Katy's InTray

 If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.

Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)? 

The Internet, itself in constant innovation since its inception, has historically supported unprecedented innovation across the globe, driving considerable growth in technology and commerce.This paper reviews a set of properties set out by Internet experts in 2012, which aimed to capture the unvarying properties that defined the Internet (“the Invariants”).

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An early realization was that that the Invariants not only capture an ideal form of the Internet, they describe a generative platform — a platform capable of continuous growth and fostering the expansive development of new things upon itself.

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Notably, several technologies being developed and deployed in today’s Internet don’t conform to those Invariants, and thus are not laying the foundation for similar innovations in the future. With the Invariants in hand, however, we have a tool to evaluate the state of the Internet and any proposed changes that would impact it, and support discussion between and among technologists and policy makers to help ensure that future choices foster a better Internet, aligned with the ideal expressed in the Internet Invariants.

This is “climate change” of the Internet ecosystem: absent concrete action to address the departure of the application infrastructure of the Internet from the ideal outlined in the Invariants, the experience of the Internet going forward will not feature such a rich diversity of solutions to the needs of the world’s population.

Despite the widespread harm caused by cars and automobility, governments, corporations, and individuals continue to facilitate it by expanding roads, manufacturing larger vehicles, and subsidising parking, electric cars, and resource extraction. This literature review synthesises the negative consequences of automobility, or car harm, which we have grouped into four categories: violence, ill health, social injustice, and environmental damage. We find that, since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least 2 billion. Currently, 1 in 34 deaths are caused by automobility. Cars have exacerbated social inequities and damaged ecosystems in every global region, including in remote car-free places. While some people benefit from automobility, nearly everyone—whether or not they drive—is harmed by it. Slowing automobility's violence and pollution will be impracticable without the replacement of policies that encourage car harm with policies that reduce it. To that end, the paper briefly summarises interventions that are ready for implementation.

This year’s State of HATE report focuses heavily on the Radical Right, a political phenomenon we define as right-wing populist in outlook, with strongly anti-immigration and anti-elite rhetoric, but differs from the traditional far right in that it advocates an illiberal democracy rather than overthrow of the system itself.

No money is universally acceptable. What distinguishes special-purpose monies (SPMs) from national currencies is not the fact of geographical or institutional constraints on their acceptability as such, but the intentional imposition of such constraints as a design priority. This article integrates SPMs into the theoretical framework of the credit theory of money and proposes a novel typology of complementary currencies. In this view, any money is part of a global hierarchy of credit monies. The position of each money in that hierarchy depends on its liquidity, including the degree of commensurability and convertibility, and on the degree of sovereignty that backs it, including aspects of sovereignty that are based on monopoly power and social norms that have no necessary link to states. The position of national currencies in the global hierarchy can be assessed along the dimensions of liquidity and sovereignty. Along the same lines, four types of SPMs can be distinguished. Non-commensurable SPMs backed by some form of sovereignty and connected to public provisioning systems appear to be a more promising instrument than private convertible currencies for supporting effective sustainability transitions.

Degrowth lacks a theory of how the state can finance ambitious social-ecological policies and public provisioning systems while maintaining macroeconomic stability during a reduction of economic activity. Addressing this question, we present a synthesis of degrowth scholarship and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) rooted in their shared understanding of money as a public good and their common opposition to artificial scarcity. We present two arguments. First, we draw on MMT to argue that states with sufficient monetary sovereignty face no obstacle to funding the policies necessary for a just and sustainable degrowth transition. Increased public spending neither requires nor implies GDP growth. Second, we draw on degrowth research to bring MMT in line with ecological reality. MMT posits that fiscal spending is limited only by inflation, and thus the productive capacity of the economy. We argue that efforts to deal with this constraint must also pay attention to social and ecological limits. Based on this synthesis we propose a set of monetary and fiscal policies suitable for a stable degrowth transition, including a stronger regulation of private finance, tax reforms, price controls, public provisioning systems and an emancipatory job guarantee. This approach can support broad democratic mobilization for a degrowth transition.

The central argument of this book is that the foundations for sustainable prosperity lie in an approach to economic management based on modern monetary theory and a job guarantee. This approach builds on the work of Keynes, Kalecki, Minsky, Davidson, Godley and other Post- Keynesian economists—as well as research by behavioral economists including Simon, Kahneman and Loewenstein—to explore the role that a permanent, equitable job guarantee could play in building an inclusive, participatory and just society. Orthodox (neoclassical) economics, in its various forms, has failed to deliver sustainable prosperity. An important reason for this failure is its lack of realistic foundations. It misrepresents both human nature and economic institutions, and its use as a frame for the development and assessment of economic policy proposals has had disastrous consequences for social inclusion and the quality of life of millions of people. This book discusses an alternative, more realistic and more useful set of economic foundations, which could deliver the opportunity of a decent quality of life with dignity to all.  

If global energy consumption returns to its pre-pandemic growth rate, it will be almost impossible to transition to a zero-emission or net-zero-emission energy system by 2050 in the absence of large-scale CO2 removal. Since relying on unproven technologies for CO2 removal is speculative and risky, this paper considers an energy descent scenario for reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions from energy by 2050. To drive the rapid transition from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources and ensure demand reduction, funding is needed urgently in order to implement four strategies: (i) technology change, i.e., implementing the growth of zero-carbon energy production, end-use energy efficiency and ‘green’ energy carriers, together with ongoing R&D on CO2 removal; (ii) reducing climate impacts; (iii) reducing energy consumption by social and behavioural changes; and (iv) improving human wellbeing while increasing social justice. Modern monetary theory explains how monetary sovereign governments, with their own fiat currencies, can create the necessary funding without financial constraints, although constraints do result from the productive capacities of their economies. The energy transition could be part-funded by a significant transfer of resources from monetary sovereign countries of the global North to the global South, financed by currency issuance.

At the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), we are committed to three things: public debate around new ideas; sustainable investment in social infrastructures; and public policy aimed at improving the quality of people’s lives. We have been inspired by experiments in universal basic income (UBI) around the world, and by a series of discussions about how to rethink economies, both local and global. In this report, we lay out some ideas about how to deliver quality of life for the UK, improve public services in ways that are affordable, and link radical policy initiatves to improved social integration and cohesion. These are ideas for debate across the broadest spectrum in the UK, including local communities. We call this set of ideas Universal Basic Services.

Australia’s system has long been designed in a deficit paradigm, underpinned by two flawed theories. Firstly, that unemployment is always an individual failing (ignoring structural and major barriers like ageism, racism, a lack of suitable work and thin labour markets, health, and disability). This drives the belief that if you only beat disadvantaged people hard enough to do the same things over and over they’ll somehow magically get a job, and if they don’t they’re lazy—the pernicious myth of the ‘dole-bludger’. Secondly, that more choice and competition in human services in every place, as well as harsh performance management, will inevitably result in better services and employment outcomes—especially for vulnerable and long-term unemployed people. Both theories have been proven to be rubbish, yet we have persisted in designing the entire system around them. The system designed for the few who cheat–around the worst people in society and the worst providers.

Consistent with the findings of previous reviews, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of unemployed people want to work. But the current rigid approach to mutual obligations is killing unemployed people’s intrinsic motivations and efforts to seek work, by drowning them and those paid to help them in a mountain of red tape, compliance requirements and pointless mandatory activities. People are made to do silly things that don’t help them get a job—such as pointless training courses or applying for jobs they won’t get—and are then harshly and repeatedly sanctioned for trivial or inadvertent breaches of prescriptive rules. It is ridiculous that over 70per cent of people with providers have been subject to payment suspensions despite zero evidence that 70per cent of people are cheating the system. The Robodebt Royal Commission’s finding that fraud in the welfare system is minuscule is apt. The nature and extent of mutual obligations is like using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito.