Daily Archives: July 10, 2016

For neoliberalism, inequality is a feature, not a bug

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One of the things that the Brexit catastrophe shows is that neoliberal economics is very bad for democracy. That’s because, for neoliberalism, inequality is a feature, not a bug. Some of us have been saying that for quite a while — and wondering why it has taken until 2016 for the penny to drop. But now it has. As Joe Stiglitz puts it:

Letting bygones be bygones is a basic principle in economics. On both sides of the English Channel, politics should now be directed at understanding how, in a democracy, the political establishment could have done so little to address the concerns of so many citizens. Every EU government must now regard improving ordinary citizens’ wellbeing as its primary goal. More neoliberal ideology won’t help. And we should stop confusing ends with means: for example, free trade, if well managed, might bring greater shared prosperity; but if it is not well managed, it will lower the living standards of many – possibly a majority – of citizens.

Which is why Obama’s proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal with the EU should now be rejected by the EU.

The ‘Internet of Things’ will need better things

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This morning’s Observer column:

You know the problem. You’re going abroad for a couple of weeks, during which time your house will be empty. You haven’t yet got round to installing a burglar alarm. But not to worry – just pop round to a supermarket and buy a couple of timer sockets. Plug them into the mains, set the timers to switch on and off at appropriate times twice a day, plug your lamps into them and off you go. Easy, peasy!

Well, yes. But it’s so 1950s. So analogue. Why not be really cool and have a proper networked timer socket, something that you can control from your smartphone from anywhere in the world? Something like the AuYou Wi-Fi Switch for example. Looks like it’s just the ticket. Plug it in, hold down the power button and it hooks up with the app on your (Android) smartphone, and – bingo! – job done. Now, where did you put that boarding pass?

But, hang on. Maybe you should just check the product reviews, just to be sure. Ah, here’s one by a guy called Matthew Garrett. “There’s a lot to like about this hardware,” Matthew writes, “but unfortunately it’s entirely overwhelmed by everything there is to hate about it.”

Eh? Turns out that Mr Garrett knows a lot about computer security…

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