Franzen's "Freedom" holds the key to what I think is wrong with Morozov's cyber-pessimism: it underestimates the problem of common knowledge and the web's contribution to its creation. That is why Wikileaks, Facebook and the blogosphere have been important to events in North Africa
VAT is not progressive, as claimed by UK Chancellor George Osborne in his defence of the tax rise. But it is a tax on something we should be doing less of. So shouldn't we welcome it?
Without massive ongoing public support the banks will fail. We should take the consequences seriously, they extend much further than bonuses
A wide-ranging conversation recorded in Cambridge, England, on November 29th 2010. Ha-Joon Chang discusses students, strikes, economic ideologies, what to do with finance, with power, nations, global governance and more
The FT's Philip Stephens brings the good news that the Treasury has a few heads above sand-level:
A confidential paper circulating in Downing Street suggests the government should
The distributional aspects of the UK government's loans/fees package looks attractive
Authors, authority and authoritarianism. A turbulent week raises the question of truth and legitimacy
Was education in the UK, before the overhaul of the Browne report and the cut in funding, really a golden age?
Why we're moving commenting on openDemocracy over to Disqus Expected launch: beginning of December.
The UK Department of Work and Pension's workfare proposals are wrong. The current system is not perfect, but works in a pragmatic way. It could be made better by decentralising the administration of benefits
openDemocracy's editor-in-chief surveys the last two months of oD coverage
