Life under Capitalism – Page 2

Non-consensual technology

Published on September 15, 2014Leave a comment

Deb Chandra on non-consensual technology:

This week, of course, provided a glorious example of how technology companies have normalized being indifferent to consent: Apple ‘gifting’ each user with a U2 album downloaded into iTunes. At least one of my friends reported that he had wireless synching of his phone disabled; Apple overrode his express preferences in order to add the album to his music collection. The expected ‘surprise and delight’ was really more like ‘surprise and delete’. I suspect that the strong negative response (in some quarters, at least) had less to do with a dislike of U2 and everything to do with the album as a metonym for this widespread culture of nonconsensual behaviour in technology.

It’s the deliberate hollowing out of the economy, stupid

Published on August 2, 2014Leave a comment

“Why Don’t the Unemployed Get Off Their Couches?” and Eight Other Critical Questions for Americans:

But aren’t there small-scale versions of economic “rebirths” occurring all over America?

Travel through some of the old Rust Belt towns of this country and you’ll quickly notice that “economic rebirth” seems to mean repurposing buildings that once housed factories and shipping depots as bars and boutiques. Abandoned warehouses are now trendy restaurants; a former radiator factory is an artisanal coffee shop. In other words, in a place where a manufacturing plant once employed hundreds of skilled workers at union wages, a handful of part-timers are now serving tapas at minimum wage plus tips.

Of course the thing about looking at any individual unemployed person is that you can always find something they can do to get a job, even more so when you don’t care what job they get. However, doing so for all of them is impossible in a situation where there are more unemployed than there are job offers.

A rising tide lifts all boats — not!

Published on July 28, 2014Leave a comment

John Emerson on why Thomas Piketty “strikes at the heart of liberal Democrats’ first principle of political economy”:

Piketty’s “r>g” formula denies specifically this point. And not only did he disprove the liberal economists’ fundamental principle, he did it using the tools of liberal economics. For forty years or so American workers’ incomes have been stagnant or declining, and as the years have gone by this tendency has intensified. But there has been no theoretical explanation for these very evident facts, and without a theoretical explanation liberal economists felt that their hands were tied; these were things that everybody knew, but no one knew it in a proper scientific way.

Sweden’s School Choice Disaster

Published on July 27, 2014Leave a comment

So it turns out that the good results of the Swedish school voucher system of “free” school choice, long the benchmark for all sorts of rightwing busybodies wanting to disrupt public schooling were created by, well, cheating:

It’s the darker side of competition that Milton Friedman and his free-market disciples tend to downplay: If parents value high test scores, you can compete for voucher dollars by hiring better teachers and providing a better education—or by going easy in grading national tests. Competition was also meant to discipline government schools by forcing them to up their game to maintain their enrollments, but it may have instead led to a race to the bottom as they too started grading generously to keep their students.

Hands up anybody who didn’t see this coming? Thought so.

Blair Disease

Published on April 12, 2014Leave a comment

In the Financial Times of all places, Simon Kuper writes about the most serious malady afflicting ex-leaders, Blair Disease:

If you are super-rich, you probably have an ex-leader working for you, like an overpaid tennis coach. Blair, for instance, has shilled for JPMorgan Chase, Qatar and Kazakhstan’s cuddly regime. Then there’s the modern ex-leader’s staple: giving paid speeches to rich people. Blair’s Queen Anne mansion outside London differs from the “museum of corruption” recently vacated by Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovich chiefly in degree, taste and the period when the money was made. Both men got rich through running countries. It’s just that Blair’s version was legal.

The Blair premiership was when it became clear that in the new capitalism none of the parties with a shot at power were actually there to listen to the people, all shot through with people who see politics either as a handy advertisment for their real career fellating the rich afterwards, or as a way to keep their own wealth safe. It was the War on Iraq and the way it was pushed through against the wishes of most of the UK, that made it clear to anybody not paying attention. Blair’s reward came after he left Number 10; he’s a millionaire now, in no danger of ever being prosecuted for warcrimes.