| | |
|
MoneyandtheLaw 4 - 10 Jul 2012 - Main.JenniferDoxey
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="Main.RohanGrey" |
|---|
In case it is not obvious by now, I have a very strong interest in the legal underpinnings of our monetary system. I find it to be of fundamental relevance to almost every discussion we have in law school, since the default assumption (in certain Torts classes more than others, perhaps) tends to assume the neutrality of money itself, or at the very best make very vague assertions about how it functions. These implicit assumptions are then used to justify the exclusion of certain avenues of enquiry, to present contingent phenomena as axiomatic laws of nature, and to obfuscate issues from their true bases. | | | I suppose my perspective on this issue (and why I find Desan's narrative compelling) is targeted towards the thought-leaders who continue to reinforce these incoherent narratives rather than the average people that accept them for psychological reasons. I find psychology an unconvincing explanation for why Presidents choose to tell the country that it's "broke," Law School Deans choose to devote entire papers to the "harms" of budget deficits, and 90% of the economics profession choose to generate models for predicting economic performance that treat the government's balance sheet as identical to a private actor. There is probably some truth to it, as well as the cynical arguments relating to politics and discursive capture by the financial elite, but I think academic inertia and genuine ignorance play a large part as well. Perhaps it's my naive faith in the genuine curiosity of people, but I trace a large part of the problem to a system where people learn from ignorant professors with bad text books, graduate and read the wrong academic journals and newspapers, before becoming teachers themselves and starting the cycle all over again.
Luckily, thanks to the GFC and the internet, we are in living a generation where the ideologically dogmatic ivory-tower of the orthodox economics discipline no longer enjoys a monopoly over either economic authority or the means of disseminating economic ideas. More enlightened thinkers, long suppressed in their fields, are finally gaining the popular support required to launch a genuine attack on the citadel. It's an exciting time for those who seek to build a new economy. | |
>
> | -- RohanGrey - 10 Jul 2012
Interesting discussion! Speaking of building a new economy, just wanted to pose a quick hypothetical:
As I was playing God on my morning commute today, I was just thinking... this is probably a dumb idea, but... there's an oversupply of young, hireable lawyers, right? And according to anecdote, there are too many young associates working too many hours for too much pay and too little real satisfaction in life.
I know it's just one piece of the massive jenga house that is the legal profession, but here's this: What if big firms hired twice as many kids at EIP, and started paying their newbies half the normal starting salary for doing half the work? If there's that much work, and plenty of bright kids right now who want to do it, why not split up the jobs? And the benefits? And schools can help with loan repayment for kids who take this route? Wouldn't that be a better across-the-board solution? And once you've got a hang of the half-as-many-hours thing, you could transition up to "normal" starting associate's pay and hours?
There are a million and one institutional and psychological barriers to this ever happening, but imagine for a second that in some alternate reality, you have a real choice here. If it came right down to a clear choice between money or health/family/free time/sanity, I know what I hope I'd pick. And it's not money.
If there were a feasible way of implementing a scheme like this, would we go for it?
I'll have more time later on to chip in on the article you posted, Rohan, but I just wondered if anyone had thoughts or gut reactions - about how the normal narrative of 'necessary' money determines decisions - whether it's even possible to retell the narrative, individually or societally?
-- JenniferDoxey - 10 Jul 2012 | | | \ No newline at end of file |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |