- An Outside Chance

Infrastructure, finance, and the sale of the future

A review of Timothy Mitchell’s The Alibi of Capital Also published on Resilience. Imagine yourself as a housing developer – an entrepreneur, a big-time player, a real deal-maker. Your people devise a plan to borrow money, buy land, design and win approval for a new subdivision, and sell 1,000 new housing units. Then, perhaps years … Read More

Wealth without wages, wages without wealth

Also published on Resilience. Wage labour is often seen as a fundamental, even the fundamental, relationship in capitalism. Some twenty years before he completed his multi-volume Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx delivered a short set of lectures entitled Wage Labour and Capital; the lectures were published two years later as a series … Read More

Do capitalists really hate capitalism?

Also published in Resilience. In North America a belief that capitalism is by far the best economic system has long been an obligatory article of faith for successful politicians. Faith in capitalism is so dominant in public policy circles that most citizens find it hard to imagine that any other system could ever come to … Read More

Marx and Sartre go shopping for a car

Also published on Resilience. Why is it so difficult to find a job or to buy products that align with our values? Why is it difficult to even know whether our personal choices might have effects in the right direction? In Alyssa Battistoni’s view, the separation of our intentions from the effects of our choices … Read More

Labour, capital, and the ‘free gifts of nature’

Also published on Resilience. Political economists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century employed a curious phrase to denote the source of wealth at the base of the economy: the “free gifts of nature.” Alyssa Battistoni, a political science professor at Barnard College, believes that careful attention to the meanings of this phrase illuminates many aspects … Read More

“Business As Usual, Electrified” is an awful way to reduce auto emissions

First published by Steady State Herald. Also published on Resilience. Auto industry voices in Canada have made headlines recently by urging a longer timeline for the transition to electric cars. We should hope that Prime Minister Mark Carney does not give in to this demand. Yet even if Canada’s federal government sticks to the current … Read More

The infinite growth of highways

Also published on Resilience. In the first few pages of his new book Overbuilt: The High Costs and Low Rewards of US Highway Construction, Erick Guerra lays out several essential points. First, while the originally planned Interstate expressway system was completed in 1992, the pace of highway construction spending since then has not slowed. Second, … Read More

The urgent necessity of asset stranding

A review of Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown Also published on Resilience. In 2023 delegates from around the world gathered for a 28th session of the Conference Of the Parties (COP), this time held in the United Arab Emirates. The official director of the mega-meeting, nominally devoted to mitigating the climate crisis … Read More

Critical metals and the side effects of electrification

A review of Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape The Future Also published on Resilience. “The energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is a crucial part of the cure for climate change,” writes Vince Beiser on page one of his superb new book Power Metal. “But it’s a cure with … Read More

november mornings

PHOTO POST On frosty November mornings I go to the beach. It’s never crowded, though I’m seldom the first to arrive. These days, I have a new bionic eye to play with: my very first cell phone. This is the first photo post I’ve done using a cell phone camera, and it’s fun to see … Read More

Facilitating a dangerous way of life – traffic engineers in a car culture

Also published at Resilience. Wes Marshall calls attention to a paradox about the profession in which he began his career: “It would make sense to assume that newer cities, built with all the knowledge that traffic engineers continue to accumulate, should be our safest cities. But that is not the case. It’s the older cities—mostly … Read More

sailing through June

PHOTO POST Things grow fast in June – especially this June in this corner of this province of Ontario. With an abundance of both rain and sunshine, the reeds in the marsh, the grasses in meadows, and the birds and bugs raced into summer at a gallop. OK, “gallop” isn’t quite the right word for … Read More