Tootfinder

This is something we love to ignore about Capitalism. It is stingy with capital. Everyone has learned to optimize “return on capital” by sucking the capital out of operations. Recent history provides a demo of how that can cause havoc: a few disruptions in extremely lean supply chains rippled into global inflation. https://

Tilde Lowengrimm (@tilde)
Capitalism interprets resilience as inefficiency and tries to erode it. Capitalism will not stop until every aspect of society is so "just-in-time" that an unexpected stiff breeze causes widespread shortages.

Capitalism and (under)development in the American South | Aeon Essays
https://aeon.co/essays/capitalism-and-underdevelopment-in-the-american-south

Capitalism and (under)development in the American South | Aeon Essays
In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy

I’m embarrassed to say I did something very similar with my wonderful friend @…. He offered to pay for me to come see him when he was visiting Seattle.
My shame made me turn him down. I’m so sorry, Monte. 😢

bananas are a story of capitalism and colonialism
...what does that make peas?

state socialists managed to make people envious of the big centralized apparatus of state capitalism. and it's time we finally got over this.
the bureaucracy, the unthinking obedience, the oversized and overspecialized capital, the central planning, the reliance on lies. that is their weakness. it makes them slow, fragile and unresponsive to changing conditions and people's needs.
we need to embrace the means that they can't fully adopt, because they don't fit int…

@…
The #long90s take, aligned with Mark Fisher's #CapitalistRealism, has some reflections on this cultural freeze. But it's proponents say it is over now.…

The Long 90s is Over
This is the text of a talk I gave at the Capitalism, Culture and the Media conference at the University of Leeds last week. It touches on some themes discussed in a bit more detail in this lecture …

I've been reading Ray Dailo's "Principles for dealing with the changing world order" in which he charts the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms and dynasties.
The main cycle, he reckons is:
1) Winner of a war consolidates power, unites the population (often through oppression)
2) A smart cooperative equitable educated society with meritocracy means good societal progress and wide sharing of the wealth.
3) Long period of peace, building good tech and military and financial systems.
4) Leadership corrupts: Excessive debt, money-printing, inequality, financial ruin, no sense of solidarity, then a natural disaster pushes it over the edge
5) The fall: Escalating rebellions, very bad inequality, internal conflicts
6) Civil war, revolution, eventually a strong leader proves the winner and back to 1.
We in the western civilization are very clearly in the late states of this kind of cycle, and it's frankly terrifying with the weapons we have these days when it comes to a war.
The leadership is too corrupt to try and fix the inequality or invest in that well educated, equitable, cooperative society.
He explicitly agrees with Marx and implicitly with me a lot more than I'd have expected from the rabid capitalist that Ray Dailo is.
It's interesting to hear his emphasis on inequality and how a prosperous society depends upon sharing the gains of prosperity widely. You tend to hear hyper-capitalists mostly emphasizing that capital's gains should go to capital, and Ray is certainly suggesting the opposite here. That if that happens, it corrupts the leadership and ends with cronyism and debt and revolution.
We seem to basically agree what creates good prosperous peaceful civil society, and that capitalism in the Anglican world isn't doing it, and that fucked up corrupt government is why we aren't doing it.
We'd offer fairly different prescriptions though I think.
#reading #books #economics

Boycott Trader Joe's. They want to dismantle the agency that enforces labor laws.
https://front-end.social/@estelle/111876588981470553

But hey, remember (especially tech folks) that sponsorship doesn’t affect how an organisation behaves.
https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/…

I was wrong about Google and Facebook: there’s nothing wrong with them (so say we all)
It’s always difficult admitting you’re wrong. But sometimes, it’s exactly what you have to do in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So, today, I admit that I was wrong about Google, Facebook, and surveillance capitalism in general being toxic for our human rights and democracy. You see, it simply cannot be true given how they are endorsed by some of the most well-respected groups and organisations in the world.

"The problem with the climate is too many people"
Instant block.
The problem is capitalism, not people having kids.