Sunday 14 December 2014

University of Greenwich revises its economics programmes to enhance pluralism and real world economics


Received from Sara Gorgoni, University of Greenwich, Department of International Business and Economics, Programme Leader


The 24th of November was an important day for the economists at the University of Greenwich, when four programmes in economics offered by the Department of International Business and Economics - BSc (Hons) Economics, BSc (Hons) Economics with Banking, BA (Hons) Business Economics and BA (Hons) Economics with Language - were successfully reviewed. Every day all over the country undergraduate programmes get reviewed and revalidated, so normally this is not something worth making too much fuss about. But this time is different! Our revised programmes are different. Why so, you may ask? 


The revised programmes were commended for “the enthusiasm and development of new material by the teaching team, showing a flexible and responsive approach to the current environment, as well as taking a leading role in the sector”. That is, they were praised for leading changes in the way economics is taught. The last seven years have not been easy for the global economy as well as the teaching of economics. The recent financial crisis and the Great Recession have led many economists, non-economists and students in economics to question the state of the discipline, wondering to what extent it provides the necessary tools to interpret the complex world we live in, signalling a deep dissatisfaction with economists’ ability to provide solutions to real world problems. Employers have recognised that the economics graduates that the standard curriculum generates are not equipped with the skills that the real world requires. Likewise, students themselves have recognised that the tools and theories they learn don’t enable them to make sense of the world they live in, let alone to address and solve real world problems. The need for a pluralistic approach to the teaching of economics, the need to teach real world economics that better helps to understand and act in the world we live in, the urgency to integrate some of the burning issues of our time such as ecological sustainability to the curriculum all emerged from the debate as crucial aspects. We are grateful to Rethinking Economics, International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics, and Post-Crash Economics Societies in Manchester and elsewhere for stimulating our debate. 

The reason the revalidation of the economics programmes at the University of Greenwich is special is that it constitutes one of the first institutional responses to current pressures from students, faculty, employers and policy makers to produce more ‘world-ready’ graduates. In redesigning our economics programmes we – the economics programmes team - have decided to:

- Address socially relevant economic questions in all core economic courses by adopting a historical and pluralistic perspective right from the start and throughout the programme. 

- Add two new compulsory courses -Economic History in the first year and History of Economic Thought in the second year, and an optional course Political Economy of International Development and Finance in the third year.

- Integrate the concept of environmental and social sustainability –– in the teaching of economics in all courses, as well as provide specific courses such as Environmental Economics and Environmental Regulation and Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. 

- Eliminate from the curriculum those topics that tend to be taught by default just because they appear on standard economics textbooks rather than because they are recognised as truly useful in understanding how economies really work. 

In particular, the rationale for the introduction of Economic History and History of Economic Thought courses is that students should be made aware of what has happened in the sphere of economics, more or less in the order that it happened. This will help them place the economic ideas and theories they come across in all courses into an historical context, to form their own opinion by reading the original texts, e.g. by Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Schumpeter, and Keynes, and hopefully develop an understanding of economics as the result of a dynamic social process including controversy, conflict, and social change. 

However, we do not isolate the development of a pluralistic perspective to only a few courses, but rather integrate it in all our courses by approaching real world problems from the perspective of different theories, both old and contemporary, comparing, contrasting, or at times synthesising them. This should help the students to develop a critical perspective towards current economic theories and evolving economic events, and develop an understanding about the limitations of theories and models (for example, what happens out of equilibrium), and think more widely about the historical, institutional and political context of economic behaviour and policies. The work of a diverse body of research active lecturers informs our teaching. 

Our understanding of pluralism does not only include different schools of thought and disciplines, but also methodologies. Our new programmes encourage going beyond Quantitative Methods.  We encourage the use of case studies, qualitative research methods, as well as a multitude of different quantitative methods including but not limited to econometrics. E.g. we pride ourselves for having the biggest research centre in Social Network Analysis (SNA) in Europe, and I, among others, use the approach and methodology of SNA in teaching economics. 

The ability to think critically also requires the ability to analyse empirical evidence, and this is why we have restructured our Quantitative Methods courses to strengthen students’ ability to identify, access and use relevant data sources to analyse current economic problems and form an independent opinion in the public debate, and to be critical about the way data is supplied and used. Finally, we care about developing the ability of our students to communicate economic ideas clearly and in a non-technical fashion to a wide variety of audiences, because economics should not be a cryptic language accessible only to an elite group of economists, but rather belong to the society. 


All in all we have tried to contribute towards a better teaching, learning and use of economics, and we hope to see more of this in the future, around the country and the world.

Saturday 29 November 2014

Curriculum Reform at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey

A summary of the campaign to change the economics curriculum at Boğaziçi University

By Anil Askin and Serkant Adiguzel at the Boğaziçi Political Economy Society (BPES) – www.ekop.org

In April 2013, BPES wrote a petition to be shared with economics students (http://ekop.org/critique-of-curriculum-in-economics/). Since BPES did not have any chance to spread the news through internal email, they figured out another way: social media. Each class of economics students has a separate group on Facebook. In May 2013, BPES started joining those groups and shared the petition. This had two effects. Posting the petition created an opportunity to discuss some points with students at different phases in their study of economics. In other words, BPES had this great chance to witness various demands, concerns and criticisms, which indeed let BPES make concrete points afterwards. Second, BPES found social media an effective way to make contact with fellow students: social media was the right place to announce when and where BPES were going to meet on campus. BPES learned a lot from this form of campaigning, from those who did not intentionally and explicitly formulate their ideas around “pluralism”, “heterodoxy” or any well-defined concept in opposition to the mainstream economics. Discussing these ideas revealed a common and huge discontent with regard to economics teaching in general.


At the end of May 2013, BPES were ready to hand in hard copies of documents to the department. BPES also sent documents via email to all professors individually, right before the departmental meeting in June, which was closed to students. Then the process had begun. For one year, the department had tried to develop a different curriculum: even mainstream economists at Boğaziçi University were not happy with the way things were going. Although it was hard to say that students’ demands and the department’s projection were completely parallel to each other, the discontent was common.

The most important change towards pluralism in the undergraduate curriculum came with the new compulsory course called “Evolution of Economies and Economics”, which indeed was proposed in the petition: all the second year students now must take this course. Although the syllabus of the course is not prepared yet, BPES can say that students will be aware that what they learn is not the only way and there are other schools of thoughts in economics.

The new curriculum offers more selective courses ranging from feminist or institutional economics to Marxian economics. There were some restrictive electives before, mainly aiming to teach neoclassical theory at an advanced level such as advanced macroeconomics or advanced microeconomics. Students had to take these “restrictive elective” courses and they had no chance to take another course in lieu of these courses. Now, these courses are part of the elective course pool showing that the hierarchy between courses such as “gender and the economy” - which has been an elective course - and, say, advanced macroeconomics - which was a restrictive elective - has now vanished. The new pool consists of many courses from which students are free to choose. Hence, students have the chance to shape their interests and to be exposed to different schools.


A key part of criticism was the disconnection of courses and real life. BPES expect more real life examples in all courses so that students can truly understand the reflections of the theory in real life. Inclusion of real life examples requires greater student-teacher discussion in class. The changes that took place in undergraduate economics curriculum at Boğaziçi University are a big step forward.

Friday 21 November 2014

Professor Steve Keen launches Rethinking Economics Kingston

Students at Kingston University kicked off a campaign for a new approach to economics with the successful launch of new society Rethinking Economics Kingston this week.

Almost 100 people squeezed in to hear Professor Steve Keen – newly appointed head of the School of Economics, Politics and History – launch the new society with a speech on what’s wrong with mainstream economics and how students should change it.

Professor Keen - author of Debunking Economics and well-known critic of mainstream economics – described how theories taught in most economic classes were unable to predict, understand or even take on board the recent financial crisis.

Keen set out his vision for Kingston’s economics department as a beacon for students interested in a vibrant, pluralist atmosphere for learning. He also described his own history of challenging the narrow academic approach to economics while still a student.

Manav Chaudhary from LSE’s Post Crash Economics Society described the rapid growth of the Rethinking Economics movement and the enthusiasm of students across the country in campaigning for better economics teaching.

Professor Keen said:

“Across the world, students are calling for realism in economics, and demanding to be taught all schools of thought, not just the dominant one that was caught completely unawares by the economic crisis. Most University departments are resisting this call—amazing in itself for a discipline that claims to be about markets, and in which the consumer is supposed to be king. Kingston is responding to this call. We are going to provide our students with a complete, honest, warts-and-all, introduction to all the strands of thinking in economics. I’m delighted that Kingston students have formed their own Rethinking Economics group, and I’d encourage students at other universities to do the same. Change in economics will only come from the young, and with pressure from the public for economics to be realistic.”

Kingston's Rethinking Economics group are on Facebook, and there's a video of the event.

Thursday 13 November 2014

Book Review Series: A Menagerie of Speculative Follies


Review of The Pit and the Pendulum: A Menagerie of Speculative Follies, by David Harding & James W. Holmes (Winton Ed.)

Reviewer: Vardhan Kapoor
The Pit and the Pendulum: A Menagerie of Speculative Follies is an ambitious work which covers 700 years of financial crises through the looking glass of waves of optimism and pessimism.  The global financial crisis triggered an array of literature on the history of finance including David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years and Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money. This addition to the literature is a welcome one, as it aims to break with some of the questionable assumptions that dog the academic discipline of economics and economic history.
The book analyses forty-six episodes of financial folly divided into seven eras, beginning with "Merchants, Kings and Projectors (1300-1700)" through "Napoleons, Titans and Pashans (1880-1900)" and finishing with "Yuppies, Tycoons & Quants (1985-2008)". The names of the themes reflect the erudite vivacity of the work, which includes an astounding amount of pertinent and symbolic art from the time of the events, as well as peppered insights from the academic literature.


The acquiescence of economic departments towards the validity of their methodology after the crash was a source of concern for the founders of Rethinking Economics. One of the most pervasive aspects of economics and economic history is its reliance on models that rely on a very particular sense of rational expectations as their starting premise. It is therefore very pleasing that, while pursuing detailed statistical analyses, David Harding’s explicitly aims to challenge the notion that markets are governed by an unalterable rationality: "Markets are human institutions, vital to progress, but they are not perfect. They reflect the humanity of their participants, and therefore we should neither worship nor despise them". This is an important nuance, one that some of the greatest economics minds have been quick to point it out; as Albert Hirschman said of Adam Smith, it wasn’t the government which he despised, but rather, their folly.

As a whole, the work proves extremely readable set of snapshots into instances of financial mania. There is a certain levity with respect to the suffering caused by the financial crashes through history; the narrative betrays a sense of wonder at the endless possibilities of market dynamics, but the book would benefit from having solutions to these issues. In a way, the lesson to take from it is that financial mania has a way of putting all of us under its spell. Ultimately the book succeeds in providing a scrumptious read.

Monday 27 October 2014

Press Release: Rethinking Economics Position on CORE Curriculum


This month Rethinking Economics released a statement on its position on the new CORE curriculum being trialled at some institutions in the UK. Continue reading below for this statement, or visit the Rethinking Economics website to download a PDF copy.

London, UK- 16 October 2014 - The CORE Curriculum is not an answer to our demands for reform. CORE is more engaging in its teaching style, but falls short of creating broader content.

RE does not currently endorse any curriculum; instead, we have written our vision of a pluralistic curriculum (http://www.rethinkeconomics.org/#!our-vision/colf) and we support the ISIPE open letter, which we contributed to along with 65 student groups (www.isipe.net). We encourage educators and curriculum writers to sign up to publically support these visions.

What we are looking for is curricula that embody the three pluralisms: pluralism in methodology, pluralism in schools of thought, and pluralism in disciplines. This means at least a key role for the history of economic thought in a way that encourages debate over different schools of thought.

We believe it is important to introduce students to a critical approach to social science in general, meaning that students can engage in debate over schools of thought, rather than be introduced to one narrative. CORE does not supply this in its present state.

Rethinking Economics welcomes progress in economics education, a small part of which CORE has achieved, but we believe firmly there is still much more to be done in economics education reform.


ABOUT: Rethinking Economics is an international network of student groups, academics and professionals that are calling for change in the way economics is taught in higher education. Through a mixture of campaigning, events and engaging projects, Rethinking Economics connects people globally to discuss and enact the change needed for the future of economics, and to propel the vital debate on what economics is today.

Contact:
Joe Richards (Press Officer)
Rethinking Economics
www.rethinkeconomics.org
press@rethinkeconomics.org
Telephone: +44 (0) 7743 855305

ENDS 

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Don't Rock the Ideological Boat (Too Much)

David Wells

In his opening keynote address at the recently-concluded Rethinking Economics conference in London (June 28-29, 2014), Lord Adair Turner dismissed the need for changes to microeconomics by referring to the beneficial use made of micro by two committees he chaired, the Pensions Commission and the Low Pay Commission.
        
His committees may well have benefited from microeconomic insights but that does not leave micro in the clear. After all, the centrepiece of the micro banquet is the model of perfect competition which is foundational for the theory of General Equilibrium which in turn lies behind those models which assured mainstream economists that the financial crash of 2008 was not merely unlikely but actually logically impossible: so micro has a lot to answer for.
        
Lord Turner then focused his attention entirely on macroeconomics. The obvious problem with this limitation is that it leaves most of the foundations of mainstream orthodox economics intact and so student rebels against orthodoxy are likely to be disappointed.

Every session I attended at the conference included at least one reference to ideology. In addition,'Whig' as in Whig history was heard at least once, and 'neoliberal' several times.
        
Yet no-one put these themes together to actually come out and say plainly that the ideology of mainstream economics is (extreme) liberal, let alone to argue that this ideology which naturally and inevitably promotes laissez faire and free markets and so on, leads to distorted and inadequate models of experience, as seen in current economic textbooks and in the 2008 crash.

Ha-Joon Chang in his concluding keynote called forcefully and eloquently for pluralism in economics teaching, without considering that some of the schools of thought within economics that he identified preach (the correct word) ideas and claims that are deeply ideological and deeply damaging, the prime culprit being the hegemonic and extreme liberal neoclassical school. Thus, I presume that DSGE models ought not to be included in any pluralist course, except possibly as a terrible example of ivory tower economists running amok.

Finally, just before the final keynote address, a short video was played in which Robert Johnson, the President of INET, sent his best wishes to the conference and congratulated the organisers - but also suggested at one point that the students should be 'guided' by INET.
        
This is strange. Why should the students be 'guided' by INET ? Why not the other way around? After all, it is the students who are the instigators of this revolution and who are at the front line, manning the barricades. INET are very active in their own way - the CORE curriculum project is especially interesting - and they supply invaluable funding, including for this conference*, but they are essentially secondary actors on the stage. The protagonists are the students, not just in the UK but all over the world: the ISIPE now has (at least) 65 member associations in 30 countries.

*        And for researchers. I applied for a grant myself and was rejected, probably quite rationally.

Putting these points together, and writing as one of the older generation who was actually there at the time, I am reminded of the 1965 essay by Herbert Marcuse on 'Repressive Tolerance'.
        
Lord Turner is happy to use his vast experience to re-examine macroeconomics, but the foundations are, frankly, OK. Everyone acknowledges that ideology is present, but no-one actually wants to analyse it deeply. Robert Johnson wishes the students well but hopes that they will accept his avuncular guidance, while Ha-Joon Chang favours pluralism but without examining any ideological skeletons that various schools might be hiding in their cupboards.


If I were a student, I think that I would find this extremely disturbing.

David Wells can be contacted at davidggwells@yahoo.co.uk

Thursday 17 July 2014

Get Involved - Call for New Organisers

Want to join the Rethinking movement? We are looking for new organisers! Contact Yuan at rethinkeconomics.org to get involved :)

Newsletter Coordinator - Gather together news from around the RE network for our fortnightly letter. Let the world and our members know what is happening.

Secretary/Note-taker - Keep us all organised and up to date. Attend RE meetings and help us follow up on projects we agree to do together, by keeping all members of the group informed as to what has been discussed and agreed.

Media Coordinator - Be the front line for responding to the many print, online, radio and tv requests we get each week. Organise who is responding to what. You can also do interviews yourself if you like.

New Groups Liaison Officer - Take care of the expanding Rethinking Economics network. Be the first point of call for new groups who want help in starting up (can be grouped into locality or language if you prefer).

All these roles will be given plenty of training, help and contact with existing organisers to ease you into the role. Don’t let lack of experience stop you from getting involved!

Monday 14 July 2014

Meet the Rethinkers: Dimitri Stoelinga of Laterite, Development Economics Research

Dimitri (right) with his co-founder, Sachin

Yuan’s Interview with Dimitri Stoelinga of Laterite (Development Economics Research - http://www.laterite-africa.com/), Kigali, Rwanda

“Economics is still in its early stages of development. When you go into an economics course, you should go in with a sense that this is a discipline that will change a lot in the next few years. Be anti-disciplinary. Do not let intellectual boundaries confine you.”

May 27th 2014 – Beijing, China and Kigali, Rwanda

Tell us a little about yourself – where did you grow up? What brought you to the path of studying economics?

I’m half-Greek, half-Dutch, and my parents always moved around. I chose to move around too, living in France, India, Angola, the US, Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi …I studied economics because I lived for a long time in Africa, and I really wanted to move back. I wanted to be involved in economic development.

I went to the Kennedy School to do the MPA in International Development. After that, I worked for the World Bank in Washington, and then in Kenya. I was getting frustrated with the whole set-up - I didn’t think it was the right place for a young person to be.

Why did you feel the World Bank was not the right place to be?


From a personal perspective, it was the work model itself. I felt the projects we were doing were not designed to fit the needs of the country itself. Economists from Washington would fly in and design a research project. Then they’d sell it to the local government. So we ended up with very large, very technical projects, based on little local context, and for which there was not much local ownership.

In Africa, the consultancy you get tends to be like that: fly-in, fly-out. We wanted to replace that model, and start research companies immersed in developing countries, which is why we started Laterite in Rwanda.

You mentioned that there was a “mismatch of people and projects.” What do you mean by this?

The World Bank has fantastic people - very committed, hard-working, who believe in what they're doing. But for operational roles – managing, let's say, a couple of large scale projects – they have economics PhDs with little operational and practical work experience outside the World Bank or academia.

So the mismatch comes from not understanding the local context, and thus focusing on tasks that exercise the skills one has, rather than tasks that exercise the skills the local project needs?

I think so, yes. What the World Bankers bring is logical design. On paper it makes sense - but in practice things are different, and what the country needs might be different.

To me this sounds like one of the general problems with economics teaching: on paper it all looks coherent, but in practice we may need very different tools! 

For yourself personally, what were the highs and lows of your Economics education?

One of the highs was definitely discovering all the possibilities of statistics and data analysis. I had a great professor, Alberto Abadie, who tries out all sorts of new program evaluation techniques and has come up with some fantastic ideas and tools – to give you one example, "synthetic controls". Another prof, Cesar Hidalgo, was looking into how to use network analysis and applying it to economics through exports networks.

All of this innovative data analysis fascinates me – and goes much beyond the linear regression framework that bugs economics research today.

The low? Definitely theory. So long as you understand the basic dynamics of a system, it felt very unhelpful for anyone’s career to study the amount of theory we did at Harvard. It felt both disconnected from reality and also at times misleading.

In what way do you think it was misleading?

A lot of what’s out there right now is very interesting – RCTs, Duflo and Banerjee’s work – but just applying, say, game theory, or some microeconomic models, will never really work in a local context. We barely use any theoretical models learnt from economic theory in our work.

What is the alternative – what do you use instead?

Data and empirical evidence. A lot of the tools we have are for post-event analysis: RCTs and evaluations after the fact. There are very few tools that have been developed for pre-event analysis or project design. We need to find better ways of testing why certain types of interventions are likely to work or not ahead of time, and do that in a very rigorous way. This could be through games or specially designed surveys, that happen on a large scale before projects and policies are rolled out.

This reminds me of the “participatory econometrics” movement – see http://www.cultureandpublicaction.org/bijupdf/EPW_ParticipatoryEconmetrics.pdf

Economists have tried to make economics a scientific discipline, with formulae and models, but at the end of the day, we know that few of these models really work, and they have very little evidence-base or real-world application. So I applaud the movement to Rethink!


Inspiration. What two thinkers, artists, creators, come to mind when you think of those who have inspired you or helped you along your way?

My top two are two professors: Cesar Hidalgo, at MIT. He’s a physicist by profession, and through studying physics became a master of network analysis – from natural, biological networks, to mobile phone networks, export goods networks. He’s been doing all this with tools completely unknown to the economics profession. What I admire is how anti-disciplinary he is; how he rejects disciplinary boundaries, and takes things from various fields. (http://chidalgo.com/ - https://twitter.com/cesifoti)

And very personally, Alberto Abadie. He helped me a lot along the way, giving me advice. I took from him the idea that you don’t need to work with real data, per se; you can work with synthetic data, with as much predictive value as real data.


Recommend one book we should read in the next half-year.

I’m very inspired by network theory, and how to apply it to economics. The book that introduced me to this was Linked, by Albert-László Barabási.


And one piece of music to listen to.

I spent five years of my life in Mali, which is the place I’ve stayed the longest. I absolutely love Malian music – it’s a world in itself. I’d recommend the song Amana Quai, by Vieux Farka Touré (the son of Ali Farka Touré): http://www.last.fm/music/Vieux+Farka+Tour%C3%A9/_/Amana+Quai


      If you could have a wish-list of 3 items, or 3 words, for the future of your project, what would they be, and why?

Grounded – in the local context. It affects how you ask questions, how you communicate, how you contribute without duplicating existing effort.

Anti-disciplinary – meaning, beyond disciplines. Not being stuck to one discipline, and working with people from many disciplines.

Human – principled in what we think is right. Sticking to what we believe in. Doing good.


What advice would you give to other young economists, and Rethinkers in general, starting out on their journey?

My sense is that economics is still in its early stages of development. When you go into an economics course, you should go in with a sense that this is a discipline that will change a lot in the next few years. I think this change will be brought by changes in data: new visualisations, big data analysis, new methods borrowed from other disciplines. And also, don’t neglect network theory – learn about it and how it might apply to some of the problems you want to solve.

Go in open-minded, and embrace all the new techniques! Try and master data. The empirics will make a huge difference to the discipline.

We’re setting up the Laterite Lab, where our team members do research together, and eventually we want to develop this into a more sort of formal lab, where we have people from different disciplines trying out new tools. We are currently recruiting new researchers: please get in contact via http://www.laterite-africa.com/.



Tuesday 20 May 2014

Who are we?


We are most likely to be aged 18-34....



We are from London, Berlin, Oxford, Cambridge, Vienna, New Delhi, Lisbon, Manchester, São Paulo, Barcelona, New York, Paris, Copenhagen, Islamabad, Rome, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Santiago, Lahore, Belo Horizonte, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Washington, Bangkok, Brussels, Calcutta and many, many more!





Sunday 11 May 2014

The Economics of Information in the 21st Century: A Review of Jaron Lanier's Books

Author: Dave Hochfelder

Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage, 2010. 240 pp.
Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future? New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. 416 pp.

The specter of technological unemployment has been haunting traditional economics since at least the Great Depression. Technological unemployment arises from increasing labor productivity due to technological advances like automation and computerization. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, American economist Hans Neisser warned of “permanent” technological unemployment and ended his article with the “inevitable” conclusion that “there is no mechanism within the framework of rational economic analysis that…would secure the full absorption of displaced workers and render ‘permanent’ technological unemployment in any sense impossible.” [1] More recently, in 2012, Nir Jaimovich and Henry E. Siu published an NBER working paper showing that recovery from the last three recessions has been “jobless” because of productivity gains from technology.[2]

Enter Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley pioneer turned critic of Web 2.0. In these two books, he lays out a powerful indictment of the technological and economic ideology behind today’s Internet and its likely future development. In particular, Lanier warns of a serious potential effect of networked information technologies: an increasing gap in the distribution of wealth. In a world where information is free, the creators of that information derive no economic value, Lanier argues. Instead, wealth flows upward to those who control the servers that store and disseminate that information. Karl Marx famously noted that “the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.” In Lanier’s future, the digital cloud gives you society with a techno-oligarchy.

Traditionally, the workers most affected by technological unemployment were in the manufacturing sector. 3-D printing and new-generation robotics are likely to reduce employment in manufacturing while enabling dramatic increases in output. Lanier, however, warns that workers in the so-called creative and knowledge classes are also likely to fall victim thanks to the technological networks of the 21st century. File-sharing, for example, has allowed musicians to reach broader audiences while at the same time has eroded their ability to earn a living at their craft.

Lanier offers a solution—allow individuals to monetize the information they share in the digital cloud. He reasons that since this information is valuable to Google, predictive analytics companies, and advertisers, then the people who generate this information should be compensated in the form of “nanopayments” (Who Owns the Future? p. 20).  It is unclear whether the “lords of the clouds” (You Are Not a Gadget, p. 54) will accept this solution, but Lanier argues that it is in their long-term interest to do so. Otherwise, he concludes, the alternative is a world of vastly unequal distributions of wealth and power.




[1] Hans P. Neisser, “’Permanent’ Technological Unemployment: ‘Demand for Commodities Is Not Demand for Labor,’” American Economic Review 32 (March 1942): 50–71.
[2] Nir Jaimovich and Henry E. Siu, “The Trend Is the Cycle: Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, 31 March 2012. http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/hsiu/research/polar20120331.pdf (accessed 5 May 2014).