Blog Posts for John Michael Greer

How Relocalization Worked

John Michael Greer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:30:59 -0800

Advocates of today's mainstream economics still commonly use the guild economies of the Middle Ages as a convenient whipping boy, following a fashion set in motion by Adam Smith. A glance at the way those older economic systems worked in a world of limited markets and difficult transportation, though, suggests that the failed economic paradigms of the present have no reason to boast. The latest ...

A Gesture from the Invisible Hand

John Michael Greer — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:30:22 -0800

It's common these days to hear claims that any shortfall in energy due to peak oil will automatically be taken care of by the market. Unfortunately for such rosy-eyed notions, there's good reason to think that in an economy constrained by energy shortages, market forces will drive money away from investments that could make a difference. The latest post from The Archdruid Report.

Harnessing Hippogriffs

John Michael Greer — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:14:56 -0800

Pick a problem, any problem, and dollars will get you doughnuts somebody will pop up insisting that the free market will solve it. There's just one difficulty with this comfortable faith -- free markets are as mythical as hippogriffs. The Archdruid explains, in this latest post from The Archdruid Report.

Why Markets Fail

John Michael Greer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:29:21 -0700

These days, if a mainstream economist offers you financial advice, you may well be better off doing the opposite of what he suggests. The reasons for that go deep into the neoclassical synthesis that dominates today's economic thought. Another irritable post from The Archdruid Report.

Strange Bright Banners

John Michael Greer — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:32:28 -0700

Social critics, with some justice, have accused today's industrial democracies of being corrupt and dysfunctional. The problem is that what replaces them need not be an improvement. The latest post from The Archdruid Report.

The Metastasis of Money

John Michael Greer — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:11:55 -0700

What do you have when you put 100 economists on a desert island with $1 million each but no food or water? A good start, some might suggest, but from another perspective you've got an uncomfortably close analogue to the modern world's predicament at the end of the age of cheap oil. The latest post from The Archdruid Report.

The Metaphysics of Money

John Michael Greer — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:29:36 -0700

Plenty of people these days think of metaphysics as one of those abstruse subjects that give otherwise unemployable academics something to do with their time. Meanwhile the industrial world hurtles toward disaster along a trajectory defined, in part, by a common metaphysical error. The latest post from The Archdruid Report.

Why Economists Fail

John Michael Greer — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:02:22 -0700

Ever noticed that whenever the economy is preparing to tank due to the latest delusional speculative binge, the vast majority of economists who make any public comment at all can be heard insisting that nothing is wrong and everyone can get rich? The Archdruid has. Here's the latest irritable post from The Archdruid Report.

Daydreams of Destruction

John Michael Greer — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:28:07 -0700

Our collective conversation on the future of industrial society has become an inkblot onto which many of us project our own dissatisfactions with the human condition and fantasies of a better world. The latest curmudgeonly post from The Archdruid Report.

A Terrible Ambivalence

John Michael Greer — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:38:48 -0700

The recent debate in print between George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth over the prospects of saving industrial civilization from itself n ever quite managed to get out from under some deeply problematic assumptions. The latest post from The Archdruid Report.