In this clear and penetrating book, Chuck Collins and Mary Wright draw on principles of Catholic Social Teaching to evaluate our economy and lay out practical steps toward establishing an economy "as if people mattered."
Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.
A more ethical economic system is now possible, one that rectifies the crisis spots of our current downturn while balancing the injustices of extreme poverty and wealth. Adam Arvidsson and Nicolai Peitersen, a scholar and an entrepreneur, outline the shape such an economy might take, identifying its origins in innovations already existent in our production, valuation, and distribution systems. Much like nineteenth-century entrepreneurs, philosophers, bankers, artisans, and social organizers who planned a course for modern capitalism that was more economically efficient and ethically desirable, we now have a chance to construct new instruments, institutions, and infrastructure to reverse the trajectory of a quickly deteriorating economic environment. Considering a multitude of emerging phenomena, Arvidsson and Peitersen show wealth creation can be the result of a new kind of social production, and the motivation of continuous capital accumulation can exist in tandem with a new desire to maximize our social impact. Arvidsson and Peitersen argue that financial markets could become a central arena in which diverse ethical concerns are integrated into tangible economic valuations. They suggest that such a common standard has already emerged and that this process is linked to the spread of social media, making it possible to capture the sentiment of value to most people. They ultimately recommend how to build upon these developments to initiate a radical democratization of economic systems and the value decisions they generate.
Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics), and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy.
This book investigates why people are willing to support an institutional arrangement that realises large-scale redistribution of wealth between social groups of society. Steffen Mau introduces the concept of 'the moral economy' to show that acceptance of welfare exchanges rests on moral assumptions and ideas of social justice people adhere to. Analysing both the institution of welfare and the public attitudes towards such schemes, the book demonstrates that people are neither selfish nor altruistic; rather they tend to reason reciprocally.
The papers in this volume go back to a conference held September 14-15, 2002, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., in honour of Prof. Daniel L. Overmyer on his retirement. The contributions pay tribute to this renowned scholar of Chinese religious traditions, whose work is a constant reminder to look beyond text to context, beyond idea to practice, to study religion as it was and is lived by real people rather than as an abstract system of ideas and doctrines. Contents PHILIP CLART: Introduction RANDALL L. NADEAU: A Critical Review of Daniel L. Overmyer’s Contribution to the Study of Chinese Religions. I. Popular Sects and Religious Movements HUBERT SEIWERT: The Transformation of Popular Religious Movements of the Ming and Qing Dynasties: A Rational Choice Interpretation SHIN-YI CHAO: The Precious Volume of Bodhisattva Zhenwu Attaining the Way. A Case Study of the Worship of Zhenwu (Perfected Warrior) in Ming-Qing Sectarian Groups CHRISTIAN JOCHIM: Popular Lay Sects and Confucianism: A Study Based on the Way of Unity in Postwar Taiwan SOO KHIN WAH: The Recent Development of the Yiguan Dao Fayi Chongde Sub-Branch in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand PHILIP CLART: Merit beyond Measure. Notes on the Moral (and Real) Economy of Religious Publishing in Taiwan JEAN DEBERNARDI: "Ascend to Heaven and Stand on a Cloud." Daoist Teaching and Practice at Penang’s Taishang Laojun Temple. II. Historical and Ethnographic Studies of Chinese Popular Religion JOHN LAGERWEY: The History and Sociology of Religion in Changting County, Fujian KENNETH DEAN: The Growth of Local Control over Cultural and Environmental Resources in Ming and Qing Coastal Fujian PAUL R. KATZ: Religion, Recruiting and Resistance in Colonial Taiwan: A Case Study of the Xilai An Incident, 1915 WANG CHIEN-CH’UAN. Transl. PHILIP CLART: The White Dragon Hermitage and the Spread of the Eight Generals Procession Troupe in Taiwan TUEN WAI MARY YEUNG: Rituals and Beliefs of Female Performers in Cantonese Opera JORDAN PAPER: The Role of Possession Trance in Chinese Culture and Religion: A Comparative Overview from the Neolithic to the Present. III. The Religious Life of Clerics, Literati, and Emperors JUDITH BOLTZ: On the Legacy of Zigu and a Manual on Spirit-writing in Her Name STEPHEN ESKILDSEN: Death, Immortality, and Spirit Liberation in Northern Song Daoism. The Hagiographical Accounts of Zhao Daoyi ROBERTO K. ONG: Chen Shiyuan and Chinese Dream Theory BAREND J. TER HAAR: Yongzheng and His Buddhist Abbots. Glossary – Index
For decades, a secret army of tax attorneys, accountants and wealth managers has been developing into the shadowy Wealth Defence Industry. These ‘agents of inequality’ are paid millions to hide trillions for the richest 0.01%. In this book, inequality expert Chuck Collins, who himself inherited a fortune, interviews the leading players and gives a unique insider account of how this industry is doing everything it can to create and entrench hereditary dynasties of wealth and power. He exposes the inner workings of these “agents of inequality”, showing how they deploy anonymous shell companies, family offices, offshore accounts, opaque trusts, and sham transactions to ensure the world’s richest pay next to no tax. He ends by outlining a robust set of policies that democratic nations can implement to shut down the Wealth Defence Industry for good. This shocking exposé of the insidious machinery of inequality is essential reading for anyone wanting the inside story of our age of plutocratic plunder and stashed cash.
“Timely and important . . . It should be our North Star for the recovery and beyond.” —Hillary Clinton “Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in people’s deepest aspirations—in their sense of purpose and self-worth.” —The New York Times When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised when serious people in Washington told him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” How, he asked, was the fear felt by millions of Americans of being one serious illness away from financial ruin not considered an economic issue? Too often, Sperling found that we measured economic success by metrics like GDP instead of whether the economy was succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. In Economic Dignity, Sperling frames the way forward in a time of wrenching change and offers a vision of an economy whose guiding light is the promotion of dignity for all Americans.
In the spring of 2010, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply his wisdom to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life, which led to this now-classic article. Although Christensen’s thinking is rooted in his deep religious faith, these are strategies anyone can use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
What are the ends of economic activity? According to neoclassical theory, efficient interaction of the profit-maximizing "ideal producer" and the utility-maximizing "ideal consumer" will eventually lead to some sort of social optimum. But is that social optimum the same as human well-being? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals addresses that issue, considering such questions as: Does the maximization of individual welfare really lead to social welfare? How can we deal with questions of relative welfare and of equity? How do we define, or at least understand, individual and social welfare? And how can these things be measured, or even assessed? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals brings together more than 75 concise summaries of the most significant literature in the field that consider issues of present and future individual and social welfare, national development, consumption, and equity. Like its predecessors in the Frontier Issues in Economic Thought series, it takes a multidisciplinary approach to economic concerns, examining their sociological, philosophical, and psychological aspects and implications as well as their economic underpinnings. Human Well-Being and Economic Goals provides a powerful introduction to the current and historical writings that examine the concept of human well-being in ways that can help us to set goals for economic activity and judge its success. It is a valuable summary and overview for students, economists, and social scientists concerned with these issues.