Links and comments

1) This article is somewhat interesting, describing the announcement of the head of the UN conference on trade and development. He claims explicitly that the “free market” approach to development has conclusively failed the poor countries. The author claims that “the ideological baton” is passing from West to East in terms of development orthodoxy. To me this statement seems dramatic, especially since organizations like the IMF are still dominated by free market advocates. It is also a narrow statement, since you could only think the baton was really passing if you no longer care, or think others don’t care, about human rights, a chief concern of heterodox development economists like Amartya Sen. See for example the capability approach. However, based on browsing at book stores and highly selective reading of Ha-Joon Chang and people like him, it does seem true that heterodox ways of looking at development are becoming more mainstream, or at least more accepted in academia (it’s not clear that public opinion was ever in favor of free market ideology). I’m sure the current global crisis has motivated these trends (perhaps ironically, in the sense of Naomi Klein’s critique of shock-driven free market policy).

2) Matt Yyglesias makes moderately interesting point about rationing. But it seems to me that things like oil and food are qualitatively different than things like piano lessons and knowledge of history. Because I am not a professional economist, I cannot justify my intuition. Yglesias probably agrees that these are different, and thinks we should lump special health care products in with piano lessons. I’m not sure about this. For one thing, isn’t it much easier to find private piano help than it is medical help? Plus a bunch of other differences.

3) Robert Fisk can use just about anything as a platform for ranting, and here he uses his viewing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. My favorite passage:

So cautious are the dear old Canadians – who should by now have learned that concealing unhappy truths will only create fire and pain – that they do not even mention that “Kando”, the first recipient of the scrolls, was Armenian. Of course not. Because then they would have to explain why an Armenian was in Jerusalem, not in western Turkey. Which would mean that they would have to mention the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 (one and a half million Armenian civilians murdered by Ottoman Turks).

I find almost all of Fisk’s comments here and in the rest of the article on the mark, in terms of the political realities surrounding the scrolls. But really, the purpose of the Dead Sea Scrolls is to put knowledge into my head about the diversity of Judaism in that period, and early Christian and Jewish religion in general. Really, the Dead Sea Scrolls should be brought to Southeast Michigan, where I live.

3) This article is slightly encouraging, but ultimately depressing, since minor economic and cultural improvements in the West Bank are, as always, in the context of Israel allowing them for the sake of politically weakening competing anti-Israeli political parties, plus the realities of the suffocation of Gaza, plus expanding settlement programs in the West Bank itself. Also, there will probably never be general recognition of Israeli crimes; we’ll just have to painfully endure Israeli generals gloating over every time Palestinians are peaceful.

4) Even though I am almost a pacifist, plus don’t like things like the CIA, I can’t help but like reading about spies.

5) Isn’t it interesting how everyone, or at least all governments, hate Al Jazeera?

6) This cheerfully titled piece of Noam Chomsky covers a bunch of happenings in 2009. It begins by attacking Thomas Friedman, always a noble cause.