Category: Capitalism
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Crony Capitalism
One of the many pro-capitalist right-wing memes that you see floating around the Internet is this: “Crony capitalism is different from real capitalism.” I think you already know what crony capitalism is, but, basically, it just means there’s a close relationship between the capitalist class and important government officials to the extent that the government…
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The Cultural Assumptions That Hold Us Back
I’d like to highlight some of the cultural assumptions that prevent the United States of America from moving toward a better society. While I do believe that it is too late to rectify these issues, addressing them would be a first step in any movement that intended to bring about a more democratic, just, and…
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Paul Krugman: Liberal Economist
Paul Krugman is a liberal. A famous one. An expert on liberal economics. He seems like he means well. He recently posted this short essay encouraging people to oppose Trumpism rather than showing deference to Trump and his minions. It’s a good idea when I put it that way, but his exact wording is, “Oppose…
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Mark Zuckerberg is a Material Threat to the Human Species
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, has just announced that Meta will be “dramatically reducing censorship across all its platforms”. Obviously, he means that they will dramatically reduce censorship of fascism, specifically. Zuckerberg said Meta would “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender…
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Trump is a Logical Consequence
Authoritarianism Goes Hand-in-hand with Late-stage Capitalism “Something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be…
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Capitalist Strategy and the Petite Bourgeoisie
Karl Marx seemed to believe that capitalism was almost over when he wrote about it in the mid to late 1800’s; now, that assumption seems absurd. In my opinion, the key to understanding the longevity of capitalism and the domination of the world by the capitalist class is the concept of the “petite bourgeoisie”. Per…
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The Real Existential Threat is Overshoot
Neither Democrats nor Republicans have sufficiently accepted the dilemma we face in terms of the human relationship to our habitat, the Earth. Dr. William Rees explains why this lack of understand is essentially guaranteed to end industrial-technical civilization incrementally over the next 25 years, culminating in a population of no more than 2 billion people…
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Rational Choice and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, the voices of neoliberalism were strongly divided on the issue of whether it could happen. This division was despite the fact of the actual history of Russia’s behavior over the last decade (and, of course, much longer than that). Certainly, there were those who said they believed that Russia would invade…
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Oil Prices and Capitalism
The Biden administration is trying to decrease the price of gasoline in the US — or at least they are making a performance of trying to decrease the price. Let’s take a look at how capitalism is making this problem worse and how a liberal (i.e., capitalist) government like the Biden administration is ill-suited to…
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The Man Who Accidentally Killed the Most People in History | Veritasium
When you think of the person that killed the most people in history, you probably assume it is going to be a dictator — probably a Hitler or a Stalin — but no, the person that killed the most people in history is Midgley. He was an aspiring capitalist who cared more about making a…