Photos from Berkeley
from Adbusters
In anticipation of November’s Carnivalesque Rebellion, a memewar salvo has been opened on the University of California – Berkeley’s prestigious Economics department. The first act was a defiant challenge. The Kick It Over Manifesto was boldly pinned to the door of Daniel McFadden, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, along with bulletin boards throughout the department.
Printed on bright pink paper, the manifesto declares in part: “You hide in your offices, protected by your mathematical jargon, while in the real world, forests vanish, species perish and human lives are callously destroyed. We accuse you of gross negligence in the management of our planetary household.”
The goal was to disrupt the obliviousness of students and teachers who preach the self-destructive consumerist lie that societies should pursue economic growth. It worked: the manifesto hit a nerve.
Within three hours, an adjunct professor emailed Adbusters to justify his approach to teaching economic theory. But he concluded with a defiant flare: “I have a fairly strong hunch that you are mistaken about the system crumbling, or the imminent loss of relevance of mainstream economics. In all likelihood my students will continue to have considerable influence on the body politic for many years to come.”
We, jammers and activists, vow to make the econ department a key location in the coming insurrection of ideas. To the students of economics in universities across the world, we say that it is time to challenge the flawed economic theories of your professors. As Kalle Lasn wrote in his Preface to the Student, before you is a decision moment: “You can ignore all of the screaming inconsistencies and accept the status quo. You can cross your fingers and hope the old paradigm has a generation or two left in it, enough for you to carve out a career. Or you can align yourself from the get-go with the mavericks. You can be an agitator, a provocateur, one of the students on campus who posts heterodox messages up on notice boards and openly challenges professors in class. You can bet your future career on a paradigm shift.”
The economics department at Berkeley will be jammed again… and again. Join us by spreading the memewar to your campus. Remember, the Carnivalesque Rebellion is November 22 to 28!
These students and the protestors in France are setting a good example.
Why today’s hikes and cuts?
Two reasons. One, governments have paid out astronomical sums of taxpayers money to save financial institutions and their ultra rich owners. Two, the Crash caused by the greed and recklessness of those same people has reduced our incomes and therefore government tax revenues.
But wait a minute. Why then should students, the middle class, the working class, the poor and the retired be made the ones to pay for the billions – or is it trillions – given to the rich?
Simple: no political clout.
So how can students, the middle class, the working class, the poor and the retired get political clout and get it quick?
These days – not always and not tomorrow if we get off our ass – people mainly get political clout with MONEY. The rich have 3 time-tested ways of buying it – 3 ways, in blunter words, of perverting the democratic process and its institutions. One, they buy political parties and elected officials by making huge contributions to their campaign funds, and they buy economists by endowing chairs and tanks. Two, they invest heavily in lobbyists who lay on the champagne, caviar and prostitutes. Three, they control the media by buying it – TV, radio, newspapers, magazines.
But in democracies, even perverted ones, you don’t need MONEY to win if you have numbers, energy, truth and virtue on your side. It has always been the case that PEOPLE-IN-THE-STREETS can triumph over MONEY. Today’s IT social-networking makes this more true and easier to keep true than anytime ever.
If people take to the streets (I’m speaking loosely here, like tacking manifestos to bulletin boards), and usually only if they do, politicians, even elected ones, will listen. Here are some giant examples: civil rights for African-Americans, equal rights for women, the liberation of India from Britain.
Unfortunately, they are often the public front of economics. Glib, self referential, and self aggrandizing they shower accolades on themselves because no one else will. As individuals they may be fine, but as a group they are destructive.
I hope the students have an impact. I have my doubts. Nonetheless I wish them well. All entrenched ideas need to be challenged periodically.
For the good of all of us.
Hmmm. My post above seems to have been truncated. My error I presume!
Please allow me to correct myself:
This is our problem. The Professor quoted above said:
“I have a fairly strong hunch that you are mistaken about the system crumbling, or the imminent loss of relevance of mainstream economics. In all likelihood my students will continue to have considerable influence on the body politic for many years to come.”
He is right.
Neoclassical economics is not about to crumble. And his students will, no doubt, have an influence on the body politic.
This is a shame. And it is why we need to be rid of him and his ilk. I wish this could be done via persuasion, but recent evidence suggests that no amount of fact undermines the faith neoclassical economists have in their theories. No amount of fact can refute their hypothesis. They are the very antithesis of science yet they portray themselves as scientific. They are bound together by outdated methods, dogma, and an ideological zeal that betrays the core value of a commitment to learning.
Unfortunately, they are often the public front of economics. Glib, self referential, and self aggrandizing they shower accolades on themselves because no one else will. As individuals they may be fine, but as a group they are destructive.
I hope the students have an impact. I have my doubts. Nonetheless I wish them well. All entrenched ideas need to be challenged periodically.
For the good of all of us.
BRAVO ! I have been writing critiques of economics and proposing systems approaches for over three decades . Time for this kind of Reformation. Read our TRANSFORMING FINANCE statement at http://www.EthicalMarkets.com
Kudos to the students!