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For thirty years, the British economy has repeated the same old experiment of subjecting everything to competition and market because that is what works in the imagination of central government. This book demonstrates the repeated failure of that experiment by detailed examination of three sectors: broadband, food supply and retail banking. The book argues for a new experiment in social licensing whereby the right to trade in foundational activities would be dependent on the discharge of social obligations in the form of sourcing, training and living wages. Written by a team of researchers and policy advocates based at the Centre for Research on Socio Cultural Change, this book combines rigour and readability, and will be relevant to practitioners, policy makers, academics and engaged citizens.
As the neoliberal order decays, we recall Polanyi's warning against market domination and his trademark ideas: commodified money, the double movement, the US exception development, the reality of society, and socialism as freedom in a complex society. The contributors consider the links between Polanyi's ideas and income inequality, world systems theory, and comparative political economy.
The capitalist mode of destruction investigates capitalism's mounting destructiveness. Tracing today's economic, ecological and democratic crises to capitalism's undemocratic use of the surplus, TMCD also highlights the necessity of a democratic classless society, which would restore control of the surplus to those who produce it.
Outsourcing - contracting out public services to private business interests - is an unacknowledged revolution in the British economy. The outsourcing revolution has happened quietly but is creating powerful new corporate interests, transforming the organisation of government at all levels, and simultaneously enriching a new business elite and creating numerous fiascos in the delivery of public services. What links the brutal treatment of asylum seeking detainees, the disciplining of welfare benefit claimants, the huge profits effortlessly earned by the privatised rail companies, and the fiasco of the management of security at the 2012 Olympics? In a word: outsourcing. The book documents how ...
Aeron Davis takes a close look at the state of elites today. He argues that the Brexit vote and 2017 election outcome are signs of a deeper leadership crisis that has been developing over decades. The great transformations of the 1980s onwards have not only upended societies, they have reshaped elite rule itself. Too many leaders today, regardless of intent, are ignorant, precarious, rootless and self-serving. Although richer, they have lost coherence, influence and control. Increasingly, they are just reckless opportunists, getting what they can amid the chaos they have created. Their failings are not only damaging wider society, they are undermining the very foundations of the Establishment itself. The book, based on interviews with over 350 elite figures, asks: how did we end up producing the leaders that got us here and what can we do about it?
This book combines phenomenology and political economy to offer new approaches for analyses of human-environment relations and technologies. It contributes to the social studies of fisheries through an analysis of how fishing practices and social relations are shaped by political economy.
A classic in the field of political economy, reissued here with a new, incisive introduction. The global financial crisis that Strange predicted in her work has now taken place, and to a large extent is still happening.
A century ago, the idea of 'the economy' didn't exist. Now economics is the supreme ideology of our time, with its own rules and language. The trouble is, most of us can't speak it. This is damaging democracy. Dangerous agendas are hidden inside mathematical wrappers; controversial policies are presented as 'proven' by the models of economic 'science'. Government is being turned over to a publicly unaccountable technocratic elite. The Econocracy reveals that economics is too important to be left to the economists - and shows us how we can begin to participate more fully in the decisions which affect all our futures.
This book is about how a new form of social contract, which we call the spatial contract, can help revitalize the economies of the basic things that matter - the core systems which build and provision the settlements human beings call home.
The foundational economy is everywhere: from clean water to care homes, schools to hospitals, these vital services were established between 1880 and 1980 to be collectively paid for, collectively delivered and collectively consumed. This essential framework has transformed the lives of billions, but in the last generation it has come under considerable attack. Privatisation, market choice and outsourcing have depleted the material infrastructure at the core of everyday life, and the foundational economy is in desperate need of renewal. This book sets out the principles and initiatives to end the degradation of the foundational economy and restore its essential place in society. In the face of our growing needs, the authors argue, politics must refocus on foundational consumption and universal minimum access and quality.