From Gates to Adam Smith and the Rogan triumvirate of R.H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E.P. Thompson. The two closing paragraphs of Tehila Sasson’s review of The Moral Economists by Tim Rogan are:
In this sense, it is worth recalling one of Polanyi S most important conclusions, written out of Rogan’s narrative: moral economies never emerge out of spontaneous human fellowship. Rather, moral economies are shaped by the state. It took immigration laws, regulations, and taxation to determine the relationships between ethics and the economy in the late 1970s, as they do today.
Despite its radical origins, in other words, the moral critique of the economy never transcended the realm of ethics. Every political economy has an ethics, but to truly reshape the ethics of the market we will need to reform it through state institutions. That requires us to leave the realm of the spiritual and go back to material question of redistribution.
Further, Gates trying to contest Thomas Piketty’s analysis of global inequality is pitiful. And almost comical.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 