Desideratum

Scott Ferguson
Declarations of Dependence: Money, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Care

Critical theory must, therefore, loosen its historical attachments to power's shifting vicissitudes and risk the embarrassments of care's apparent guilelessness. Without this affective labor, its conceptual tools remain inert.

Packed into these two sentences is a bold invitation to think otherwise. And to renegotiate perception and feeling... dare to imagine money as a boundless public reserve. Through imagination, to contest.

And so for day 2409
18.07.2013

Good Technique Pays

A sample from The Beggar's Handbook: A Guide To Successful Panhandling by M.T. Pockets (Loompanics Unlimited, 1989).

To be a successful panhandler you must lead the intended giver to believe that you will be slightly improved by the gift, however small. When you make your approach, be fearful, be distressed, be upset, even be a little disoriented, but be coherent. Lead the intended giver to believe that his or her gift will restore your equilibrium. This will lead the giver to believe that he or she will feel good about this transaction afterward. Of course, when you get what you want, look relieved. The giver will feel every bit as good about the transaction as you do. There is no sense doing it the other way; all that does is engender hostility and — just possibly — problems with the authorities in and around your chosen place of work. Once you are marked as a troublemaker, you will be forced to move on and that can mean giving up a goldmine for a tin quarry. I do not need to further belabor the implications in terms of dollars received for effort made.

Good tips on how to gather those tokens of appreciation and relieve apprehension.

And so for day 2255
14.02.2013

Notes on Disbursements

Antonio Porchia

I know what I have given you, I do not know what you have received.

Nick Hanauer

The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn't believing that if the rich get richer, it's good for the economy. It's believing that if the poor get richer, it's bad for the economy.

$$$ $$$ $$$

And so for day 1346
20.08.2010

Islamic Ghandis

The venue for this was a posting to the McLuhan discussion list (Sept. 24, 2001). Very much in the vein of a McLuhanesque probe.

Do you know of anyone who can verify reports that Islamic pacifists are calling for the withdrawal of Arab capital from Western banks in order to cut funds to terrorists?

Islam forbids usury. At one time Christianity did too.

Do you know of any academic paper discussing Islamic banking and the IMF?

Do you know anyone who can verify reports of Islamic and other pacifists lining up at police stations and consulates around the world to ask for the disclosure of the financial connections of terrorist suspects?

"It may seem like another lifetime, but it's actually only a year ago that the conservative business magazine The Economist published an editorial saying that the most pressing moral, political and economic issue of our time is Third World poverty." Linda McQuaig, National Post Sept. 24/01

The discourse of policy makers and politicians may yet turn to income inequality and its drag on the world economy.

And so for day 732
14.12.2008

Craft, Value and Economy

Wendell Berry in an essay entitled "Preserving Wildness" collected in Home Economics makes the case for what may be called an economy of attentiveness (as opposed to an economy of mere attention).

The good worker loves the board before it becomes a table, loves the tree before it yields the board, loves the forest before it gives up the tree. The good worker understands that a badly made artifact is both an insult to its user and a danger to its source. We could say, then, that good forestry begins with the respectful husbanding of the forest that we call stewardship and ends with well-made tables and chairs and houses, just as good agriculture begins with stewardship of the fields and ends with good meals.

Care for quality.

And so for day 532
28.05.2008

Value and Price and Respect

From the essay "A Nation Rich in Natural Resources" collected in Home Economics comes this meditation by Wendell Berry upon the notion of value.

We must also notice that as the natural energy approaches human usability, it passes through a declension of forms less and less complex. A potato is less complex than the topsoil, a steak than a steer, a cooked meal than a farm. If, in the human economy, a squash on the table is worth more than a squash in the field, and a squash in the field is worth more than a bushel of soil, that does not mean that food is more valuable than soil; it means simply that we do not know how to value the soil. In its complexity and its potential longevity, the soil exceeds our comprehension; we do not know how to place a just market value on it, and we will never learn how. Its value is inestimable; we must value it, beyond whatever price we put on it, by respecting it.

One could ask whether or not we truly comprehend the simplicity of the potato. If the answer is no, we may not be able to truly value the potato.

And so for day 521
17.05.2008