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Showing posts from August, 2012

Are more egalitarian societies more healthy societies?

Effects of inequality is a central topic of the contemporary political debate, and have been, in the form of egalitarian thought, a recurrent theme throughout the human history. Unlike in the history, however, the discussions about prospects and drawbacks of egalitarianism have moved far beyond the biblical notion of ‘everyone is created equal’, and take a more utilitarian view. Trekking close to this utilitarian view, I will analyze if more egalitarian societies do better or worse. While there are many ways to see inequality, such as inequality of opportunity or equal rights, most of the current debates are based on economic inequality. In one side, these talks are based on the relation between income inequality and social factors like health, education level and crime level, and on the other it takes the form of economic prospects of income inequality driven competition. While conclusions from both these arguments are quite contentious, they compel us to look at what level of inequal

Crises in Capitalism and the Reactions under a Marxist Lens

This is a course paper I wrote for a class on Philosophy of Marx at University of Sussex summer school in 2012. Looking back now, this seem very basic, and could be more accurate in depicting some of the ideas from Marx, Gramsci etc... Oh well.. Marx’s political and economic theories have been a controversial topic since the early days. While most economists, and even sociologists might consider his theories out-dated, specially his prediction of a successful proletariat revolution, current socio-economic conditions has brought a new wave of enthusiasm in Marx’s works. Thus it is interesting to evaluate how his theories of capitalism and its demise stand today. One can possibly see parallels between what Marx identified as problems with capitalism and contemporary market crises that has penetrated deeply into the social sphere. However, the conditions capitalism created are only half of what is important today; the other half is how the society is reacting to these problems. Thus I w