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u/the8thbit · 3 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

Well you've come to the right place, then!

For a cursory treatment of these ideas, like with many ideas, wikipedia is a good starting point.

History of capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism#Origins_of_capitalism

Enclosure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

History of modern policing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police#Early_modern_policing

Peter Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread is kind of the go to introduction to classical anarchism. Its a good book, and it details the relationship between capitalism, the owner class, the working class, and police, as well as discussing alternatives to the our current social configuration: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm

The Conquest of Bread is also available as a free audiobook: https://librivox.org/search?title=The+Conquest+of+Bread&author=Kropotkin&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced

The concepts of biopower and the spectacle are developed by the writers Michel Foucault and Guy Debord respectively. Their writing can be a little dense, but these concepts and their authors have wikipedia pages which make these ideas a little more accessible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle_%28critical_theory%29

Also, this is a reading of Debord's Society of the Spectacle laid over a collage of contemporary footage which conveys the concepts discussed. This is a sort of remake of a film Debord himself made in the '70s. Very very cool: https://vimeo.com/60328678

Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) also happens to be an historian and has produced an excellent documentary about medieval Europe. In the first episode he discusses the lives of the peasantry which is somewhat relevant to this discussion. There are certainly aspects of medieval living that I'm not keen to revive. But there is a nugget of gold in that form of life that we've lost in our contemporary context. Anarchists want a return to that sense of autonomy and deep social bonds within communities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTWsUvT8nsw

An Anarchist FAQ is a very thorough, contemporary, and systematized introduction to anarchist ideas: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html

Noam Chomsky's On Anarchism is an accessible introduction to anarchism that focuses on a modern, large-scale, industrial anarchist society that existed in Spain in the 1930s, to illustrate the concepts underpinning anarchist thought. It's a bit of hokey in parts, especially in the little chapter introductions which are just quotes from Q&A sessions with Dr. Chomsky. But if you can get past that, its good: https://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Noam-Chomsky/dp/1595589104

Chomsky also wrote Manufacturing Consent and Profit Over People, which are much less shallow than On Anarchism, and document how the state maintains a facade of legitimacy and some of the things that the contemporary state (circa 1999... its a little out of date, but not terrible in that respect) does to sophisticate the relationship between owner and worker. Chomsky is probably best known publicly for those two texts, but he has a lot of work in a lot of different fields. He's a pretty prolific intellectual with numerous contributions to political theory, linguistics, cognitive theory, philosophy, and computer science.

Richard Wolff is an economist who has taught at Yale, UMass, City College NY, and is currently teaching at New School. He does a monthly update on global capitalism where he kind of tries to give a bird's eye view of how our global economy shifts and develops from month to month. He also does weekly updates too, but I can never manage to stay up to date on those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdMCTlHl5RQ&t=1836s

Anthropologist David Harvey's book 17 Contradictions and the End of Capitalism details many of the ways in which capitalism appears to be constantly fighting against itself for survival, all the while heightening the conditions which cause capitalism to become precarious in the first place: https://www.amazon.com/Seventeen-Contradictions-Capitalism-David-Harvey/dp/0190230851

This is a film about where capitalism is headed, and what it will look like in 2030: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vApEgrLf7S4

Encirclement: Neoliberalism Ensnares Democracy is a documentary which discusses some of the ways that capitalism post-1968 has shifted so as to wrest more power away from communities. Its very similar to Noam Chomsky's Power Over People, and Chomsky is featured prominently alongside several other intellectuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh44qlii6X4

We Are All Very Anxious is a really cool and short text by anonymous writers about how the different stages of capitalism impact the psychiatric health of the individual. Its availible as a free text, or as a short audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP_5NlY-4mI

This is Albert Einstien's short introductory essay on socialism called Why Socialism. Its not an advocacy of Anarchism per se, and I'm skeptical about the (admitedly vague) path to socialism that he lays out. But some of the concerns he raises at the end of the essay are problems that Anarchism aims to directly address: https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

George Orwell (author of 1984 and Animal Farm) spent time living in and fighting for the Spanish Anarchist society that Chomsky focuses on in On Anarchism, and he documents his experiences in his memoir, Homage to Catalonia: https://www.amazon.com/Homage-Catalonia-George-Orwell/dp/0156421178

The Take, by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis is a film that documents a growth of anarchist factories, offices, and communities following the 2001 financial collapse in Argentina. Today these communities still exist and control hundreds of workplaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOCsfEYqsYs

This is a short film about the anarchist nation of Rojava (northern syria, western kurdistan) which formed in 2013 in the midsts of the Syrian civil war, and is currently the primary boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p40M1WSwNk&t=8s

Since the early-mid '90s most of Chiapas, Mexico has operated as an anarchist society in direct defiance of the Mexican government and NAFTA. In addition to providing for their own communities, Chiapas is also the 8th largest producer of coffee in the world. This is a short documentary about that society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HAw8vqczJw&t=2s

This is a children's film about the same people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDNuzFQW3uI&t=463s

Resistencia is a documentary about anarchist communities emerging in Honduras in the wake of the 2009 US-backed coup: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/resistencia

Marx' Capital is a foundational text in modern socialist thought. It lacks some of the cool ideas of the 20th century (a genealogy of morality, the spectacle, and biopower as examples) but is very thorough in providing an economic critique of capitalism. Capital is dense, massive (three volumes long), and incomplete, but David Harvey has a great series of lectures which go along with the texts: http://davidharvey.org/2008/06/marxs-capital-class-01/

This is another pretty dense one, but if you watch that lecture series and/or read Capital, Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is an interesting follow up text. Carson looks at the plethora of arguments that have developed since the publication of capital which try to recuperate economics to before Marx' critique. In it he discusses and critiques subjective value theory, marginalism, and time preference, which all ultimately argue in different ways that the the prices of goods are determined primarily by demand, rather than the cost of production, a rejection of an important conjecture in classical economics which Marx' critique incorporates. Carson's overarching critique of these responses to Marx and the Marxian approach isn't that these demand-focused understandings of value are entirely wrong or useless, but that as critiques of classical cost theory of value they kind of lose sight of what Marx and the classicals were actually saying. While demand is an important aspect of production, Smith, Ricardo, Marx, etc... are looking at the case where supply and demand have reached equilibrium. While demand may be a determining factor of price where this isn't the case, we know that competitive commodity markets tend towards a supply/demand equilibrium, so an analysis of the equilibrium case is useful for analyzing the form that markets take in the long-term. You can justify small gains through market arbitrage for example, or the way we value art and other unique works by looking at demand, but its not as useful for understanding how someone can see consistent long-term gains through investment: https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/MPE.pdf

In this post I provide a summary of some of the ideas that Carson discusses thats not anywhere nearly as thorough as Carson, but isn't quite as condensed as the above paragraph (If you look closely, you'll notice I recycled some of my earlier post from this one): https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/53e0e8/socialists_from_ltv_to_exploitation/d7scmya/

(cont...)

u/fencerman · 645 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

I remember reading "Pedigree: How Elite students get elite jobs", a book that describes how at elite banks, financial institutions and companies:

>at every step of the hiring process, the ways that employers define and evaluate merit are strongly skewed to favor job applicants from economically privileged backgrounds. She reveals how decision makers draw from ideas about talent―what it is, what best signals it, and who does (and does not) have it―that are deeply rooted in social class. Displaying the "right stuff" that elite employers are looking for entails considerable amounts of economic, social, and cultural resources on the part of the applicants and their parents.

>Challenging our most cherished beliefs about college as a great equalizer and the job market as a level playing field, Pedigree exposes the class biases built into American notions about the best and the brightest, and shows how social status plays a significant role in determining who reaches the top of the economic ladder.

But instead of reacting with horror and disgust at the proof that the entire economic system makes a mockery of meritocracy and any notions of earned status, the reviews treated it as a "How To" -

>"Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs is an academic book with the requisite references to gender theory and Marxist concepts of inequality. But read it carefully and it becomes something far more useful--a guide on how to join the global elite."

Of course, it's not a "how to" at all - nobody without that kind of money and connections has any chance of joining these clubs. That's the whole point of exclusionary sorting like they engage in. But people desperately want to think they can be the exception and the winner. Same as why they like to play monopoly.

u/apodicity · 3 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

They love inflation--as long as they get the newly created money first. They're scared to death of deflation. Deflation is reality asserting itself. They have many more tools to deal with inflation than deflation.

I broadly agree with you, but I think you are discounting the effect that voting has when one of the parties is the Republicans. No, I am not lionizing the Democrats; it's simply that the Republicans are that bad. The reason for strong unions was the labor movement and activism. This was, of course, aided by the fact that labor paid a living wage, and it wasn't so much cheaper for them to replace labor with capital equipment (automation), etc.

With regard to economic inequality and electoral politics in the US, I recommend:

Larry M. Bartels

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

1/23/10 Edition

ISBN-13: 978-0691146232, ISBN-10: 0691146233

With regard to why people vote for Trump:

"Finally, he challenges conventional explanations for why many voters seem to vote against their own economic interests, contending that working-class voters have not been lured into the Republican camp by "values issues" like abortion and gay marriage, as commonly believed, but that Republican presidents have been remarkably successful in timing income growth to cater to short-sighted voters."


Communism? There is no such thing. Perhaps there will be one day, but there are serious practical problems with implementation. Communism works well for communes. It doesn't scale. The human family (should be) a communist institution. I know it's boring, but social democracy is probably the best we can do now. If there is something I should read which makes some other case, I'll bite.

Rather than blather on, it is better that I just link to something worth your time.


Bruce Alexander

The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit

1st Edition

ISBN-13: 978-0199588718, ISBN-10: 0199588716


https://www.amazon.com/Globalization-Addiction-Study-Poverty-Spirit/dp/0199588716
This book shows that the social circumstances that spread addiction in a conquered tribe or a falling civilisation are also built into today's globalizing free-market society. A free-market society is magnificently productive, but it subjects people to irresistible pressures towards individualism and competition, tearing rich and poor alike from the close social and spiritual ties that normally constitute human life. People adapt to their dislocation by finding the best substitutes for a sustaining social and spiritual life that they can, and addiction serves this function all too well.

u/Known_and_Forgotten · 2 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

It really is a case by case basis. For example, the Arab Spring in Bahrain went largely unreported (and unsupported) because the Bahraini monarchy hosts one of the largest bases for the US Navy in the ME. See the work of former CNN journalist Amber Lyon who was fired for reporting on the Arab Spring in Bahrain.

Or Yemen, where the US (and now the Saudis) had been bombing the shit out of rural tribes for years in a campaign of politically motivated airstrikes at the behest of the former government, and when the Houthis began to fight back they've been relentlessly demonized.

But then there was the Arab Spring in Libya, which has been a work in progress for decades. Efforts began under the Reagan admin to overthrow the Libyan government. See the book Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution written by Francis Anthony Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, who also served as legal council to Libya and filed lawsuits on Libya's behalf against the US with the World Court (he won both trials against the US), will give you a good idea of how reasonable and restrained Gaddafi and Libya was.

A preview of the book provides a brief overview of US aggression towards Libya:

>After the Bush Senior administration came to power, in late 1991 they opportunistically accused Libya of somehow being behind the 1988 bombing of the Pan American jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. I advised Libya on this matter from the very outset. Indeed, prior thereto I had predicted to Libya that they were going to be used by the United States government as a convenient scapegoat over Lockerbie for geopolitical reasons. Publicly sensationalizing these allegations,in early 1992 President Bush Senior then mobilized the U.S. Sixth Fleet off the coast of Libya on hostile aerial and naval maneuvers in preparation for yet another military attack exactly as the Reagan administration had done repeatedly throughout the 1980s. I convinced Colonel Qaddafi to let us sue the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the Lockerbie bombing allegations; to convene an emergency meeting of the World Court; and to request the Court to issue the international equivalent of temporary restraining orders against the United States and the United Kingdom that they not attack Libya again as they had done before. After we had filed these two World Court lawsuits, President Bush Senior ordered the Sixth Fleet to stand down. There was no military conflict between the United States and Libya. There was no war. No one died. A tribute to international law, the World Court, and their capacity for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Pursuant to our World Court lawsuits, in February of 1998 the International Court of Justice rendered two Judgments against the United States and the United Kingdom that were overwhelmingly in favor of Libya on the technical jurisdictional and procedural elements involved in these two cases. It was obvious from reading these Judgments that at the end of the day Libya was going to win its World Court lawsuits against the United States and the United Kingdom over the substance of their Lockerbie bombing allegations. These drastically unfavorable World Court Judgments convinced the United States and the United Kingdom to offer a compromise proposal to Libya whereby the two Libyan nationals accused by the U.S. and the U.K. of perpetrating the Lockerbie bombing would be tried before a Scottish Court sitting in The Hague, the seat of the World Court. Justice was never done. This book tells the inside story of why not.

u/baxter001 · 4 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism


https://web.archive.org/web/20080118173212/http://www.teslafounders.com:80/

STEALTH BLOODBATHJanuary 10, 2008, 6:40 pm
Filed under: General

Okay, I said this blog is not going to be about criticizing Tesla. But I just have to say something about the bloodbath going on over there right now, because it seems to be going largely unreported in the press. Just from the outside, I have seen the following people booted out in the last few days:

 (Names removed for privacy reasons)

  • (writer – owner’s manuals)
  • (VP Manufacturing)
  • (Software development engineer)
  • (firmware development engineer)
  • (lead engineer on Tesla’s motor team; creator of Tesla’s motor)
  • (CIO)
  • (formerly VP of Service & Support, then demoted to Director)
  • (manufacturing engineering manager)
  • (software development engineer)
  • (VP Whitestar)
  • (the original, sassy moderator of the Tesla blog, among her many engineering management jobs)
  • (firmware engineer)
  • (world famous motor expert)
  • (systems engineer, working on service diagnostics procedures)
  • (communications director and published author of Car Hacks for Dummies)

    and also (since my original posting)…

  • (Transmission Team)
  • (Buyer)
  • (Vehicle Development Engineer)
  • (Technical Writer)
  • (Mechanical Engineer)
  • (Motor Team)
  • (Supply Manager)
  • (running all of supply chain)
  • (UK Logistics Manager)
  • (HR)
  • (Web Developer)

    …and many more. Watch to see more fall in the coming weeks; I will add to this list as I hear about more. Some of these folks were let go with NO severance package at all. Others got pathetic severance packages. This is not the way I treat people, that is for sure. Maybe this explains why I got the boot first.

    Here’s how it feels on the inside, in the words of a few anonymous employees and newly-former employees:

    >“As you may have heard, the ax has been steadily chopping away at Tesla. I don’t pretend to understand the choices being made and honestly wouldn’t even be surprised to learn if I was next on the list. At this point, I’m not even sure if that would necessarily be a bad thing.”
    >
    >“The company has changed so tremendously since I started. It’s very secretive and cold now. It’s like they’re trying to root out and destroy any of its heart that might still be beating.”
    >
    >“I came to Tesla with a great deal of optimism to work for a company with a noble purpose that had a real chance to make a difference in the world. That sense of mission and hope generated incredible energy and determination to overcome the many challenges of producing a great EV. This energy has been drained by the cold, irrational bloodletting that has been going on there. Everyone understands necessary, rational cost management actions in startups, but this was neither necessary nor rational. No thought has been given to the immediate and long term impact on the future of Tesla. Entire departments are stumbling around stunned, bleeding, and headless.”
    >
    >“It is a damn shame about Tesla. I once again spent the day dreading the words, ‘Did you hear?’ Today I heard that both Wally Rippel and [REDACTED1] are now gone. I just don’t know what they’re thinking. [REDACTED2] referred to it as a ‘stealth bloodbath.’ It’s next to impossible to concentrate and actually get anything done. And the real insult in my mind is that they have the nerve to host the holiday party this Saturday. It’s going to be more like a wake(!)”
    >
    >“The atmosphere at Tesla Motors has been suffering for the last couple of months as the new management have slowly squeezed the life out of engineering. The way in which the layoff/reduction-in-force/firings have been handled is one almighty clustercabbage. In a stroke of pure genius, the two HR folks were the first to go, leaving nobody to turn out the lights. Only after they left the building did they realize that now there was nobody to write the termination letters. Like I said, pure undiluted genius.”
    “Sadly - and I do mean this - I am not sorry to leave. The culture that Martin and Marc created is gone. The car is nice, but every day in the office was like a visit to the dentist, not knowing what was going to happen next. Enough. I have moved on.”
    “Unfortunately, the company that I used to love has changed drastically. If I were to pin point a critical turning point, it would be the day when you were pushed aside. Until then, it was not so obvious how Tesla Motors was really Martin Eberhard’s company. After you were gone, I think the spirit and the character of the company went with you. It was surprising how quickly it happened. Yes, there were technical and operations delays for sure, but these could have been better managed and, to a certain extent, anticipated since what you have started was a major paradigm shift in the industry. It was well understood that a revolutionary movement always comes with major challenges and costs. What Tesla has now become is a mere profit-loss centric company—and with a poor chance of making even that—unless someone absorbs it for its remaining core value that you have left behind. Tesla lost its true evangelist and the leader..”

    Now, you maybe can argue that there are a lot of necessary changes as the company has grown and scaled. And obviously, transitions are always difficult, even with careful planning. But axing nearly the entire executive staff, letting the world’s foremost EV motor engineer go, trimming down the service organization before the job of opening the first service center is done, ripping through the firmware team – and doing it by random firings on a daily basis – are all hard to explain.

    Is this really the right time for Tesla to be tightening its belt this drastically? Really? Right now, when clean tech investment is THE hot investment field and when Tesla Motors is the poster child of clean tech companies, Tesla should be able to raise as much money as it needs to finish the Roadster and launch Whitestar, even with its current technical difficulties. After all, Tesla has proved its fundamental concept: An EV can be a car that rocks, while also being the greenest machine on the road. Tesla’s difficulties are relatively mundane: get the transmission working (and whatever other bits are still to do) and ship the cars. No show stoppers here!

    Why would they choose not to fully fund the company in this investment environment? Why instead hack and slash the company? One wonders.
u/Jurassekpark · 1 pointr/LateStageCapitalism
He's giving from one hand, taking back from the other basically. And his giving on one hand is done for spectacle, for public image, it's what a PR firm told him to do after the 1999 microsoft monopoly trials.

A lot of his non-profit aid consist in paying for-profits that are often already responsible for the issues in Africa, or aid that benefit microsoft following this simple scheme : give money to for-profit to help education -> this for-profit then use the money to buy microsoft license to help said education. In 2014 they have 2.2 millions dollars of their foundation invested in for profit prison, probably more now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticism

They are monsanto's dog



https://americaoutloud.com/the-bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-is-the-gangster-godfather/

https://www.amazon.com/Such-Thing-Free-Gift-Philanthropy/dp/1784786233

https://medium.com/@CitationsPodcst/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media-b1f8e0fe092f

Microsoft is a scam, it's a malware and spyware, designed for control, thanks to him the USA have an awesome way to spy easily basically anybody who uses it. Microsoft is an active participant to the PRISM project.

Devil's best trick is make us believe he doesn't exist.
u/clydethefrog · 100 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

I just want to mention Carl Barks here. Duck comics might be ony made for Europeans, it was still a great artist from America who created the world behind those comics.

>Andrae argues that Barks's oeuvre presents a vision strikingly different from the Disney ethos. Barks's central theme is a critique of modernity. His tales offer a mordant satire of Western imperialism and America's obsession with wealth, success, consumerism, and technological mastery, offering one of the few communal, ecological visions in popular culture. Although a talented visual artist, Barks was also one of America's greatest storytellers and, Andrae contends, lifted the comic book form to the level of great literature

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578068584/boing05-20#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1478479275348

Lost in Andes was my first introduction with imperialism as a kid. Afraid the new Ducktales will just be another white washed version missing the bite of the Barks' comics.

u/AngelaMotorman · 9 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

Friends are the best treatment. Round 'em up and go for a long walk in a park. Go listen to some serious seasonal music (not the pop kind), like this or this or this. Celebrate Winter Solstice with ritual intoxication and plenty of candles. Find a working fireplace and sit around it consuming sweets and savories of the season and plotting ways to organize better next year. Lean into the season, claim this time of reflection about peace for yourself. And give of yourself to someone who needs it.

u/OPengiun · 6 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

If you're interested in creepiness factor, here is one of their books they had us read (if you press "look inside", you'll find this):

>Every business is a corporate family. It doesn’t matter if your company has ten employees or ten thousand; the relational bonds within the organization are very similar to those in the basic family unit. Executive leaders who guide the company are like parents: setting expectations, developing skill sets and habits, checking progress, and rewarding good effort. And all employees experience varying degrees of sibling rivalry as they look to the “parents” for instruction and guidance, strive to meet expectations, vie for attention, and even test limits.

[...]

>When you enter any business, you should find a group of people working together with a shared purpose to fulfill a set of objectives. Whether the business is a bakery, a bank, or an international investment firm, all members operate within their unique culture, depending on each other to uphold responsibilities and looking to the “head” for direction. By definition, a family is a group that has commonality, typically comprised of parents and their children. In a sense, every business is like a family—we call this your “Corporate Family.”

https://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Family-Matters-Steve-Wilke/dp/061535775X

edit: corrected nouns used to describe the training. Also, please note that I did not work for the people that wrote this book. They were brought in to the company I worked at for leadership training.

u/yunohavefunnynames · 39 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

The gospels are the primary source for hearing about Jesus's life. The only contemporary corroborating sources are the Apostle Paul's letters (written ~20 years before the gospels) and Josephus's Antiquities (written around the same time as the gospel of John and about 20 years after the synoptic gospels, which only mentions that he existed. There's a lot more in Josephus about Jesus's brother James and John the Baptist). You can call them a "radicalization" but there's not really an objective source to compare them against, so we can't really tell if they're radicalized or not. People have tried to "de-radicalize" the gospels, but again, there is no source material outside of the Bible that describes his life, so it's all just conjecture. However, if you want a really good and highly respected attempt at that, you should check out Jesus by David Flusser. Flusser is a liberal Christian (which is different than politically liberal) and was the foremost Jesus scholar, Christian or not, in the 20th century. He's quite objective, easy to understand, and absolutely brilliant. It's very much worth the read!

u/resemble · 3 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

his early linguistic work was fundamentally with the goal of devising a universal mathematical model of natural language, particularly one that could support automatic machine translation, a project that was of particular interest to three letter agencies so they could translate Russian for basically free

The preface of Syntactic Structures that clearly states that "This work was supported in part by the U.S.A. Army... the Air Force... and the Navy": https://www.amazon.com/Syntactic-Structures-Noam-Chomsky/dp/1614278040

Similar footnote is in: http://twiki.di.uniroma1.it/pub/LC/WebHome/chomsky1959.pdf

you can call this "meaningful support" if you want to, at least in the past tense, but that's not really relevant in the context of the post lol. particularly, I posted with respect to aggasalk's marginal expression of surprise that "Chomsky actually seems to take this line." When given his early work, it's not surprising. Consider the position expressed:

>"US military-industrial complex works to a large degree as an R&D funnel for publicly-funded normal commercial/civilian development. computers and the internet, commercial airliners, all kinds of chemical industrial stuff, lots of other things"

"lots of other things" included his dissertation research and work toward getting tenure. after that, he did speak out against that military industrial complex, openly and continuously, but only after participating in that R&D funnel. so no, it's not surprising that Chomsky has a mild critique of the MIC itself, even when being veritably spicy with American imperialism

u/Alict · 13 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

The basic idea here is actually more true than you think. In a psychological sense, communism doesn't fall apart because humans are innately greedy -- it's because humans have a strong sense of fairness and strongly resent cheaters.

In games meant to simulate a sharing economy, everyone is perfectly happy splitting winnings evenly until they notice someone else cheat. All it takes is a single person taking more than they put in to set off a chain reaction of cheating where people are suddenly angry and indignant at only getting their fair share because other people are getting more.

While this is obviously a simplified situation, what it implies is that while humans are for the most part innately generous, the impulse to make sure others get their fair share is weaker than the one to make sure our own share is fair... which makes perfect sense, evolutionary.

What this means for governments is complex, but it's basically why the human race as it stands now probably would never be able to function under a true communistic state -- all it takes is one weak link to destroy the whole thing. A basal income where you could then earn on top of it would be more likely to succeed.

source -- not on their website, unfortunately, the article is only in print. This is a super-interesting article about a modified version of the game and the difference between how American and Japanese subjects played -- basically, Japanese players start more spiteful but ultimately collaborate better, while Americans start okay and are more likely to go off the rails later.

u/StumbleOn · 1 pointr/LateStageCapitalism

HELLO FRIEND.

Get this stuff. The truth of vanilla is that what you will usually find in bottles is not very high quality. And the taste of vanilla is often hugely diluted so all you really need is sort of the essence of it. For almost all vanilla purposes, cheap big ass bottle of mexican vanilla mix is just as good if not better than anything except straight up vanilla beans. Exceptions are going to be things which heavily rely on good vanilla, like real home made vanilla ice cream.

I bake a lot, and I use this bottle for everything except white cakes, for which I use clear artificial vanilla.

Trust me, nobody anywhere can really tell the difference and you can go nuts with the stuff because it's so cheap.

u/sofunnyiweep · 35 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

A while back there was a comic called "Batman: The Golden Streets of Gotham" which told the story of Batman as a working class hero during the industrial revolution. It's an interesting take on Batman and IMHO a Batman I can definitely get behind.

I also recommend the book, "Working class comic book heroes: Class conflict and populist politics in comics." If you're not keen on using Amazon, I am sure you can find it elsewhere.

u/ChillPenguinX · 0 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

The best we can do is strive for equality of opportunity. Equality of outcome is not achievable. Also, the economy is not a zero-sum game. Just because someone has more, does not mean others necessarily must have less. Capitalism is the fairest system we have. Prices are the most efficient way there is to distribute scarce resources (which have alternative uses) to enormous numbers of individuals, each with individual wants, needs, and values. Capitalism is not perfect, thus the vast majority of people prefer to have a government over anarchy. But, the more government interferes, the less efficient it becomes, thus regulate as a last resort. This is all in the first chapter of basic economics.

u/draw_it_now · 3 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

Richard D Wolff is big in the Market Socialism/Democratic Socialism world right now.

A good intro to Economics in general would be Economics: a User's Guide (it's very easy to understand and the author has a short animated introduction to his book)

A good intro to Marxism specifically is the Mad Marx series.

Other than that, I recommend that you look into the different forms of Socialism and what's been tried before.

u/triplealpha · 54 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

It's billed as a bulk bottle since the bottle cannot be reused after the patient is done. Think of it as being billed $4.26 for each dose x 100 theoretical doses in the bottle, instead of just the price of the bottle because it's smaller.

See how the mineral oil was billed as a unit dose cup of 30mL x 1 dose of $4.02? Whereas an entire bottle is like $2 for ~600mL? https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Falls-Vitamin-Compare-Johnsons/dp/B071GKQV1Q/ref=sr_1_3_acs_sk_pb_1_sl_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1537489684&sr=8-3-acs&fpw=pantry&keywords=mineral+oil

Congrats on your new baby by the way (based on your medication list)

/Physician and former pharmacist

u/1Operator · 17 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

Now I want this book. :)

If "hard work = success," then blue-collar physical laborers would commonly be among the highest-paid & richest people instead of commonly being among the lowest-paid & poorest.

If "hard work + sacrifice + pursuing your passion" was such a repeatable formula for success with such predictably common results, there would be a heck of a lot more successful people in the world.

It's a mistake to think everyone who isn't 'successful' hasn't worked hard.

It's also a mistake to think everyone who is 'successful' has worked hard.