Download or read book The Dignity of Commerce written by Nathan B. Oman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-01-19 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why should the law care about enforcing contracts? We tend to think of a contract as the legal embodiment of a moral obligation to keep a promise. When two parties enter into a transaction, they are obligated as moral beings to play out the transaction in the way that both parties expect. But this overlooks a broader understanding of the moral possibilities of the market. Just as Shakespeare’s Shylock can stand on his contract with Antonio not because Antonio is bound by honor but because the enforcement of contracts is seen as important to maintaining a kind of social arrangement, today’s contracts serve a fundamental role in the functioning of society. With The Dignity of Commerce, Nathan B. Oman argues persuasively that well-functioning markets are morally desirable in and of themselves and thus a fit object of protection through contract law. Markets, Oman shows, are about more than simple economic efficiency. To do business with others, we must demonstrate understanding of and satisfy their needs. This ability to see the world from another’s point of view inculcates key virtues that support a liberal society. Markets also provide a context in which people can peacefully cooperate in the absence of political, religious, or ideological agreement. Finally, the material prosperity generated by commerce has an ameliorative effect on a host of social ills, from racial discrimination to environmental destruction. The first book to place the moral status of the market at the center of the justification for contract law, The Dignity of Commerce is sure to elicit serious discussion about this central area of legal studies.
Download or read book The Dignity of Commerce written by Nathan Oman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dignity of Commerce is a rigorous and novel exploration of moral justification of contract law through how it fosters well-functioning markets. Nathan B. Oman demonstrates how contract law deals overwhelmingly with the matters of commercial exchange, and how commerce in turn breeds habits of mind, or virtues, that support a liberal society. He also shows how markets provide a framework for peaceful cooperation across the fault lines of race, culture, religion, and politics that outdo even democratic political institutions. The Dignity of Commerce is ambitious in its aims and its conclusions and the implications are powerful. It is sure to elicit a serious discussion at the very heart of one of the most central areas of legal studies, and Nathan B. Oman has provided a clear, engaging, and comprehensive vehicle to get the discussion started.
Download or read book Bourgeois Dignity written by Deirdre Nansen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The big economic story of our times is not the Great Recession. It is how China and India began to embrace neoliberal ideas of economics and attributed a sense of dignity and liberty to the bourgeoisie they had denied for so long. The result was an explosion in economic growth and proof that economic change depends less on foreign trade, investment, or material causes, and a whole lot more on ideas and what people believe. Or so says Deirdre N. McCloskey in Bourgeois Dignity, a fiercely contrarian history that wages a similar argument about economics in the West. Here she turns her attention to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to reconsider the birth of the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity. An utterly fascinating sequel to her critically acclaimed book The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity is a feast of intellectual riches from one of our most spirited and ambitious historians—a work that will forever change our understanding of how the power of persuasion shapes our economic lives.
Download or read book The Bourgeois Virtues written by Deirdre Nansen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.
Download or read book The Dignity of Labour written by Jon Cruddas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does work give our lives purpose, meaning and status? Or is it a tedious necessity that will soon be abolished by automation, leaving humans free to enjoy a life of leisure and basic income? In this erudite and highly readable book, Jon Cruddas MP argues that it is imperative that the Left rejects the siren call of technological determinism and roots it politics firmly in the workplace. Drawing from his experience of his own Dagenham and Rainham constituency, he examines the history of Marxist and social democratic thinking about work in order to critique the fatalism of both Blairism and radical left techno-utopianism, which, he contends, have more in common than either would like to admit. He argues that, especially in the context of COVID-19, socialists must embrace an ethical socialist politics based on the dignity and agency of the labour interest. This timely book is a brilliant intervention in the highly contentious debate on the future of work, as well as an ambitious account of how the left must rediscover its animating purpose or risk irrelevance.
Download or read book The Romance of Commerce written by Harry Gordon Selfridge and published by London : J. Lane ; New York : J. Lane Company. This book was released on 1918 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book International and Comparative Business written by Leo McCann and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2013-11-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ′Erudite and accessible, McCann demonstrates how the national gets reconfigured around the global without losing some of its unique features. Far from being a one-size-fits-all Anglo-American template, neoliberalism comes in many different hues and variations. This is by far the best textbook in the field and is destined to become a classic for years to come.′ Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai′i-Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA ′A sweeping examination of systems of capitalism in theory and in the world’s major industrial economies leads Leo McCann to challenge the conventional wisdom on globalization. Historical analysis of the evolution of business systems and detailed examination of present practice demonstrate persuasively that, despite facing common challenges, distinctive national differences remain salient. A must read for anyone who needs to understand how business systems operate in an increasingly interdependent world economy.′ - Dr Eileen Appelbaum, Senior Economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC, USA Globalization has profound effects on national economies even as distinct national ‘models’ of capitalism remain. International and Comparative Business accessibly tracks the historical and socio-political contexts of the world’s major countries on a chapter-by-chapter basis to the present day. The book provides a comprehensive, critical, yet concise introduction to each of the economies’ key features, including macro overviews as well as organizational and workplace-level analysis. Each chapter features learning objectives, in-depth interpretation and critique of key literature, and annotated further reading to allow readers to rigorously navigate their way through the wealth of material available for each country. This text is essential reading for students and researchers in the areas of international business and cross-cultural management, comparative political economy, and history. Leo McCann is Senior Lecturer in International and Comparative Management at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK
Download or read book Capitalism and Commerce written by Edward Wayne Younkins and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Capitalism and Commerce, Edward Younkins provides a clear and accessible introduction to the best moral and economic arguments for capitalism. Drawn from over a decade of business school teaching, Younkins's work offers the student of political economy and the educated layperson a clear, systematic treatment of the philosophical concepts that underpin the idea of capitalism and the business, legal, and political institutions that impact commercial enterprises. Divided into seven parts, the work discusses capitalism and morality; individuals, communities, and the role of the state; private and corporate ownership; entrepreneurship and technological progress; law, justice, and corporate governance; and the obstacles to a free market and limited government.
Download or read book What is Wrong with the First Amendment written by Steven H. Shiffrin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that America's relationship with the First Amendment jeopardizes privacy, equality, fair trials and democracy.
Download or read book Honorable Business written by James R. Otteson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Business has a bad name for many people. It is easy to point to unethical and damaging behavior by companies. And it may seem straightforward to blame either indivuduals or, more generally, ruthless markets and amoral commercial society. In Honorable Business, James R. Otteson argues that business activity can be valuable in itself. The primary purpose of honorable businesses is to create value-for all parties. They look for mutually voluntary and mutually beneficial transactions, so that all sides of any exchange benefit, leading to increasing prosperity not just for one person or for one group at the expense of others but simultaneously for everyone involved. Done correctly, honorable business is a positive-sum activity that can enable flourishing for individuals and prosperity for society. Otteson connects honorable business with the political, economic, and cultural institutions that contribute to a just and humane society. He builds on Aristotle's conception of human beings as purposive creatures who are capable of constructing a plan for their lives that gives them a chance of achieving the highest good for humanity, focusing on autonomy and accountability, as well as good moral judgment. This good judgment can enable us to answer the why of what we do, not just the how. He also draws on Adam Smith's moral philosophy and political economy, and argues that Smithian institutions have played a significant role in the remarkable increase in worldwide prosperity we have seen over the last two hundred years. Otteson offers a pragmatic Code of Business Ethics, linked to a specific conception of professionalism, and defends this Code on the basis of a moral mandate to use one's limited resources of time, talent, and treasure to provide value for oneself only by simultaneously providing value to others. The result is well-articulated parameters within which business can be an acceptable-perhaps even praiseworthy-activity.
Download or read book Between Dignity and Despair written by Marion A. Kaplan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness. Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.
Download or read book Changemakers written by Adam Arvidsson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that, as industrial capitalism enters a period of prolonged crisis, a new paradigm of ‘industrious modernity’ is emerging. Based on small-scale, commons-based and market-oriented entrepreneurship, this industrious modernity is being pioneered by the many outcasts that no longer find a place within a crumbling industrial modernity. This new industriousness draws on the new planetary commons that have been generated by the globalization of industrial capitalism itself. The outsourcing of material production to global supply chains has made the skills necessary to engage in commodity production generic and common, and the globalization of media culture and the internet have generated new knowledge commons. Together these new commons have radically reduced the capital requirements to engage in economic activity, and are providing new, highly efficient tools of productive organization at little cost. This timely analysis of the new forces of change in our societies today will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the impact of digital technologies and the future of capitalism.
Download or read book Karl Polanyi written by Gareth Dale and published by Polity. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.
Download or read book Human Dignity and Bioethics written by and published by U.S. Independent Agencies and Commissions. This book was released on 2008 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains a collection of essays exploring human dignity and bioethics, a concept crucial to today's discourse in law and ethics in general and in bioethics in particular.
Download or read book Waste written by Kate O'Neill and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Waste is one of the planet’s last great resource frontiers. From furniture made from up-cycled wood to gold extracted from computer circuit boards, artisans and multinational corporations alike are finding ways to profit from waste while diverting materials from overcrowded landfills. Yet beyond these benefits, this “new” resource still poses serious risks to human health and the environment. In this unique book, Kate O’Neill traces the emergence of the global political economy of wastes over the past two decades. She explains how the emergence of waste governance initiatives and mechanisms can help us deal with both the risks and the opportunities associated with the hundreds of millions – possibly billions – of tons of waste we generate each year. Drawing on a range of fascinating case studies to develop her arguments, including China’s role as the primary recipient of recyclable plastics and scrap paper from the Western world, “Zero-Waste” initiatives, the emergence of transnational waste-pickers’ alliances, and alternatives for managing growing volumes of electronic and food wastes, O’Neill shows how waste can be a risk, a resource, and even a livelihood, with implications for governance at local, national, and global levels.
Download or read book Work Time written by Cynthia L. Negrey and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Work Time is a sociological overview of a complex web of relations that shapes much of our experience of work and life yet often goes without critical examination. Cynthia Negrey examines work time past and present, exploring structural economic change and the gender division of labor to ask: what are the historical, cultural, public policy, and business sources of current work-time practices? Topics addressed include work-time reduction in the US culminating in the 40-hour statute of 1938, recent trends in annual and weekly hours, overtime, part-time work, temporary employment, work-family integration, and international comparisons. She focuses on the US in a global context and explores how a new political economy of work time is taking shape. This book brings together existing knowledge from sociology, anthropology, history, labor economics, and family studies to answer its central question and will change the way upper-level students think about the time we devote to work.
Download or read book Will Big Business Destroy Our Planet written by Peter Dauvergne and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walmart. Coca-Cola. BP. Toyota. The world economy runs on the profits of transnational corporations. Politicians need their backing. Non-profit organizations rely on their philanthropy. People look to their brands for meaning. And their power continues to rise. Can these companies, as so many are now hoping, provide the solutions to end the mounting global environmental crisis? Absolutely, the CEOs of big business are telling us: the commitment to corporate social responsibility will ensure it happens voluntarily. Peter Dauvergne challenges this claim, arguing instead that corporations are still doing far more to destroy than protect our planet. Trusting big business to lead sustainability is, he cautions, unwise — perhaps even catastrophic. Planetary sustainability will require reining in the power of big business, starting now.
