On democracy

"To depend on great thinkers, authorities, and experts is, it seems to me, a violation of the spirit of democracy. Democracy rests on the idea that, except for technical details for which experts may be useful, the important decisions of society are within the capability of ordinary citizens. Not only can ordinary people make decisions about these issues, but they ought to, because citizens understand their own interests more clearly than any experts."

Howard Zinn, "Passionate Declarations", chapter "Introduction: American ideology".

Grain de sable

"Dans cette gestion politique du vivant que Foucault appelle «biopolitique», les résultats de l'incitation à la libre inconséquence ne se feront pas attendre. Les gaspillages individuels, multipliés par le nombre de gaspilleurs, atteignent des totaux impressionnants. Plus de la moitié des trajets effectués en ville au volant d'une voiture couvrent une distance inférieure à 2 km, or, un véhicule n'atteignant sa consommation normale qu'après 5 km, on peut évaluer la perte à 1,5 milliard de litres de carburant. Les 165 milliards de kw/h consommés par les Français pour leur éclairage correspondent à la production de deux centrales nucléaires de 13 000 mégawatts. Une seule suffirait si les foyers étaient équipés d'ampoules moins voraces. Un robinet qui goutte équivaut au moins à 35 000 litres annuels, soit la consommation de cinquante personnes pendant trois ans dans la savane africaine. À ce type de comparaisons, sachant par exemple qu'il faut près de 200 litres pour prendre un bain et 11 litres à une chasse d'eau pour évacuer un flacon d'urine dans une cuvette des W-C, on pourra s'adonner à d'effarants calculs. De tels chiffres pourraient être avancés pour nos actions quotidiennes les plus apparemment anodines.
La question «que puis-je faire ?» prélude déjà à l'aveu d'impuissance, tant il est vrai que, désemparés par l'ampleur du monde, où tout se joue sans nous, nous paraissons quantité microscopique et franchement négligeable au pied des forteresses industrielles, juridiques, étatiques. Mais si notre influence personnelle sur le cours des choses peut être tenue pour nulle, nous restons tout-puissants sur la façon dont ce cours nous traverse, ou sur notre faculté de lui rester imperméable. Les fabricants qui nous inondent d'objets inutiles et de nouveautés facultatives ne persévéreraient pas longtemps s'il n'existait un marché pour la pacotille que les clients approuvent par leurs achats. La propagande économique nous a formés au chacun-pour-soi, voire au chacun-contre-tous, et, après avoir changé notre responsabilité en pouvoir d'achat, elle nous presse de renier pour quelques sous ce à quoi nous croyons. En plaçant le consommateur au coeur de son mécanisme, l'autorité marchande lui donne aussi le moyen d'aiguiser son choix en arme d'un contre-pouvoir, de refuser ce qu'il réprouve, d'encourager ce qu'il défend, de se priver de l'inadmissible, et de passer du statut de rouage à celui de grain de sable.
La notion de citoyenneté évolue. Le citoyen d'Athènes n'est pas le citoyen de la Révolution française, qui n'est plus le citoyen d'aujourd'hui. L'écocitoyen, sans négliger les relations que l'homme entretient avec la société, s'attache à la nécessité pour l'individu d'avoir des gestes et un comportement responsables par rapport au lieu où il vit aussi bien qu'à l'égard de ses semblables. Et voici que cet individu si souvent séparé des autres et de lui-même, fragmenté par le pouvoir consumériste, invité à se nourrir, à s'habiller, à vivre contre ses principes fondamentaux comme un animal dressé contre son instinct, peut s'engager tout entier dans ses choix, ses gestes et ses actes, trouver en lui de quoi se réunifier, pour affirmer haut et fort la cohérence qu'on lui dispute ou qu'on lui interdit, reconquérir ce que Rousseau appelle «l'inaliénable souveraineté individuelle», et y gagner ainsi sa réconciliation. L'homo consummator porte en lui-même la sentence d'un homo ethicus."

Armand Farrachi, "Les Ennemis de la terre" (cité par Bernard Maris, "Antimanuel d'économie. 1: les fourmis", chapitre "La politique dans l'économie").

Superstitions

"La superstition scientifique apporte avec elle des illusions si ridicules et des conceptions si infantiles que par comparaison la superstition religieuse elle-même en sort ennoblie."

Antonio Gramsci (cité par Bernard Maris, "Antimanuel d'économie. 1: les fourmis", chapitre "Science dure, science molle, ou science nulle?")

L'esprit de finesse

"A l'esprit de finesse, lié à la pluridisciplinarité du champ [de l'enseignement] secondaire, succède [dans l'enseignement supérieur] l'esprit de géométrie, qui ne prétend plus comprendre le monde, mais le métrer, le formater selon le calcul économique et l'idéologie du calcul."

(Bernard Maris, "Antimanuel d'économie. 1: les fourmis", chapitre "Introduction").

Cette critique, appliquée ici à l'économie, peut aussi s'appliquer à certaines sciences plus "dures", notamment l'océanographie physique !

Hope

"Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills - against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation...
It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Robert Kennedy, cited by Jeffrey Sachs in "The end of poverty, economic possibilities for our time", chapter "Our generation's challenge".
Jeffrey Sachs then concludes his book:

"Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope, and that we worked together to heal the world."

Sustainable development or extreme poverty: do we have to choose?

A friend of mine tells me that sustainable development should not be our priority, since it would impede economic growth, therefore perpetuating extreme poverty.
On the contrary, Jeffrey Sachs argues that both fights should be taken together and will benefit from being solved together:

"While targeted investments in health, education, and infrastructure can unlock the trap of extreme poverty, the continuing environmental degradation at local, regional, and planetary scales threatens the long-term sustainability of all our social gains. Ending extreme poverty can relieve many of the pressures on the environment. When impoverished households are more productive on their farms, they face less pressure to cut down neighboring forests in search of new farmland. When their children survive with high probability, they have less incentive to maintain very high fertility rates with the attendant downside of rapid population growth. Still, even as extreme poverty ends, the environmental degradation related to industrial pollution and the long-term climate change associated with massive use of fossil fuels will have to be addressed. There are ways to confront these environmental challenges without destroying prosperity (for example, by building smarter power plants that capture and dispose of their carbon emissions and by increasing use of renewable energy sources). As we invest in ending extreme poverty, we must face the ongoing challenge of investing in the global sustainability of the world's ecosystems."

(Jeffrey Sachs, "The end of poverty, economic possibilities for our time", chapter "Our generation's challenge").

Reason vs Passion

"The critics of progress should therefore be met partway. Progress is possible, but not inevitable. Reason can be mobilized to promote social well-being, but can also be overtaken by destructive passions. Human institutions, indeed, should be designed in the light of reason precisely to control or harness the irrational side of human behavior. In this sense, the Enlightenment commitment to reason is not a denial of the unreasonable side of human nature, but rather a belief that despite human irrationality and passions, human reason can still be harnessed - through science, nonviolent action, and historical reflection - to solve basic problems of social organization and to improve human welfare."

(Jeffrey Sachs, "The end of poverty, economic possibilities for our time", chapter "Our generation's challenge").

Mass murder for a good cause

"My bias is this: I want my readers to think twice about our traditional heroes, to reexamine what we cherish (technical competence) and what we ignore (human consequences). I want them to think about how easily we accept conquest and murder because it furthers "progress". Mass murder for "a good cause" is one of the sicknesses of our time. There were those who defended Stalin's murders by saying, "Well, he made Russia a major power." As we have seen, there were those who justified the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by saying "We had to win the war."

(Howard Zinn, "Passionate Declarations", chapter "The use and abuse of History").

Homme vs Nature ?

Extraits du débat "L'homme ou la Nature, faut-il choisir ?", dans "Philosophie Magazine", no 13 (oct 2007):

Philippe Descola:
"Il est quand même frappant de voir à quel point Montaigne, père de l'humanisme occidental, s'émerveille de la capacité de raisonnement des animaux. Il n'établit pas de différence de nature mais de degré entre humains et non-humains. Cette différence de degré plutôt que d'essence avec le monde non-humain conduit à remettre en question la dissociation tranchée qui s'est établie à l'âge moderne - soit après Montaigne, notamment sous l'impulsion de Descartes - entre nature et culture."

En lisant ceci, j'étais conforté dans mon idée que nous ne sommes pas si différents des animaux, étant seulement le plus évolué des animaux. Mais le point de vue suivant se défend aussi:

Luc Ferry:
"Qu'est-ce qui justifie qu'on attribue à l'humain des droits et une telle supériorité par rapport aux arbres ou aux animaux ? Qu'est-ce qui définit sa compétence en tant que seul être moral ? Les humanistes ont cherché un critère de différenciation moral, pas un critère lambda. On aurait pu en trouver mille: les animaux n'ont pas de téléphone portable, ils ne fument pas, ils ne font pas cuire la nourriture. Je crois que c'est Rousseau qui le premier formule le bon critère. Ce n'est pas le langage qui caractérise l'humanité, le language n'est pas un critère moral. Le fait qu'un être parle ou ne parle pas est important pour un ethnologue. Pour un moraliste, cela n'a aucune pertinence. De la même façon, ce n'est pas l'intelligence qui compte. Une personne trisomique 21 mérite autant de respect qu'Albert Eisntein. Le critère de Rousseau est la liberté, comme arrachement à la tradition et au code de la nature [...]
«Le programme de la nature s'impose à l'animal, tandis que l'homme s'arrache à la nature pour entrer dans l'histoire.»[...]
Comme le dit encore Vercors dans sa fable Les Animaux dénaturés (1952), pour porter un jugement de valeur, il faut être en écart par rapport à la nature. L'animal fait un avec la nature, l'homme fait deux et là est le secret de ses pouvoirs de destruction comme de protection..."

Cet argument rejoint celui des religions monothéistes, qui n'octroient une âme qu'aux êtres humains car ce sont les seuls à avoir la liberté d'aimer ou de haïr, de choisir le bien ou le mal.
Mais est-on si sûr qu'aucun animal n'ait cette faculté ?
Je pense par exemple à ces chiens qui se laissent mourir sur la tombe de leurs maîtres. Suivent-ils en cela le programme de la nature ? Ou au contraire ne montrent-ils pas une capacité à aimer, d'une façon dont bien des humains seraient incapables ?
Comme le dit Renaud dans sa chanson Baltique:

"Et dire que ça se veut chrétien
Et ça ne comprend même pas
Que l'amour dans le coeur d'un chien
C'est le plus grand amour qui soit
[...]
Je pourrais vivre dans la rue
Etre bourré de coups de pieds
Manger beaucoup moins que mon dû
Dormir sur le pavé mouillé
En échange d'une caresse
De temps en temps d'un bout de pain
Je donne toute ma tendresse
Pour l'éternité ou plus loin
Prévenez-moi lorsque quelqu'un
Aimera un homme comme moi
Comme j'ai aimé cet humain
Que je pleure tout autant que toi"

Killing another myth

This could also be the sixth and last episode of "Public vs private", where the conclusion is drawn that to achieve an efficient economy turned toward people needs, one has to combine public and private sectors:

"The last myth worthy of mention is the social Darwinist myth, often the modern economist's myth, which warns against soft-hearted liberalism on the grounds that "real life" is competition and struggle, of "nature red in tooth and claw" in Tennyson's evocative phrase. Social Darwinism holds that economic progress is the story of competition and survival of the fittest. Some groups dominate; other groups fall behind. In the end, life is a struggle, and the world today reflects the outcome of that struggle.

Despite the fact that much free-market economic theory has championed this vision, economists from Adam Smith onward have recognized that competition and struggle are but one side of economic life, and that trust, cooperation, and collective action in the provision of public goods are the obverse side. Just as the communist attempt to banish competition from the economic scene via state ownership failed miserably, so too would an attempt to manage a modern economy on the basis of market forces alone. All successful economies are mixed economies, relying on both the public sector and the private sector for economic development. I have explained the underlying theoretical reasons why markets and competition alone will not provide efficient levels of infrastructure, knowledge, environmental management, and goods. Just as that is true at the national level, it is also true internationally. Without cooperation, a collection of national economies will not provide efficient levels of investment in cross-border infrastructure, knowledge, environmental management, or merit goods among the world's poor."

(Jeffrey Sachs, "The end of poverty, economic possibilities for our time", chapter "Myths and magic bullets")

Public vs private (5)

"Fifth, governments will want to help the poorest of the poor not only by providing infrastructure and social investments, but also by providing productive inputs into private business if that, too, is required to help impoverished households get started in market-based activities. Thus government might want to provide subsidized fertilizers to subsistence farmers so that they can produce enough to eat or microcredits to rural women so that they can start microbusinesses. Once these households successfully raise their incomes above subsistence, and begin to accumulate savings on their own, the government subsidies can be gradually withdrawn.
At the same time, except in the case of the poorest households, governments generally should not provide the capital for private businesses. Experience has shown that private entrepreneurs do a much better job of running businesses than governments. When governments run businesses, they tend to do so for political rather than economic reasons. State enterprises tend to overstaff their operations, since jobs equal votes for politicians, and layoffs can cost a politician the next election. State-owned banks tend to make loans for political reasons, rather than on the basis of expected returns. Factories are likely to be built in the districts of powerful politicians, not where they can best serve the broader population. Moreover, governments rarely have the in-house expertise to manage complex technologies, and they shouldn't, aside from sectors where the government's role is central, such as in defense, infrastructure, health, and education."

Public vs private (4)

"Fourth, societies around the world want to ensure that everybody has an adequate level of access to key goods and services (health care, education, safe drinking water) as a matter of right and justice. Goods that should be available to everybody because of their vital importance to human well-being are called merit goods. The rights to these merit goods are not only an informal commitment of the world's governments, they are also enshrined in international law, most importantly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as follows:

• Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

Moreover, according to Article 28 of the Universal Declaration, «Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.» A follow-through on the Millennium Development Goals would mark a major practical application of that article."

When I read these articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I am amazed on how little they are actually applied even in the rich countries, especially the United States! If you don't have a work, you don't have a health insurance and therefore adequate medical care. One time I was at the hospital in Honolulu, I saw a cartoon on the front desk, where an old poor guy that looked very sick was arriving in a hospital, the receptionist was asking him if he had a health insurance, the guy was replying «no», and the receptionist was pointing to the door while telling him «the exit is this way». I was litterally shocked! You don't have equal access to higher education neither, since the selection is made on money, not on merit!
The situation is less bleak in France, and Europe in general, but I don't think we are heading in the good direction with the new government's reforms...

Public vs private (3)

"Third, many social sectors exhibit strong spillovers (or externalities) in their effects. I want you to sleep under an antimalarial bed net so that a mosquito does not bite you and then transmit the disease to me!
For a similar reason, I want you to be well educated so that you do not easily fall under the sway of a demagogue who would be harmful for me as well as for you. When such spillovers exist, private markets tend to undersupply the goods and services in question. For just this reason, Adam Smith called for the public provision of education: «An instructed and intelligent people ... are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition...» Smith argued, therefore, that the whole society is at risk when any segment of society is poorly educated. Natural capital is another area where externalities loom large. Private actions - pollution, logging, overfishing, and the like - can lead to species extinction, deforestation, or other kinds of environmental degradation with serious adverse consequence for the whole society, or even the whole world. Governments therefore have a crucial role to play in conserving natural capital."

Public vs private (2)

"A second category of publicly provided capital goods includes those that are nonrival, when the use of the capital by one citizen does not diminish its availability for use by others. A scientific discovery is a classic nonrival good. Once the structure of DNA has been discovered, the use of that wonderful knowledge by any individual in society does not limit the use of the same knowledge by others in society. Economic efficiency requires that the knowledge should be available for all, to maximize the social benefits of the knowledge. There should not be a fee for scientists, businesses, households, researchers, and others who want to utilize the scientific knowledge of the structure of DNA! But if there is no fee, who will invest in the discoveries in the first place? The best answer is the public, through publicly financed institutions like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. Even the free-market United States invests $27 billion in publicly financed knowledge capital through the NIH."

Public vs private (1)

The following are good arguments for what should be taken care of by the public sector instead of the private sector. And they are from a capitalist economist who has militanted his whole life to spread liberal market mechanisms worldwide, as an efficient way to fight against poverty (Jeffrey Sachs, "The end of poverty, economic possibilities for our time", chapter "Making the investments needed to end poverty"). It is quite long so I will split it into 5 parts, following the 5 points argumentation of the author.

"Why should government finance schools, clinics, and roads, rather than leave those to the private sector ? There are five kinds of reasons, all compelling in the proper context. First, there are many kinds of infrastructure, especially networks like power grids, roads, and other transport facilities - airports and seaports - which are characterized by increasing returns to scale. If left to private markets, these sectors would tend to be monopolized, so they are called natural monopolies. If such capital investments are left to the private sector, the privately owned monopolies would overcharge for their use, and the result would be too little utilization of this kind of capital. Potential users would be rationed out of the market. It is more efficient, therefore, for a public monopoly to provide network infrastructure and set an efficient price below the one that would be set by a private monopolist."