Made in America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend - "For US manufacturing to make sense, factories must make extensive use of automation. That's getting easier, given that the cost of robots with comparable capabilities has decreased precipitously in the past two decades." [more inside]
posted by kliuless on May 20, 2011 - 52 comments

In a pinch, upgrade the humans or redistribute the robots - "[S]uppose [as a factory owner] I replace all my workers with machines... This squeeze has many implications, one of them being that here is an important sector of the economy in which more or less all the gains accrue to the owners of capital and more or less none to the working class..." [more inside]
posted by kliuless on May 1, 2011 - 98 comments

Dylan Ratigan's Howard Beale Moment (via se) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jul 19, 2010 - 35 comments

Solidarity Economics. (pdf) Strategies for Building New Economies From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out. [more inside]
posted by lunit on Jan 2, 2010 - 11 comments

What is the future of capitalism?
a) 3.0
b) Canada* ([1],[2])
c) 'smart growth' (viz.)
d) none of the above** [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Feb 15, 2009 - 86 comments

Adam Smith in Beijing Embedded Flash film 1hr59mins "Is US power in decline? What are we to make of the rise of China? Will a possible equalization of North-South relations herald a more brutal capitalism or a better world? Giovanni Arrighi, Joel Andreas, and David Harvey give their perspectives in this forum, for a discussion of Arrighi's 2007 book Adam Smith in Beijing. The event, filmed in Baltimore, MD, in March of 2008, was organized by the Red Emma's collective."
posted by Abiezer on Nov 9, 2008 - 10 comments

The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive? "China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end. But that does not necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China -- but only if Washington sets about strengthening that liberal order now." [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Dec 29, 2007 - 29 comments

"All over Orlando you see forces at work that are changing America from Fairbanks to Little Rock. This, truly, is a 21st-century paradigm: It is growth built on consumption, not production; a society founded not on natural resources, but upon the dissipation of capital accumulated elsewhere; a place of infinite possibilities, somehow held together, to the extent it is held together at all, by a shared recognition of highway signs, brand names, TV shows, and personalities, rather than any shared history. Nowhere else is the juxtaposition of what America actually is and the conventional idea of what America should be more vivid and revealing."

"Welcome to the theme-park nation." [more inside]
posted by wander on Mar 2, 2007 - 61 comments

Sunday's Investment Tip: Snark Inc. This wasn't the sort of snark I was looking for but it's too amusing to pass over. Worth singling out: the Globalization game; the Snark, Snarquila and Serf commercials (this last one good enough to go legit, imho); the Corporate Culture documentary and the Careers questionnaire. All in all, healthy anti-capitalist fun for the whole family! [Click on "View"; Flash required.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jul 14, 2002 - 6 comments