"Development economics expert Ha-Joon Chang dispels the myths and prejudices that have come to dominate our understanding of how the world works in a lecture at the RSA."

"Despair is a black leather jacket in which everyone looks good, while hope is a frilly pink dress few dare to wear. Rebecca Solnit thinks this virtue needs to be redefined.

Here she takes to our pulpit to deliver a sermon that looks at the remarkable social changes of the past half century, the stories the mainstream media neglects and the big surprises that keep on landing.

She explores why disaster makes us behave better and why it's braver to hope than to hide behind despair's confidence and cynicism's safety.

History is not an army. It's more like a crab scuttling sideways. And we need to be brave enough to hope change is possible in order to have a chance of making it happen."

"…FBI gave explicit orders to leave the “anarchist” Libertarian Alliance alone, and focus on everyone else in the room.<br />
What’s so galling is that, in the libertarians’ revisionist history of themselves, they constantly describe themselves as “radicals”–as in “radicals for capitalism” or “anarcho-capitalists.” For three decades now, they’ve been pumping American history full of free-market mind-smog…<br />
<br />
The real radicals were destroyed by the State: imprisoned, scattered, harassed, surveilled, ruined, even shot to death in their beds, like Fred Hampton. That becomes clear in those FBI files. Today, there’s no Left to speak of. Today, libertarianism is not only the only “choice” that the state allows us to make, but worse, libertarianism’s popularity is growing to record levels (thanks to the billionaire Koch brothers’ investment), according to a recent New York Times article, “Poll Finds Shift Towards More Libertarian Views.”"

"Universities are elitist: they are about selecting the most able cohort of a generation and educating them to their ability—breaking open the elite and making it consistently anew. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are not the same thing. A society divided by wealth and inheritance cannot redress this injustice by camouflaging it in educational institutions—by denying distinctions of ability or by restricting selective opportunity—while favoring a steadily widening income gap in the name of the free market. This is mere cant and hypocrisy."<br />
<br />
[via: http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2011/05/03/easter-reading.php ]

"What alternative roles might designers take and what new strategies and ideas might the ‘design community‘ employ in response to these challenges?<br />
What happens when we move from severing corporate interests to the interests of the community?<br />
How can new tools and resources of rapid prototyping, digital and bio hacking, and DIY culture as a whole be used to create new economies?<br />
What services might we design if our constraints move from concerns about legal implications to personal ethical considerations?<br />
If instead of designing for the free market, what if we designed for the street, or black market?"

"He's often called the founder of modern economics. Some see him as the godfather of the free market. Others have viewed his work from a more socially concerned, even socialist standpoint. Business Daily takes a look at Adam Smith, the man and his legacy. Born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy in Scotland, he's been influencing economic thinking ever since the publishing of his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations. The eminent historian and economist, Tristam Hunt, guides us through Smith's life and how his ideas still have a fundamental bearing on economic and political strategies today. From Edinburgh to Vienna to Chicago to London, Hunt talks to some of the world's leading academics about Adam Smith's life and work, including Professor Iain McClean, professor of politics at Oxford university, Dr Craig Smith of St Andrew's University, Anthony Giddens from the London School of Economics and the activist and author Naomi Klein."

"In the ideal America of economic citizenship, there would be a single, universal, integrated, lifelong system of economic security including single-payer healthcare, Social Security, unemployment payments and family leave paid for by a single contributory payroll tax (which could be made progressive in various ways or reduced by combination with other revenue streams). Funding for all programs would be entirely nationalized, although states could play a role in administration. There would still be supplementary private markets in health and retirement products and services for the affluent, but most middle-class Americans would continue to rely primarily on the simple, user-friendly public system of economic security."

Some comments: "What is it about a certain kind of American mindset that feels everything can be solved by the profit motives of the private sector? It seemed like a naive mentality ten years ago, but given the implosion of the economy over the past two years it's feeling downright pathological" ... "Capitalism is to education as a pipe wrench is to watercolors."

"Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s economic sanity." ... "When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come."

"Ponder that sentence for a moment. The Federal Reserve has decided it must order lenders not to make loans that they should not make. As Paul Krugman observed -- "Horse. Barn door." Perhaps if Bernanke's predecessor, Alan Greenspan, had taken it upon him

"Stafford Beer in his book Platform for Change. Beer talks about social institutions such as 'schooling,'... These are self-organising and self-regulating systems. As their environment changes, how do they not collapse? How are they not sensitive to shock