ILF POST

By Charles Lindblom A recent morning paper told me that Exxon Mobil gave $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to various groups to mislead the public about global warning. It gives one to think.
Many of us believe, or simply assume, that the major purpose of communication is to inform. Each of us depends on information [...]

By Charles Lindblom Gifts from corporations and the wealthy nourish many orchestras, operas, theaters, art galleries, museums, research institutions, schools, universities colleges, think tanks, hospitals, and political organizations such as lobbies, interest groups, parties, and campaigns. We encourage the gifts, as, for example, through tax benefits for qualifying contributors. Givers can afford the gifts [...]

By Charles Lindblom In a market oriented system like ours, presumably we can make some good (if only rough) estimates of what we value — of what is really important to us — by looking at what we spend. We spend heavily on national defense and on recreation, for examples, and we do [...]

By Charles Lindblom In a book manuscript on its way to publication, I have just read a message addressed to liberals and radicals urging that they abandon the word “liberal” and instead use “progressive”. Many have of course already done so in recent years.
It may be a good idea. But —

By Charles Lindblom Given the steady flow of controversy over globalization and free trade — in short, over the place of the market system in the world — it would become clear, one might think, that the market is a vast system, a world-wide social coordinator, whether for good or bad.
We all know that governments [...]

By Charles Lindblom Am I right in thinking that most of us who take an interest in public affairs fall into either one or the other of two camps?
1. Conservative. The social world we live in, despite its flaws, is acceptable. It is far better than it was, and the slow progress [...]

By Charles Lindblom Suppose you lived in a society somewhat more thoughtful than ours. But as a continuing irrationality it required all parents to single out a single value to be taught, through daily mouthing by all youngsters, who pledge it.
Would you favor the value of allegiance? If so, though allegiance seems unlikely to [...]

By Charles Lindblom When we believe that a fellow citizen is or has been engaged in unacceptable behavior, we usually do not call on the elaborate and clumsy machinery of law– police, prosecuting attorney, and court– to put a stop to it. Instead we engage in more informal kinds of influence or pressure, including spoken [...]

By Charles Lindblom Earlier in one of these ILF blogs (June 8, 06 under the title From National to Cross National ,”) I made a case for the creation of at least one global or world university in order to mix faculty, as well as students, of many countries far beyond the [...]

By Charles Lindblom In recent years, corporations and their managers have again given us all the evidence we need to conclude that they are often rapacious and running out of control. Yet it looks as though we can’t do without them. They are prodigious organizers, movers and shakers. Thanks in large part to their [...]

By Charles Lindblom As everyone knows, in every nation a very small number of people play powerful roles in proximate policy making: presidents, cabinet ministers, political bosses, heads of parties, gray eminences, members of legislatures. They run the country, though constrained in some degree by ordinary citizens or subjects, among them those often called [...]

By Charles Lindblom In the continuing debate on globalism, many voices deplore the immorality of corporate executives who, despite their own wealth, take advantage of the third-world poor by paying them poverty wages –or less.
The counter argument, of course, is that poverty wages are better than no wages at all, better too than prevailing wages; [...]

By Charles LindblomFrom the New York Review, I quote:
” We realized that our military might alone cannot, when push comeS to shove, defend us. . . . . How can it be that a people with our powers of creativity and regeneration. . . finds itself today — precisely when it has [...]

By Charles Lindblom Enron executives Lay and Skilling have been convicted. Theirs is a sordid little episode in a great story that goes back at least as far as Sargon in the 24th century B. C., King of Akkad, ruling conquered lands from Mesopotamia to both Mediterranean and Black Sea, history’s first emperor. It is [...]

By Charles Lindblom A few weeks or so ago I agreed, even if not confidently, with the frequent charge that contemporary culture is corrupted by an excessive pursuit of those values that can be bought and sold, neglecting values that cannot. Thus in the pursuit of gourmet delights, ever more splendid autos, foreign travel, [...]

By Charles Lindblom My good friend Robert E. Lane has just published his erudite, brilliant, and enjoyable After The End of History. Among several themes is materialism, on which he joins countless critics of its excesses. He is persuasive. Precisely speaking, however, he joins most of his fellow critics in missing some junctions.
“Materialism”, as Lane [...]

By Charles Lindblom Time reports that Mukesh Ambani, a private enterpriser of extraordinary accomplishments, intends to build–profitably–two new Indian cities, each for 5 million people. He probably knows what he is doing and may indeed succeed in so vast a plan. In contrast, many people are disposed to believe that, say, the U. S. [...]

By Charles Lindblom To whom do we owe democracy? To no one, for, strictly speaking, it has not yet arrived. Well, then, to whom do we owe such incomplete democracy as we have in fact achieved? I’ll nominate the English merchants of the 17th and 18th centuries–we now call them businessmen (few women then [...]

>By Charles Lindblom A number of commentators have been telling us that the Democratic Party has become “a gaggle of special and narrow interests.” Many democrats, Howard Dean among them, believe that it is “a group of constituencies instead of a party.” Needs looking into.
We live and work in a big social [...]

By Charles Lindblom Might the President, alleging enemies dangerous to the nation, at some point announce the cancellation of a coming election? Or, after an electoral defeat, refuse to leave office, calling on a willing military unit to surround the White House to maintain him? Who or what might deter him? Who or what could [...]

By Charles Lindblom Thanks both to individual philanthropy and corporate gifts, American society is favored, beyond what governments provide, with a wealth of schools, universities, research institutes, hospitals, museums, art galleries, orchestras, theaters, beneficial societies, parks and nature reserves, and some splendors of architecture. The same sources also give us political corruption. But set that [...]

By Charles Lindblom Congress wants sporadically to curb what it calls the left-wing broadcasts of National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting. And a loud chorus of uncertain origin complains endlessly about left-wing reporters. Perhaps, then, the media ought to complain about right-wing Congress and other rightist critics. Is the problem nothing more than that [...]

By Charles Lindblom Yale University has been circulating an announcement of its many substantial but modest moves toward new international connections in both teaching and research. Other universities are moving in the same direction, some faster than Yale, some slower. The great universities, earlier mostly private, could not have become today’s powerhouses of teaching and [...]

By Charles Lindblom Might it be possible for a nation–even a nation with a history of freedom and democracy–to reach a parting of the two? Liberty remains, but democracy erodes to extinction? Citizens continue to enjoy their civil liberties, their choices of occupation, and mobility; and they read and speak as they please? But they [...]

By Charles Lindblom Like a beautiful, powerful, wild animal in chains, free speech is everywhere constrained, sometimes gently, sometimes put into a coma close to death. Unable to predict, I fear that today’s small children will, in their late years, find only a corpse. The near universal strategy for curbing so dangerous a creature has [...]

strong>By Charles Lindblom People used to maim, kill, and sometimes eat each other. It took at least several thousand years for masses of them to learn that their own lives would be more secure if these practices could be constrained. They later learned that they could do even better by also creating authorities, customs or [...]

By Charles Lindblom Democracy, we say, gives power to the people. What power does it in fact give to you, me, or any person? Almost nothing. It gives a grant to me of one vote, as it does to millions of others, and the result is that you, I and every other person is almost [...]

By Charles Lindblom The governor of my state wants to spend a half million dollars to study the possibility of capturing a professional sports team for the state. He believes, or is riding on the common belief, that in policy making we need to use more brains, less brawn — study our problems much more [...]

By Charles Lindblom In a world more sane than ours and with customs permitting research and teaching less hobbled than ours, I believe that the fundamental practice that establishes a market system would be perceived as immoral, its practical effects denounced as inhumane and on other counts intolerable. The practice is, in brief: quid pro [...]

By Charles Lindblom As I see it, in bars and living rooms no less than in think tanks, a continuing great debate on economic globalization is enriching what we know about corporations, governments, and the market system in their relations with each other. If among the 200 or so nations of the world, almost [...]

By Charles Lindblom As I see it, in bars and living rooms no less than in think tanks, a continuing great debate on economic globalization is enriching what we know about corporations, governments, and the market system in their relations with each other. If among the 200 or so nations of the world, almost [...]