Can’t We be Friends? Analysing Singapore’s LGBT Struggle Through a Schmittian Lens

It is often better to be a friend than an enemy of the state. This paper uses Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political and its friend-enemy distinction to analyse Singapore’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (LGBT) situation. While Schmitt describes the political as a domain where participants may have to engage in physical combat when pushed to the extreme, this paper applies his concepts to politicians ‘fighting’ for their political lives, to be elected. Analysing Singapore’s laws and policies affecting the LGBT using Schmitt’s concepts suggests that the conservative segments of society belong to the friend-group and the LGBT community the enemy-group, because of greater electoral support from the former due to its larger numbers. Hence, it is coherent that Singapore’s leaders have indicated that societal acceptance of LGBTs is an important criterion to change the country’s policies affecting them. Therefore, a plausibly suitable strategy is to sway the electorate so that they will decide that the LGBT community, currently an enemy, is instead a friend. The paper suggests how this can be done and the price its members may have to pay.

Mea Culpa: Why the Developed World is Responsible for the Global Poor

The global order harms the poor. Thomas Pogge argues that the causes of global poverty are systemic, refuting the notion that the misery in poor countries are mostly self-induced. We, the developed world, are the architects of the global order and continue to run it to the detriment of the global poor. Hence, we have the responsibility to fix it. This order is comprised of economic and institutional parts. By examining both parts, we can then identify the causes of the problems and propose possible solutions.

Superabundance and Excess: Is Bataille’s Conception of General Economy Credible?

Georges Bataille’s concept of general economy strikes at the core of our prevailing understanding of economics. He posits two contrasting premises in the first volume of The Accursed Share (TAS):

1) The condition of the world is one of superabundance rather than scarcity. Bataille proposes that all life and wealth derive from the sun, which is effectively an unlimited source of energy. In the general economy, what the world faces is not scarcity, as foundationally assumed in conventional economics, but superabundance. While pockets of poverty can be found, the world on aggregate has an excess of wealth.

2) However, there are limits to growth, because there is only so much space on the planet which life can occupy. Once the limits are reached, no further growth is possible. Hence the excess cannot be used for growth; it cannot be saved and it needs to be expended. The choice we have is to either expend it well or badly.

Is Bataille’s conception of general economy credible? In addition to examining these two premises, this paper investigates Bataille’s method to reconceptualise how we can understand the world by adopting a radical position on political economy so as to derive novel insights. Specifically, I analyse his idea of limits and savings, his empirical approach and his critique of scarcity and utility in conventional economics. I contrast his views of capitalism and potlatch with Jean-Joseph Goux’s critique that Bataille’s solution of consumption has already come to pass in today’s capitalist economies and George Gilder’s notion that giving is central to entrepreneurial capitalism, and propose a possible Bataillean response. I then consider Andrew Abbott’s extension to Bataille’s theory of general economy, which Abbott draws on to argue that problems of excess are fundamentally different from problems of scarcity, hence requiring their own solutions. I conclude by assessing whether Bataille has been successful in challenging conventional economics and the applicability of TAS to political economy today.