Beyond a naive economics to a political economy of how things actually are
Beyond a naive economics to a political economy of how things actually are Violence has been the basis of our economy for 500 years TOBY ROGERS MAY 19, 2024 It seems to me that we’ve been doing political economy wrong for the last two hundred and fifty years. Any honest political economy of how things actually are would start by focusing on the following aspects of society: 1. The disproportionate impact of violence . A single bullet changes the course of history for hundreds of years, dynamite can move mountains, and now a single bomb can erase a city. 2. The willingness to use violence . This is a small subset of the population. 3. The ability to organize people to commit violence on a mass scale through the use of persuasion, fear, and legitimation. This is an even smaller subset of the population. 4. The stuff that you can get with the mastery of 1, 2, and 3 — oil fields that power the world economy, literal gold (silver, copper, platinum, and cobalt) mines, and control of