{"id":10956,"date":"2015-08-12T18:10:20","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T23:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10956"},"modified":"2015-08-12T18:10:20","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T23:10:20","slug":"exposing-the-false-prophets-of-social-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10956","title":{"rendered":"Exposing the false prophets of social transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Exposing the false prophets of social transformation<\/a><\/h3>\n

A growing group of elite storytellers present radical solutions to global problems, but their ideas actually inhibit real change and strengthen the status quo.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market. Credit:\u00a0http:\/\/www.sustainablebrands.com<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008<\/a>\u00a0was a shock for many people. For a moment it seemed like capitalism, or at least \u2018neoliberal\u2019 capitalism, was on its last legs. But the moment passed and capitalism survived. The combination of huge cash subsidies for Wall Street and austerity for working people revived corporate profitability, trade, and production growth. Yet a sense of crisis and uncertainty remains pervasive in American society and many other countries around the world.<\/p>\n

In the US, the economy remains the top concern. Good jobs lost during the recession have been replaced by low-wage, part-time jobs, while traders and lawmakers worry over whether Federal Reserve Chair\u00a0Janet Yellen\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0plan to raise the federal funds rate this year will derail the \u2018recovery.\u2019 The runaway success of Thomas Piketty\u2019s\u00a0treatise on global inequality<\/a>; the surprising crowds drawn by an openly socialist candidate for the US Presidency like Bernie Sanders; and recent widespread mobilizations against police\u00a0brutality<\/a>\u00a0in cities across the United States, all indicate a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo.<\/p>\n

Outside the spheres of politics and economics, a different but related sense of crisis is apparent. There\u2019s a growing feeling of dread that our way of life is destroying the planet, highlighted by books such as Paolo Bacigalupi\u2019s\u00a0The Windup Girl<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and David Mitchell\u2019s\u00a0The Bone Clocks<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0and popular films likeElysium<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Snowpiercer<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0Naomi Klein\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0far-reaching critique of capitalism and global warming has received the most attention, but she is not alone.\u00a0Voices from across the political spectrum<\/a>\u00a0have declared that capitalism is in crisis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exposing the false prophets of social transformation A growing group of elite storytellers present radical solutions to global problems, but their ideas actually inhibit real change and strengthen the status quo. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market. Credit:\u00a0http:\/\/www.sustainablebrands.com. All rights reserved. The\u00a0collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008\u00a0was a shock for many people. For a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2384,303,305,312,451,1264,3283,8048],"class_list":["post-10956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-elite","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-financial-crisis","tag-janet-yellen","tag-recession","tag-thomas-piketty","tag-transformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10957,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956\/revisions\/10957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}