There seems to be two rather different philosophies of aid to development and poverty relief. (1) The progressive/social-democratic approach is for the government or aid agencies to do more and more good things for people. (2) The classical-liberal approach is to change the underlying conditions so that people are empowered to do good things for themselves. In this paper, we analyze Alexis de Tocqueville’s approach to these questions in his First Memoir and his (unfinished) Second Memoir on Pauperism.
Opening the gates to Plato’s Heaven
March 15, 2025 by
The recipe to “open the gates to Plato’s Heaven” is by minimizing
the role of rivalrous substance and maximizing the role of non-rivalrous form. This creates a whole
series of different processes, positive feedback processes, vicious or virtuous circles, cumulative
circular causality, and increasing returns phenomena, which are analysed in this paper.
A Fundamental Conundrum in Human Affairs
February 5, 2025 by
Across the whole spectrum of human endeavors, there are helping relationships wherein some helpers (e.g., doctors, teachers, social workers, advisors, managers, or organizers) try to help their counterparts (e.g., patients, students, clients, workers, and so forth) to help themselves. But there is a fundamental “helping self-help conundrum” in the very idea of helpers giving external assistance to others to become more autonomous, i.e., to become independent of external assistance.
Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation
October 6, 2024 by
This paper reviews some of the classic authors and literature on the subtleties of intrinsic motivation in the human activities where a presumed ‘helper’ (teacher, manager, social worker, etc.) are working with a certain class of ‘doers’ (students, workers, clients, etc.).
Marcora Law for Europe
January 19, 2022 by
There is a time-tested solution in Spain and Italy that provides liquidity to such enterprises in a democratic manner by establishing employee ownership schemes. The new source of liquidity is allowing unemployed workers to capitalize part of their unemployment insurance to invest in a new or existing enterprise where they will have a job.
Comments on Universal Basic Income
June 1, 2020 by
This is a draft paper called “UBI: A Bad Idea Whose Time has Come?”. The income supplements supplied due to the coronavirus pandemic have put the UBI back on the policy agenda, so it is appropriate to re-examine the idea. Click here to download the paper.
Worker Ownership and the Current Crisis
March 15, 2020 by
There are so many crises these days (coronavirus, global warming) that this paper seems already out of date since we are referring to the crisis caused by the neoliberal post-socialist transition policies in East Europe and elsewhere in the post-socialist world.
Panopticon vs. McGregor’s Theory Y
March 29, 2018 by
This paper is part of a larger project to better understand the limitations of the economic theory of agency and incentives. The economic approach focuses on extrinsic incentives whereas a better understanding of human organization requires an understanding of intrinsic motivation and the complementary or substitutive relationships with extrinsic motivation.
Knowledge and Institutional Change
January 5, 2017 by
This paper attempts set forth systematically some of the knowledge questions that determine certain strategies for institutional change.
Voucher Privatization with Investment Funds
January 5, 2017 by
This paper has been cited many times as the representative critique of voucher privatization with investment funds.