by Robert Varenik Robert Varenik is the Director of Programs for the Open Society Justice Initiative. He has worked in various initiatives to assess and reform criminal justice systems.The following essay was solicited by the “Left Technocrat”. The New York Times ran an editorial, “The Message Is Clear: ‘Stop Killing Us’ ”, which called for …

Continue reading Policing Now – Demonstrations Create Opening for Longer Term Solutions

In the fall of 1966, before anyone set foot on the moon, let alone Mars or Venus, a big comfortable vessel crossed our TV screens “to seek out new life and new civilizations.”  Yet, even as it cruised by some colorful planet or whizzed through the cosmos, the Starship Enterprise, its cheery crew, casually clothed …

Continue reading 1966 and All That: Utopia, There and Back Again

When Trump became a presidential candidate back in 2015 I had a vague memory of him from back in the 1980s, when I was new to New York City, from the investigative journalism of Wayne Barrett at the Village Voice. Trump was one of many sleazy landlords/developers who tended to own New York City politicians. …

Continue reading American Oligarchs: The Trumps, the Kushners, and the Marriage of Money and Power By Andrea Bernstein: A Review

Now that everyone has probably had their fill of Game of Thrones, (yes, the last episode was a disappointment after so much wonderful darkness), I want to discuss Titus Groan, the first book of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy, which has a small band of followers who consider it superior to  its contemporary, The Lord of …

Continue reading The Political Economy of Gormenghast: A Digression

Part 2 of 2. While there is much to agree with in Piketty's Capital, I have two major issues.  The first involves his theory of growth, and the lack of importance he attaches to it.  The second is related to his policy proposal for a wealth tax. While I support a wealth tax, at least …

Continue reading The Problem with Piketty

Moishe Postone may have given us the most sophisticated philosophy of history (he would modestly insist on “critical theory”) for our era in his masterpiece Time, Labor, and Social Domination.  He manages to re-conceptualize the strangely symbiotic histories of capitalism and socialism through a close and critical rereading of Marx’s Grundrisse and Capital.  He uses …

Continue reading RUTGER BREGMAN’S “UTOPIA FOR REALISTS”: POSTONE MADE [TOO?] SIMPLE

Thomas Piketty’s Capital is important to several policy conversations we will have on this blog. In order to give other readers a basic grounding in his work, I have tried to summarize the main points of Piketty's Capital. In a second blog, "The Problem with Piketty" I provide a review and critique of this work: …

Continue reading “Capital” by Thomas Piketty: A Summary and Review in Two Parts

Let's take a break from the Olympian perspective on policy with a left technocrat take on the developing scrum of Democratic presidential politics! David Leonhardt in this Sunday's New York Times does an excellent job on the policy side of that struggle with a highly perceptive article on Elizabeth Warren's agenda. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/opinion/sunday/elizabeth-warren-president-2020.html He starts with …

Continue reading Policies for the Present!

Our fearless (or fearful) forum moderator asked me to move the discussion of my previous blog post toward the realm of concrete policy and our current political situation.  Rightly requested, but a slower process to respond to.  Here is a start. First, my diagnosis of the problem of our economic regime was intended to address …

Continue reading Policy Regime Concepts to move past the current impasse of growing inequality, chauvinistic populism and environmental degradation