Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Prologue
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- The Economics of the Yasuní Initiative
- Chapter 1 Thermodynamics
- Chapter 2 The Tragedy of the Commons
- Chapter 3 The Willful Ignorance of Realpolitik
- Chapter 4 The General Theory of Second Best
- Chapter 5 Through the Bottleneck of a Cowboy Economy
- Conclusions
- Appendix: Annotated YouTube Filmography
- Ordering
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 3 - The Willful Ignorance of Realpolitik
Market Failure or Cost-shifting Success?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Prologue
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- The Economics of the Yasuní Initiative
- Chapter 1 Thermodynamics
- Chapter 2 The Tragedy of the Commons
- Chapter 3 The Willful Ignorance of Realpolitik
- Chapter 4 The General Theory of Second Best
- Chapter 5 Through the Bottleneck of a Cowboy Economy
- Conclusions
- Appendix: Annotated YouTube Filmography
- Ordering
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Nineteen Eighty-Four should be required reading for anyone who votes. Through a tale of totalitarian dystopia, George Orwell shows how the State can distort language for its ever shifting purposes. “Doublespeak” is one of the neologisms of the novel that has entered the vernacular. What exactly is it? According to William Lutz, professor of English:
Doublespeak is a language which pretends to communicate but really doesn't. It is language which makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive, or at least tolerable. It is language which avoids or shifts responsibility, language which is at variance with its real or purported meaning. It is language which conceals or prevents thought. Doublespeak is the language which does not extend thought but limits it.
Despite the gravity of the phenomenon, humorous examples abound. For example, The Quarterly Journal of Doublespeak reports a vote by the Minnesota Board of Education “…to consider requiring all students do some ‘volunteer work’ as a prerequisite for High School graduation.” We can all laugh. But there is nothing laughable when, say, the US government refers to the drowning of prisoners denied habeas corpus as the “waterboarding” of “detainees.” Doctors were on duty to perform tracheotomies if necessary.
In the spectrum of doublespeak, I am tempted to locate the “market failure” of economic theory somewhere between the “volunteer work” mandated by the Minnesota Board of Education and the “waterboards” authorized in the Bush Administration Torture Memos.
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- Information
- The Economics of the Yasuní InitiativeClimate Change as if Thermodynamics Mattered, pp. 27 - 40Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010