Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking

http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1692

Thomas Kida (Amherst, MA) is a professor in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the author of many articles on decision-making.

Do you believe that you can consistently beat the stock market if you put in the effort? —that some people have extrasensory perception? —that crime and drug abuse in America are on the rise? Many people hold one or more of these beliefs although research shows that they are not true. And it’s no wonder since advertising and some among the media promote these and many more questionable notions.
Although our creative problem-solving capacity is what has made humans the successful species we are, our brains are prone to certain kinds of errors that only careful critical thinking can correct. This enlightening book discusses how to recognize faulty thinking and develop the necessary skills to become a more effective problem solver.
Author Thomas Kida identifies “the six-pack of problems” that leads many of us unconsciously to accept false ideas:

• We prefer stories to statistics
• We seek to confirm, not to question, our ideas.
• We rarely appreciate the role of chance and coincidence in shaping events.
• We sometimes misperceive the world around us.
• We tend to oversimplify our thinking.
• Our memories are often inaccurate.

Kida vividly illustrates these tendencies with numerous examples that demonstrate how easily we can be fooled into believing something that isn’t true.
In a complex society where success—in all facets of life—often requires the ability to evaluate the validity of many conflicting claims, the critical-thinking skills examined in this informative and engaging book will prove invaluable.

World Population Growth Infographic

http://www.upack.com/press/population-growth/ 

Just how much is the world's population expected to grow over the next 40 years? Here's a look at how the massive population growth over the past 60 years has impacted the world we live in and what to expect as the world population continues to grow.
Originally seen on: http://pimentanegra.blogspot.com/

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
- Walden - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

TAX HAVENS: How Globalization Really Works

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=5576

From the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man to the Principality of Liechtenstein and the state of Delaware, tax havens offer lower tax rates, less stringent regulations and enforcement, and promises of strict secrecy to individuals and corporations alike. In recent years government regulators, hoping to remedy economic crisis by diverting capital from hidden channels back into taxable view, have undertaken sustained and serious efforts to force tax havens into compliance.

In Tax Havens, Ronen Palan, Richard Murphy, and Christian Chavagneux provide an up-to-date evaluation of the role and function of tax havens in the global financial system-their history, inner workings, impact, extent, and enforcement. They make clear that while, individually, tax havens may appear insignificant, together they have a major impact on the global economy. Holding up to $13 trillion of personal wealth—the equivalent of the annual U.S. Gross National Product—and serving as the legal home of two million corporate entities and half of all international lending banks, tax havens also skew the distribution of globalization's costs and benefits to the detriment of developing economies.

The first comprehensive account of these entities, this book challenges much of the conventional wisdom about tax havens. The authors reveal that, rather than operating at the margins of the world economy, tax havens are integral to it. More than simple conduits for tax avoidance and evasion, tax havens actually belong to the broad world of finance, to the business of managing the monetary resources of individuals, organizations, and countries. They have become among the most powerful instruments of globalization, one of the principal causes of global financial instability, and one of the large political issues of our times.

Authors:
Ronen Palan is Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad Millionaires, also from Cornell.
Richard Murphy is CEO of Tax Research, LLP, based in the UK. He is a frequent adviser to the media, NGOs, and politicians, and writes a blog at taxresearch.org.uk.
Christian Chavagneux, based in Paris, is deputy editor in chief of Alternatives Economiques and editor of L'Economie politique.

"Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist."
- Garth Jowett

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters

"The freshest, deepest, most optimistic account of human nature I've come across in years."
-Bill McKibben

Rebecca Solnit - Author 

The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster's grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.

Rebecca Solnit is the author of numerous books, including Hope in the Dark, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. In 2003, she received the prestigious Lannan Literary Award.

The Evolution of Cooperation

Insects that survive on plant sap alone offer insights into the likely origin and evolution of all multicellular life

Source: http://seedmagazine.com/

Credit: Flickr user Michael Hodge

Suppose you were imprisoned in a room with no food supply except for a huge trough of maple syrup. How long do you think you could survive? Sure, the syrup would provide plenty of energy for basic bodily functions, but it would perhaps be only a few months until scurvy or other nasty diseases of malnutrition ravaged your body. Without the ability to somehow produce vitamins and amino acids necessary for survival, consuming a food composed of just sugar and a few minerals likely wouldn’t sustain you for even a year.

Yet many animals do survive on very limited diets, and they have no more ability than you do to produce the basic building blocks of life. Last week, microbiology researcher Ryan Kitko pointed out that the candy-stripe leafhopper thrives while consuming only the xylem and phloem of plants—sap. So how do sap-sucking insects like leafhoppers and aphids survive? Kitko points to two studies on a type of leafhopper commonly known as sharpshooters. Researchers found cells in sharpshooters that were jam-packed with bacteria, which converted the raw materials from sap into the vitamins and amino acids the insects need to survive.

The glassy-winged sharpshooter has two different resident bacteria, each of which creates different nutrients for the host insect from its base diet of plant sap. The bacteria are transmitted directly from the mother to her eggs, so young insects hatch with all the apparatus they need to live on plant sap alone. The bacteria, in turn, have very limited genomes. They wouldn’t be able to survive without the host insects to provide protection and a ready supply of food. In fact, the two bacteria that provide nutrients for the sharpshooter themselves have complementary genomes, each having lost formerly essential sections of their genome now found in the other. The bacteria not only produce nutrients for the host, but also depend on each other’s presence to get the nutrients they themselves need.

Most biologists now believe that complex cells with nuclei—eukaryotes—originated from simpler cells by combining and integrating the functions of those cells. A eukaryotic cell’s mitochondria, which convert food to more readily usable energy sources, or a eukarotyic cell’s chloroplasts, responsible for photosynthesis, are both believed to derive from what once were separate and distinct organisms. Similarly, the bacteria in leafhoppers have become essential for the leafhoppers’ survival, reproducing along with the insects themselves.

Perhaps not surprisingly, mutualistic relationships between bacteria and host organisms aren’t limited to insects. The biochemist who blogs as “Lab Rat” points to another such relationship, which allows plants to use otherwise inaccessible nitrogen in the atmosphere. While the importance of the relationship between plants and the bacteria in root nodules has been recognized for years, recent advances in genome sequencing have helped shed light on how the relationship may have evolved. Lab Rat cites a review published last month by Christina Toft and Siv Andersson in Nature Reviews Genetics. Toft and Andersson say that as a mutualistic relationship becomes more advanced, genomes in mutualistic bacteria become progressively smaller.

In the early stages of a mutualistic relationship, a bacterium must be able to survive on its own in addition to within a host organism. In fact, its genome might become more complex as it develops the means to interact successfully with its host. But once the bacterium is completely dependent on its host, the genes and apparatus that allowed it live independently become unwieldy vestigial baggage. The research on genome size in these bacteria backs this up: Bacteria that are fully dependent on their hosts have significantly smaller genomes than those that are also able to live on their own.

After nearly a billion years of evolution, the mitochondria in your cells bear small resemblance to their bacterial ancestors, but they still possess their own DNA and the ability to reproduce. Their tiny genome contains just enough information to preserve their function, independent of the vastly larger genome of your cell nucleus. Without the protection of your body and the food delivered by your digestive and circulatory systems, your mitochondria couldn’t survive. But without mitochondria, all eukaryotic life as we know it, let alone plants and animals, would be impossible. While it’s impossible to reconstruct the evolution of mitochondria with certainty, other mutualistic bacteria can give us insight into how mitochondria may have evolved.

And while it seems unlikely that humans will ever develop the ability to survive on syrup alone, insects that thrive on an equally simple diet can still show us something about how human life evolved, with all its diverse tastes and needs.

Dave Munger is editor of ResearchBlogging.org, where you can find thousands of blog posts on this and myriad other topics. Each week, he writes about recent posts on peer-reviewed research from across the blogosphere. See previous Research Blogging columns »

L' oligarchie, ça suffit, vive la démocratie - Hervé Kempf

http://www.seuil.com/fiche-ouvrage.php?EAN=9782021028881

Sommes-nous en dictature ? Non. Sommes-nous en démocratie ? Non plus. Les puissances d’argent ont acquis une influence démesurée, les grands médias sont contrôlés par les intérêts capitalistes, les lobbies décident des lois en coulisses, les libertés sont jour après jour entamées. Dans tous les pays occidentaux, la démocratie est attaquée par une caste. En réalité, nous sommes entrés dans un régime oligarchique, cette forme politique conçue par les Grecs anciens et qu’ont oubliée les politologues : la domination d’une petite classe de puissants qui discutent entre pairs et imposent ensuite leurs décisions à l’ensemble des citoyens.

Si nous voulons répondre aux défis du XXIe siècle, il faut revenir en démocratie : cela suppose de reconnaître l’oligarchie pour ce qu’elle est, un régime qui vise à maintenir les privilèges des riches au mépris des urgences sociales et écologiques.

Car la crise écologique et la mondialisation rebattent les cartes de notre culture politique : l’Occident doit apprendre à partager le monde avec les autres habitants de la planète. Il n’y parviendra qu’en sortant du régime oligarchique pour réinventer une démocratie vivante. Si nous échouons à aller vers la Cité mondiale, guidés par le souci de l’équilibre écologique, les oligarques nous entraîneront dans la violence et l’autoritarisme.

Au terme de ce récit précisément documenté mais toujours vivant, le lecteur ne verra plus la politique de la même façon.

Comment les riches détruisent la planète et Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme, les précédents ouvrages d’Hervé Kempf, ont rencontré un réjouissant succès. Ils ont été traduits dans de nombreuses langues. L’intérêt soutenu qu’ils continuent de susciter en fait désormais des références de l’écologie politique.

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey

http://davidharvey.org/

Since the moment the deeply unsettling financial disaster erupted in September 2008, a crisis of confidence has gripped the economic mind. Experts of all stripes, from Alan Greenspan on down, were at a loss to explain what had happened.

A legendary scholar and critic of capitalism, David Harvey has been warning of problems for decades. Now, in The Enigma of Capital , Harvey provides a sweeping and brilliantly clear explanation of how the disaster happened, and how we can avoid another like it. Unlike other commentators, Harvey does not focus on subprime loans or mortgage securitization as the root cause of the calamity. Instead, he looks at something that reaches far deeper into the heart of capitalism--the flow of money through society. He shows how falling profit margins in the 1970s generated a deep transformation. With government assistance, capital was freed to flow across borders, and production moved to cheaper labor markets, depressing workers' incomes in the West. But as more and more money moved out of the laboring classes and into the pockets of the wealthy, a problem arose--how could the workers afford to buy the products which fueled the now-global economy? To solve this problem, a new kind of finance capitalism arose, pouring rivers of credit to increasingly strapped consumers. Moreover, these financial institutions loaned money to both real-estate developers as well as home buyers--in effect, controlling both the supply and demand for housing. But when the real-estate market collapsed, so did this financial edifice, an edifice that dominated our economy.

We cannot afford to simply shore up this financial system, Harvey writes; we need to undertake a radical overhaul. With this landmark account, he offers a richly informed discussion of how we can turn our economy in a new direction--fairer, healthier, more just, and truly sustainable.

Understanding and Forecasting the Credit Cycle

Why the Mainstream Paradigm in Economics and Finance Collapsed

by Richard A. Werner

Table of contents

Introduction
Crises Have Disproven Mainstream Neo-Classical Economics
What’s Wrong with Mainstream Economics?
The Reality of Credit Creation: There Is No Such Thing As a Bank Loan
How to Fix the Banking System and Ensure Employment

The Reality of Credit Creation: There Is No Such Thing As a Bank Loan

What are the implications for finance and banking? For small firms, the price of money (the interest rate) is usually less important than the question of whether a loan can be obtained at all. Banks prefer to ration and allocate credit—even in the best of times—because due to the high demand for this useful thing called money, the theoretical market-clearing interest rate would be so high as to leave them with only risky projects, while sensible projects could not service the loans. This explains why interest rates are far less important in the economy than is generally claimed. Instead, the quantity of credit is the most important variable determining growth, asset prices, and exchange rates.

The most important institutional reality that has been neglected by theoretical equilibrium economics is the key function banks perform: they create between 95% and 98% of the money supply. The first and most important form of privatization that has swept the world has been the privatization of the creation and allocation of money, which is implemented by privately-owned commercial banks.

This means that there is no such thing as a “bank loan.” Banks do not lend money. “Lending” refers to transferring control of the lent object to the borrower. If I lend you my car, I can’t drive it at the same time. That’s not what banks do when they issue a “bank loan.” Instead, they are allowed by the current regulatory framework to create new money out of nothing—which is called “credit creation.” The collective decisions of commercial bank staff thus determine how much money is created, who gets the newly created money and to what use it is put.

Mainstream economics assumes that the best possible outcome will be achieved if banks are left alone in making their decisions about how much money should be created, to whom it should be handed over, and for what purpose. But the current crisis has demonstrated that we can’t expect banks’ credit decisions to be in any way beneficial to the overall economy, social welfare, or even the bankers themselves—as Alan Greenspan has now admitted. The incentive structure at banks is such that they tend to create too much credit, when not needed, and for unproductive use. This is followed by banks creating too little money, when more would be needed.

There are some simple rules for sound banking and sound economics that need to be followed. Whenever credit is created and used to increase the amount of goods and services provided, it will result in noninflationary growth; more money comes about, but also more goods and services. Whenever credit is created and used for unproductive purposes, inflation comes about; more money chases limited goods or assets. The unproductive credit creation can take two forms. When credit is extended for consumption, it will result in consumer price inflation. When credit is extended for non-GDP transactions (which means mainly financial and real estate transactions), there will be asset inflation. Both cases are unsustainable and, if sufficiently large, result in banking and economic crises.

In the research experience of this author, this framework (first proposed in a 1992 paper, published as Werner, 1997) delivers the most reliable models for forecasting nominal GDP growth, equity markets, bond markets, and even currencies. Credit used for GDP transactions is the most reliable forecaster of nominal GDP growth. Credit used for non-GDP transactions ends up driving up real estate and asset prices, and ultimately turns into bad debts. It is thus a key variable to watch by policy makers, if one wants to prevent asset bubbles and banking crises, as I have suggested many times in the past two decades. Empirical evidence and further details can be found in the book, New Paradigm in Macroeconomics.

To prevent banking crises, it must be ensured that the bulk of credit creation is used for productive purposes. Specifically, aggregate bank credit for transactions that are not part of GDP (something that can be easily verified by loan officers) needs to be monitored, and suppressed when it rises in excess of overall bank credit growth (see Werner, 1997, 1999). This simple measure would have prevented the credit bubbles in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, and many emerging markets, which have now burst and caused the current crisis. It would also have prevented the Japanese depression since 1990 or the US Depression of the 1930s, among others. Central banks used to monitor precisely this but, following the deregulation advice of mainstream economics, they chose to abolish their “credit guidance” policies and instead let rip the unproductive bank credit expansions. Ironically, now the UK, French, and German governments want to monitor the allocation of new bank lending (to small firms) policy advice of the kind I have given consistently and repeatedly since 1991, but which was rejected as ‘inefficient interference’ in ‘free markets’. This amounts to closing stable doors when the horse has already bolted.

Thus one also needs to ask why those institutions that could have prevented the bubbles have singularly failed to do so, although they had been given unusually strong powers with little accountability to democratic institutions—the central banks. They cannot feign ignorance: apart from employing the largest number of economists of any institution and spending vast resources on ‘research’ (none of it on the taboo topic of credit creation), I have also contacted many central banks and finance ministries and have in the past twenty years published many articles based on my credit model, warning of pending crises (such as today’s UK banking collapse) and indicating that bubbles and subsequent collapses could easily be prevented by monitoring and restricting speculative (non-GDP) credit creation. Central banks – and governments for that matter – were not interested. This suggests that the very independence and lack of accountability of central banks has been a factor in allowing the creation of credit bubbles and the propagation of the current crisis. Central banks should be made to monitor credit flows and be more directly accountable to democratically elected assemblies for the macroeconomic results.

Modernities, Class, and the Contradictions of Globalization: The Anthropology of Global Systems

"Bacall and Bogart typify a particular time in film. Ekholm Friedman and Friedman define a particular time in anthropology. Bacall and Bogart did it with grace; Ekholm Friedman and Friedman do it with disciplinary elegance. What they do is to rethink anthropology, specifically by using global anthropology to explain the emergence and dynamics of the modern world. In Modernities, Class, and the Contradictions of Globalization, the second volume of their monumental The Anthropology of Global Systems, the authors introduce concepts and theoretical debates that have characterized different attempts to understand the global. Ekholm Friedman and Friedman help us understand the modern world's changing ethnographic landscape, forms of political order, and diverse modes of discourse. They are the Bacall and Bogart of systemic globalization."—Stephen Reyna, University of Manchester

In Modernities, Class, and the Contradictions of Globalization, two distinguished anthropologists look at how global processes have shaped the emergence of our dynamic and often difficult and contradictory modern world. The authors are particularly interested in structures that link individual human beings to more general social transformations. This book is a synthesis of the Friedmans' decades-long anthropological research into the human consequences--whether for good or bad--of globalization. (http://iris.ehess.fr/document.php?id=714)

About the Authors

Kajsa Ekholm Friedman is professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at Lund University, Sweden.

Jonathan Friedman is directeur d'études at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, and professor of social anthropology at Lund University.

Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item2712693/?site_locale=en_GB

Kristin J. Anderson, University of Houston-Downtown

http://www.benignbigotry.com/Site/Introduction.html

While overt prejudice is now much less prevalent than in decades past, subtle prejudice - prejudice that is inconspicuous, indirect, and often unconscious - continues to pervade our society. Laws do not protect against subtle prejudice and, because of its covert nature, it is difficult to observe and frequently goes undetected by both perpetrator and victim. Benign Bigotry uses a fresh, original format to examine subtle prejudice by addressing six commonly held cultural myths based on assumptions that appear harmless but actually foster discrimination: 'those people all look alike'; 'they must be guilty of something'; 'feminists are man-haters'; 'gays flaunt their sexuality'; 'I'm not a racist, I'm color-blind' and 'affirmative action is reverse racism'. Kristin J. Anderson skillfully relates each of these myths to real world events, emphasizes how errors in individual thinking can affect society at large, and suggests strategies for reducing prejudice in daily life.

The financialization of the Ecosystem Services:

How and why should we trust profit driven markets to solve the problems created by a mindset of permanent economic growth? "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." - Albert Einstein (neither by the same instituitional framework. Institutional diversity is required to tackle the multidimensional challenges that human kind needs to adress properly.)

Ecosystem Services: Pricing to Peddle

by Brian Czech

Souce: http://steadystate.org/ecosystem-services-pricing-to-peddle/

On November 15, five nations issued a complaint about a UN initiative called the “Global Green New Deal.” These nations claim that “nature is seen [by the UN] as ‘capital’ for producing tradable environmental goods and services.” They express their concern about the “privatization and the mercantilization of nature through the development of markets for environmental services.” They also declare their “condemnation of unsustainable models of economic growth.”

For the purposes of this week’s Daly News, it matters little who these nations are, nor does it matter if their interpretation of the Green New Deal is completely accurate. What does matter is that their complaint ripens our attention to a widespread and growing controversy about the implications of valuing ecosystem services.

The good news from the Green New Deal is that ecological microeconomics (such as valuing ecosystem services) has risen from the recesses of academia into the realm of international diplomacy. The bad news is that ecological macroeconomics (such as limits to growth) apparently has not. Let’s take a look at the implications.

The primary distinction of ecological economics, in contrast with conventional or “neoclassical” economics, is that ecological economists recognize limits to growth and a fundamental trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection. The economic pie can only get so big even if all its pieces are correctly priced, including ecosystem services. Because the economic pie can only get so big, society must also pay greater attention to fairly distributing the pieces. In order to protect the environment, and to help allocate resources in the fairest manner, it helps to recognize the economic value of ecosystem services. That’s what ecological microeconomics is all about; estimating the value of natural capital and ecosystem services.

In mainstream economic circles, on the other hand, limits to growth are seen as nonexistent or too far off to worry about. That leads to a nonchalant attitude about fairness; just grow the economy because a “rising tide lifts all boats.” Traditional economists don’t mind valuing ecosystem services, however. As long as the prices are right, and markets are established, ecosystem services can be allocated efficiently, just like steel and milk into guns and butter.

The valuation of ecosystem services provides some common ground for neoclassical and ecological economics. That should be a good thing. However, common ground can be a minefield, too. Many a well-meaning bureaucrat and diplomat are stumbling toward the landmines.

Perhaps the two most common concerns about valuing ecosystem services are: 1) Many ecosystem services are beyond the ability of humans to estimate the value of, much less to “price” for the market. “Value of the ozone layer? Priceless.” 2) The valuing of ecosystem services begs a market, then monetization of the services such that they are viewed as commodities to be traded like hogs or hoola hoops. For many cultures this offends the senses of dignity and harmony with the natural world. “Would you take 40,000 hogs for the climate regulation provided by that forest over there?”

But my concern is with another problem; namely, our inattention to where the money comes from to pay for services such as water filtration, carbon sequestration, pollination, etc. There seems to be an attitude that, if we just throw enough money at a problem, we’ll solve it. And that is precisely the attitude that creeps in when ecological microeconomics is not complemented with a healthy dose of ecological macroeconomics. Markets convey the idea that you can have as much as you want as long as you pay the right price; ecological macroeconomics says the total is limited and the right market price should simply ration the limited total. And if the total is not limited then it is hard for the price to be “right”.

We especially need more awareness of the trophic origins of money. Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it does come from the ground in a very real sense. The amount of money available for the purchasing of guns, butter, hogs or carbon sequestration originates from the agricultural and extractive surplus that frees the hands for the division of labor.

In other words, it is not the ozone layer that “generates” money for throwing at its priceless service. Nor does the North Pole “generate” the money for ecotourists to witness it. What generates money is activity on the ground – on the farm, in the forest, in the fishery – that gives everyone else their food, as well as the materials for their clothing and shelter. Everyone else is then free to work in the manufacturing or service sectors. With plenty of surplus, the economy can even support bankers, actors, and financial engineers who set up markets for trading carbon permits. That’s the trophic structure of the human economy.

The more our farmers, loggers, and fishermen produce, the more money we’ll all have for the bank, the movies, and trading in biodiversity credits. But of course the more we ask them to produce, the more environmental impact we’ll have. If you insist on growing the economy and protecting the environment, eventually the bank and the theatre will be empty; your money’s going straight to the ecosystem services market. It’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Now consider the other side of the coin, so to speak. We often hear about the investment in the Catskill Mountains watershed that provides clean water to New York City. I’m all for it! But it’s no example of reconciling the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. What do the growthers think they’re going to do in that watershed: open hog farms and build high-rises? No, by “investing” in that natural capital a decision was made to keep the land relatively free from intensive economic activity. That’s not the kind of investment they like to hear about in New York City, at least not on Wall Street.

So I’ll stop short of saying, “Let’s encourage all the ecological microeconomics we can get.” Let’s encourage some of it, while realizing that there are only so many ecological economists to go around. Let’s encourage far more study and practice of ecological macroeconomics. With microeconomics, let’s help to demonstrate what’s at stake when we mine an aquifer or pull up a fishery. But more importantly, let’s not peddle those ecosystem services like they’re rubber boots. Remember where the money comes from to pay for them: the liquidation of natural capital stocks somewhere else. That’s ecological macroeconomics, and that leads to a steady state economy where some of those precious ecosystem services stay where they belong: out of the market.

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061765216

"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act."
- Stanley Milgram, 1974

In the 1960s Stanley Milgram carried out a series of experiments in which human subjects were given progressively more painful electro-shocks in a careful calibrated series to determine to what extent people will obey orders even when they knew them to be painful and immoral-to determine how people will obey authority regardless of consequences. These experiments came under heavy criticism at the time but have ultimately been vindicated by the scientific community. This book is Milgram′s vivid and persuasive explanation of his methods.

Big Government and Big Business ... will try to impose social and cultural uniformity upon adults and their children. To achieve this they will (unless prevented) make use of all the mind-manipulating techniques at their disposal and will not hesitate to reinforce these methods of non-rational persuasion by economic coercion and threats of physical violence. If this kind of tyranny is to be avoided, we must begin without delay to educate ourselves and our children for freedom and self-government. Such an education for freedom should be ... first of all in facts and in values — the facts of individual diversity and genetic uniqueness and the values of freedom, tolerance and mutual charity, which are the ethical corollaries of these facts. 
- Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)
http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/Illuminating_Quotes.cfm

"A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection not an invitation for hypnosis."
- Umberto Eco

Ellen Brown from the book Web of Debt

"Today the government is actually run by the money cartel. Big business holds all the cards, because its affiliated banks have appropriated the power to create money for themselves. These giant cartels can be brought to heel only by cutting off their source of power and returning it to its rightful sovereign owners, the people and their representative government. The problem with the current monetary scheme is not that the government is irresponsibly running the printing presses but that private bankers are covertly engaged in that practice. Bankers have monopolized the business of issuing and lending the national money supply, a function that the Constitution delegates solely to Congress. What hides behind the banner of "free enterprise" today is a system in which giant corporate monopolies have used their affiliated banking trusts to generate unlimited funds to buy up competitors, the media, and the government itself, forcing truly independent private enterprise out. Big private banks are allowed to create money out of nothing, lend it at interest, foreclose on the collateral, and determine who gets credit and who doesn't. They can advance massive loans to their affiliated cartels and hedge funds, which use the money to raid competitors and manipulate markets. If some players have the power to create money and others don't, the playing field is not 'level' but allows some favored players to dominate and coerce others. "

There is a disturbing amount of evidence that our problems don't just extend to the private corporate banks, but that in fact the entire World Banking System exists not to enrich humanity but to enslave humanity beneath its debt.

While I certainly cannot claim to know the motivations that guide those behind the institutions currently in power, I can however investigate their history and their actions.

http://secret-of-life.org/the-Federal-Reserve

La décroissance: Entropie - Écologie - Économie (1979)

La table des matières; Quatrième de couverture.

Introduction à la deuxième édition, 1995; Préface à la première édition (1979).

Table des figures

Fiches des auteurs cités par Georgescu-Roegen (Annexe II, pp. 203-231)

Le texte de La Décroissance au format Word 2001 à télécharger (Un fichier de 213 pages et de 1 Mo.)

Le texte de La Décroissance au format PDF (Acrobat Reader) à télécharger (Un fichier de 213 pages et de 956 K.)

Le texte de La Décroissance au format rtf (Rich text format) à télécharger (Un fichier de 213 pages et de 1,5 Mo.)

Une édition électronique réalisée à partir du livre de Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994). La décroissance. Entropie - Écologie - Économie (1979). Présentation et traduction de MM. Jacques Grinevald et Ivo Rens. Nouvelle édition, 1995. [Première édition, 1979]. Paris: Éditions Sang de la terre, 1995, 254 pp. [Autorisation accordée par les ayant-droit et les traducteurs, MM. Jacques Grinevald et Ivo Rens, Université de Genève, le 17 février 2004] Une éditions numérique réalisée par Gemma Paquet, bénévole, professeure retraitée du Cégep de Chicoutimi.
Courriel: Ivo.Rens@droit.unige.ch, professeur, Université de Genève.