Book Review:Free Enterprise and Economic Organization: Legal and Related Materials. Louis B. Schwartz

Any economic activity carried out by an organization, can generate a wide range of environmental implications. Particularly important, must be considered the activities that have a significant negative effect on the environment, meaning those which pollute. Being known the harmful effects of pollution on the human health, the paper presents two models of utmost importance, one of the material environment-economy interactions balance and the other of the material flows between environmental factors and socio-economic activities. The study of these models enable specific conditions that must be satisfied for the economic processes friendly coexist to the environment for long term, meaning to have a minimal impact in that the residues resulting from the economic activity of the organization to be as less harmful to the environment.

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Defetishizing Free Time: From Akrasia to Profanation

Philosophical Literary Journal Logos ◽

10.22394/0869-5377-2019-1-159-186 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 159-188

Keyword(s):

Leisure Time ◽

Free Time ◽

Economic Organization ◽

Acting Out ◽

Basic Income ◽

Giorgio Agamben ◽

Dominant Position ◽

The Gift ◽

Modern Economic ◽

Economic Thinking

Images of free time are used today to give the impression that alienation from work is being alleviated. As a result, exploitation of the workers who are constantly occupied with “self-realization” becomes even more effective. Free time becomes a fetish — a means of productively engaging people’s energy through various scenarios in which they are (supposedly) enjoying their leisure time pursuits. Is it even possible to undo the fetishization of free time? And if so, how else might we conceptualize it? In seeking an answer to these questions the author continues the discussion of akrasia launched by Michail Maiatsky in his article “Liberation from Work, Unconditional Income and Foolish Will” (Logos, 2015, 25[3]) in which Maiatsky expressed a well-founded fear that a contemporary “post-Nietzschean” person might respond to the “gift of unconditional freedom” with an irrational desire to test the boundaries of that boon and end up as Dostoyevsky said “living by his own foolish will.” A hypothesis to address that fear argues that the intentions behind such an “akratic rebellion” are inherently rooted in the fetishistic logic that dominates both current perceptions of free time and also the debate about providing a basic income. The akratic reaction is a form of phantasmatic acting out of the painful suspicion that efforts to reach liberation could turn into another form of bondage. The roots of this bind can be found in the historically embedded form of economic organization, which is based on a sense of dire emergency. We owe this understanding of the “economic dispositive” to the work of Giorgio Agamben, but it is already discernible in Xenophon. We can find an indication of its dominant position in modern economic thinking in Nikolay Sieber’s (1844–1888) criticism of the postulates of the “subjective school” of economics. Because the economy acquires a sacred aspect within this dispositive, akrasia may be compared with a sacrilegious trespass of its boundaries. However, Agamben proposes that challenging any form of the solemn ceremonies of capitalism’s priesthood in a way that is not merely imaginary must necessarily be a kind of profanation.

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Governance in Online Stolen Data Markets

10.1093/oso/9780198794974.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Meltem Odaba¸ ◽

Thomas J. Holt ◽

Ronald L. Breiger

Keyword(s):

Social Structure ◽

Communication Networks ◽

State Intervention ◽

Governance Structure ◽

Economic Organization ◽

User Groups ◽

Underground Economies ◽

Two Sided Markets

We analyze the governance structure of online stolen data markets. As cybercriminal underground economies, stolen data markets are beyond the reach of state intervention, and yet they need form and regulation in order to function. While the illicit nature of the business brings risks to its participants, the online characteristics of these markets enable the participants to communicate easily, which is a crucial means of generating trust. We first identify stolen data markets in terms of their economic organization as two-sided markets, economic platforms with two distinct user groups that provide each other with network synergies. This characterization enables us to understand the role of the forum administrator as that of an intermediary, market creator, and market regulator. Then we clarify the role of communication networks and social structure in creating trust among buyers and sellers.

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The possibility of democratic socialism in Habermas

European Journal of Social Theory ◽

10.1177/1368431020986892 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 136843102098689

Author(s):

Pedro A. Teixeira

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Deliberative Democracy ◽

Economic Organization ◽

Democratic Socialism ◽

Theory Of Justice ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

Political Economic ◽

Theory Of Democracy ◽

Economic Regime ◽

The Ideal

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy.

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