Geophilos: Issue 6, Spring 2003

NUCLEAR weapons ensured the mutual destruction that led to the standoff between ideological enemies in the 45 years up to 1990. Since then, the New World Order promoted by the first President Bush has delivered the terror of stateless bands of malcontents who have no territory to yield to their enemy. Terrorists are the moving target that no weapon can destroy for so long as the economic and political conditions exist which nourish a profound sense of cultural deprivation. Resolving this grievance is the 21st century’s task. The policy shift needs to be away from the science of destruction to the social reforms that would deliver prosperity for everyone.

The responsibility for delivering reform lies with everyone on both sides of the economic divide. Rich nations need to re-examine the capitalist order, because there are profound fault lines in that system. Developing nations need to question their values because they are fostering the failures that help to spawn the terrorists. To clarify the issues, we need to revisit history as well as the philosophies that guide political decisions today. We find that governments are driven by doctrines which are calculated to defeat their aspirations.

An example of the philosophy of failure is the so-called Right to Development. This notion emerged in the post-colonial era. The decolonised states expressed their discontent within the United Nations circuit by evolving the demand for greater support from the rich nations. They might have simply expressed themselves in terms of a demand for compensation for the damage done by the colonial powers. Why did they fail to take this course of action?

Contents

• Editor's Introduction (Download PDF)
  
  
• Manna from Heaven (Download PDF)
  Radio Rent Windfalls and the Tax Conversion Fund
  Fred Harrison
  
  
• Redefining the Washington Consensus (Download PDF)
  An interview with Joseph Stiglitz
  Christopher R. Williams
  
  
• The Gains from Taxing Land (Download PDF)
  Nicolaus Tideman and Florenz Plassmann
  
  
• Taxes, Capital and Jobs (Download PDF)
  The variability of valences
  Mason Gaffney
  
  
• Resource Rents (Download PDF)
  Re-embedding the economy into society
  Peter Gibb
  
  
• Pseudo-Scientific Economics (Download PDF)
  The business cycle and a neo-classical 'mystery'
  Ed Dodson
  
  
• PRIVATE COMMUNITIES
  
  
  • The Libertarian Perspective (Download PDF)
    The route to economic justice?
    Fred E. Foldvary
    
    
  • From the Ground Up (Download PDF)
    Raising cities from the rent of land
    Kenneth Jupp
    
    
• INSITE on Terrorism
  
  
  • The Geopolitical Roots of Asymmetrical Conflicts by David Smiley (Download PDF)
    
    
• BOOK REVIEWS (Download PDF)
  
  
  • The Disappointed Sherpa - Charles Bazlinton
    
    
  • Conservation: The Answer's in the Soil - Fred Harrison