A land fit for all our futuresSep 6, 2023
Thoughts wash around my head all the time, very occasionally I can turn them into words. I'm not yet sure how successfully... https://penguinjunk.github.io/posts/Markets-and-humanity/
#markets #economics #commons #reason #highmodernism
Markets as an expression of humanity

Markets are the source of all ills in the capitalist world, right? This was my instinct before I started my MPA. Coming from a background in environmental worrying and occasional campaigning, it certainly seemed that markets were the cause of the relentless attack on the natural world and on the best attributes of people and society. After an intensive term learning about economics, in fact, after a second term letting the first one settle, I’ve come to understand markets in a different light. My sense now is that markets are simply one expression of a fundamental characteristic of humanity. Why they fail is a clue to why other aspects of our society are also not working.

PenguinJunk
Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 2, 2023

The other classic example is that of Robert Moses, who amassed enough government power in the 1930s to 1960s that he was able to personally implement his anti-human urban planning agenda of replacing cities with exurbs and highways.

Moses was also deeply racist and designed bridges that were too low to accommodate buses to ensure that poor people of color, who might have lacked personal cars at the time, could not take public transportation to the beach.

Or that other monstrosity of High Modernism, Brasilia, Brazil’s planned capital city. It was designed without sidewalks or crosswalks, because its designers expected (and therefore commanded, by way of infrastructure) that everyone would just drive everywhere all the time.

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https://www.npr.org/2020/07/05/887386869/how-transportation-racism-shaped-america

#RobertMoses #HighModernism