Recommended Reading"Engrossing, exciting [...] This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics ..."
--Literary Review of Canada "Thought-provoking and creative" — Julie Nelson, author of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics "Meme Wars is a Molotov cocktail tossed into the boardroom. "— Calgary Herald From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and brings to light a more ecological model. Meme Wars aims to accelerate the shift into this new paradigm that takes into account psychonomics, bionomics, and other aspects of our physical and mental environment that are often left out in discussions of economics. Like Adbusters, the book will be image heavy and full-color throughout. Lasn calls it "a textbook for the future" that provides the building blocks, in texts and visuals, for a new way of looking at and changing our world. Through an examination of alternative economies, Lasn hopes to spur students to become "barefoot economists" and to see that a humanization of economics is possible. Meme Wars will include contributions from Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Samuelson, George Akerlof, Lourdes Benería, Julie Matthaei, Manfred Max-Neef, David Orrell, Paul Gilding, Mathis Wackernagel and the father of ecological economics Herman Daly, among others. Based on ideas that were presented in a special issue of Adbusters entitled "Thought Control in Economics: Beyond the Growth Paradigm / An Activist Toolkit," Meme Wars will help move forward the Occupy Wall Street movement. http://www.randomhouse.com/book/219342/meme-wars-by-kalle-lasn What is the ultimate responsibility of economists? Is it to do no harm? Is it to manage our planetary household in a responsible way ... to make sure the human race survives? |
Some awkward questions for your professorsWhat should the role of finance be in our society...what about the role of the banks? How does climate change factor into our study of economics? Are the self-organizing principles of markets the have emerged in human cultures over the past 300 years in conflict with the self-organising principles of ecosystems that have evolved over the past billion years? Why is is easier to imagine a total catastrophe which ends all life on Earth than it is to imagine a real change in capitalist relations? Do economists suffer from an academic inferiority complex called "physics envy"? Who grows up happier...the suburban kids in North America or the kids in the slums of Dhaka? Should we slow down fast money with a Robin Hood tax? Why is there nothing about Islamic economics in our curriculum? Why are we selling off our planet's natural capital - the foil, fish, forests and minerals - and the calling it income? Isn't this the most stupid of all mistakes that a planetary household manager can make? Is economic progress killing the planet? How do you measure progress? How do you know if we're going forward or backward? If economists don't know how to measure progress, on what basis do they give policy advice to governments? How does the $1-trillion year ad game factor into our studies of economics? What is the economic cost of the epidemic of mental illness now sweeping the globe? Is economics a cold theoretical game or...a profoundly personal discipline that goes to the heart of who we are as human beings? Do you think the economic and political framework which has ruled the world for the past fifty years is about to heave? Will our econ 101 curriculum change? |