Second Paper Topics for PH1104

Due: Thursday, March 28th

Length: 5 pages

Format: Argumentative, posing a thesis or question and offering sustained argument.

References: Use at least two sources from class and two outside sources. 

Submit: Via email to justin@oursanctuary.org 

1. Should the US Federal Reserve Bank be nationalized? If so, why? If not, why not? Make use of Stephen Zarlenga’s Monetary Reform Manual in your response (https://monetary.org/pdfs/home/32-page-Monetary-Reform-Manual.pdf) 

2. What is usury, is it morally-wrong and why? If not, why not? 

3. Is it possible to redesign money and monetary systems so that they serve the restoration of the environment and human society? A response to this should include discussion of efforts to reform and/or innovate alternatives to debt-based bank created money, starting with this interview with former central banker and monetary reformist Bernard Lietaer (https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/money-print-your-own/beyond-greed-and-scarcity).

4. In his notes to HR2990, Stephen Zarlenga asserts “How a society defines money determines who controls it. Define money as wealth, and the wealthy will control it. Define it as credit/debt, as is done today, and the banker will be in control. Define it as Aristotle did - an abstract legal power - and government can control it to promote the general welfare.” What are the consequences of these different ways of understanding money, which understanding makes the most sense, and why?

5. While the libertarian anarchist philosopher Robert Nozick argues that “Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor,” philosopher of the Commons Peter Barnes argues that private wealth extracted from the Commons ought to underwrite a social dividend payment to all of the living beings who collectively own The Commons. What are the key differences between these contrasting views of distributive justice, and which vision makes more sense of our current situation with regard to wealth distribution>

6. In his recent article “America’s Next Civil War” (https://thewalrus.ca/americas-next-civil-war/) Canadian journalist Stephen Marche argues that America’s national identity remains fractured along racial lines. Can a civic and inclusive conception of nationalism spoken of by Fredrick Douglas resolve this conflict or is the US tied to an ethnic nationalism forever divided by its roots in slavery?

7. When is the assertion of national self-determination (in terms of a common origin and ethnicity) a valid moral call for solidarity with oppressed groups, and when is it an immoral call for the repression of ethnic minorities?

8. In his reinterpretation of the social contract tradition, Charles Mills argues that ““Instead of pretending that the social contract outlines the ideal that people tried to live up to but which they occasionally failed (as with all ideals) fell short of, we should say frankly that for whites the Racial Contract represented the ideal, and what is involved is not deviation rom the (fictive) norm but adherence to the actual norm.” (The Racial Contract, p. 57) What does Charles Mill’s hypothesis of a racial contract attempt to reveal about America’s social contract and its connection to racism? 

9. Charles Mills claims that the Racial Contract not only justifies racial exploitation, but that it ‘constructs’ race. (The Racial Contract, p.63) In what sense - based on what evidence - is it true that racial identity in the US was created by a contractual agreement or series of agreements?

10. After President Obama’s historic terms in office, some cultural commentators have asserted that the US has now entered a post-racial moment, freed from the structural racism of its past. Is this true? If so, in what sense. If not, what evidence suggests the enduring presence of structural racism?

11. How can U.S. culture and society be altered when the roots of white supremacy are foundational as a matter of history and law? How can a group of people invented in part through the assertion that they are more deserving of rights and privileges than others be transformed? Is it possible to take something conceived out of superiority and deployed as a wedge between American laborers, and make it humane and fair?

12. Are prisons obsolete (socially, economically, morally) or are they a necessary tool for maintaining civil peace that merely need to be reformed? 

13. The small ‘a’ anarchist David Graeber asks “Perhaps instead of asking what the best political system is that our current social order could support, we should be asking, What social arrangements would be necessary for us to have a genuinely, participatory, democratic system that could dedicate itself to solving collective problems?” What would it take to allow our political and economic systems to become a mode of collective problem solving rather than a mode of collective war?

14. Make up your own question but be sure to check it with me first.