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The Need for Resilience in the EU Economy
The concept of resilience (lat. risiliere) became frequently used in public discourse in recent years. Originally used by scientists, it has a long history in various disciplines (physics, materials science, engineering, psychology, ecology)[1] before the crises that have emerged worldwide in the last decades led to its appropriation by international organizations (UN, OECD, IMF, World Bank etc.) and various decision-makers. They integrated it into their strategies, guidelines and transformed resilience into a public policy desideratum. More
Technology’s Dominion: An Ever-Tightening Web of Dependency
Although some degree of indeterminacy circumscribes perception and communication, it does not follow that the information which filters through our perceptual screens must be false or illusory. Norbert Wiener characterized it as “the devil of confusion, not of willful malice.” His concern was with the loss or distortion of information – analogous to entropy – in the process itself. It is a problem which bedevils our best efforts to find a common ground for understanding. More
An Economic Perspective on the Ant Colony
Ever since I explored the surrealism around Salvador Dali’s creative universe, I have been fascinated in particular by one of his prevailing iconographic motifs symbolizing death, putrefaction, moral degradation as well as his dark spectrum of sexual desires: the swarming ants. Dali’s artistry largely consisted of exposing his subconscious imagery through these seemingly unobtrusive symbols. Despite this, however, what do we actually know about ants? More
Three “Mister K” and Our Recovery from Eastern European “Kafkian” Absurdum
In Kafka’s novel, Das Schloß [The Castle], there is a gentleman bearing the name “K” who unsuccessfully tries to obtain a hearing with the enigmatic ruler of a bureaucratic citadel dominating, physically and psychically, an alienated village community, to secure a living in that surreal neighbourhood. In Der Prozess [The Trial], a certain Joseph K. gets arrested and accused by an obscure authority for a crime never unveiled, either to him or anyone else (including the millions of readers of the novel). In Amerika [America], the main character, Karl Rossmann, lives a David-Coppefield-ian life within an illusive and deluding “new world”. All three novels are part of the “absurdist literature”, are unfinished and are posthumous. Even though Kafka didn’t experience communism, his novels can be seen as a crude premonition of that epoch. In the present essay we shall speak, however, about three different characters whose names start with the Kafkian effigy “K” and whose professional careers were devoted to the extraction of Eastern Europe from the absurdum of communism: the Polish philosopher and historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski (1927-2009), the Hungarian economist János Kornai (1928-2021) and the ex-President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus (b. 1941). More
Social Justice – A Key Tool to Fight Against Social Inequality
By considering that social justice is a principle for generating the basic structure of the society, three such approaches to social justice theory are known in the specialty literature: the approach based on fairness, the approach based on capability and the approach based on entitlement. Some considerations about each type of approach will be presented below. More
The Macroeconomic Dashboard: From Financial to Corona Crisis
Worldwide, economies periodically face cyclical evolutions, economic crises, shocks generated by exogenous factors of the economic system, as is happening right now amid the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The common ground of these developments is the need for policies able to support the economy and to establish the necessary corrections, in accordance with imbalances. Nevertheless, solutions must be accurately identified and adapted to the real causes of crises, otherwise economic treatment will fail. More
The Lords of the Olympic Rings
The idea of sport is associated with peace in an almost reflexive manner. At the same time, prosperity is being called into the arena of sport’s allies. But if we overcome the reflexes and become reflective, we can take into account the counter-opinions to the standard pleadings according to which sports competitions, for example the Olympic Games, both in their original, ancient expression and in modern and contemporary forms, would be, politically, victories against war, and, economically, it would mean triumphs against (of?) waste. More
Requiem for the Forever War
The Biden Administration, contrary to its partisans’ and detractors’ expectations that it would dither or outright renege on the previous Administration’s plans to exit Afghanistan (overtly), pulled the trigger on a ramshackle retreat that created incredibly bad optics and elicited negative reactions from around the world, especially from allies. The problem of whether to take in Afghan refugees and how many is already starting to rear its head in the domestic politics of Western countries, and will assume center stage once all of the countries have removed their nationals from Afghanistan. The latter is an incredible oversight given the transparent nature of the term for American retreat from Afghanistan, and illustrates both the incredulity, up until the last minute, that the Biden Administration would keep to the deal and the shocking nature of the Taliban’s series of victories over the Kabul Government. More
The Lockdown-Quagmire
Economics tells us that every decision comes at a cost, an opportunity cost. In the same period of time that I am writing this article, I could have done other things. Deciding to spend time writing automatically entails missing out, for example, on watching TV, reading a book, or writing other pieces. The missed opportunities are the costs of writing this article. More
New Institutional Economics, the Anthropomorphization of Institutions and Pathologies of Organisations
One of the main weaknesses of New Institutional Economics (NIE), identified by Herbert Alexander Simon (1991), is the inability of NIE to understand organizations, and thus the institutions themselves, on account of the fact that the mechanisms and tools used in this sense had been derived from neoclassical economics and from the market. More
Benedetto Croce – Liberal, Idealist, Activist (In This Order)
Many people throughout history are known for acts of great courage and grand conquests. Some live by through immortal creations forever bearing their name. Others were examples of irreproachable ethics and conduct, strength of character and Olympian serenity. They are usually separated in men which demonstrated either active or passive involvement in asserting dedication to their ideals, much more rarely both. But even far less are those who showed they had achieved all these signs of distinction during their lifetime, troubled by the fatality of history and hazardous game of eras. In the shade of the dusk of epochs rise strong characters ready to resist the darkness of upcoming times and bring back the light spread by the flame of liberty. After years of spiritual wickedness, ethical scarcity and social cowardice, it is possible that justice be made. If so, those who once took up their role as freedom fighters and tirelessly took action in favour of what they believed to be just shall get their sincere recognition from their admirers. More
Penetrating the Fog of Culture War
Protracted conflict is a historical phenomenon. It attends upon every systemic breakdown and the ensuing quest for a new equilibrium. Every revolutionary movement issues from a position of physical inferiority vis‑a‑vis the defender of the status quo. The revolutionary movement, to assure its final victory, must perforce rely more upon the breadth of its vision than the strength of its arms. Its strategy derives from a superior understanding of the total historic situation; the spectrum of revolutionary conflict techniques is as wide as the entire scale of social change. Within that spectrum, a central intelligence organizes and phases the instruments of conflict ‑‑ political, economic, psychological, technological and military. That central intelligence discerns potential weapons where the defender of the status quo sees only the tools of peace; in short, it turns plowshares into swords.[1] More
