capitalism

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• 1/22/2023
  

  As the Progressive Era Ideal of Regulation Vanishes, What Will Stop the March of AI?

  by Walter G. Moss

  If capital decides that artificial intelligence is sufficiently profitable to put in charge of driving our cars, writing our essays, or even teaching our history classes, what is left to stop it, even if the products are terrible or even dangerous? 

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• SOURCE: Foreign Policy
  1/16/2023
  

  You Can't Understand MLK's Politics Without Understanding His Critique of Capitalism

  Adam Tooze discusses King's longstanding efforts to link racial discrimination and economic exploitation, as well as the working-class base of the civil rights movement. 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  12/20/2022
  

  2022's Lesson? Billionaires Bad, Actually

  Tech historian Margaret O'Mara says Musk, like other tech moguls, has long been supported by a myth of the individual genius that is only now being overturned by his erratic decisionmaking, boosting of right-wing conspiracy theories, and incredibly thin-skinned reaction to criticism. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  12/16/2022
  

  Dickens Would Have Had Bankman-Fried's Number

  The novelist targeted the absurdities and self-congratulation of utilitarian philosophers, the forerunners of the tech industry's "effective altruism," in his 1854 "Hard Times." 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/22/2022
  

  Is Environmental Damage Really Sabotage by Capital?

  by R.H. Lossin

   The term "capitalist sabotage" describes intentional destructive activity in service of profit, and is a more accurate label than "accident" or "unintended consquence" for the environmental change that will cause a million unnecessary deaths a year over the coming decades. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  11/10/2022
  

  Lunchtime in Italy: Work, Time and Civil Society

  by Jonathan Levy

  The Italian lunchtime insists that time be organized around communal rituals and sustenance, not work. Does the utter foreignness of this attitude in America help explain the current national derangement? 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/27/2022
  

  The Robber Barons Had Nothing on Musk

  by David Nasaw

  Like the Gilded Age robber barons, Elon Musk's self-made mythos hides the government subsidies supporting his businesses. Unlike them, he has the werewhithal to move financial markets to his advantage through Twitter. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  8/3/2022
  

  The Internet is Lousy Because of Capitalism, Not Bad Apple CEOs

  by Matthew Crain

  "Surveillance advertising was created by marketers, technology start-ups, investors, and politicians, a coalition bound by the desire to commercialize the web as quickly as possible."

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  7/20/2022
  

  Can We Have International Cooperation Without Domination?

  by Jamie Martin

  There is no golden age of international relations free of the coercive power of capital. A different version of internationalism is needed. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  6/13/2022
  

  Reviewed: The Bio of Hippie Capitalism Pioneer and Technofuturist Stewart Brand

  by Malcolm Harris

  From LSD to the computer revolution, Stewart Brand appeared in some way in the biggest cultural trends to emerge from California in the late 20th century. A new authorized biography tells a version of his story, but is it the whole story? 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  4/27/2022
  

  Palm Oil is Colonialism's Continuing Nightmare

  by Max Haiven

  The extraction and trade in palm oil in west Africa has been at the center of two centuries of exploitation and violence, which stands to get worse as the Ukraine war threatens the world supply of competing sunflower oil. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  4/4/2022
  

  Your House Makes More Money than You Do

  Rising real estate values are bringing more wealth to Americans than wages and salaries are. This is a big problem for economic equality.

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  3/13/2022
  

  How London Became the Oligarchical Cesspool of "Londongrad"

  by Geoffrey Wheatcroft

  From football to real estate to politics, British institutions have been willing to welcome Russian cash for decades without regard for its potential moral taint. 

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• SOURCE: The Economist
  3/4/2022
  

  Russian Sanctions a "Watershed" Moment in Global Economic History

  by Nicholas Mulder

  "Sanctions are no longer scalpel-like instruments that exploit globalisation. At their current scale, they are a tempest that will change the nature of globalisation itself in major ways."

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  2/14/2022
  

  Selling Hope

  by Wendy A. Woloson

  After a cancer diagnosis, the author still couldn't escape a world of consumerism that relentlessly commodifies even the worst experiences.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  2/17/2022
  

  The Revolt of the Super Employees

  by Erik Baker

  The business managerial ethos established in the 1980s destroyed the idea of solidarity and replaced it with a fantasy version of meritocracy. Now, upper-middle management is having the rug pulled out from under it, and they're mad. Are they mad enough to recognize the faults of the system? 

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• SOURCE: Dissent
  2/9/2021
  

  Focus on the Family? The Problems with Blaming GOP Radicalism on Family Business

  by Paul Heideman

  Is the rise of the privately-held megacorporation the root of the radical conservative movement, or has corporate America long had a right-wing fringe? 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/5/2021
  

  Forget "Ghost Guns" and other Media Panics. Gun Capitalism is the Underlying Problem of a Violent Society

  by Andrew C. McKevitt

  A long series of moral panics over the dangers of specific guns (and their imagined users) has hidden the real danger to Americans: the profitability (and legality) of selling deadly weapons.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/2/2021
  

  After 20 Years, Enron Still Haunts Us

  by Gavin Benke

  Despite Enron's bankruptcy and the resulting economic fallout, American business media is still dangerously credulous toward promises of "innovation" and "disruption" without asking whether the latest hot entrepreneur is using smoke and mirrors. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/29/2021
  

  Lizabeth Cohen: Why Americans Buy So Much Stuff

  As holiday shopping overlaps with historic supply chain disruptions, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Lizabeth Cohen on the economy's reliance on spending and the culture of consumerism in the U.S.