capitalism

• 
• 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? 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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."

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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? 

• 
• 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? 

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/15/2021
  

  The Not-So-Hidden Purpose of the University of Austin

  by Daniel Drezner

  Anyone attracted to the promises of academic freedom and untrammeled inquiry at the University of Austin should be scared of the power it proposes to concentrate in its corporate governing board. 

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  11/1/2021
  

  How Historians Helped Convince Big Business Trump Was Dangerous

  Historian Timothy Snyder recounts his role in a November 2020 presentation to business leaders about the authoritarian danger reflected in Trump's lies about the "stolen" election. Did a potential coup fail because CEOs thought it was bad for business? Or is there a change afoot in corporate citizenship?

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/3/2021
  

  The Customer is Always... Insufferable? The History of Today's Beleaguered Service Worker

  Writer Amanda Mull checks with historians Susan Strasser and William Leach to explain why American diners, shoppers and passengers seem to be driven to torment servers, clerks and flight attendants. 

• 
• 7/11/2021
  

  Why Does Speculation Persist in the Age of Predictive Data?

  by Gayle Rogers

  "During this pandemic, all of us have studied many data points to assess our risks and predict how safe our futures will be under X or Y scenarios. Even when there has been no shortage of data, even when the data have overwhelmed us, the future has never been made certain and clear for us by them. Instead, we have had to become speculators to some degree."

• 
• SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor
  

  Capitalism American-Style: A Financial History of the United States

  “Ages of American Capitalism" by Jonathan Levy sheds light on U.S. history as seen through a financial lens. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  6/14/2021
  

  Our Insurance Dystopia

  by Caley Horan

  America's health insurance morass is a result of the replacement of the ideal of mutual, universal risk sharing with the privatization of risk in pursuit of profit. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Seminar
  4/2/2021
  

  The World the Suez Canal Made

  by Aaron Jakes

  "The purpose of the Suez Canal, from the perspective of both the Egyptian state and its European investors, was not simply to render the world more interconnected and international transport more efficient, but to extract transit fees from the ships passing through it."

• 
• SOURCE: Financial Times
  2/7/2021
  

  The Biggest Lesson of GameStop

  The GameStop episode highlights a dangerous development in the last 40 years of capitalism's history: the linking of broad-based purchasing power to the fluctuating prices of financial assets held in retirement accounts. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  12/9/2020
  

  The End of the Businessman President

  by Kyle Edward Williams

  Will Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic mark the end of the pernicious myths that the popular good is served by running government like a business, or that business executives have a talent for governing?