Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Capitalism
Most recents (24)
Ahh, how is it that in 2023 there are still conservationists who think that #biodiversity loss is because of a misalignment between logics of inquiry and action, rather than the non-logic of #capitalism & #colonialism?
Link to paper: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
Link to paper: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
There's this great paper summarising how economic growth drives biodiversity loss conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
And this paper that demonstrates how over 3 years after regional free trade agreements are enacted, deforestation increases esp in tropics journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.10…
1/4🧵 Introducing the concept of: Dictamocracy
Dictamocracy: any type of government whose leadership, policies, agreements & socioeconomics which serves the dictated-interests of outside democracies or the directed geopolitical aims of expansionist hegemonies. #Democracy #World
Dictamocracy: any type of government whose leadership, policies, agreements & socioeconomics which serves the dictated-interests of outside democracies or the directed geopolitical aims of expansionist hegemonies. #Democracy #World
2/4 Democracy: any type of government whose authority represents the values of the governing country through the social norms, prosperity, welfare, security & economic needs of its own citizens.
Diff Democracies:
Western Democracy
Chinese democracy
Russian democracy
#freedom
Diff Democracies:
Western Democracy
Chinese democracy
Russian democracy
#freedom
3/4 Dictatorship: the opposite of Western democracy or typically any single-party government that rules with an iron fist against outside interferences/collaborations.
Capitalism: the worst form of democracy
Undemocratic: depends on which side you support
#economy #capitalism
Capitalism: the worst form of democracy
Undemocratic: depends on which side you support
#economy #capitalism
Have you thought to wonder how 🇨🇦's #HousingCrisis relates to the transition from #feudalism to #capitalism, through the lens of #feminism? I did, so I asked ChatGPT to help, with focus on Silvia Federici's writings in her book, Caliban and the Witch. 1/11
🧵⤵️
#cdnpoli #onpoli
🧵⤵️
#cdnpoli #onpoli
Canada's housing crisis today can be understood through the lens of the historical process of capitalist accumulation discussed in the book, Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici. 2/11
The book argues that the transition from feudalism to capitalism was not a natural or inevitable process, but rather a violent and coercive one that involved the dispossession of land, resources, and knowledge from common people, particularly women. 3/11
Johnson approved this greenwashing redevelopment site for luxury apartments in a pocket of 1 of the worst deprived areas in Ealing, despite Council and residents campaign to block it, now they are falling ill due to petrol like fumes in the area. Obscene.
theguardian.com/business/2023/…
theguardian.com/business/2023/…
Case in point
Royal Ins. of Chartered Surveyors do not serve the public interest, they're a powerful lobbying group for venture capitalists with a direct channel into Govt. Housing crisis is no accident, a calculated product of an elite group.
theguardian.com/artanddesign/2…
Royal Ins. of Chartered Surveyors do not serve the public interest, they're a powerful lobbying group for venture capitalists with a direct channel into Govt. Housing crisis is no accident, a calculated product of an elite group.
theguardian.com/artanddesign/2…
Meanwhile, local authorities have been forced into public-private partnerships for major developments on their own land, including the “regeneration” of estates that leads to the loss of thousands of council houses and the break-up of communities.
I wrote some threads recently about #fear, and I'd like to return to that topic. one could fill entire bookshelves with treatises on fear.
Western society, however, has not encouraged an understanding of fear. it's easy to see why: understanding fear would lessen it.
(cont'd)
Western society, however, has not encouraged an understanding of fear. it's easy to see why: understanding fear would lessen it.
(cont'd)
and Western politics and leadership and most especially Western *religion*, i.e. Christianity (for the West is hostile to all other religions but Christianity), rely heavily upon fear as their chief tool. the practical psychology of #marketing is largely about fear.
(cont'd)
(cont'd)
fear furnishes a ready means for *manipulating* people: put a *scare* into people and they panic. they act on fearful impulses, clutching to things for security, behaving in predictable and even ritualized manners that they've learned—coping mechanisms for their fears.
(cont'd)
(cont'd)
one of the sillier manifestations of right-wing ideology in this era of electronic mass communication—which seems to have dissolved all political discourse into a soup of memes and buzzwords—is the oxymoronic "anarchocapitalism", or #AnCap. it's big with computer geeks.
(cont'd)
(cont'd)
surely a large fraction of the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi / @ShellenbergerMD right-wing Twitter clique—which attracts mostly people who enjoy the luxury of "passive income" through non-productive means, like management or cryptocurrency—fancy themselves "anarchocapitalist".
(cont'd)
(cont'd)
I feel that I must *thank* @elonmusk for something.
his actions (as well as those of Mr. @mtaibbi, who may or may not be a friend of Elon Musk's, depending on which direction his independence is blowing) have furnished a unique illustration of something that's usually invisible.
his actions (as well as those of Mr. @mtaibbi, who may or may not be a friend of Elon Musk's, depending on which direction his independence is blowing) have furnished a unique illustration of something that's usually invisible.
that intangible, abstract thing is the concept of #trust, which is essential to society. most (if not all) powerful persons in the United States are untrustworthy—that is to say, you can't rely upon these powerful persons to stick to agreements or principles or anything else.
Democratic Capitalism - Marriage on the Rocks
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…
@SenSanders
#GreenDemocraticSocialism
"In (the US) three people own more wealth than the bottom half of all Amercan society"
"A system ruled by greed and rigged against ordinary people"
It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism
hive.co.uk/.../Its-OK-to-…
#GreenDemocraticSocialism
"In (the US) three people own more wealth than the bottom half of all Amercan society"
"A system ruled by greed and rigged against ordinary people"
It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism
hive.co.uk/.../Its-OK-to-…
We're about to enter a new chapter of capitalism. Where we eliminate labour from the productivity equation. GDP will not be tethered to labour, meaning it will become unbounded. It's gonna get weird fast.
For those looking for more details, I've compiled some thoughts here with my AI:
🧵1/ As #AI drives the cost of knowledge & physical work towards 0, we'll see widespread adoption across industries. 💼🤖 Massive layoffs won't mean a loss in productivity—instead, we'll witness an… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
🧵1/ As #AI drives the cost of knowledge & physical work towards 0, we'll see widespread adoption across industries. 💼🤖 Massive layoffs won't mean a loss in productivity—instead, we'll witness an… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
🧵1/ As #AI transforms labor markets & drives productivity, it's essential to understand how this may challenge the traditional notions of GDP & capitalism. Let's explore the implications with a balanced view, referencing key economic principles. #Economics #GDP #Capitalism
📉2/… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
📉2/… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
A thread on 'Brave New World' and the link between #hedonism & #eugenics:
Aldous Huxley was right: eugenics and hedonism are inextricably linked. 'Brave New World' is about a eugenic society that designs human beings for specific social stations and jobs. 1/10
Aldous Huxley was right: eugenics and hedonism are inextricably linked. 'Brave New World' is about a eugenic society that designs human beings for specific social stations and jobs. 1/10
Everyone has a genetic destiny and a pre-ordained role in the labor force. 'Brave New World' is also, in equal measure, about a hedonistic society in which people only care about pleasure, sex, material things, 'feelies,' doing drugs, and having orgies. 2/10
They don't care about relationships, art, philosophy, ethics, or love. Those things go hand in hand. When you are genetically designed to fill a certain social role, you're not a person, you're a thing. You're a cog in the machine. 3/10
the Pnictogen Wing has a hypothesis about @elonmusk's decision to ruin the public @Twitter API—it's not a hypothesis we've too much confidence in, but still we offer it: we think ONE of the purposes of doing this was to make Musk's own Twitter activities harder to analyze.
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This is a threaded version of Chapter 22:
“Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
“Rules Made to Benefit the Wealthy Are Now More Important Than Life”
of *Culture War, Class War 2022: Truth & Generations
by Michael Adzema
THREAD sillymickel.blogspot.com/2017/10/cultur… #history #Blue
CW22 22/1
“Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
“Rules Made to Benefit the Wealthy Are Now More Important Than Life”
of *Culture War, Class War 2022: Truth & Generations
by Michael Adzema
THREAD sillymickel.blogspot.com/2017/10/cultur… #history #Blue
CW22 22/1
“[*Chapter 22 text begins:*] So these days you have the attitude, “A dollar laid is a dollar played”; people’s suffering is irrelevant to the game.”
THREAD wp.me/p1C4cs-2HP #history #Blue #economics #Reagan #80s #politics #resist #Republicans #Reaganomics #60s
CW22 22/2
THREAD wp.me/p1C4cs-2HP #history #Blue #economics #Reagan #80s #politics #resist #Republicans #Reaganomics #60s
CW22 22/2
“*Foolin’ the People About History*
“*Obvious “Truths”:*
“*Reagan “saved” America.* [untrue truism]
“*Reagan rescued Americans from an oppressive tax burden.* [untrue truism]
READ/DWL BOOK... drive.google.com/file/d/1ySbhcO… #history #Blue #economics #Reagan #80s #politics
CW22 22/3
“*Obvious “Truths”:*
“*Reagan “saved” America.* [untrue truism]
“*Reagan rescued Americans from an oppressive tax burden.* [untrue truism]
READ/DWL BOOK... drive.google.com/file/d/1ySbhcO… #history #Blue #economics #Reagan #80s #politics
CW22 22/3
we weren't *great* students in college. we maybe got as many Fs as As, if not more. we failed out of @Caltech completely! still we struggled and pushed our way towards our degrees. here's two of them.
as a result, we've seen a lot of people like @NateSilver538. *fakers*.
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as a result, we've seen a lot of people like @NateSilver538. *fakers*.
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while we were at @SDSU especially, which was a very big and crowded school full of people studying every conceivable subject, it was impossible not to run into people like @NateSilver538, @mattyglesias, @mtaibbi, &c.—people who thought that "higher learning" was a crock.
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likely they were there mostly out of a sense of family obligation: their parents had money and power over them and pushed them to get a degree chiefly because college degrees are vital to social status in "the West". #capitalism may hate education but it loves *degrees*.
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the unseemly rush to shove @sama / @OpenAI / #ChatGPT "artificial general intelligence" into all our products—whether we want #AGI or not, but capitalists don't really care about our desires, only *their* desires—is put into some perspective: it's rebound from @Meta.
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with its uncanny instinct for choosing only *stale* ideas to monetize, the #technology / #programming industry decided—for a while—that the next big high-tech thing that EVERYBODY would be forced to love would be "the #metaverse", which already exists in video games.
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it also exists in @SecondLife, and in @nealstephenson and who knows how much other science fiction. people have been running around in computer-animated "avatars", of varying degrees of complexity and detail, for decades. @Meta and #MarkZuckerberg were wheel-reinventing.
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so let's talk about a subject near and dear to @mtaibbi's heart: betraying the United States.
now I have to be honest here: I myself feel no great loyalty to the United States. I am the child of a Chilean exile, and I grew up with multinational friends. I'm no patriot.
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now I have to be honest here: I myself feel no great loyalty to the United States. I am the child of a Chilean exile, and I grew up with multinational friends. I'm no patriot.
(1/x)
in this life, anyway, I've regarded myself almost from the first as a citizen of the world, who happens to be a citizen of the United States. @mtaibbi and lots of other globetrotting propagandists probably like to think of themselves as somehow "international", too.
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I've never *pretended* to be patriotic, though—I even once got myself in trouble for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in a grade-school biology class, because I saw the Pledge as basically equivalent to a fascıst oath of loyalty. it is! the Pledge is scary.
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"That the #Anthropocene, at its core, is a fundamentally bourgeois concept should surprise no one. After all, it tells us that behind the current, disastrous state of world affairs is the #Anthropos. It’sa trick ...
researchgate.net/publication/26… #history #capitalism #ideology
researchgate.net/publication/26… #history #capitalism #ideology
... as old as #modernity – the rich and powerful create #problems for all of us, then tell us we’re all to blame. But are we? And just who, in any case, is ‘#we’?"
"The #Anthropocene concept has graced the cover of The Economist magazine and received the blessing of The New York Times’ editorial board – for the very sound reason that anthropogenic arguments obscure capitalogenic realities." #Science/#Society
"This long Malthusian cycle brewed the ideological alchemy of Good #Science and the Civilizing Project. Each moment produced new scientific and imperial regimes that simultaneously mapped, secured, and justified ever more extensive and violent...
scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/emancipations/… #society
scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/emancipations/… #society
... appropriations of unpaid #work/energy for capital. Every moment of enclosing waste (the commons) involved grand movements creating #waste on the frontiers. In this long #history of natural law, Good #Science has been mobilized not only as a “productive force” but as the...
... ideological cement for securing the “general interest”. Thus decisive ideological function for successive #class compacts between ruling strata and the scientific, administrative, and military strata ...
#AgeOfDeception: “#Washington is filled with politicians and organizations that hyperventilate about government #debt and the burden it imposes on our children, but they ignore the burdens imposed by #patent and #copyright monopolies granted by the government.”
“Suppose that we were spending another $50 billion a year on medical #research in order to replace #patent supported research, and all the findings were placed in the #public domain so that all #drugs were sold as #generics. ...
... The annual #deficit would be $50 billion higher due to the additional spending on research, but we would save $380 billion a year on drugs due to generic pricing.”
#Science/#Society/#Academia:
“The process of #rationalization central to #capitalism has required the creation of an intermediate stratum comprising the specialists of this rationalization, as #administrators, #technicians, #scientists, #educators. The very complexity of not...
“The process of #rationalization central to #capitalism has required the creation of an intermediate stratum comprising the specialists of this rationalization, as #administrators, #technicians, #scientists, #educators. The very complexity of not...
... only the #technology but the social system has made it essential that this stratum be large and, over time, expanding.The funds that have been used to support it have been drawn from the global surplus, as extracted through entrepreneurs and states. In this elementary but ...
... fundamental sense these #cadres have therefore been part of the #bourgeoisie whose claim to participation in the sharing-out of the surplus has been given precise ideological form in the twentieth-century concept of #HumanCapital. Having relatively little real capital to ...
#Capitalism/#Work: "Timed to go to the toilet. Told off for leaning. Monitored for each package completed. As a #worker at #Amazon, I often feel that we aren’t being treated as people."
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
"We are treated worse than the #robots doing automated tasks in the warehouses. If the robots have an issue, the company pays for them to be serviced, whereas if we drop below certain targets multiple times, we can be fired – we have to sort it out or get out"
"Everyone who I work with at the warehouse in Coventry is frustrated.... The shifts are hard work, spent all on our feet, walking miles back and forth through large warehouses. All of that for just £10.50 an hour. That’s why about 400 workers at our warehouse are striking today."
#Democracy/#FacaDemocracy: “Bolstering these #IntellectualProperty protection devices is an expanding set of inter-government deals. The construction of the global #market #system has been marked by a proliferation of over 3,200 bilateral and multilateral treaties on trade ...
... and investment, most of which have never been subject to any #democratic mandate or accountability."
"…. As one Investment #banking expert noted: 'It is a mistake to call it a trade agreement. This is really an agreement that's [sic] purpose is substantially to weaken nation-based #regulation while at the same time strengthening #IntellectualProperty protections.' ...
#Modernity/#Inequality: “one of the most significant pillars of historical #capitalism, institutional #racism. What we mean by racism has little to do with the xenophobia that existed in various prior historical #systems. Xenophobia was literally fear of the ‘stranger’. ...
... #Racism within historical #capitalism had nothing to do with ‘strangers’. Quite the contrary. Racism was the mode by which various segments of the #work-force within the same economic structure were constrained to relate to each other. Racism was the ideological ...
... justification for the #hierarchization of the work-force and its highly unequal distributions of reward. What we mean by racism is that set of ideological statements combined with that set of continuing practices which have had the consequence of maintaining a high ...
A thread on the hegemony of science and its impact on humanistic philosophy:
Psychology and psychiatry have appropriated concepts that used to belong to the purview of philosophy. 1/13
Psychology and psychiatry have appropriated concepts that used to belong to the purview of philosophy. 1/13
Love, alienation, anxiety, despair - all these and more have been transformed into psychological constructs, susceptible to pathologization and depoliticization. Here is an example from bell hooks' 'All About Love':...2/13
"When I talked of love with my generation, I found it made everyone nervous or scared, especially when I spoke about not feeling loved enough. On several occasions as I talked about love with friends, I was told I should consider seeing a therapist... 3/13
Your typical capitalist shill responses to anyone who mentions the word socialism:
1. It's human nature to be selfish, thus capitalism.
2. It's never worked before.
3. Humans can't co-operate without monetary incentive.
Let's explore these, shall we?
1. It's human nature to be selfish, thus capitalism.
2. It's never worked before.
3. Humans can't co-operate without monetary incentive.
Let's explore these, shall we?
1. Being self-interested doesn't undermine cooperation. You wouldn't want to live in a household full of people who exploit each other, would you? If anything, it's in my interest to build a world in which everyone is happy and not exploited.
Workers co-ops are an excellent example of people being able to work together and decide how the surplus value of their labour (profit) is to be spent, democratically. It is not a requirement that there be a dictator at the top of the hierarchy that the rest MUST obey.
