Peter Singer on Greed & Wall Street Excesses

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | January 18th, 2010

Peter Singer, an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton, cre­at­ed the ani­mal rights move­ment back in the 1970s, and, more recent­ly, launched a cam­paign to end world pover­ty. One can’t con­tem­plate pover­ty with­out also con­sid­er­ing greed, and that brings us to the clip above. Inter­viewed in 2009, Singer sug­gests that greed dri­ves us bio­log­i­cal­ly (as does social col­lab­o­ra­tion for­tu­nate­ly). Greed helps us sur­vive and inno­vate. But there is also a point where it becomes point­less and patho­log­i­cal, and that’s what we have wit­nessed in the finan­cial world. Greed brought us Bernie Mad­off. But it has also brought us (my infer­ences) bankers who cre­ate a cat­a­stro­phe one year and take record bonus­es the next. And it has brought us to the point where  our coun­try has dan­ger­ous­ly slipped off of its demo­c­ra­t­ic moor­ings. Lloyd Blank­fein, this clip is for you. Thanks Ted for send­ing this one along.

Look­ing for free phi­los­o­phy cours­es? Vis­it the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our Free Course col­lec­tion.

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What Would MLK Say About the USA Today?

in Current Affairs, History, Stanford | January 15th, 2010

What would Mar­tin Luther King Jr. think about Amer­i­ca in 2010? Few would know bet­ter than Clay­borne Car­son, the Stan­ford his­to­ri­an who directs the Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Research and Edu­ca­tion Insti­tute. In this talk, Car­son describes MLK’s like­ly thoughts about Amer­i­ca dur­ing the Great Reces­sion. King cared deeply about eco­nom­ic jus­tice, and it’s clear that King would­n’t have looked unam­biva­lent­ly upon the inequal­i­ties that the finan­cial melt­down made so glar­ing­ly obvi­ous. Next week, the U.S. will cel­e­brate King’s birth­day and bankers will col­lect their record-set­ting bonus­es …

Note: Clay­borne Car­son is cur­rent­ly hold­ing Open Office Hours on Stan­ford’s Face­book Page. Be sure to vis­it. Also, Pro­fes­sor Car­son has taught an online course that you can freely down­load. It’s called African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle, and you can find it on YouTube and iTunes. It’s also the first course that appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es.

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Faith and Globalization: Tony Blair Teaches at Yale

in Current Affairs, Politics, Religion, Yale | January 5th, 2010

After he left office in 2007, Tony Blair went across the pond and spent time teach­ing at Yale. Exit Prime Min­is­ter Blair. Enter Pro­fes­sor Blair. Dur­ing the 2008-09 aca­d­e­m­ic year, Blair and Miroslav Volf co-taught “Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion,” a course designed to help stu­dents under­stand the two inter­twined forces shap­ing our world. In some ways, reli­gion is the real focus here, and it is Blair’s argu­ment (above, for exam­ple) that “If you can­not under­stand the world of faith, whether you are in busi­ness, or in pub­lic affairs, or in pol­i­tics, then you actu­al­ly can­not under­stand the world.” The full course can be accessed on iTunes, and we have also added it to our large col­lec­tion of free cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, please vis­it Yale’s Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion web­site and also be sure to access Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Behavioral Economics and Underwater Mortgages

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | December 3rd, 2009

What if peo­ple behaved like banks? Or, more pre­cise­ly, what if indi­vid­u­als hold­ing “under­wa­ter” mort­gages stopped fol­low­ing the social norms of ‘per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty’ and ‘promise-keep­ing’ and instead act­ed like cap­i­tal­ist play­ers in a free mar­ket? Most would dump their sink­ing mort­gages and walk away. That’s the find­ing of Brent White, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, who has pub­lished a new paper called “Under­wa­ter and Not Walk­ing Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Man­age­ment of the Hous­ing Cri­sis.” (PDF) The bot­tom line is that home­own­ers and banks play by two dif­fer­ent sets of rules. Main Street accepts the “emo­tion­al con­straints … active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by the gov­ern­ment, the finan­cial indus­try,” and they hold the bag. Wall Street acts in its own self inter­est and gets a fresh start. The only thing they have in com­mon these days are (you guessed it) guns.

Just for the record: I’m not advo­cat­ing a posi­tion here, and I don’t hold an under­wa­ter mort­gage…

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“The Wire” @ Harvard

in Current Affairs, Life, Television | November 3rd, 2009

bubblesDavid Simon once called his HBO series, The Wire, “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” Think of it as a five sea­son, 3600 minute, artis­tic depic­tion of the esca­lat­ing break­down of urban soci­ety. The show is art. But it is also life in the biggest sense. And it’s why some thinkers have likened the epic series to (or even ele­vat­ed it above) Tol­stoy’s War & Peace. Now comes this… Accord­ing to The Har­vard Crim­son, William J. Wil­son, a Har­vard soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, will teach a new course that uses The Wire as “a case study for pover­ty in Amer­i­ca,” say­ing that “The Wire has done more to enhance our under­stand­ing of the sys­temic urban inequal­i­ty that con­strains the lives of the poor than any pub­lished study.” If you haven’t seen this series, and if this whets your appetite, you can find a nice deal on Ama­zon. The full series now goes for $125.00, 50% off the list price.

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This American Life Demystifies the American Healthcare System

in Business, Current Affairs, Politics | October 27th, 2009

When the glob­al finan­cial sys­tem col­lapsed last year, This Amer­i­can Life and its sis­ter pro­gram, Plan­et Mon­ey (iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site) began doing some­thing that few oth­ers could pull off. They took very com­plex prob­lems and made them under­stand­able, often demys­ti­fy­ing dif­fi­cult con­cepts in a reli­ably engag­ing way. Now, they’re at it again. This time, they’re break­ing down the Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem and get­ting at the core ques­tion. Why can’t we con­trol ever-ris­ing health­care costs? That’s what the rag­ing health­care debate is effec­tive­ly all about. And, if you want to be an informed par­tic­i­pant in the debate, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to these two episodes that tease things out. The first episode, called More is Less, looks at doc­tors, patients, insur­ance com­pa­nies and their tan­gled rela­tion­ship. (Click here, then scroll down and find the “Full Episode” icon.) The sec­ond episode, Some­one Else’s Mon­ey, gets you inside the world of drug and insur­ance com­pa­nies and patients. Have a lis­ten, and thanks to Bob in Brook­lyn for the tip here.

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The End of Wall Street?: Michael Lewis

in Current Affairs, Economics | September 17th, 2009

Here we are. One year after the fall of Lehman Broth­ers. And here we have Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Pok­er, talk­ing about his next book — The Big Short: Inside the Dooms­day Machine (2010) — that looks at those peo­ple who actu­al­ly under­stood that Wall Street was going to blow up. Most of the bank­ing com­mu­ni­ty did­n’t see it com­ing. (Hap­py anniver­sary Dick Fuld.) But a hand­ful saw the writ­ing on the wall and took the big short bet. You can get Lewis’ com­plete talk here.

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Al Franken Effortlessly Draws the Map of America

in Comedy, Current Affairs | July 2nd, 2009

Al Franken, the for­mer SNL come­di­an, the Har­vard grad­u­ate, and now US Sen­a­tor, has a spe­cial tal­ent. He can draw the map of Amer­i­ca, state-by-state, while chat­ting up a crowd. Almost makes me feel the 4th of July spir­it…

Thanks for Eric for this one.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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