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The Moral Economy
WEARING TWO HATS GIVES ME A HEADACHE Read the column / post a comment here at Blogspot May 26, 2011 The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in The Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper - link ». THE ISSUE THAT DARES NOT SPEAK ITS NAME Read the column / post a comment here at Blogspot March 31, 2011 The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in The Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper - link ». CAN AN ECONOMY EVER BE MORAL? Read the column / post a comment here at Blogspot February, 2011 The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in The Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper - link ». FAIRNESS AND TRANSPARENCY IN SHORT SUPPLY Another Moral Economy Column by Christopher Lind I will never forget a story told to me by one of my students, a middle aged woman who had been married to a farmer for many years. They lived in rural Alberta. She needed to buy a new car so she went to the nearest town and discussed her needs with the salesman at the car dealership. When she came home ...
Read the column / post a comment here at Blogspot November, 2010
KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL Another Moral Economy Column by Christopher Lind Yeah, yeah, yeah, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. So what can we do about it? This is one of the most challenging questions I hear. On the one hand the questioner agrees with me that things are deeply wrong. On the other hand they see the engine of destruction frozen in place and no mechanic in sight. What is to be done?. ... Read the column / post a comment here at Blogspot October, 2010 UNPAID WORK IGNORED ONCE MORE The Canadian Government has now decided to scrap the compulsory long form census. The head of Statistics Canada has resigned amid the furor because the government was claiming the agency supported this change when clearly it did not. Lost in the debate is the fact the Canadian Government has also scrapped the question on unpaid household labour. ... Read the column / post a comment here at Blogspot August, 2010 CANADA POST IN PARLIAMENTARY GARAGE SALE Rural Canadians are resilient, multi-talented people. However, they also depend on a few key institutions to support their diverse way of life. One of those institutions is the Post Office. Fortunately Canada Post recognizes their unique role. This is how the Crown Corporation describes its self-understanding on its website: “For longer than Canada has been a country, Canada Post has been part of the bedrock of rural Canada. Today we remain the only company that serves all Canadians, in their communities, and this is not going to change.” The last year was a difficult one for Canada Post ...
Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - December, 2009 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper. DO GOOD AND DO NO HARM In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas summed up our ethical imperatives with the phrase “Do good and do no harm”. This was not original to him. He was affirming what he learned from early Greek philosophers. The medical profession makes the same claim, which it learned from Hippocrates over 2,000 years ago. This simple formulation expresses a very powerful and complex moral command. For example, humanity is hungry for energy ...
Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - April, 2010 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper. FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME I have been ashamed of my country only twice in my life. The first time was when we declared war on Iraq in 1990. The second was last week when I listened to a British journalist upbraid Canadians for allowing our government to undermine new international action on climate change. I never thought Canada would declare war in my lifetime and I never thought my Canadian government would undermine collective efforts to do the right thing internationally. I was wrong on both counts. The connecting issue for both of these events is oil ... Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - December, 2009 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper.
Every other day I open the newspaper and read some new speculation about another federal election. Will we, won’t we, and what story will we tell ourselves this campaign is about? Given the crisis we are still in the middle of, the story should probably be an economic one. Prime Minister Harper seems to be anticipating this because he keeps goading the Leader of the Opposition into saying how he would deal with the new fiscal deficit. ...Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - October, 2009 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper. View this column as a video at the Moral Economy YouTube edition here »  WHEN MORALITY IS AGAINST THE LAWAnother Moral Economy Column by Christopher Lind Have you ever downloaded music from the Internet? Do you know anyone else who has – a son or daughter perhaps? Have you ever sent a copy of a song you liked to a friend? When you did, were you sharing a treasured experience and giving a gift; or were you shoplifting and passing along stolen ... Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - 27 August, 2009 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper. View this column as a video at the Moral Economy YouTube edition here »
If the truth be told, I never actually met a farmer who had done that, but I heard the story often. It may not have been historical truth but it contained great truth all the same. Part of its appeal is that the story is archetypal ... Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - June 25, 2009 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper. View this column as a video at the Moral Economy YouTube edition here »
Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - May 7, 2009 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper. See larger format video both introduction and the column as video at the Moral Economy YouTube edition here »
"What you‚'re really asking is whether it is possible to be both rich and ethical‚" I replied. "Yeah. That‚'s right." My mind was immediately flooded with images of people I knew who had become rich through indifference to the welfare of others but I knew that's not what the student wanted to hear. He wanted a role model - someone he could look up to and hold onto. I told him the story of Bob Stollery.... Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - 13 March 2009 - The Moral Economy is a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper. See larger video at the Moral Economy Column YouTube channel here »
We are in the middle of a systemic failure in global financial markets.... The same failed global economic system that has now crippled international trade is also responsible for the increasing disparity between rich and poor. By all means, let us change course, and do so dramatically – but in which direction? .. are there any moral values guiding public policy in response to the economic crisis?... Read the column / post a comment - here: link to Blogspot - 15 January 2009 - "The Moral Economy" column is published in The Western Producer, Canada's largest agricultural paper [link »] See larger video at the Moral Economy Column YouTube channel here »  RE-EMBEDDING THE ECONOMY: Another Moral Economy Column by Christopher Lind
Are you surviving the biggest economic crisis in 75 years? Most of us have been watching it unfold from a distance. First it was Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, AIG, HBOS, Fortis Bank, and now it’s Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine and Belarus. If these events haven’t yet affected you directly, they will... Read the column / post a comment here: link to Blogspot - 13 November 2008 - "The Moral Economy" column is published in The Western Producer, Canada's largest agricultural paper [link »] See larger video at the Moral Economy Column YouTube channel here » MORAL HAZARD OR MORAL ECONOMY: THE ETHICS OF ECONOMIC BAILOUTS Another weekend, another financial bailout. Will it be enough? Last week it was Washington Mutual, America’s largest Savings and Loan being packaged up for the government’s favourite financial holding company JPMorgan Chase. Last March the American government intervened to ensure the investment bank, Bear Stearns, was sold off to the same outfit. Who will it be next week? Which pillar of Hercules will come tumbling down signaling, once more, the end of the world as we know it? ... Read the column / post a comment: Online at the Producer (paid subscription) here »
We‘ve been hearing a lot about excellence in sport recently and it always gives me an uneasy feeling. What do people really mean by it? It sometimes sounds like this: gold means excellent, bronze is close but not very. I believe in excellence but my excellence includes ethics. ... Read the column / post a comment FUEL vs. FOOD Do you support Bill C33? This is the Canadian legislation requiring biofuels as a percentage of all fuels sold in Canada. The legislation currently before the Senate, allows the Government to require up to 5% renewables in all gasoline sold here or up to 2% of all diesel fuels. I was asked this question recently and my answer is yes, BUT! Here’s why. Some people claim that converting corn to ethanol is driving up the price of food. Others say it is taking food away from the poor. Let’s deal with the price of food first. ... Read the column / post a comment Speculators Have Two Faces Speculators are never popular. We associate such people with naked greed. They profit from our misery. No one wants to be known as a speculator. An alternative word is investor or risk manager. To be an investor is to have confidence in the future. To be a risk manager is to be prudent and wary, concerned about dangers ahead. These two words can sometimes be two faces of the same activity. ... Read the column / post a comment Is Agriculture a Public Good? Soft fruit growers in Ontario are currently caught between two competing visions of the role of government in protecting the public interest. CanGro Foods (part of Kraft Foods Canada until 2006) recently announced that they were closing their fruit and vegetable processing plants near Niagara-on-the-Lake (St. David’s) and London (Exeter). This closure will put nearly 300 people out of work. It will also leave 150 pear and peach growers without a buyer for their products. The pear harvest of 3,000 tons is worth $1.8 million while 6,000 tons of clingstone peaches are worth $2.5 million. One more plant closure might not seem remarkable except that the St. David’s plant is over 100 years old and is the last tender fruit cannery east of the Rocky Mountains. ... Read the column / post a comment Mining Companies Challenged by Demands of Ecojustice Is social justice compatible with environmental justice? If social justice requires economic expansion and environmental justice requires industrial regulation, aren’t these two concerns moving in the opposite direction? Solidarity is one of the principles of ecojustice but it is also an ethical concept drawn from struggles between people. It is union members that sing solidarity forever, isn’t it? Another ecojustice principle is “socially just participation”. ... Read the column / post a comment
2007 Blogspot: The Moral Economy
What if the Earth Could Speak? What if the Earth could speak? What would it say? Would it laugh with joy or cry out in pain? This is a hard concept for us to grasp. Increasingly people are beginning to realize that thinking of the Earth as the third rock from the sun is a product of old ways of thinking and also a major problem. It is more helpful to think of Earth as an interdependent set of communities that move through cycles of life in fragile ecosystems. Humans represent one system of life but not the only one Read the column / post a comment How fitting that the only remaining symbol of the venerable Saskatchewan Wheat Pool are the letters SWP, used for shares traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The company is now formally called Viterra after having purchased Agricore United. So all the institutions reflecting the desire of western Canadian farmers to change the balance of economic power in farming, the Alberta Wheat Pool, the Manitoba Pool Exchange, United Grain Growers (all combined in Agricore United), and the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, have now disappeared. I have no doubt that Viterra will be good at its job. It’s just that it is now doing a different job than the old farmer owned cooperatives did. Encouraging cooperation among farmers is no longer their mission, increasing return on investment for shareholders is. Read the column / post a comment Did you forget where you put your keys last night? Do you sometimes forget the name of your best friend? Forgetfulness is common, especially as we get older. But some things we think are important to remember and others we want to forget. When we have painful or traumatic experiences there seem to be two common approaches to them. One voice says we should forget them in order to put them behind us - get on with our lives. Another voice counsels us to remember the pain because if we submerge them beneath the waves of our conscious mind our lives will be directed by hidden forces and we will never be truly free. Read the column / post a comment Should we care that industrial production and globalized trade are doing to our marine life what it has done to our land and agricultural life? It is and I think we should. Decimation was the practice and indifference was the attitude we used to eliminate the bison from the western Canadian prairie. Read the column / post a comment The Challenge of Sustainability Have you noticed an increased use of the term “sustainable development” recently? Maybe it’s the increased environmental awareness that causes people to fall back on this term in an uncritical way. In the same way I have also noticed an increased use of the term “sustainable prosperity”. Who could be opposed to sustainable prosperity? Don’t we all want our prosperity to be sustainable? One way to think critically about these concepts is to ask the question: sustainable for whom? Read the column / post a comment Economic Lessons My Father Taught Me My father died last month. He was 91. During his 50 years in business, he tried to teach me some lessons about life and money. This is what I learned. Read the column / post a comment 2006 Blogspot: The Moral Economy • Investing in Equality Leads to Peace Prize - link » 2005 Blogspot: The Moral Economy • Convicted by Climate Change - link » 2004 Blogspot: The Moral Economy • Common Security - link » 2003 Blogspot: The Moral Economy • The Moral Hazard of Politics - link » |
The Moral Economy Column
a syndicated monthly column currently published in the Western Producer, Canada’s largest farm newspaper and over the internet (1996 – 2000; 2002 - present). See here »
Visit the column blog - offer comments here » Theology in the Public Square - text »
EDMONTON JOURNAL [link »]
October 24, 2001 What the Red Sea Can Teach Us about the Moral Economy
The United Church OBSERVER [link »]
July, 1997, front page Who Benefits from the ‘New Agriculture’? Globalization, Agriculture and the New Right
PRAIRIE DOG, February, 1996
Social Cuts Signal Critical Point
ANGLICAN JOURNAL [link »], January 1995
The Ethics of Globalization Globalization: What is it?
UNION FARMER [link »], Vol. 43 #10, December 1992.
The Role of the Churches in the Farm Crisis Is There Any Hope for Real Social Change?
United Church OBSERVER [link »]
March 1992, front page. What Does the Vatican Really Want?
CHINA AND OURSELVES, No. 25 and 26, May/June, 1981
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