via Rabih Alameddine rabihalameddine.bsky.social at https://bsky.app/profile/rabihalameddine.bsky.social/post/3ld7mnwyvlc26

the title of the book implies an ownership of poverty (by America)... there's also an implication of authorial voice as if America is a "creator", but specifically a creator of poverty as much as it is a creator of wealth

In the framing of toxic capitalism, it's almost as if one of the things America is good at manufacturing is poverty.

If we've outsourced most of our manufacturing sector, why not also include poverty?!?

Desmond, Matthew. Poverty, by America. 1st ed. New York: Crown, 2023. https://amzn.to/40Aqzlp

Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:eefd847a2a1723651d1d863de5153292

Alternate annotation link: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3Aeefd847a2a1723651d1d863de5153292

Compare this with the reference in @Kimmerer2013 about responsibility to the tree and not wasting paper: https://hypothes.is/a/pvQ_4ofxEe-NfSOv5wMFGw

where is the balance?

https://x.com/Chronotope/status/1828785701732663335

Crypto miners are being paid not to mine to ease energy production/consumption cycles.

Related to protection money for the mob

re: https://x.com/curious_founder/status/1828511303788322888/photo/1 on The Economist's article about crypto mining in Texas o/a 2024-08-27

see also: Barnouw, Erik (1993), Documentary a History of the Non-fiction Film (PDF), New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 241–242, retrieved March 30, 2020

West Wing S7 E 11 "Internal Displacement"<br /> http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTranscript&id=145<br /> written by Aaron Sorkin & Bradley Whitford

A powerful quote about what really matters in America

Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire by [[Jason Del Rey]]

Special Features of Trump’s Bible by [[Andrew Singleton]]

Ongweso Jr., Edward. “The Miseducation of Kara Swisher: Soul-Searching with the Tech ‘Journalist.’” The Baffler, March 29, 2024. https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-miseducation-of-kara-swisher-ongweso.

ᔥ[[Pete Brown]] in Exploding Comma

Perhaps without the toxic capitalism portion Uber may have been a great innovation? Maybe it would have been better as a co-op, community, or government supported organization which put the value into both drivers' and riders' pockets?

Naturally the crazy hype which generated the VC money would have been needed to be replaced, so the question becomes: who would have funded the start up?

While Joy looks at the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions as well as nuclear nonproliferation ideas, the entirety of what he's looking at is also embedded in the idea of gun control in the United States as well. We could choose better, but we actively choose against our better interests.

What role does toxic capitalism have in pushing us towards these antithetical goals? The gun industry and gun lobby have had tremendous interest on that front. Surely ChatGPT and other LLM and AI tools will begin pushing on the profitmaking levers shortly.

Wells attempts in this essay to help mankind "pull it's mind together" for the betterment of people and the planet. How is this supposed to happen in a modern media environment which is designed to pull our minds apart as rapidly as possible?

How might the strength of capitalism be leveraged to push people back toward a common middle rather than split them apart?

This quote is a feature of toxic capitalism, which should be efficient enough to allow a person to quickly obtain another job to thereby make the issue moot.

Part of it is tied into identity as well.

https://udenver.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcuceuspzkuE9VomnEaGva1HH1ra_iS4Eua?ref=jessestommel.com#/registration

Some related ideas that are suggesting some sort of thesis for improving the idea of ungrading: - We measure the things we care about. - In Education, we care about learning and understanding, but measuring these outside of testing and evaluation is difficult at best (therefor ungrading). - No one cares about your GPA six months after you graduate. - Somehow we've tied up evaluations and grades into the toxic capitalism and competition within US culture. Some of this is tied into educational movements related to Frederick Winslow Taylor and Harvards Eliot. - Hierarchies instituted by the Great Chain of Being have confounded our educational process.

Where does this wealth ultimately go in the long run? Not to the worker, but primarily to the corporation competing against them for the added value.

Meador, Jake. “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church.” The Atlantic, July 29, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-church-communitiy-participation-drop/674843/.

Meador looks at how churches might offer better community as a balm to W.E.I.R.D. lifeways and toxic capitalism.

Why must religion be the source for these communal and social supports? Why can't alternate social structures or institutions handle these functions?

Is this why the religious right is also so heavily opposed to governmental social support programs? Are they replacing some of the needs and communal desires people in need have? Why couldn't increased governmental support programs be broader and more holistic in their leanings to cover not only social supports, but human contact and community building as well.

Do some of these tensions between a mixed W.E.I.R.D. and non-W.E.I.R.D Americans cause a lot of the split political identities we see in the last few decades? What is the balm for this during the transition?

Workist cultures are built on the principle that identity, worth, and dignity are grounded in an individual's accomplishments.

Extreme focus on financial and professional success has driven people to give less time to communal spaces and experiences including religious life.

Is this specific to America's brand of toxic capitalism or do other WEIRD economies experience this?

Social media should be comprised of people from end to end. Corporate interests inserted into the process can only serve to dehumanize the system.

Robin Sloan is in the same camp as Greg McVerry and I.

A billionaire following a $44 billion dollar company purchase pushing employees to work "maniacally"? As if they weren't working hard before?

What value did he possibly see here?

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

I've been told since the first day I started working at the Division of Hospital Medicine at @UCSF that my work doesn't bring in $ to cover my salary. It's a narrative of manufactured scarcity, a common tactic in capitalism. The CEO is making $1.85 million plus bonuses.

— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022

A Hospitalist’s economic value is in what we *save* the system in terms of quality-driven care and patient throughput (DC/unit time), not in how much we bring in through profees. Because of how the system is structured, you’ll only see our value when we aren’t there.

— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022

This sounds a lot like hospitalists fall under David Graeber's thesis in Bullshit Jobs that the more necessary and useful you are the less you're likely to get paid and be valued.

I suspect the ability to track an employees' direct level of productivity also fits into this thesis. One can track the productivity of an Amazon warehouse worker or driver, but it's much more difficult to track the CEOs direct productivity.

Is part of this effect compounded by America's history of the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber)?

Do the wealthy/powerful benefit by this structure of penalizing the unemployed this way? Is there a direct benefit to them? Or perhaps the penalty creates a general downward pressure on overall wages and thus provides an indirect benefit to those in power?

What are the underlying reasons we tax the unemployed this way?

Middle Americans, and particularly those in suburbia and rural parts of America that account for the majority of poverty in the country, tend to make their poverty invisible because of the toxic effects of extreme capitalism and keeping up appearances.

Has this effect risen with the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and the idea of "living one's best life"? How about the social effects of television with shows like "Keeping up with the Kardashians" which encourage conspicuous consumption?

More interesting is the fact that most of these suburban and rural poverty stricken portions of the country are in predominantly Republican held strongholds.

Is there a feedback mechanism that is not only hollowing these areas out, but keeping them in poverty?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/28/publisher-blocks-access-ebooks-students-faculty-scramble

I still say that students should do their own work on researching and identifying textbooks and not their professors. They should all be optional and never required. This would fix the textbook issue rapidly.

Draws on labour process theory and the work of Stiegler to conceptualise the de-professionalisation of academic workers and their proletarianisation. This relates to the arguments about how economic rationales have colonised all areas of social life.

This seems to mirror similar arguments put forward by Nikolas Rose and Michel Dean and other post-structuralists such as drawing on Foucault's governmentality