that power of our sincere desire to remain in peace, but with orders to protect our commerce against the threatened attack. The measure was seasonable and salutary. The Bey had already declared war. His cruisers were out. Two had arrived at Gibraltar. Our commerce in the Mediterranean was blockaded and that of the Atlantic in peril.
The arrival of our squadron dispelled the danger. One of the Tripolitan cruisers having fallen in with and engaged the small schooner Enterprise, commanded by Lieutenant Sterret, which had gone as a tender to our larger vessels, was captured, after a heavy slaughter of her men, without the loss of a single 1 on our part. The bravery exhibited by our citizens on that element will, I trust, be a testimony to the world that it is not the want of that virtue which makes us seek their peace, but a conscientious desire to direct the energies of our nation to the multiplication of the human race, and not to its destruction. Unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense, the vessel, being disabled from committing further hostilities, was liberated with its crew.
The Legislature will doubtless consider whether, by authorizing measures of offense also, they will place our force on an equal footing with that of its adversaries. I communicate all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstances of weight.
I wish I could say that our situation with all the other Barbary States was entirely satisfactory. Discovering that some delays had taken place in the performance of certain articles stipulated by us, I thought it my duty, by immediate measures for fulfilling them, to vindicate to ourselves the right of considering the effect of departure from stipulation on their side. From the papers which will be laid before you you will be enabled to judge whether our treaties are regarded by them as fixing at all the measure of their demands or as guarding from the exercise of force our vessels within their power, and to consider how far it will be safe and expedient to leave our affairs with them in their present posture...
+
Some two hundred and ten years later...
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett Says President Obama’s Unilateral Choice to Order U.S. Military Force Against Qadhafi is an Affront to Our Constitution
Saturday, December 25, 2010
The Neo-liberal method, circa 1585
The King's brother is evidentally Grangino, brother of Wingina.
The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques & discoveries of the English ... By Richard Hakluyt
The Kings brother had great liking of our armour, a sword, and diverse other things which we had: and offered to lay a great boxe of pearle in gage for them: but we refused it for this time, because we would not make them knowe, that we esteemed thereof, untill we had understood in what places of the countrey the pearle grew: which now your Worshippe doeth very well understand.
A lengthy paper by Fred Willard on lost-colony.com suggests other commodities that may have inspired this early neo-liberal adventure...
Raleigh’s 1587 Lost Colony:
Conspiracy, Spies, Secrets & Lies
The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques & discoveries of the English ... By Richard Hakluyt
The Kings brother had great liking of our armour, a sword, and diverse other things which we had: and offered to lay a great boxe of pearle in gage for them: but we refused it for this time, because we would not make them knowe, that we esteemed thereof, untill we had understood in what places of the countrey the pearle grew: which now your Worshippe doeth very well understand.
A lengthy paper by Fred Willard on lost-colony.com suggests other commodities that may have inspired this early neo-liberal adventure...
Raleigh’s 1587 Lost Colony:
Conspiracy, Spies, Secrets & Lies
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
There is a vast lacuna in the Apollo 11 Transcipts.
Woefully missing from the Onboard Voice Transcription-Command Module transcription is the on board conversation that takes place before a curious question is posed to Houston, which we find in the Technical Air-to-Ground Voice transcription, on pg. 190 (of pdf) at time stamp (day/hour/minute/second) 02 12 45 46:
"Do you have any idea where the S-IVB is with respect to us?"
Houston answers that the S-IVB (final stage of rocket) is 6000 miles away. But outside the capsule the astronauts were seeing something much closer, as Buzz Aldrin describes in Apollo 11- The Untold Story (beginning at around 4:00).
Three days of transcripts of the onboard conversations are missing; these were apparently not included in the original confidential document, as the page numbering indicates: page 51 ends with 00 03 29 21 and page 52 begins with 03 03 39 38.
Woefully missing from the Onboard Voice Transcription-Command Module transcription is the on board conversation that takes place before a curious question is posed to Houston, which we find in the Technical Air-to-Ground Voice transcription, on pg. 190 (of pdf) at time stamp (day/hour/minute/second) 02 12 45 46:
"Do you have any idea where the S-IVB is with respect to us?"
Houston answers that the S-IVB (final stage of rocket) is 6000 miles away. But outside the capsule the astronauts were seeing something much closer, as Buzz Aldrin describes in Apollo 11- The Untold Story (beginning at around 4:00).
Three days of transcripts of the onboard conversations are missing; these were apparently not included in the original confidential document, as the page numbering indicates: page 51 ends with 00 03 29 21 and page 52 begins with 03 03 39 38.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Tapeworm
The tapeworm is a rather disgusting metaphor that Catherine Austin Fitts has employed in characterizing the prevailing economic racket of recent decades. As she defines "tapeworm economy," or "negative return on investment economy" in an interview for Karavans...
That's an economy with two classes of players, the insiders & the outsiders. The insiders are constantly subsidized at the expense of the outsiders, like a tapeworm, a parasite that eats through the body. The parasites engineer the economy to drain it for their benefit, consolidating wealth & economic power by liquidating wealth, people, environment, & economic productivity, all to fatten the Tapeworm.
Just as a tapeworm, lodged within the intestines, is able to produce and pump neurotransmitters through the blood-brain barrier that make its host crave the very nutrients that it requires at the expense of the host's nourishment, so does the economically parasitical "insider" utilize a broad variety of tools, anything from the mass media to high fructose corn syrup, for making "outsider" host consumers desire self-impoverishing things that concomitantly enrich the insider.
Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, explains this dynamic as it applies to the fast-food industry, in an interview on the NewsHour:
The food industry has been able to figure out the bliss point, the optimal combinations of fat and salt, fat and sugar, fat, sugar and salt that you think tastes good, but when you look at the science, we now know that those ingredients stimulate, they activate the brain's circuitry. They stimulate our intake. They condition us. They drive us to want more. They affect the neural circuits. For decades, the food industry has said, "We're just giving consumers what they want." But, in fact, now we know that what they're doing is excessively activating the brains of millions of Americans.
Such a dynamic is thus a foil to the classic law of supply and demand where, on the one end of economic transaction, a population of consumers by their own interest desire a product, to which desire producers respond by supplying that product in quantities proportionate to the demand. With tapeworm economics, the producers can modulate the desire of consumers.
Such a foil is really nothing new however. Thorstein Veblen perhaps described it in the "wasteful expenditure" of a leisure class which adopts behaviors (such as in the near religious following of sport franchises, for instance) having little intrinsic economic value.
Veblen is most famous for the term "conspicuous consumption." But, some 90 years before Fitts, we find Veblen employing the tapeworm analogy in an entirely different context, though utilized somewhat in the same sense. In his Imperial Germany and The Industrial Revolution (1915), we read on page 169 (of the 1939 edition):
...the uses of the dynastic establishment are seen to be of the same nature as the uses of a tapeworm; and the tapeworm's relation to his host is something not easy to beautify in words, or even to authenticate in such convincing fashion as will insure his affectionate retention on grounds of decorous use and want.
As Veblen employs the term, however, the tapeworm operates upon a body politic. Thus, from the late XIXth through the early XXth century, Prussian dynastic militarism reinforces itself through pan-Germanic engagement of industrial infrastructure, vocation, and all human capitol rendered available for recruitment through familiar habits of allegiance.
The bias of solidarity...is a solidarity subservient to an extraneous initiative; an initiative not necessarily alien to the spontaneous consensus of the group, but also not necessarily coincident with or germane to the ends of life comprised in the consensus of the community... Where the popular consensus so comes to coincide with the line of the State's initiative and unfolding power, as in the Prussian case, it will commonly happen that this happy consummation is reached through the community's accepting the State's ends as its own, and also commonly without such knowledge of the State's ends in the case as would enable the community to take stock of them and appreciate what has been accepted or assented to... (Pg. 164/5)
That's an economy with two classes of players, the insiders & the outsiders. The insiders are constantly subsidized at the expense of the outsiders, like a tapeworm, a parasite that eats through the body. The parasites engineer the economy to drain it for their benefit, consolidating wealth & economic power by liquidating wealth, people, environment, & economic productivity, all to fatten the Tapeworm.
Just as a tapeworm, lodged within the intestines, is able to produce and pump neurotransmitters through the blood-brain barrier that make its host crave the very nutrients that it requires at the expense of the host's nourishment, so does the economically parasitical "insider" utilize a broad variety of tools, anything from the mass media to high fructose corn syrup, for making "outsider" host consumers desire self-impoverishing things that concomitantly enrich the insider.
Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, explains this dynamic as it applies to the fast-food industry, in an interview on the NewsHour:
The food industry has been able to figure out the bliss point, the optimal combinations of fat and salt, fat and sugar, fat, sugar and salt that you think tastes good, but when you look at the science, we now know that those ingredients stimulate, they activate the brain's circuitry. They stimulate our intake. They condition us. They drive us to want more. They affect the neural circuits. For decades, the food industry has said, "We're just giving consumers what they want." But, in fact, now we know that what they're doing is excessively activating the brains of millions of Americans.
Such a dynamic is thus a foil to the classic law of supply and demand where, on the one end of economic transaction, a population of consumers by their own interest desire a product, to which desire producers respond by supplying that product in quantities proportionate to the demand. With tapeworm economics, the producers can modulate the desire of consumers.
Such a foil is really nothing new however. Thorstein Veblen perhaps described it in the "wasteful expenditure" of a leisure class which adopts behaviors (such as in the near religious following of sport franchises, for instance) having little intrinsic economic value.
Veblen is most famous for the term "conspicuous consumption." But, some 90 years before Fitts, we find Veblen employing the tapeworm analogy in an entirely different context, though utilized somewhat in the same sense. In his Imperial Germany and The Industrial Revolution (1915), we read on page 169 (of the 1939 edition):
...the uses of the dynastic establishment are seen to be of the same nature as the uses of a tapeworm; and the tapeworm's relation to his host is something not easy to beautify in words, or even to authenticate in such convincing fashion as will insure his affectionate retention on grounds of decorous use and want.
As Veblen employs the term, however, the tapeworm operates upon a body politic. Thus, from the late XIXth through the early XXth century, Prussian dynastic militarism reinforces itself through pan-Germanic engagement of industrial infrastructure, vocation, and all human capitol rendered available for recruitment through familiar habits of allegiance.
The bias of solidarity...is a solidarity subservient to an extraneous initiative; an initiative not necessarily alien to the spontaneous consensus of the group, but also not necessarily coincident with or germane to the ends of life comprised in the consensus of the community... Where the popular consensus so comes to coincide with the line of the State's initiative and unfolding power, as in the Prussian case, it will commonly happen that this happy consummation is reached through the community's accepting the State's ends as its own, and also commonly without such knowledge of the State's ends in the case as would enable the community to take stock of them and appreciate what has been accepted or assented to... (Pg. 164/5)
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Death of Laissez Faire
Thirty years ago this week, Michel Foucault delivered the first of his lectures under the course title The Birth of Biopolitics at the College de France (the eighth of a winter quarter stint of public lectures he had given throughout the '70s and early '80s). The title as it would turn out was a bit misleading... if any thing, "the gestation of biopolitics" might apply. Really these lectures were a continuation of those of the year previous - Security, Territory, Population - which focused upon the development of governmentality and Raison d'Etat (State Reason) in the 17th Century. In picking this up in the '79 lectures, governmentality is found to be relaxed in the 18th Century and homo oeconomicus is permitted and indeed facilitated by governmental action and inaction to drive the modern state. So what we have is a rough history of liberalism (in the economic sense of the term). The first lectures begin with the 18th century adaptation of governmentality to market dynamics. Then we quickly jump to post-WWII Germany and the thriving of "ordoliberalism"; contemporary French economic policy and American neo-liberalism (or the "anarcho-capitalism" of the Chicago school) are examined; and in the last two lectures, we return to the 18th Century, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and the like...
In his course summary (after the fact), Foucault writes, in somewhat of an apologetic tone for the digression:
The theme was to have been "biopolitics," by which I meant the attempt, starting from the eighteenth century, to rationalize the problems posed to governmental practice by phenomena characteristic of a set of living beings forming a population: health, hygiene, birthrate, life expectancy, race ... It seemed to me that these problems were inseparable from the framework of political rationality within which they appeared and took on their intensity.
This means "liberalism"...
We have previously quoted a key passage (see Manufacturing Freedom ), which offers a greater grasp of the situation that Noam Chomsky analyzes (but misses in all of its implications) as "manufacturing consent". Chomsky fails to capture the more comprehensive answer to the question: consent to what? - Presumably, consent is manufactured to facilitate an exploitative foreign policy on behalf of multinational corporations, whose sole interest is to make more money. That is a bit too simplistic.
Those on the Right might reply to Chomsky: 'the way of life you and your fellow whiny liberals enjoy is made possible by the policies you lament'. Economic neo-liberalism (and its accompanying neo-conservative muscle) is the cradle that coddles begrudging social liberalism. Those who do and those who do not consent (provided the former enjoy some semblance of a majority) have had a dominion of freedom carved out for them, whether they find it ethical or not. So, the core question is how this freedom is "manufactured" or made possible. Consent is only ancillary to the question.
Foucault, then, is able to meet the neo-lib (and neo-con) on its own turf. In his characteristic non-committal way, as if approaching a Sphinx, he is not oppositional and lamenting (for the most part), but simply trying to get a grasp of the situation... to capture the riddle.
To get a grasp of things, Foucault introduces two conceptions of freedom: revolutionary (Rousseauian), based on fundamental right, and radical (utilitarian), of "the independence of the governed vis-a-vis governmentality" (pg. 42). These coexist heterogeneously in a "non-dialectical logic." It is the latter freedom, and its place in the liberal tradition, that is Foucault's primary focus. He characterizes liberalism as a naturalism, "inasmuch as the freedom that the physiocrats and Adam Smith talk about is much more the spontaneity, the internal and intrinsic mechanics of economic processes than a juridical freedom of the individual recognized as such" (pg. 61). So the task of government, then, is to comprehend the processes, and to do so it must gather accurate evidence of the economic mechanisms at play. Once it does, governmentality then knows its limits (demarcated not by right, but by utility). Government is hence mainly concerned with making itself useful, without meddling in the natural course of economic processes.
What governmentality can do, as an agent of utility, is to constitute a framework more conducive to the flows of economic relations. There are differing approaches as to how to achieve this contingent on geo-political or even purely geographic circumstances. For instance, in the 19th Century, the liberal economic policy employed as a tactical instrument suitable to a maritime power, namely Britain, would not have been suitable to a continental power like Germany (Pg. 107-108). For its part, Germany adopted in the post-WWII period (which Foucault gives considerable focus) the Ordo-liberal model. Here, the approach is to intervene as little as possible on the market itself, while carefully crafting its framework: "...to the same extent that governmental intervention must be light at the level of economic processes themselves, so must it be heavy when it is a matter of this set of technical, scientific, legal, geographic... broadly social factors which increasingly become the object of governmental intervention" (Pg. 140). Even to the point of altering climate; Foucault cites Walter Eucken's Grundsatze der Wirtschaftspolitik: "Finally, if necessary, we will have to be able to intervene on the climate" (Pg. 141).
The approach to framing market economies which had gained ascendancy from the late 20th century until very recently was the Anarcho-capitalist model of the Chicago school, with which we, having lived in its midst, are overly familiar. The dogma: let us privatize as much as we can get away with, and then just sit back and watch the markets work their magic. In this formulation, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is invoked profusely (though it was used only once in his own Wealth of Nations). Yet, are these "invisible hand" invokations really applicable to neo-liberal models? Foucault: "...for the neo-liberals, the most important thing about the market is not exchange, that kind of original fictional situation imagined by eighteenth century liberal economists. The essential thing of the market is elsewhere; it is competition" (Pg.118).
But, somehow, lately, this model has fallen into disfavor... So much so, that classical Liberalism itself is being declared dead, as we find Nicolas Sarkosy expressing on the occasion of the meltdown of September '08:
Laissez-faire is finished
But to this, "laissez-faire" might say: rumours of my demise are highly exagerated; it is simply a particular approach that is being cast aside.
In its place, we might anticipate a more muscular ordo-liberal model, given to much heavier interventions upon society, upon bodies, upon climate...
In his course summary (after the fact), Foucault writes, in somewhat of an apologetic tone for the digression:
The theme was to have been "biopolitics," by which I meant the attempt, starting from the eighteenth century, to rationalize the problems posed to governmental practice by phenomena characteristic of a set of living beings forming a population: health, hygiene, birthrate, life expectancy, race ... It seemed to me that these problems were inseparable from the framework of political rationality within which they appeared and took on their intensity.
This means "liberalism"...
We have previously quoted a key passage (see Manufacturing Freedom ), which offers a greater grasp of the situation that Noam Chomsky analyzes (but misses in all of its implications) as "manufacturing consent". Chomsky fails to capture the more comprehensive answer to the question: consent to what? - Presumably, consent is manufactured to facilitate an exploitative foreign policy on behalf of multinational corporations, whose sole interest is to make more money. That is a bit too simplistic.
Those on the Right might reply to Chomsky: 'the way of life you and your fellow whiny liberals enjoy is made possible by the policies you lament'. Economic neo-liberalism (and its accompanying neo-conservative muscle) is the cradle that coddles begrudging social liberalism. Those who do and those who do not consent (provided the former enjoy some semblance of a majority) have had a dominion of freedom carved out for them, whether they find it ethical or not. So, the core question is how this freedom is "manufactured" or made possible. Consent is only ancillary to the question.
Foucault, then, is able to meet the neo-lib (and neo-con) on its own turf. In his characteristic non-committal way, as if approaching a Sphinx, he is not oppositional and lamenting (for the most part), but simply trying to get a grasp of the situation... to capture the riddle.
To get a grasp of things, Foucault introduces two conceptions of freedom: revolutionary (Rousseauian), based on fundamental right, and radical (utilitarian), of "the independence of the governed vis-a-vis governmentality" (pg. 42). These coexist heterogeneously in a "non-dialectical logic." It is the latter freedom, and its place in the liberal tradition, that is Foucault's primary focus. He characterizes liberalism as a naturalism, "inasmuch as the freedom that the physiocrats and Adam Smith talk about is much more the spontaneity, the internal and intrinsic mechanics of economic processes than a juridical freedom of the individual recognized as such" (pg. 61). So the task of government, then, is to comprehend the processes, and to do so it must gather accurate evidence of the economic mechanisms at play. Once it does, governmentality then knows its limits (demarcated not by right, but by utility). Government is hence mainly concerned with making itself useful, without meddling in the natural course of economic processes.
What governmentality can do, as an agent of utility, is to constitute a framework more conducive to the flows of economic relations. There are differing approaches as to how to achieve this contingent on geo-political or even purely geographic circumstances. For instance, in the 19th Century, the liberal economic policy employed as a tactical instrument suitable to a maritime power, namely Britain, would not have been suitable to a continental power like Germany (Pg. 107-108). For its part, Germany adopted in the post-WWII period (which Foucault gives considerable focus) the Ordo-liberal model. Here, the approach is to intervene as little as possible on the market itself, while carefully crafting its framework: "...to the same extent that governmental intervention must be light at the level of economic processes themselves, so must it be heavy when it is a matter of this set of technical, scientific, legal, geographic... broadly social factors which increasingly become the object of governmental intervention" (Pg. 140). Even to the point of altering climate; Foucault cites Walter Eucken's Grundsatze der Wirtschaftspolitik: "Finally, if necessary, we will have to be able to intervene on the climate" (Pg. 141).
The approach to framing market economies which had gained ascendancy from the late 20th century until very recently was the Anarcho-capitalist model of the Chicago school, with which we, having lived in its midst, are overly familiar. The dogma: let us privatize as much as we can get away with, and then just sit back and watch the markets work their magic. In this formulation, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is invoked profusely (though it was used only once in his own Wealth of Nations). Yet, are these "invisible hand" invokations really applicable to neo-liberal models? Foucault: "...for the neo-liberals, the most important thing about the market is not exchange, that kind of original fictional situation imagined by eighteenth century liberal economists. The essential thing of the market is elsewhere; it is competition" (Pg.118).
But, somehow, lately, this model has fallen into disfavor... So much so, that classical Liberalism itself is being declared dead, as we find Nicolas Sarkosy expressing on the occasion of the meltdown of September '08:
Laissez-faire is finished
But to this, "laissez-faire" might say: rumours of my demise are highly exagerated; it is simply a particular approach that is being cast aside.
In its place, we might anticipate a more muscular ordo-liberal model, given to much heavier interventions upon society, upon bodies, upon climate...
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