Articles by Howard Richards
We found 114 results.
A Proposed Framework for Thinking about Existential Threats
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Nov 2023
Today´s existential threats to humanity might perhaps be classified in four categories. Let this be the offer of one among many ways to classify existential threats, followed by ten theses for discussion.
→ read full articleWho or What Will Do What Must Be Done?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Oct 2023
Given that funds sufficient to solve the employment problem cannot come from sales, and cannot come from taxes, the necessary funds must come from surplus where surplus can be found.
→ read full articleWhat Must Be Done
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Sep 2023
Videos produced by The Drawdown Project outline what must be done to prevent more climate catastrophes worse than the ones already happening. The main staff members of the project, including narrator Jonathan Foley, are climate scientists.
→ read full articleWhy More Upstream Care Ethics Are Badly Needed
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jul 2023
The time has come for ethics of care. In the plural. Reverberating through revivals of venerable old spiritual caring traditions. Reverberating through adoptions of benevolent new innovative caring practices. My story starts in Sweden in the early 1970s.
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Achieving Growth as a Constraint
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Jun 2023
Let us take a closer look at the systemic imperative to do whatever must be done to achieve growth.
→ read full articleThe Crisis (or Crises) of Civilization
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 May 2023
The word “crisis” draws its meaning from medicine. When a patient is in crisis, life and death hang in the balance. When the crisis is over, although the patient may not have recovered yet, the prognosis is that s/he will recover. Below I suggest (1) that business civilization is in crisis too, and (2) a way forward.
→ read full articleCreating Dignified Livelihoods
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Mar 2023
My title is taken from the last speech of Martin Luther King, Jr given in Memphis less than 24 hours before his assassination. He was only 39 years old and world-famous for nonviolent resistance to racism, but his thinking and his activism had moved on.
→ read full articleDignity & Humiliation
Prof. Howard Richards - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Feb 2023
Acceptance of the Lifetime Commitment Award from the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Association
→ read full articleThe Rules-Based International Order and the Foggy Bottom Blues
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2023
The four words Rules Based International Order are surrounded by controversies. I will review some controversies as a prelude to a proposal. The proposal will recommend discarding the currently dominant discourses that are, as Michel Foucault might say, the historical conditions of the possibility of RBIO discourse.
→ read full articleThe Failure of Development
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jan 2023
Although “peace” and “security” were ideals that led to the founding of the United Nations, “development” was not. However, conceived as the solution, not as the problem, “development” named an ideal that could keep the UN united. It solved the problem of keeping the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on board.
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A Short Introductory Bibliography on Unbounded Organization
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Nov 2022
Concepts of Unbounded Organizing
→ read full articleThe Failure of the Expected Peace and the Suggestion of an Unbounded Way Forward
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Nov 2022
“Expected peace:” the peace expected after WWII. In a few years the UN was founded, human rights redefined to include social rights, colonial empires dissolved and new nation-states welcomed. It was reasonable to believe that human beings were learning how to live together in peace and shared prosperity.
→ read full articleAchieving Socialism by Definition
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Oct 2022
My advice on how to cope is to employ patient reasoning and unlimited good will. Socialism can today be defined, if one chooses to do so, as a set of ideals, including ideals of mental flexibility and open-mindedness, which overlap with ideals of capitalist reformers. Meaningful conversations that bridge the capitalist/socialist divide are now possible because some premises can plausibly be construed as shared.
→ read full article(Castellano) Derrotar la Pobreza en Todas las Casas
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Oct 2022
Una vez que se entiende el principio básico aquí destacado –que el empleo y por ende la dignidad no tienen que depender de las ventas, sino que pueden ser también fruto de la solidaridad, hay innumerables variaciones y extensiones posibles.
→ read full articleReinventing Employment with Solidarity Ethics
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2022
Solidarity ethics offers keys that open many doors. Here I suggest that if not by force of law, then by force of conscience, they oblige everyone to contribute, to the extent that they can, to the creation of employment with dignity for all those who need it.
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(Italiano) Imparare dalla storia
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jul 2022
1 Luglio 2022 – Nel 1973 lavoravo in Cile con una squadra all’organizzazione di comunità sotto forma di educación popular. Ispirati dalla filosofia di Paulo Freire, non è in fondo un’esagerazione dire che eravamo fanatici nell’evitare a tutti i costi di fare quello che Freire chiamava “educazione bancaria”.
→ read full articleLearning from History
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2022
I had already learned from my California experience that whatever national laws may be, the law of the Modern World-System is that investors choose which nation´s laws they will obey when they chose where to site their operations.
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(Italiano) Guerra ed estinzione della specie
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2022
Per pensatori critici le conseguenze a cascata della guerra d’Ucraina sono prove ridondanti di quanto già sapevano prima della guerra: non ci sono soluzioni ai problemi principali dell’umanità entro gli schemi delle strutture legale ed etiche basilari del sistema-mondo moderno.
→ read full articleWhy Are Humans Fighting Other Humans when We Are Facing Extinction as a Species?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2022
How can the absurdity of humans fighting humans lead to solutions while physics, chemistry and biology have us slated for extinction? How can we contribute to rethinking and reinventing ourselves? An idea: a Pedagogy of the Rich, conceived as a companion volume to Paulo Freire´s ‘The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.’ It could also be called ‘The Pedagogy of the Unoppressed.’
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Ruling Out Social Democracy as an Option and a Way to Rule It Back In
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Mar 2022
14 Mar 2022 – A decisive misunderstanding prolonging today´s mega crisis is the lingering belief that social democracy, as it existed in Europe during the thirty glorious years after World War II, and in a different form in the USA during the four terms of Franklin Roosevelt´s presidency, is a viable option in today´s world.
→ read full articleDoes Gabriel Boric Have the Answer?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2022
Markets command governments more than governments command markets. Governments, whatever their ideology, in practice devote themselves to attracting investment and to discouraging disinvestment. “When investors choose not to invest, policymakers are powerless to force them.”
→ read full articleEnding Poverty by Rethinking Thinking
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2022
Ending poverty would benefit everyone. It would be relatively inexpensive. It would open paths to sustainability. Rethinking thinking is needed to see why ending poverty is feasible…
→ read full article(Castellano) Borrador de Propuestas para Construir la Paz en Chile
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Jan 2022
20 enero 2022 – Quisiera decir algo concretando unos sueños de paz que han venido a vivir en mi alma, con la finalidad de hacerlos concretos con acciones que mi mente y otras mentes consideran inteligentes, y también con otra finalidad mayor. La finalidad mayor es contribuir a un sueño colectivo que nace, compartido entre numerosos individuos y numerosas instituciones tanto privadas como públicas.
→ read full articleA Proposal to Humanity: A Path to Surviving Today`s Megacrises
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Dec 2021
After WWII it was believed that the formula for peace, dignity, and sustainable prosperity had been discovered. It was called “Development.” Its ingredients included the rule of law, human rights including those declared in the Universal Declaration of 1948, and–crucially–mixed economies like those pioneered in Scandinavia. Now the dreams of 1948 have turned into the nightmares of 2021. Why?
→ read full article(Italiano) Creare sussistenze dignitose che non dipendano da vendite
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Dec 2021
Si dissolvono i principali ostacoli al salvarci dalle sei minacce all’umanità trattate in Project Save the World; per chi non ne sappia abbastanza, le 6 minacce sono: Guerra e armi, riscaldamento globale, fame, pandemie, contaminazione radioattiva, e rischi cibernetici.
→ read full article(Norwegian-Norsk) Overskuddsdeling – etisk atferd i praksis
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Dec 2021
13. desember 2021 – De siste tiårene har noen hundre mennesker i Norge blitt ufattelig rike, en tendens vi ser i en rekke land. Globalt kontrollerer noen styrtrike familier praktisk talt alle økonomiske sektorer over hele verden. Man kan undre seg over at rike mennesker er så uvillige til å dele av sin overflod med folk som ikke får dekket sine mest grunnleggende behov.
→ read full articleCreate, or Help Create, Dignified Livelihoods That Do Not Depend on Sales
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Dec 2021
Project Save the World’s six threats to humanity: War and Weapons, Global Warming, Famine, Pandemics, Radioactive Contamination, and Cyber Risks. Question: “Where do we start?”
→ read full articleA Call to Practice an Ethic of Care by Sharing Surplus
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Oct 2021
Given today´s economic science and common sense assume, jobs for everybody, paid for by the products the employees contribute to making, will never happen. There will never be enough employers finding it profitable to hire workers and pay them well to create sustainable good jobs for everyone who needs one.
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(Italiano) Invertire la marcia verso l’auto-distruzione?
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Sep 2021
Sì, è ancora possibile invertire la marcia verso l’auto-distruzione. Oggi non esistono più i conflitti d’interesse che hanno creato l’insostenibile mondo odierno.
→ read full articleIs It Still Possible to Reverse Humanity’s March toward Self-Destruction?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Sep 2021
YES! Today the conflicts of interest that created today´s unsustainable world no longer exist. NO! Most governments are fighting the economic impact of Covid by promoting growth through funding consumption, keeping banks solvent, and subsidizing business–to get people back to work. After the crisis, the same mental model will be employed to raise growth rates that in most of the world were already lagging before Covid, to bring down the numbers of those who were even then rejected by the labour market.
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(Castellano) El Once de Septiembre en Chile
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Sep 2021
13 Septiembre 2021 – El día once de septiembre, este año como todos los años, fuimos junto con mi pareja Carolina y con nuestra hija Shelley, al cementerio de Limache, el pequeño pueblo de la quinta región donde vivimos. Nos sumamos a nuestros vecinos limachinos quienes también no dejen de conmemorar la muerte de seres amados, y la muerte de la democracia, el once de septiembre de 1973.
→ read full articleContributions to Methods for Structural Transformation
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jul 2021
There may be people who believe that the problem of mass unemployment has become a non-problem solved by the Biden Administration. I doubt that any of them read TMS. I also trust that detailed explanations of phrases like “structural transformation” are as unnecessary as they are impossible here. Everyone knows about structural violence. And the reader will tolerate having to rely on context when she or he is not familiar with unusual kinds of structure-talk that I find indispensable.
→ read full article
Fees Must Fall
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 May 2021
“Fees must fall” is a South African species of a genus found on every continent. The issue is the high price of tertiary education. It is a chant that is easy to repeat, a slogan easy to remember–and a moral demand that deserves to be taken seriously.
→ read full articleFratelli Tutti and the Great Reset
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Apr 2021
Pope Francis on 3 Oct 2020 released his latest encyclical letter, Fratelli Tutti. Less than four months previously, Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret launched ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset’ at Davos–the World Economic Forum. In some ways their authors might appear to share a common worldview.
→ read full articleWho Are We? Where Are We Going? How Will We Get There?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Mar 2021
• We are the species whose ecological niche is the creation of cultures.
• We are going to a global mosaic of green and open societies.
• We will get there by transforming capitalism.
(Italiano) Una società non-razziale (senza razzismo) dev’essere per forza una società sconfinata
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2021
“Arcobalenismo” è da non confondere con “Non-razzialismo” o “Una società non razziale.” La differenza è che in “una Società Arcobaleno” vivono insieme in pace e armonia persone di diverse razze, mentre in una “Società non-razziale” non esiste razza, si riconosce la verità. Che è che non esiste una tal cosa come la razza. L’umanità è una.
→ read full articleA Non-racial Society (a Society without Racism) Must Necessarily Be an Unbounded Society
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2021
“Rainbowism” is contrasted with “Non-racialism” or “A Non-racial Society.” The difference is that in “a Rainbow Society” people of different races live together in peace and harmony, while in a “Non-racial Society” race does not exist; the truth is acknowledged. The truth is that there is no such thing as race. Humanity is one.
→ read full articleEmbrace Communities to Save Humanity and the Planet
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2020
The unbounded idea includes sharing surplus, moving resources from where they are not needed to where they are needed, following the ancient principle Pope Francis is repeating every day: our property belongs not only to us but also to those we can help with our surplus. It is about peace by peaceful means; education, ethics, and practical applications; more than about playing hardball with people who choose to live by a different philosophy.
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The Public Sector Cannot Solve Our Problems–Their Hands Are Tied
Tshepiso Moahloli via Howard Richards - TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Oct 2020
I work for the government and not a single day goes by when I do not hear the same cries of alarm. You are going to scare away investors! Every day we are warned that anything we do for the good of the 99% is going to scare off investors.
→ read full articleSelectively Unwalking the Path of History
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Oct 2020
I would like to help you out. Which way did you come in? Unwalking the historical path that led us to where we are, we humans should seize the day, carpe diem. We should transition to the day when humans will spend their time doing intrinsically valuable activities (sports, music, science, philosophy, dance, religion, studies, gardening , yoga, etc.) while advanced technology produces more and better goods and services, and creates more surplus to share.
→ read full articleTheoretical Note: John Maynard Keynes vs. Milton Friedman
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2020
The thesis of this note is that what is most important about Keynes was that he called attention to staggering features of the basic structure, namely the chronic insufficiency of effective demand and the chronic insufficiency of the inducement to invest. What is most important to extrapolate from Keynes survives the falsification of some of his empirical claims.
→ read full articleA Solution to Keynes´ Problem
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2020
Don´t leave anybody high and dry, bored, and hungry, tempted to join a gang to have fun being bad! Homo sapiens should transition to the day when humans will devote themselves to fun and funded intrinsically worthwhile activities –sports, music, science, philosophy, dance, religion, scholarship, gardening, yoga and so on—while advanced technology produces more and better goods and services, and creates more surplus to transfer.
→ read full articleCorruption
Howard Richards - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jul 2020
16 Jul 2020 – We are not trying to sell you our theory, but we do have a theory. It says that modern western civilization is no longer viable. It says that humanity needs to work together to solve its physical problems drawing on ethics that are not modern, not western, and in some cases have never existed anywhere and will need to be constructed in the future. We call our theory ´unbounded´ and ´realist. ´
→ read full articleThe Humans and the Viruses: The World Economic Forum and the Coronaviruses
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 May 2020
Let me suggest, first, that there is a plausible explanation at the heart of our failure to live out the best of human nature, and that the current pandemic shows how crucial it is to change it. And, second, that the smartest of the business leaders are realizing that their own fate and the fate of all of us depends on replacing the essence of capitalism with an ethics of solidarity.
→ read full articleNow What Do We Do?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Mar 2020
Accumulation for its own sake, far from being assumed to be the normal goal for property owners should not be a legitimate goal at all. Markets are created by communities. Property rights are created by communities. They should be regarded as morally legitimate if, when, and to the extent that they function to meet the needs of human communities and of the larger earth community of which we human beings are members.
→ read full article(Castellano) Mas Cordura, Menos Violencia, la Organización Ilimitada
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Mar 2020
2 Mar 2020 – La apuesta de este bosquejo es: Si uno comprende que la estructura cultural básica (junto con las leyes de la física, química, biología y otras ciencias naturales — todas ellas resumidas en la ecología) es el poder causal que más determina el rumbo de la historia; entonces uno comprenderá que la metodología de organización ilimitada es una metodología (no la única) apta para cambiar el rumbo de la historia.
→ read full articleA Rationale for Unbounded Organization: A Path to Positive Peace
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
This is a proposal for a pragmatic, functional and realistic framework for talking, thinking and building institutions.
→ read full articleThree Cheers for the Cheerfully Deluded!
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2019
Let’s hear three cheers for the cheerfully deluded! Instead of telling them that their dreams are very likely to be disappointed, let’s change the world to make it possible for more of their dreams to come true. Soul medicine. What is not possible in pure neoliberal markets is possible in impure African and Latin American markets. Public policies and human sympathy can rescue not only the bodies of the poor, but also the dignity of the poor.
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(Italiano) Pax Gandhiana: La Filosofia Politica del Mahatma Gandhi
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
In un mondo in cui gli studi prevalenti di pace e politica sono dominati da ciò che passa per realismo e ciò che passa per ordine mondiale, l’emerito studioso di Gandhi Anthony Parel ha derivato da un attento studio delle opera di Gandhi una filosofia politica che promette di essere alla lunga più realistica di quella/e dei cosiddetti realisti.
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Gandhi’s Economics: Practical Ethics for Systemic Transformation
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2019
Here the concept of basic cultural structure is used to argue that Gandhi, with deep roots in a different basic cultural structure, is able to offer a deeper and in the end more realistic critique of, and alternative to, neoliberalism than critiques that remain within the basic cultural structure of modernity. Why have moral economies failed to materialize? Is it now too late to prevent inevitable irreparable disastrous ecocide? Is it really true that by practicing the ideals of Gandhi and other great moral exemplars we are contributing to building a peaceful, just and sustainable world?’
→ read full article
Pax Gandhiana: The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
In a world where mainstream studies of peace and politics are dominated by what passes for realism and for world order, the distinguished Gandhi scholar Anthony Parel has derived from a close study of Gandhi’s works a political philosophy that promises in the long run to be more realistic than the so-called realists. It rests on a deeper order, an order in the human soul, than the global political and economic order established after World War II whose current disintegration mainstream scholars are now lamenting.
→ read full article(Castellano) La Transformación de la Estructura Cultural Básica (ECB): Nada Menos nos Salvará
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
11 Nov 2019 – Chile no es un caso único. También se registran ahora mismo conflictos sociales masivos en Argelia, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Egipto, Estados Unidos, Francia, Guinea, Haití, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iraq, Kazakstán, Kashmir, Líbano, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistán, Rusia, Siria, Sud África, Venezuela, Yemen unos cuantos países más. No hay país donde, aunque sea relativamente tranquilo ahora mismo, no se encuentre germinando las semillas de la rebelión.
→ read full article(Castellano) Chile Despertó, pero Chile no Despertó
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
11 Nov 2019 – De lo que he podido constatar, participando en unas manifestaciones en la quinta región, y enterándome por los medios y por las redes sociales de lo que pasa en el resto del país, los manifestantes son principalmente jóvenes, sinceros y comprometidos con el bien común, y sin ninguna intención de hacer mal a nadie. Simplemente quieren una vida digna normal, garantizada en el plano material por una seguridad económica confiable, es decir, no precaria. Otra cosa es la violencia que ha acompañado el despertar.
→ read full articleThe Basic Cultural Structure: A Comment from Chile as It Burns
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
An immediate payoff for peace is that once one analyses the main causes at work in history as structures, not as people, one should (if one is logical) tone down one’s anger. The world works the way it does because its main dynamics (capital accumulation, war) and other principal dynamics were socially constructed during long centuries when none of our contemporaries had yet been born. Another immediate payoff for peace is guidance on how to do peace-making.
→ read full articleThe Climate Crisis (and Other Crises) Require the Transformation of the Basic Cultural Structure of the Modern World (Part 2)
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
This is a revised version of the TMS Editorial with same title published on 14 Oct 2019–to clarify and answer questions from readers.
→ read full articleThe Climate Crisis (and Other Crises) Require the Transformation of the Basic Cultural Structure of the Modern World (Part 1)
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
It is in the news that millions of people around the world –inspired by a Swedish teenager so honest that looking at a picture of her will cure a headache—have taken to the streets demanding that something must be done. I will use this editorial to offer an answer to the question what must be done: The basic cultural structures of the modern world must be transformed. I will not try to prove this thesis here. I will try to state clearly the thesis to be proven.
→ read full article(Castellano) Eventos actuales en una perspectiva histórica
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
Pretoria: Cyril Ramaphosa, anteriormente presidente de la Unión Nacional de Mineros, y ahora presidente de la República de Sudáfrica, ha estado hablando recientemente mientras dormía: “no entiendo lo que me pasó. No entiendo lo que me pasó. No entiendo lo que me pasó”. Un ratón, que se abrió paso debajo de sus mantas y estaba en condiciones de morder uno de sus dedos de los pies, al escuchar sus gemidos, como el Daily Maverick y el Globe and Mail, y aparentemente por razones similares, decidió no atacar.
→ read full articleCurrent Events in an Historical Perspective
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
To rebuild the world, to build a world that works, we do not need ‘other economists’ as much as we need people trained in other fields who are able to look at problems now classified as ‘economic’–like ‘unemployment’–from other perspectives using different conceptual and mathematical tools.
→ read full articleTwo Necessary and Sufficient Principles
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
Life’s (humanity’s and the earth’s) bottleneck problems can be solved, I dare to suggest, by applying just two general principles. The two can be regarded as principles of unbounded organization. Unbounded organization is the name of a conversation, an academy and a movement (one of many, but not one that duplicates what the others do) devoted to making the impossible possible. Here I contribute to its conversation the proposal that implementing just two principles will make the impossible possible; namely, a pro-social attitude plus doing what works; or alternatively, a pro-social attitude plus structural understanding.
→ read full articleGreen New Deals
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
Green New Deals can be thought of as bearing new wine in old bottles. The old bottles are demands for social justice. Now they include shock and dismay at threats to the survival of our fragile biosphere. They can easily become just another rationale for tax benefits for investors and for massive public investment financed by public debt even more massive than it already is. The new wine is the creative thinking that is seeking ways to achieve structural changes that will make it possible to succeed where social democracy failed.
→ read full article
(Italiano) Quando si arriva alla fine della strada è ora di pensare fuori dagli schemi
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
22 Aprile 2019 – il mondo di ieri basato sulla premessa di guadagnarsi da vivere con un lavoro è finito. Finito! Tassare i ricchi per sovvenzionare i poveri – proposta con le migliori intenzioni da qualcuno a sinistra – è impossibile perché se si prova a tassarli, si trasferiscono. Inoltre, nessuno sa davvero quanto denaro è nascosto in fondi fiduciari dei paradisi fiscali sotto nomi fittizi, o quanto ne guizza per il mondo in frazioni di secondo in transazioni speculative mega-milionarie che rendono insignificante l’economia reale.
→ read full article(Castellano) El Final del Camino
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
No hay soluciones económicas (es decir, no hay soluciones pro-vida) porque la economía vive y se mueve y tiene su ser dentro del marco del derecho de propiedad y del derecho contractual tal como se lo desarrolló primero en el Imperio Romano, después en los estados sucesores del Imperio Romano durante el período moderno temprano. La ley europea fue impuesta a los habitantes de las Américas, África y Asia por la fuerza. (Consultar Patriarcado y acumulación a escala mundial de María Mies)
→ read full articleWhen You Get to the End of the Road It Is Time to Think Outside the Box
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
Thinking outside the box means thinking outside private law and outside the political and ethical philosophies that legitimate what Karl Polanyi called ‘market society’ (market society is a genus of which capitalism is a species). It means acknowledging that traditional Muslims are not stupid, in the light of their life experience, when they prefer Sharia Law. Sharia Law with all its faults is at least a possible way to organize human life including everybody (at least ‘all the faithful’) and respecting nature.
→ read full articleThomas Piketty vs. Yanis Varoufakis
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
Markets are the primary institution. Governments are secondary. Markets govern governments. Governments do not control markets. The first imperative for any government is to make the economy work for the people. The government can only comply with that imperative by pleasing the markets… This is why the disagreement between Thomas Piketty and Yanis Varoufakis is a splendid educational opportunity to move the conversation to a deeper level, to take to heart the words of Albert Einstein: ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.’
→ read full articleEurope is in Danger! But Why?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
8 Feb 2019 – Now a hue and cry has gone up that Europe is in danger. The continued existence of Europe’s core ideals –of its very essence– is said to be threatened. The occasion of today’s hue and cry is the possibility that the populist far right might sweep the elections of May 2019. I take this opportunity to question what I take to be the conventional wisdom of the official story.
→ read full articleWhat Is the Question?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jan 2019
“The question is whether finance will promote economic growth and rising living standards or create unproductive credit and use government to enforce creditor claims by imposing austerity and reducing large swathes of the population to debt peonage.” This précis of the pickle that is our prison was written by Michael Hudson but could have been written by Yanis Varoufakis, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders’ advisor Stephanie Kelton, or any of the distinguished scholars which I shall call “the Economists on the side of the Angels.” (EA)
→ read full articleWill 2019 Bring Opportunities to Change the System?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2019
1 Jan 2019 – Some of us think 2008 was a lost opportunity. Humanity had a chance to change course to save itself and the biosphere. We blew it. Could 2019 be a second chance? The reason why 2008, instead of some other recent year, stands out as a change opportunity is that toward the end of that year investors were losing money.
→ read full articleThomas Piketty’s Proposal to Remake Europe: Three Comments and a Suggestion
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Dec 2018
13 Dec 2018 – In the midst of more than one crisis, a stellar group of left-leaning intellectuals led by Thomas Piketty has written a proposal to remake Europe. It includes a manifesto, a treaty establishing what would amount to a new European legislature, and a budget. As its authors say, the greatest merit of their proposal is that it exists. Everyone is invited to comment on it and to suggest improvements. Taking them at their word, here are three comments and one suggestion.
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Solidarity Economics: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Nov 2018
When we are dealing with socially created realities we should bear in mind that the ways people think about the problems create them. If people are going to solve the problems, they need to think differently. Solidarity economics redefines the problems. The Roman Law iron cage of European “civilization” has got to go. Europe must demote itself to the status of a peninsula of Asia whose savants are no wiser than Gandhi, Confucius, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela or Paulo Freire. Many pioneers are developing alternative economies.
→ read full article(Castellano) Educación Moral para el Cambio Estructural
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Sep 2018
Se proponen tres principios educativos respaldados por hallazgos científicos para orientar la educación moral: la comprensión, la participación, y la empatía. Tomando como ejemplo la ‘trampa estructural’ por la cual la buena intención de cumplir con los DDHH sociales, como la salud, termina desincentivando la inversión económica, se sugiere que la buena y masiva educación moral es capaz de facilitar la resolución de obstáculos estructurales que traban las soluciones a los problemas sociales y ecológicos
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Solidarity for Full Employment (whole paper)
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Sep 2018
1. Analysis of the Bottleneck Problem
2. Examples (showing how to solve the bottleneck problem)
3. The Road from Here to There (generalizing from the examples)
4. The Imperative to Maximize Profits (blocks the road from here to there)
5. The Fiscal Crisis of the State (blocks the road from here to there)
6. Unbounded Organization (a way forward)
Solidarity for Full Employment
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Sep 2018
The problems of drug addiction, gangs, crime, ethnic nationalism, racism, sexism, chronic depression, immigration issues, poverty in old age, mental illness, war, inner city schools, taking necessary measures to save the biosphere that cost jobs, and many others will not be reduced to manageable proportions, much less solved, until human life is reorganized so that most people who need decent employment are able to find it. Would you agree? I call employment a bottleneck problem. If it is not solved, many other problems will not be solved either.
→ read full article(Castellano) Una Lectura Económica de Los Hechos de los Apóstoles: Taller de Relectura de Pablo de Tarso
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jul 2018
Es necesario construir formas de vida muy distintas de la forma actualmente dominante. Entre las estructuras sociales dominantes que hay que desechar está la que subordina los procesos vitales de la vida a la existencia de ingresos, cuyos montos son fijados por un contrato de trabajo. En el plano científico, el equilibrio general, que nunca ha sido pensado como una realidad, tiene que dejar de ser pensado como un ideal en el cual el producto del trabajador corresponde al sueldo fijado en un contrato libremente negociado a la luz de las fuerzas del mercado.
→ read full articleWhat Should We Do Now?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jul 2018
There is another reason why having to live in one regime of accumulation or another is unsustainable. It is because although the physicists, chemists, and biologists have explained to us very clearly what we must do to save the biosphere, we can’t do it. The causal powers that determine our behaviour are mainly in the social structures. What happens is not what humans want to happen, but what the structures compel. Nobody wants the destruction of the biosphere, but nevertheless we are compelled to destroy the biosphere. It is a systemic imperative to obey the necessity of capital accumulation and to disobey hard science.
→ read full articleEconomic Theory and Community Development
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Apr 2018
22 Apr 2018 – One of several key theses of this book is the ethical principle: we should share the surplus. It is an ancient principle that in modern times the principal founder of economic theory, Adam Smith, took great pains to deny. It is present in one form or another in most of the cultures homo sapiens has constructed. It survives today in most religions. It is, implicitly at least, a centrepiece of socialism and of responsible capitalism. We do not think of ourselves as proposing a new idea, but as reviving an old one whose time is now returning.
→ read full articleMoral Education for Structural Change
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
The experience of the education for social responsibility program at the University of Concepción suggests the viability of large-scale moral education programmes, aimed at forming a functional, realistic, and solidary ethical conscience. Three educational principles supported by scientific findings are proposed to guide moral education: understanding, participation, and empathy. Taking as an example the ‘structural trap’ by which the good intention of complying with social human rights, such as health, ends up discouraging economic investment…
→ read full articleFollowing Foucault: The Trail of the Fox
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2018
A Kindle E Book on Amazon – by Howard Richards, with Catherine Odora Hoppers and Evelin Lindner, with a Foreword by Magnus Haavelsrud.‘I found this a truly fascinating work: timely, original, dynamic. There is such a huge secondary literature on Foucault; one is almost sceptical about new additions to the corpus. This, however, is certainly worth the read; partly because of the ways it also counters and contradicts many accepted ways of reading Foucault, especially on power.’
→ read full articleDesigning a Miracle to Save South Africa
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
3 Jan 2018 – This article is an offer of new ideas, designed to be food for thought for the first group, the questers; to question the certainties of the second group, those on either the right or the left or in the centre who believe the right path is known but just not followed; and to inspire hope and clarity in the third group, those whose emotions are deep but whose thoughts are muddled and incoherent.
→ read full articleHumanity’s Principal Challenge
Howard Richards and Ela Gandhi – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Oct 2017
20 Oct 2017 – This paper was written for a seminar in Santiago, Chile, with TRANSCEND member Ela Gandhi, a granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi who continues his work. Each participant was asked to write three pages on the topic, “What is the principal challenge facing humanity today?”
→ read full articleA General Solution to Economic Problems
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Jun 2017
I refer to the unsolved ones, not to those that are pretty satisfactorily solved already. I focus on our two acronyms SF1 and SF2, where SF can be read as Staggering Fact or as Structural Fact.
→ read full articleOn the Intransitive Objects of the Social (or Human) Sciences
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 May 2017
Jan 2017 – When Roy Bhaskar first introduced his concept of intransitive objects of knowledge in A Realist Theory of Science, his first examples of such objects were the specific gravity of mercury, the process of electrolysis, the mechanism of light propagation, sound and heavy bodies falling to earth. Such objects would continue to exist in a world where there was no science to know them. In such a world, which has existed in the past and which might come again, the causal laws that science has now discovered would prevail in the absence of knowledge of them.
→ read full articleCelebrating the Fifth of May
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Apr 2017
If you have successfully freed your twenty-first century mind from enslavement to the jurisprudence of the eighteenth century, you will have no trouble accepting the cancellation of debts. If you are a realist about the evolution of the human species on the planet earth, you will see necessary or desirable debt cancellation as just another adjustment of culture to its physical functions.
→ read full article(Castellano) Estado y Ciudadanía: el rol de la educación en DDHH para su construcción cultural y política
Howard Richards y Alicia Cabezudo – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Mar 2017
Adelantamos la tesis de que hay una oportunidad prometedora y desafiante que tenemos los profesores para cambiar en sentido positivo el rumbo de la historia. Es una oportunidad también peligrosa. Cuando usamos la frase “rumbo de la historia” tenemos en mente la diferencia entre, por una parte, los innumerables sucesos que pasan; y, por otra, aquellos sucesos, o constelaciones de sucesos, que cambian de una manera fundamental la forma de vida de un pueblo, o de unos pueblos.
→ read full articleHow to Save the World from Fascism and Meet Human Needs in Harmony with Nature
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Feb 2017
President Franklin Roosevelt had declared that America was fighting for the Four Freedoms: speech, worship, from want, and from fear. Jack wrote home that the U.S. troops in Europe were called “The Four Freedoms Boys.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt would soon play a leading role in drafting a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that would establish social rights to education, health care, employment, and social security in old age.
→ read full articleThe Future of the United States of America
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jan 2017
31 Dec 2016 – What I most want to say is that social chaos and ecological disaster cannot be avoided without transforming basic cultural and social structures. Otherwise no economic policy will work. For structural reasons, all economic policies lead to unacceptable results.
→ read full article(Castellano) Economía Solidaria: Clave de la Justicia, la Paz, y la Sustentabilidad
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Dec 2016
Voy a adelantar tres tesis. Por supuesto la veracidad o falsedad de ellas no se puede evaluar sin conocer los significados de las palabras que las componen. Me voy a dedicar principalmente a explicar de qué se trata, vale decir a explicar el significado de los conceptos que componen las tesis. Después, voy a pedir a los lectores evaluar según sus luces si las tesis sean ciertas o sean falsas.
→ read full articleKeynes’ Limitations and Trump’s Disasters
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Dec 2016
My recommended way forward will be to deepen Keynes’ macroeconomic analysis to make it an historical analysis of social structure leading to a communitarian reformulation of social and economic democracy. This theoretical move supports a flexible approach to practice called “unbounded organization.”
→ read full article(Castellano) Una Propuesta Muy Importante de José Luis Corragio
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Nov 2016
Aunque parezca una exageración, creo que señala una pista a seguir para salvar a la humanidad del caos social y para salvar la biosfera de la extinción. Es muy importante.
→ read full articleNow What Should We Do?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Nov 2016
An Agenda for Berniecrats after the United States Election
→ read full articleNatural Rights: A Solution in the 18th Century, a Problem in the 21st
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Oct 2016
Individual and Human Rights – Let’s talk about natural rights. What shall we say? Well, let’s begin the way students in law schools begin when they brief a legal opinion to prepare for a class. They read the dissenting opinion before they read the majority opinion. Starting with the dissent is a good way to bring the issues into focus.
→ read full article(Castellano) ¿Hay una Crisis Chilena?
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Oct 2016
6 Oct 2016 – “Chile vive una muy profunda crisis de confianza de todas las instituciones.” La opinión arriba citada no es la opinión de cualquiera. Es la opinión de quien fue el Ministro de Economía en la transición del gobierno militar al gobierno civil de 1990.
→ read full article(Castellano) Las Bajas Jubilaciones en Chile
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Sep 2016
“Nuestro mayor problema político es la falta de imaginación”. –Michel Foucault ~ La apuesta de la economía social y solidaria es que la misma lógica cálida que rescata a los victimas del sistema es capaz de transformar el sistema.
→ read full articleSouth African Elections 2016
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Aug 2016
Bloomberg frames the expected reforms as the efficient causes that will generate prosperity and employment. That investors are already expecting higher profits is framed as good news for the poor. The proposition that more investor-friendly reforms (on top of the many South Africa has already had) will serve the common good is treated as a given needing no proof; as if it were a joke that had already been told; as if those who did not understand the joke and did not know when to laugh, or did not know whether to laugh or cry, were not so much mistaken as left out of the conversation, deprived of voice.
→ read full articleIndividual and Human Rights
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Aug 2016
Take a cue from the days when Jesus could say “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” In those days money belonged to sovereigns and sovereigns used their financial privileges to defray their expenses, mainly the expenses of waging wars. Now banks and other financial institutions have privileges that the sovereign people should have and should use to make social rights real rights.
→ read full article(Castellano) Intento de Golpe de Estado en Turquía, Nueva Constitución en Chile
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Aug 2016
¿Qué es lo que es la democracia? Según el realismo critico la palabra “democracia” –y cualquier otra palabra—es una herramienta de acción social. Hablar es actuar. Esgrimir la palabra “democracia” es una acción. Debe ser una acción responsable. Sucesos actuales en Turquía y en Chile subrayan la importancia práctica de esta perspectiva teórica.
→ read full articleTrump vs. Clinton vs. Sanders: The Blind Leading the Blind Leading the Blind
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2016
My thesis is that the proposals put forward by Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders offer no solutions to the fiscal crisis of the state, and partly for this reason do not and cannot promise social integration. I am not complaining. I am just trying to do my part as a philosopher to help generate better ideas, ideas that will work.
→ read full articleThe Nice Terror Attack: Mind at the End of Its Tether
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2016
Nice is an opportunity to work on learning what we should be trying to learn anyway: how to live in peace with one another. As Baruch Spinoza pointed out in 1677 –and it was already old news then—anybody can kill anybody. Nice dramatizes the fact that peace through law enforcement is not feasible. Anybody can kill people with a truck, and there is no way to deploy police everywhere to stop that from happening. Peace is a table with four legs: justice, justice, justice, and justice.
→ read full articleThe Impossibility of Politics – And How to Make Politics Possible
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2016
The thesis that politics today is impossible (or stated a bit less briefly, that the goals that politics sets out to achieve are unattainable) is so far more a provocation than a hypothesis. To make it into a meaningful claim I have to assign meanings to the word “politics” and to the word “impossible.”
→ read full article(Castellano) Como Entender la Política y Como Cambiarla
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2016
Lo que distingue el político de los demás oficios y profesiones no es en fin ninguna calidad moral distinta, sino el hecho que le corresponde cumplir una tarea que en la época que nos toca vivir es imposible. La tesis que hoy la política es imposible, o –dicho de una manera menos escueta– que los objetivos que la política se propone sean inalcanzables, es hasta aquí todavía más una provocación que una hipótesis.
→ read full articleEconomic Theory and Community Development – An Exercise in Applied Philosophy
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Oct 2015
The Imaginary World That Holds the Real World Captive
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