MetaFilter posts tagged with capitalism

The Gervais Principle

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:47:36 -0800

The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”. Warning: link may evoke baleful despair!

Capitalism Is Evil

philip-random — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:25:38 -0800

Director Michael Moore now wants nothing less than the complete overthrow of the modern capitalist system. Michael Moore's latest is called CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY and the first reviews are starting to filter in from Venice where it just premiered. Thus far, the verdict seems split: "Pic's target is less capitalism qua capitalism than the banking industry, which Moore skewers ruthlessly, explaining last year's economic meltdown in terms a sixth-grader could understand. That said, there's still plenty here to annoy right-wingers, as well as those who, however much they agree with Moore's politics, just can't stomach his oversimplification, on-the-nose sentimentality and goofball japery."

Everyone agrees. It's about to explode.

jrb223 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:14:52 -0800

The Coming Insurrection (pdf) (in French) by the Invisible Committee. Composed following the 2005 riots in France, The Coming Insurrection predicts the collapse of capitalism and has been described as a manual for revolution. It is also at the center of the trial of the 'Tarnac 9,' a group of anarcho-autonomists (believed to be the Invisible Committee) arrested on terrorism charges for allegedly sabotaging train lines. Three were released in December, while their alleged leader, Julien Coupat, was released on bail after 6 months imprisonment in May. This past June saw the ‘official’ launch of the English translation in New York. The New York Times seems bemused, but Glenn Beck seems pretty worried…

Will Pique Your Curiosity in the Most Delightful Way

Potomac Avenue — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:13:06 -0800

SkyMall product reviews. Shirts! Salts! Herps! Lights! Sexy Chicks! Shifty Cats! A critical examination of products featured in America's favorite in-flight catalogue.

Financial innovation, you say?

vivelame — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:36:15 -0800

Madness is doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (SLBP)

The Great American Bubble Machine

philip-random — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:32:11 -0800

"The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." Matt Taibbi vs Goldman Sachs. “What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain -- an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.” previously.

Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong

kliuless — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:44:18 -0800

Prelude to Federation - Like a neocolonial SEZ (or TAZ) Paul Romer, not to be confused with David, posits "less developed countries contract with capitalist nations to set up Hong Kong's for them... that we rethink sovereignty (respect borders, but maybe import administrative control); rethink citizenship (support residency, but maybe import voice in political affairs); and rethink scale (instead of focusing on nations, focus on cities—on city states like Hong Kong and Singapore)." cf. neocameralism [1, 2, 3] BONUS - New Urbanism - Taking Up Space

Gee, 20

mippy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:10:15 -0800

Protests against today's G20 summit in the UK turn predictably bloody. The main financial hub, the City, is closed off as a retail bank is broken into and dismantled. Another street, in contrast, is taken over and turned into an encampment.

great generation or greatest generation?

kliuless — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 08:24:42 -0800

Now is the time for a less selfish capitalism - "we should stop the worship of money and create a more humane society where the quality of human experience is the criterion... accelerated economic growth is not a goal for which we should make large sacrifices." Lord Layard challenges the orthodoxy; perhaps it's time to rein in the banks and try trickle-up bailouts? btw Richard Layard's 2003 LSE happiness lectures I think were pretty influential in reorienting economics back towards a more 'utility-based' approach in recent years, cf. Giddens on 'third way' politics re: Blair, New Labour and now Brown, viz. "to build tomorrow today..." ...which leads me to obama: third wayist of the hermeneutian order? from one part of his 'Q&A' at the business roundtable [transcript]

I think we have a moral obligation to make sure that, in a country this wealthy, you don’t have single moms not able to send their kids to a doctor because they just can’t afford it, and they don’t have insurance on their job... But having said that, I also just have a very hard-headed analysis about this, which is the path we’re on is unsustainable. If you have six, eight, 10 percent health care inflation every single year, at some point we are all broke... we can’t simply just add on a whole bunch of people to a broken system... because then you’ll just be broke that much faster... So the cost issue is the thing that we actually think is the big driver in this whole debate... everybody agrees on this theoretically until you start getting into the specifics... resistance is not based on evidence, it’s based on people’s interests. Everybody is kind of dug in. They know that the system doesn’t work, but at least it kind of works for them in one particular aspect. And part of the reason that we did not simply design our own plan and try to jam it down the throats of Congress is we want them to see some of the contradictions in their own positions... Not everything is going to be implemented now. And this, by the way, goes to a broader issue with respect to our budget... the budget document that we put forward is a 10-year document. We are, like any organization — just like all of yours, we have to do long-term planning even as we’re addressing short-term issues. If we don’t do the long-term planning, then we end up having more short-term issues again and again... We’re not going to have instant health IT all next year. The same is true on the energy front... But if we don’t start now, if we wait until — to have the debate in 2012, and then suddenly it turns out that oil is at $150 a barrel again, and we say, oh, why is it that we didn’t start thinking about this and making some steps now to figure this out. Well, that’s what Washington does. You guys could not run your business that way. And so the notion that we are doing some long-term planning now and trying to get this town to think long term, that somehow that’s a distraction just defies every sound management practice that I’ve ever heard of.

BONUS amartya sen & stephen colbert previously 1 2

The Future of Capitalism

geoff. — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:57:26 -0800

"For me, capitalism has never been an abstract concept. It is a real, concrete part of everyday life." President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on the future of capitalism.

whither or wither?

kliuless — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 09:41:13 -0800

What is the future of capitalism?
a) 3.0
b) Canada* ([1],[2])
c) 'smart growth' (viz.)
d) none of the above** *cf. Spain ([1],[2]) **cf. trust networks

Tragedy of the anti-commons

stbalbach — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:27:39 -0800

Tragedy of the anti-commons is the opposite of tragedy of the commons - it's when too many owners create grid-lock, nothing can get accomplished. It exists everywhere from copyright law, tech patents, music industry, airport runway expansion, medicine, etc.. it is pervasive across all aspects of modern capitalist societies. The concept was coined by Professor Michael Heller who published a book in 2008 called The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives. In an excellent Authors@Google video, Michael Heller explains what it is and how it undermines capitalism, in particular over the past 30 years with increased privatization.

What's going on at Circuit City?

hypersloth — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:39:06 -0800

Circuit City: Founded in 1949 as the Wards Company, Circuit City is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. At the time of the liquidation announcement (January 16, 2009), the company operated 567 stores in 153 media. Ok bai.

Adam Smith in Beijing

Abiezer — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:21:59 -0800

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."

The forgotten Holocaust

hadjiboy — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:10:41 -0800

In 1943, while the Allies were busy battling the Axis Powers and the Nazi Regime, there was another kind of war that was being waged against a helpless populace (living on the Indian Sub-continent). A war that has been largely ignored by the mass media and the history books of our time. It is known as the Great Bengal Famine, and ended up causing the death of an estimated 1.5 million to 4 million people.

Disaster Capitalism

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:35:26 -0800

"Like the dotcom bubble, the disaster bubble is inflating in an ad-hoc and chaotic fashion." Journalist Naomi Klein discusses how corporations and governments are working together more closely than ever, using the mandate of catastrophe — whether natural or man-made — to further concentrate power in fewer hands, with less oversight: from illegal sales of American police technology to China to avert hypothetical tragedies during the Beijing Olympics, to the privatization of water supplies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka.

Taking Affirmative Action Against Crime and For Economic Reconstruction

orthogonality — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:12:57 -0800

The black backs by and on which the fortunes of the New South were built:

On March 30, 1908, Green Cottenham was arrested by the sheriff of Shelby County, Alabama, and charged with “vagrancy.”... Cottenham’s offense was blackness.... [After a brief trial] Cottenham... was sold. Under a standing arrangement between the county and a vast subsidiary of the industrial titan of the North — U.S. Steel Corporation — the sheriff turned the young man over to the company for the duration of his sentence.... he was chained inside a long wooden barrack at night and required to spend nearly every waking hour digging and loading coal. His required daily “task” was to remove eight tons of coal from the mine. Cottenham was subject to the whip for failure to dig the requisite amount, at risk of physical torture for disobedience, and vulnerable to the sexual predations of other miners.... Forty-five years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves, Green Cottenham and more than a thousand other black men toiled under the lash at Slope 12.

— from the Introduction to Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II. The book's website includes reviews of the book, an excerpt of the Introduction, and an extensive photo gallery that includes disturbing images of enslaved and tortured prisoners. For those unable to read the entire introductory excerpt, I've copied a few paragraphs, but you're better served reading the whole thing:

The camp had supplied tens of thousands of men over five decades to a succession of prison mines ultimately purchased by U.S. Steel in 1907. Hundreds of them had not survived. Nearly all were black men arrested and then “leased” by state and county governments to U.S. Steel or the companies it had acquired.3 Here and in scores of other similarly crude graveyards, the final chapter of American slavery had been buried. It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for most men, and the relatively few women drawn in, this slavery did not last a lifetime and did not automatically extend from one generation to the next. But it was nonetheless slavery—a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion. Instead of thousands of true thieves and thugs drawn into the system over decades, the records demonstrate the capture and imprisonment of thousands of random indigent citizens, almost always under the thinnest chimera of probable cause or judicial process. The total number of workers caught in this net had to have totaled more than a hundred thousand and perhaps more than twice that figure. Instead of evidence showing black crime waves, the original records of county jails indicated thousands of arrests for inconsequential charges or for violations of laws specifically written to intimidate blacks—changing employers without permission, vagrancy, riding freight cars without a ticket, engaging in sexual activity— or loud talk—with white women. Repeatedly, the timing and scale of surges in arrests appeared more attuned to rises and dips in the need for cheap labor than any demonstrable acts of crime. Hundreds of forced labor camps came to exist, scattered throughout the South—operated by state and county governments, large corporations, small-time entrepreneurs, and provincial farmers. These bulging slave centers became a primary weapon of suppression of black aspirations.... By 1900, the South’s judicial system had been wholly reconfigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites. It was not coincidental that 1901 also marked the final full disenfranchisement of nearly all blacks throughout the South. Sentences were handed down by provincial judges, local mayors, and justices of the peace—often men in the employ of the white business owners who relied on the forced labor produced by the judgments. Dockets and trial records were inconsistently maintained. Attorneys were rarely involved on the side of blacks. Revenues from the neo-slavery poured the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars into the treasuries of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and South Carolina — where more than 75 percent of the black population in the United States then lived.... That the arc of Green Cottenham’s life led from a birth in the heady afterglow of emancipation to his degradation at Slope No. 12 in 1908 was testament to the pall progressing over American black life. But his voice, and that of millions of others, is almost entirely absent from the vast record of the era. Unlike the victims of the Jewish Holocaust, who were on the whole literate, comparatively wealthy, and positioned to record for history the horror that enveloped them, Cottenham and his peers had virtually no capacity to preserve their memories or document their destruction. The black population of the United States in 1900 was in the main destitute and illiterate. For the vast majority, no recordings, writings, images, or physical descriptions survive. There is no chronicle of girlfriends, hopes, or favorite songs of the dead in a Pratt Mines burial field. The entombed there are utterly mute, the fact of their existence as fragile as a scent in wind.

Kiki and Bubu

homunculus — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:00:26 -0800

Kiki and Bubu! Austrian art collective monochrom presents the adventures of two sock puppets. Part One: Kiki and Bubu and The Shift. "Bubu wants to know why his dad is busy all the time. And Kiki explains him why... because of the neoliberal shift." Part Two: Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege. "Bubu ran into a bunch of liberals and they gave him a book. They said if he doesn't read it, they're going to beat him up. But Bubu can't read! And so Kiki helps..." [Via BB]

Žižek!

homunculus — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:00:20 -0800

"Žižek!" is a feature documentary exploring the eccentric personality and esoteric work of the "wild man of theory": the eminent Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7. Democracy Now! did a two-part interview with Žižek which concluded today: Part 1, Part 2. His latest book is "In Defense of Lost Causes". Žižek was previsouly discussed here and here.

The Brilliant Issue

Non Prosequitur — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:06:26 -0800

I asked Nathan Myhrvold, C.E.O. of Intellectual Ventures and widely considered to be one of the smartest people in technology, if he is brilliant. "If you put yourself in that camp, you might be correct," he teased. "But then, you're also an asshole." The Brilliant Issue profiles Porfolio's picks for best game-changers, upstarts, rebels, connectors and other influencers. yes it's mainstream Condé Nast bs but it's also fun!

The 'advantage' of 'low human rights'

Abiezer — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:14:18 -0800

Only China can destroy socialism. Qin Hui, one of the country's most important public intellectuals, argues "China's rampant state-dominated, welfare-lite capitalism could so undercut competitors that it could threaten the social democratic traditions that underpin the West." [As ever, via.]

playing with the tuning knobs when the back of the appliance is in flames

gerryblog — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:45:17 -0800

The Wire is dissent; it argues that our systems are no longer viable for the greater good of the most, that America is no longer operating as a utilitarian and democratic experiment. An already-quite-good discussion about The Wire, originating in Mark Bowden's Atlantic article ('The Angriest Man in Television') and continuing through Mark Bowden's post on the show's nihilistic bleakness gets even more interesting on Matt Yglesias's blog, where the creator of the show stops by to give his opinion on what it's all supposed to mean.

The Rise of China

homunculus — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:01:06 -0800

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." Long Time Coming: The Prospects for Democracy in China. "Is China democratizing? The country's leaders do not think of democracy as people in the West generally do, but they are increasingly backing local elections, judicial independence, and oversight of Chinese Communist Party officials. How far China's liberalization will ultimately go and what Chinese politics will look like when it stops are open questions." The Battle of Beijing: What happens when an authoritarian government and thousands of activists go head-to-head at the Olympics? China is about to find out.

Privatize profit. Socialize risk.

orelius — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:26:37 -0800

Push Capitalism. Bill Moyers' interview with Dr. Benjamin Barber about the state of our modern capitalist society and how he believes capitalism threatens American democracy. PBS.org streaming video. This week on Bill Moyers, an interview with Dr. Benjamin Barber, senior fellow at Demos, and author of books such as Jihad vs. McWorld and more recently, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole.

limits

kliuless — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:09:35 -0800

The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy - naked capitalism reprints (with added commentary) an FT article by Martin Wolf on why it's vital for (civilised) society to sustain a 'positive-sum' world, otherwise: "A zero-sum economy leads, inevitably, to repression at home and plunder abroad." Wolf's solution? "The condition for success is successful investment in human ingenuity." Of course! Some are calling for more socialism, while others would press on to build more megaprojects. For me, at least part of the solution lies in environmental accounting and natural capitalism :P