Send in the Clowns, Where are the Clowns, They’re Already Here

The sense of common decency is a rare commodity these days, a very rare commodity indeed, something that has all but disappeared in this day and age. Brazen means someone without shame. The parties that have taken an entire nation hostage just so that they don’t have to reveal certain unspeakable facts certainly have no concept of […]

Golds Up, Better Ideas are Down……

The traditional corporation won’t vanish, but it will cease to be the center of gravity of economic life in another generation or two. They will live on as religious institutions do today, as weakened ghosts of more vital institutions from centuries ago. Venkatesh Rao The RibbonFarm Blog, A Brief History of the Corporation The […]

The Usual Suspects

Two other important examples the study dissects are financial deregulation in the United States and privatization in post-Soviet Russia. In both cases, economic reforms that made a lot of sense in the abstract and in terms of economic efficiency had the unintended consequence of strengthening already powerful political interests. As the powerful often do, they […]

Pull the Curtain Back and Take a Good Look

“Of course the irremediable bitterness in Picasso’s soul, the power of the inner sanction he felt later in life to wound and humiliate others, had to come in part out of the paradox that the paintings that brought him the greatest sums were precisely the works which had cost him the most miserable days of […]

A Gross National Happiness Capitalism

There are more than two thousand publicly owned electric utilities now operating, day by day, week by week, throughout the United States (many in the conservative South). Indeed, 25 percent of US electricity is supplied by locally owned public utilities and co-ops. What Then Must We Do? […]

Voluptuous Economics and Stingy Sweethearts

MONDRAGON Corporation is a business-based socioeconomic initiative with deep roots in the Basque Country… Fosters participation and the involvement of people in the management, profits and ownership of their companies, developing a shared project which unites social, business and personal progress. From Mondragon’s website If the Best is Yet Come, Exactly What was All of […]

Sustainable Comedy and the Folly of Capitalism

For years, economists have posited that prosperity requires growth, with environmental damage as the regrettable but unavoidable consequence. A growing number of critics are now challenging this equation, though, calling for a radical revamping of the economic system. Nils Klawitter My Cowboy Cadillac and the Place I’ve Called Home for Near Four Decades I’ve […]

Market Testing Narrative Or How I Celebrated My Vegetative State of Mind

Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data New York Times May 6, 2013 Front Page (Below the Fold) Time heals all things. Yesterday while flying back from Seattle I choked down this front pager from the NYT on the notion of using data before the making of a script into a […]

Saturday night in West Seattle

Am opportunity to hob nob with the locals…included beverage of your choice, loud vintage rock & roll jukebox, gothic tattoos, dogs on leash, and young lovers in sunset heatwave ritual….

The Wisdom of Pilots… And the Fools of Wall Street

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It’s what everything else isn’t. Theodore Roethke Poet FLYING IS NOT FAITH BASED The debate regarding the kind of capitalism might best serve our world seems to be at the center of many controversies. Never was a comedy about what has happened to […]