In 1977, the U.S. agency of Housing and Urban Development audited the real estate industry and discovered that blacks were shown fewer properties (or were told they were unavailable) and treated less courteously than their white counterparts. Today, the Information Age has introduced modern discrimination problems that can be harder to trace: From search engines to recommendation platforms, systems that rely on big data could be unlocking new powers of prejudice. But how do we figure out which systems are disadvantaging vulnerable populations—and stop them?
Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of “all of us”, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society…To desire thecommon good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity…The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in thepólis. (p. 7)
Rising inequality is one of the most salient issues in global and European politics. Guy Standing writes that what we have witnessed in recent decades is not simply an increase in inequality, but a...
Pope Francis called Friday for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the "economy of exclusion" that is taking hold today.
French economist Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-first Century” is a sweeping account of rising inequality. Reviewing the French edition of the book, which came out last year, Branko Milanovic, a former senior economist at the World Bank, called it “one of the watershed books in economic thinking.” The Economist said that it could change the way we think about the past two centuries of economic history. Piketty has written a book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can afford to ignore.
But this study provides hard evidence that they are right – the idea that we are living in a popular democracy is the fairytale, the notion that we live under the domination of an economic elite is the reality.
Neal Lawson and Uffe Elbæk: In a connected world the hierarchies of state and business are falling away. But we still need a way of making politics coherent
"What is the shape of that transformation? Representative democracy must now take its place alongside direct and deliberative forms of democracy and a mash-up of all three: what is being called liquid democracy, as we cast, lend and pool our votes. People will stop being the occasional consumers of politics and instead become its permanent producers.
The culture will change too. Tribalism and adversarialism will give way to shifting alliances. Empathy, respect and the ability to engage with people you don't agree with will be crucial. So if you want to be a rebel, be kind. And leadership will be less about pulling levers for people and more about building the spaces and capacity for people to do thing collectively themselves.
The big and successful transformations in values and behaviour, like support for gay rights, greater gender equality and the end of apartheid, only take place when the overwhelming majority see change as common sense. If a "good society" is achieved by even a metaphorical big stick, then that stick will go on being used in that so-called good society. Remember, means shape ends. So we must be change we wish to see in the world.
In these new times, political parties will still matter. After Tahrir Square – or some day soon Trafalgar Square – someone has to offer the candidates, make the manifesto coherent, set the budgets and establish the policy basis for capacity building. As Guardian journalist John Harris said at the recent Change: How? conference, "you can't redistribute income sitting in a tent outside St Paul's". The party must become the "bridge" between the state and the new horizontal movements.
Modernity and the human values of love, empathy and connection are being aligned. Instead of trying to fit people into a bureaucratic state or a free market we can bend this increasingly flat world to our values and us. We are all particles in the wave of a future that is ours to make"
‘European citizenship’ is a ‘constituent’ process that emerges, develops and is constantly elaborated within social practices. How does the practice of the commons effect it? This week’s guest feature reports back on an experiment conducted last September in Teatro Valle.
The International Monetary Fund has backed economists who argue that inequality is a drag on growth in a discussion paper that has also dismissed rightwing theories that efforts to redistribute incomes are self-defeating.
It should come as no surprise, then, that "green" lifestyles don't resonate with low-income communities; being "green" involves a set of behaviors that are financially or culturally inaccessible to millions of Americans. This presents a major problem for the environmental movement. If it is going to be successful, environmentalism simply cannot afford to be demographically segregated or isolated from the pathos of economic disparity.
Enough Is Enough lays out a visionary but realistic alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth—an economy where the goal is enough, not more. Based on the best-selling book by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill, the film explores specific strategies to fix the financial system, reduce inequality, create jobs, and more. Drawing on the expertise of Tim Jackson, Kate Pickett, Andrew Simms, Natalie Bennett, and Ben Dyson, Enough Is Enough is the primer for achieving genuine prosperity and a hopeful future for all.
On the one hand the incredible rise of UKIP, echoed across much of the continent in a surge of support for populist anti-EU and anti-immigrant parties, is a grim omen of things to come. A party with some very unsettling messages, and even more unsettling people, has just won a nationwide election. But on the other hand, their dramatic rise in support jolts us into confronting these seismic shifts taking place. Moreover, at the very time the old politics is disintegrating, new ways of being and doing are opening up that give us hope. UKIP maybe leading the headlines, but there’s much more going on in politics beyond the main parties.
Many wealthy Americans believe that dysfunctional behavior causes poverty. Their own success, they would insist, derives from good character and a strict work ethic. But they would be missing some of the facts. Ample evidence exists to show a correlation between wealth and unethical behavior, and between wealth and a lack of empathy for others, and between wealth and unproductiveness.
Anyone following the OpenStack ecosystem could be forgiven for being a bit dazed and confused – how many distributions are there? (Fifteen, I think.) How many public clouds? How many private? Even higher-ups at the OpenStack Foundation are hard pressed to answer these questions off the top of their heads.
A new book by French economist Thomas Piketty on "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" has recently caused a major stir on the opinion pages of newspapers and magazines. Piketty has resurrected from the ash heap of history Karl Marx's claim that capitalism inescapably leads to a worsening unequal distribution of wealth with dangerous consequences for human society.
http://www.ted.com We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
Fundamentally at stake, the critics say, is the social contract that cultivates science for the common good. They worry that the philanthropic billions tend to enrich elite universities at the expense of poor ones, while undermining political support for federally sponsored research and its efforts to foster a greater diversity of opportunity — geographic, economic, racial — among the nation’s scientific investigators.
The precariat, a class-in-the-making, is the first mass class in history that has systematically been losing rights built up for citizens. So, why is it thenew dangerous class and how is it differentiated from other class groups in the evolving global labour process?
The global society, more connected than ever is indeed a complex living organism that is suffering from all sorts of disharmonies and inequalities. Most of this issues are the result of years of economical development that were based on competition, and unsustainable extraction of value from nature and people.
“The Revolt Against the Masses” is a brilliantly argued, well-timed case against reactionary snobs who were and remain disgusted with American society. Under the subtitle “How Liberalism has Undermined the Middle Class,” Siegel documents with scholarly detail the arrogance of elites who launched a movement that romanticizes the poor while trying, with distressing success, to dismantle the democratic, capitalist traditions that helped establish the middle class.
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