Sauk Valley's premier bookstore/coffeehouse features fiction, non-fiction, children's & local interest books.
Open 7 days/week, we also have fine coffees & pastries, wooden puzzles, children's art supplies & other toys, handmade fair trade goods plus priceless conversation. Special orders welcomed.
I pass along a PBS program that aired last week and was passed along to me. I had heard much of the Alan Greenspan, Rob Rubin, Larry Summers, et al cabal before, but not so much about Brooksley Born (Her father had expected a boy to name after his best friend Brooks, so didn't plan on a girl's name. Love the name, sir.) . What I felt very naive about was Ayn Rand's philosophy and how that influenced Alan Greenspan, or how people have said it did. I still feel like Forrest Gump or someone naive. I still reject the notion that libertarianism and objectivism are for no government intervention whatsoever; it cannot possibly be against crime prevention. I know it's on tape that Ayn Rand is against any regulation and that Greenspan took that to mean that the government is not responsible for stupid fools, but I cling with my fingertips to the cliffedge of sanity -- how can he possibly believe that government is not responsible for punishment of those who act against society? Michael Sandel in his new book wrote that libertarians believed in government's role in at least three areas:
enforce contracts
protects private property from theft
keeps peace
I think preventing fraud is covered under all of these:
enforce contracts with a civilized society
protects private property from theft including theft from the unscrupulous, the greedy and the violators of the Golden Rule
keeps peace including chaos due to economic meltdown and attacks on the lives of innocents
For one thing, although "bespoken derivatives" were so narrowly defined as to be one-of-a-kind and contracts are admittedly or should be between two consenting parties, when these CDOs, etc are being offered up to the general public through the vehicle of the stock market, bond market, insurance policyholders, etc and the public becomes a partner in these contracts (as shareholders or other stakeholders), the government should rightly be a representative of the public as a whole. Maybe it should be under a different name -- not regulation, but oversight, peacekeeping, contract enforcement or theft prevention.
Michael Sandel's Justice: What is the Right Thing to Do? was treated to a lot of fanfare at the BookExpo this past May. They had a bio video that showed students hanging off the rafters in his lecture hall-- the most popular class at Harvard. And, I heard him speak in person, sort of a mini-lecture, albeit with the same material I had heard from his editor the previous evening at a panel featuring choice editors' picks.
Sandel is certainly an engaging speaker. He seemed a little disconcerted while attempting to interact with the older, more reticent crowd (probably a median age of 45 at the BookExpo versus the more familiar bold & brightest 19-year-olds), but one could tell that he is intelligent and passionate about his subject. He must have charmed those who should have known better within Farrar Straus Giroux, because the book itself is so poorly edited, that it is difficult for me to recommend it without qualification. I would have recommended to the publishers that they bundle the books as a companion to an audio or even a video of his reading the book or lecturing on the topics of Aristotle, utilitarianism, libertarianism, Kant, market theory and much more. With the sheer force of his personality leaping across the audio or visual medium, he might have been able to make this book a decent reading experience, although still a pale shade to live performance, er, I mean class offering.
In an open learning mode, a reader on his own can learn quite a bit and gather ammunition for almost any position. We can almost see the libertarian in each of us, while wanting to be really morally good -- whatever that means. Like a good teacher, Sandel makes every effort to stay objective, not take a stand on one position or another, explain how each situation would have been viewed by expousers of one philosophy of justice (or, what is right, what is fair, what is morally good) versus another's. In that spirit, he manages to confuse, frustrate and bore the reader who has no outlet to air opinions or ask for further clarification. However, I must concede that as a reference from philosophy to real, current world situations, it is more accessible than actually reading and then, interpreting Aristotle, Immanual Kant or John Rawls on one's own. And, I like to recommend anything that might get us all to think about and again yearn for a civil society.
