Politics On the Commodification of Everything Beautiful After my first medical appointments of the day, I find myself hanging out at a Panera and dreaming of a world there were public spaces I could sit on a democratically controlled Internet,
Politics What “The Economy” Means …“the economy,” which was a short-hand term for corporate profit… (A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn) This is a very useful thought technology. We should all implement a
Politics On Meritocracy and the Role of Capitalist Inoculation Undoubtedly, ordinary people benefited to some extent from these changes. The system was rich, productive, complex; it could give enough of a share of its riches to enough of the working class to
Politics On Revolution, Reform, and Capitalism’s Terrifying Escape Room The problem of democracy in the post-Revolutionary society was not, however, the Constitutional limitations on voting. It lay deeper, beyond the Constitution, in the division of society into rich and poor. For if
Politics On Ineffectiveness When I walked into Starbucks this morning, I ran into a guy with a shirt not unlike this one. Maybe he hasn't been keeping up with his daily pledges?
Politics On Disruption and Underpaid Labor MoviePass says its model can realize a healthy profit margin, provided it can monetize its user data and sign up enough casual moviegoers. This one sentence says so much about what's wrong with
Politics The Intersection of Exploitation and Privilege During the Cold War, defense companies like Lockheed in the Santa Clara Valley drew scores of ambitious scientists; these workers seemed to share certain personality traits, including social awkwardness, emotional detachment, and, namely,
Politics A Passion for Things At IKEA, I found possibly the best short description of capitalism ever.
Link Article Apologies as Commodities A huge multi-national company like Starbucks is inextricably plugged into the system of global capitalism and, as such, is complicit in all the forms of oppression that this system engenders or heightens. But
Programming Time After Capitalism A large part of what makes hobbies enjoyable is that, freed from the profit motive, practitioners work at the pace they choose, allowing them to experiment, mess up, quit, and start over. My
Politics Land of the Free, My Ass Under the new guidelines, travelers who are selected by its officers for additional screening could be asked to unlock their electronic devices for inspection or provide passcodes. They will be asked to disable
Politics God Bless Us Everyone Working seventy hours a week is about close as you can get to being back in the nineteenth century without a time machine. When most people hear about this situation, they immediately think
Politics The Perils of Authoritarian Censorship Lately, there have been a lot of Twitter bannings and flagging of videos on YouTube which discuss why white nationalism is wrong. Sadly, this is something I was afraid would happen. Since the
Politics Accumulation Through Dispossession Jones is a reminder that the migration narrative in Britain needs a rethink. Those who came from the colonies were not foreigners. Britain was an empire, not a nation, and every single colonial
Politics Mutual Aid Over the next month, Luis, Christine, and ARECMA, took over the group’s storm-ravaged hilltop center and set up the Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo (Project for Mutual Aid). I flew back home to
Politics Ephemeral Alliances I’m reading through Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, and I can’t help but feel like he predicted leftist Twitter: Possibilists , Collectivists , Radicals , Jacobins , Blanquists , will be thrust together , and waste time
Politics Anti-Fascism Also, many of their followers think that this is a game, that this a joke, that they can come off the Internet and into the streets without this having very serious implications. And
Politics Silver Spoons At that time the contracts for farms ran for a long time, often for ninety-nine years. The progressive fall in the value of the precious metals, and therefore of money, brought golden fruit
Politics Download More Proles Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn’t actually need that many more programmers. As a result, teaching millions of kids to code won’t make them all middle-class. Rather, it will proletarianize
Religion/Spirituality Racism and Homophobia in the KC Pagan Community: The Asatru Folk Assembly For two months, however, I have been combating racism and homophobia being brought to my community. It has taken over my time I reserve for blogging and, in the past few weeks, sleep
Politics A Foundation, Not a Net Under laissez-faire capitalism, income is only distributed to the factors of production, i.e. labor and capital. If you don’t own a whole bunch of capital or have the capacity and opportunity
Politics Fiat Currency, Socially Necessary Labor Time, and Other Causes for Revolution I’m currently reading through Capital, Volume 1 by Karl Marx, and I’ll readily admit that it’s not always an easy read for me. Theoretical complexity isn’t usually an issue
Politics What Is Antifa? A Scholar Of the Movement Explains Disruption is necessary for social movements. It’s used precisely to make it clear that business as usual can’t move forward without some kind of change. In the end, the growing struggle
Politics Socialism at Play Alas, it turns out that the crucial component of informational capitalism is distribution. Conglomerates like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft quickly adapted to this peaceful seizure of the means of production. They opened their
Politics On Queer Liberation vs. LGBTQ Rights I have mixed feelings on assimilation. On the one hand, to borrow from Harry Potter lore (as I so often do), I am a Slytherin. I prefer to blend into crowds rather than