Author Archive for: masaccio
About Ed Walker
Notre Dame undergrad (math); JD, Indiana University at Bloomington; 1st Lieutenant, US Army.; private practice in corporate and securities law; Assistant AG in Tennessee for consumer protection and securities; Blue Sky Securities Commissioner, Tennessee; private practice, bankruptcy and corporate law.
I have had a lifelong interest in economics. For most of my career, that interest was practical, focused on the problems in front of me. Lately I have been more interested in economics as a theory, especially its impact on the lives of people like those I met in my bankruptcy practice, and on the politics of money in the US. I also enjoy reading philosophers, starting in college and steadily expanding my reading ever since. I wrote at FireDogLake for a number of years.
Generally, I think the problem facing the US is the dominance of neoliberal discourse. I think it clouds the vision, and limits the kinds of problems that can be identified and solved. For example, the existence and danger of climate change can easily be identified in a scientific discussion. However, the problem does not fit the neoliberal discourse because science insists that the pursuit of individual and corporate self-interest will lead to devastation. In neoliberal discourse, the pursuit of self-interest always leads to Eden.
The neoliberal project has two prongs. One is the police function of crushing dissent and alternative views. The police function is provided by government agencies and private and institutional actors. The counterpart is the economic system , which is operated by government and by private and institutional actors. Some of these actors operate in both spheres. I focus on the second prong.
Entries by Ed Walker
Tolstoy On Iraq
/5 Comments/in War/by Ed WalkerOne of the great pleasures of travel is long uninterrupted stretches of time for reading. I’m on the road for a long trip, including a visit to Russia, and took a copy of War and Peace with me. It’s really long, and therefore perfect for this kind of travel, and I was able to read […]
Security Territory and Population Part 5: Governmentality And Introduction to Foucault’s Method
/5 Comments/in Economics, emptywheel/by Ed WalkerIn the fourth lecture in Security, Territory and Population, Michel Foucault introduces the idea of governmentality. He begins this lecture with a discussion of the change in the idea of governing that began in the 16th Century, when writers of the day began saying that the word covers a number of different relationships. There is […]
Security Territory and Population Part 4: Conclusion of Description of Security and Population
/21 Comments/in Economics/by Ed WalkerThe third lecture by Michel Foucault in Security, Territory and Population begins with a discussion of the systems of law and discipline considered from the standpoint of “norms”. In the system of law, norms are the acceptable behaviors,derived from sacred texts or societal customs or the will of the sovereign. They are then codified and […]
Security Territory And Population Part 3: Security As The Basis For Governing
/18 Comments/in Economics/by Ed WalkerIn the second lecture in Security, Territory and Population, Michele Foucault takes up the problem of food scarcity; this follows his examination of the problems of criminal law and epidemics in the first lecture. Foucault discusses two ways of thinking about problems like scarcity. One idea is that they are misfortunes, in the classical Greek […]
Security, Territory and Population Part 2: Initial Discussion of Security
/3 Comments/in Economics/by Ed WalkerThe first lecture in the series Foucault calls Security, Territory and Population is primarily a discussion of security. Instead of a definition, Foucault gives two sets of examples. The first group involves penal statutes. In the simplest case, there is a prohibited practice (you shall not steal) and a punishment (amputation). In the second, the […]
Security, Territory and Population Part 1: Introduction
/6 Comments/in Neoliberalism/by Ed WalkerSecurity, Territory and Population is a collection of lectures given by the French thinker Michel Foucault at the College of France in 1977-8. Foucault describes the lectures as a work of philosophy, defined as “the politics of truth” (p. 3), a term which itself seems to require a definition. This creates two difficult problems for […]
Index to Posts on The Theory of Business Enterprise by Thorstein Veblen
/1 Comment/in emptywheel/by Ed WalkerThe following is a list of posts on The Theory of Business Enterprise by Thorstein Veblen, published in 1904. I see that I have misnamed the book in several post titles, and mis-numbered them as well. I really must be more careful. I don’t think this inattention to detail affects the substance of any of […]
Principles Of Business Enterprises Part 8: Conclusion
/7 Comments/in Education/by Ed WalkerThe general plan of The Principles of Business Enterprises by Thorstein Veblen is to state several ideas about the way business operated in the Gilded Age, with explanation and examples, and then to examine the logical outcomes of the operation of these principles. There is no grand theory, just observation, description and discussion. Two of […]
The Theory of Business Enterprises Part 7: Cultural Changes
/1 Comment/in Economics/by Ed WalkerIn the early chapters of the book, Thorstein Veblen describes industrial productive methods and the changes they require of workers. In Chapter 9, he describes the effect of those changes on the workers and on businessmen who own the factories. In general, the businessmen become more attached to a system of thought based on natural […]