422 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
    1. for - liberalism - economic growth - adjacency - liberalism - economic growth

      Adjacency - between - growth - liberalism - adjacency statement - Since researching the work of Christopher Shaw, and especially his book - Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change - I can see the adjacency between liberalism and economic growth - Laws are a cap on one type of behavioral liberty, and yet, there is no cap on consumptive liberty, which is what is causing us to collectively exceed natural limits

  2. Jan 2024
    1. Nearly 40% of U.S. workers, or more than 64 million people, did some freelance work in the past 12 months, according to a December survey by freelancing marketplace Upwork.

      自由职业市场 Upwork 12 月份的一项调查显示,近 40% 的美国工人(即超过 6400 万人)在过去 12 个月中从事过一些自由职业工作。

  3. Dec 2023
    1. you can see it all the time it's 00:41:37 unbelievably it's unbelievably painful we look at all the our institutions
      • for: polycrisis - entrenched institutional bias, examples - entrenched institutional bias - bank macro economic policy - lobbyist

      • paraphrase

        • James provides two examples of major institutional bias that has to be rapidly overcome if we are to stand a chance at facilitating rapid system change:
          • Bank of England controls macroeconomic policies that favour elites and not ordinary people and
            • these policies are beyond political contestation
          • In the normal political system, lobbyists through the revolving door between the top levels of the Civil Service and the corporate sector bias policies for elites and not ordinary citizens
    1. This dissatisfaction with the dominant role of the state, or similar dissatisfaction by what others consider the failing market-based neoliberal order, may now go into different directions
      • for: different possible socio-economic-political futures

      • comment

        • Michel outlines the possibilities then selects the last one as the one he situates himself in and will write on, namelyl:
          • A dream to integrate:
            • markets,
            • networks,
            • state functions, AND what we could call
            • ‘the Commons’
  4. Nov 2023
    1. nderlying causes for the rebellion, including government incompetence, economic problems, and natural disasters.
  5. Sep 2023
    1. Adler's record of ineptness is pret ty good so far — but he surpasses it with his third Revolution. He dis likes both Marxists and Moscow, so how did the Russian Revolution be come one of the great sources or change in modern society? Because “with the Russian Revolution, we have, for the first time, the emer gence of the welfare state” — mild offspring sired from such ferocious parents. In the past, only right‐wing kooks thought F.D.R. derived his in spiration for W.P.A. from the Bol shies!

      Reference to the "welfare state" in 1971 by Gary Wills.

  6. Aug 2023
    1. The task is to have a communitynevertheless, and to discover means of using specialties topromote it. This can be done through the Great Conversa-tion.

      We need some common culture to bind humanity together. Hutchins makes the argument that the Great Conversation can help to effectuate this binding through shared culture and knowledge.

      Perhaps he is even more right in the 2000s than he was in the 1950s?

    2. I should like to add that specialization, instead of makingthe Great Conversation irrelevant, makes it more pertinentthan ever. Specialization makes it harder to carry on anykind of conversation; but this calls for greater effort, not theabandonment of the attempt.

      The dramatic increase in economic specialization of humanity driven by the Industrial Revolution has many benefits to societies, but it also has detrimental effects when the core knowledge and shared base of the society is lost.

      Certainly individuals have a greater reliance on specialists for future outcomes (think about the specialization of areas like climate science which can have destructive outcomes on all of humanity or public health outcomes with respect to vaccines and specialized health care delivery), but they also need to have a common base of knowledge/culture and the ability to think critically for themselves to be able to effect necessary changes, particularly when the pace of those changes is more rapid than humans have generally been evolved to accept them.

    3. Even before mechanization had gone as far as it has now,one factor prevented vocational training, or any other formof ad hoc instruction, from accomplishing what was expectedof it, and that factor was the mobility of the Americanpopulation. This was a mobility of every kind —in space, inoccupation, and in economic position.
    4. We and the Japanesethought, in the i86o's, how wonderful it would be if thisresult could be achieved. We and they fixed our minds on theeconomic development of Japan and modified the educationalsystem of that country on "American lines" to promote thiseconomic development. So the rich got richer, the poor gotpoorer, the powerful got more bellicose; and Japan becamea menace to the world and to itself.

      Writing in 1951, Hutchins is writing too close to the time period of post World War II to have a better view of this topic. He's fashioned far too simple a story as a result.

      There was a lack of critical thinking and over-reliance on top down approval which was harmful in the Japanese story of this time period though.

    5. Undoubtedly the first task of the statesman in such countriesis to raise the standard of living to such a point that thepeople may be freed from economic slavery and given thetime to get the education appropriate to free men.

      A bulk of America was stuck in a form of economic slavery in the 1950s. See description of rural Texans in Robert Caro's LBJ biography for additional context --- washing/scrubbing, carrying water, farming, etc. without electricity in comparison to their fellow Americans who did have it.

      In the 21st century there is a different form of economic slavery imposed by working to live and a culture of consumption and living on overextended credit.

      Consider also the comedic story of the capitalist and the rural fisherman and the ways they chose to live their lives.

    1. there's no uh uh catastrophe even if things plug along as they're going and there's no mass die off of humans or anything like that 00:36:47 the population is set to decline i don't know when the peak is supposed to come but uh the peak is supposed to come at you know within the next 10 20 years or so 00:36:59 and after that the world population will start to decline how is how is this growth capitalism model growth-based capitalism model how is that going to 00:37:12 function when the world is shrinking
      • for: population decline, economic growth vs population decline
      • comment
        • John makes a good point
        • how will humans negotiate a growth economy when population is shrinking?
        • it may be that AI automation may lessen the need for human capacity, but the future is unknown how these forces will balance out
  7. Jul 2023
  8. May 2023
    1. the Carthusian monks decided in 2019 to limit Chartreuse production to 1.6 million bottles per year, citing the environmental impacts of production, and the monks' desire to focus on solitude and prayer.[10] The combination of fixed production and increased demand has resulted in shortages of Chartreuse across the world.

      In 2019, Carthusian monks went back to their values and decided to scale back their production of Chartreuse.

    1. the Prison Notebooks, contain Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory associated with his name, such as: Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining and legitimising the capitalist state The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from the working-class An analysis of the modern capitalist state that distinguishes between political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society, where leadership is constituted through consent Absolute historicism A critique of economic determinism that opposes fatalistic interpretations of Marxism A critique of philosophical materialism
  9. Apr 2023
    1. Based on yesterday's discussion at Dan Allosso's Book Club, we don't include defense spending into the consumer price index for calculating inflation or other market indicators. What other things (communal goods) aren't included into these measures, but which potentially should be to take into account the balance of governmental spending versus individual spending. It seems unfair that individual sectors, particularly those like defense contracting which are capitalistic in nature, but which are living on governmental rent extraction, should be free from the vagaries of inflation?

      Throwing them into the basket may create broader stability for the broader system and act as a brake via feedback mechanisms which would push those corporations to work for the broader economic good, particularly when they're taking such a large piece of the overall pie.

      Similarly how might we adjust corporate tax rates with respect to the level of inflation to prevent corporate price gouging during times of inflation which seems to be seen in the current 2023 economic climate. Workers have seen some small gains in salary since the pandemic, but inflationary pressures have dramatically eaten into these taking the gains and then some back into corporate coffers. The FED can increase interest rates to effect some change, but this doesn't change corporate price gouging in any way, tax or other policies will be necessary to do this.

  10. Mar 2023
    1. Ads, Andrew and James discuss where the the climate movement is right now, how deep time plays into the effects we are having on the planet, when good people do bad things because of poor systems and what happens next if 1.5C fails.
      • 21:52 Carbon credits, carbon markets
        • it's a scam designed to perpetuate fossil fuel use, in a phoney war against the climate crisis
        • Offsets were designed to allow polluters to pay others to create schemes that would compensate or "offset" that pollution. The classic example WAS afforestation, the planting of trees that can sequester that carbon.
        • Carbon neutrality comes from this idea that you can keep polluting if you offset it and become "carbon neutral"
        • A company may decarbonize a lot of their supply chain but may struggle to get rid of airflights around the world. In that case, they use offsets. When companies analyze the very difficult choices, they take the easy way out and use carbon offsets
        • However, there is so much offsets for afforestation now that there isn't enough land on earth
        • Carbon markets are a recipe for grifting and fraud or zero impacts
        • This is the current state of offsets

      31:00 Shell oil carbon offset greenwashing scam - the sky zero proposal - Shell claims they can offset all the O+G emissions out of the ground - it is preposterous - there's not enough land on earth when you tally up all the carbon offset afforestation schemes

      • 32:30 Neo-colonialism

        • rich white man can offset his emissions by buying land from a developing nation. Now the indigenous people cannot use that land for any reason.
        • also, will require huge amount of water to grow those trees
        • we don't have enough land and we don't have 100 years, only 5 years.
        • nature-based solutions are an industrial, myopic approach
      • 37:00 Deferred Emission Reduction

        • a lot of carbon credits are called deferred emission reduction credits.
        • this is avoided emissions - ie. trees in a forest with 100 ton of sequestering potential
        • this is promise to not destroy the biosphere any further so it's not removing any existing carbon
        • maybe multiple people might own the same forest, or someone might come along and burn it down
        • Trees are vulnerable to climate impacts - ie. Microsoft bought a large forest in California that later burned down in a climate change intensified wildfire
      • 40:00 can we do anything within the extractive capitalist system?

        • some people claim that as long as extractivist capitalism still persists, we cannot have system change
        • also a neocolonialist element - global north exploited the global south to create most of the emissions in the atmospheric commons
        • a number of people are beginning to see that an extractivist capitalist system is not in line with effectively addressing the climate crisis
        • wind, solar, etc has displaced electricity generation in a number of countries like in the UK. However, these are only a few countries.Renewables are helping increase overall energy production
      • 44:22: Stop burning fossil fuels

        • t doesn't matter if investments in renewables triple. It won't make a difference if we don't significantly stop burning fossil fuels at the same time.
      • 47:00 economic growth prevents real change

        • Insisting on 1, 2 or 3% growth, will limit the response to the climate threat to render it irrelevant
        • Climate change is still mostly an optimization problem. They are more concerned with economic damage.
        • Economists believe that anything that threatens economic growth cannot be accepted
      • 51:00 Degrowth making headway

        • Degrowth scholars are getting more attention on the need to decouple economic grwoth from climate policies
      • 52:10 Is there a positive future scenario - The role of solidarity

        • Solidarity is the greatest strength we can harness.
        • The success of Doughnut Economics gives me hope
        • The richest 1% must reign in their impacts and redistribute to allow the impoverished to live humane lives
        • We can all have good lives and we don't have to manufacture that wonder
        • This is what it is to be human
  11. Jan 2023
    1. A new economic paradigm for people and planet

      !- Title: A new economic paradigm for people and planet !- Date: Jan 30, 2023 !- Organizer: RSA !- Speakers: David Sloan Wilson, evolutionary biologist & Dennis Snower, economist

  12. Dec 2022
    1. By summing together these costs, the overall estimate is that in 2015, child-hood poverty in the United States was costing the nation $1.03 trillion a year.This number represented 5.4 percent of the U.S. annual GDP.The bottom line is that child poverty represents a significant economicburden to the United States.
    2. For most Americans, poverty is seen as an individualized conditionthat exclusively affects those individuals, their families, and perhaps theirneighborhoods. Rarely do we conceptualize a stranger’s poverty as having adirect or indirect effect on our own well-being.

      The Golden Rule not only benefits your neighbor, but you as well.

  13. Oct 2022
    1. kriminalisering av deltagande i kriminella gäng

      Undrar om ekonomisk brottslighet menas. Den utgör minst 100 miljarder kronor per år, alltså minst 1,8% av sveriges BNP, medan flyktingimmigration kostar cirka 1,0% av sveriges BNP; observera att flyktingimmigration bidrar till sveriges BNP, vilket ekonomisk brottslighet aldrig gör.

  14. Sep 2022
    1. To truly alleviate poverty on a large scale, we must fix a system in which normallife experiences such as childbirth can translate into economic insecurity. Mostof the poor are not unexplainable anomalies in an otherwise well-functioningsociety. Instead, they are the normal consequence of structural arrangementsguaranteed to produce economic insecurity.

      This sort of institutionalized economic insecurity seems bound up in institutionalized racism and may have a relationship with recent abortion bans. Can we tease out the ways these ideas are tied together or compounded?

      How can alleviating the perceptions of these effects help create societal changes and greater flexibility and more resiliency?

      These are potential national security issues were the country to come to war with other major powers.

    2. Consider another example—education. It is true that in most countries, asin the United States, a higher level of educational attainment is typically as-sociated with a lower risk of economic insecurity. But the penalties associatedwith low levels of educational attainment, and the rewards associated with highlevels of attainment, vary significantly by country. Full-time workers without ahigh school degree in Finland, for instance, report the same earnings as thosewith a high school degree. In the United States, however, these workers ex-perience a 24 percent earnings penalty for not completing high school.23 InNorway, a college degree yields only a 20 percent earnings increase over a highschool degree for full-time workers, versus a much higher 68 percent increase inthe United States.24 The percentage of those with a high school degree earningat or below the poverty threshold is more than 4 times higher in the UnitedStates than in Belgium.25

      The US penalizes those who don't complete high school to a higher degree than other countries and this can tend to lower our economic resiliency.

      American exceptionalism at play?

      Another factor at play with respect to https://hypothes.is/a/2uAmuEENEe2KentYKORSww

    3. Indicative of howclose many Americans are to poverty, a recent study by the Federal ReserveBank found that 37 percent of Americans do not have enough savings put asideto protect them from a $400 emergency.20
      1. Federal Reserve Bank, “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019” (Washington DC: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2020).
    4. economic insecurity will strike a majorityof the population but will do so for a relatively short period of time.
    5. in discussing economic mobility across generations, we refer to theintergenerational elasticity statistic. Again, this ranges between 0 and 1 andindicates how strong the relationship is between parents’ income and theirchildren’s income.10
    6. Theidealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, withhard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. Consequently, those whofail to get ahead have only themselves to blame according to this argument. Itis within this context that America thinks of itself as a fair and meritocraticsociety in which people get what they deserve in life.

      There is a variety of confounding myths in America which tend to hold us down. These include economic mobility, meritocracy, poverty, and the land of opportunity.

      With respect to the "land of opportunity", does positive press of a small number of cases from an earlier generation outweigh the actual experience of the majority?


      There was a study on The Blitz in London and England in general in World War II which showed that despite high losses in general, enough people knew one or more who'd lost someone or something to the extreme but that the losses weren't debilitating from a loss perspective and generally served to boost overall morale. Higher losses may have been more demoralizing and harmful, but didn't happen. (Find this source: possibly Malcolm Gladwell??)

      Is this sort of psychological effect at play socially and politically in America and thereby confounding our progress?

    1. Chetty’s paper reports that “the strongest and most robust predictor [of the level of upward mobility in an area] is the fraction of children with single parents.”

      Cross reference with: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/raj-chettys-american-dream/592804

      I should read more of Chetty's primary material here.

    1. In October, Chetty’s institute released an interactive map of the United States called the Opportunity Atlas, revealing the terrain of opportunity down to the level of individual neighborhoods.
    1. assessment of extra capacity required of alternative energy electrical power systems to completely replace fossil fuels

      Title: Assessment of extra capacity required of alternative energy electrical power systems to completely replace fossil fuels Author: Prof. Simon Michaux, Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) Year: 2022

  15. Aug 2022
  16. Jul 2022
    1. e first present the updated socio-economic trends in Figure 1 as global aggregates as in theoriginal set of 12 socio-economic graphs. We have also now, where the data permit, split ten of thesocio-economic graphs into trends for the OECD countries, for the so-called BRICS countries(Brazil, Russia, India, China (including Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan where applicable) andSouth Africa), and for the rest of the world (Figure 2). OECD members are here defined as coun-tries that were members in 2010 and their membership status was applied to the whole data set,which in some cases goes as far back as 1750.

      Socio-economic trends are split into three groups: OECD, BRICS and all other countries. This split reveals the unequal distribution of the indicators.

    1. experiments in laboratories by the economistVernon Smith and his colleagues have long confirmed thatmarkets in goods and services for immediate consum ption -haircuts and hamburgers - work so well that it is hard to designthem so they fail to deliver efficiency and innovation; whilemarkets in assets are so automatically prone to bubbles andcrashes that it is hard to design them so they work at all.
  17. Jun 2022
    1. Numerous studies have shown thatthe fiscal state’s rise in power made a major contribution to the pro-cess of economic development. The new receipts did in fact make itpossible to finance expenditures that proved indispensable not onlyfor reducing inequalities but also for encouraging growth. These ex-penditures included a massive and relatively egalitarian investmentin education and health care (or, at least, a much more massive andegalitarian investment than any previous); expansion of transporta-tion and other community infrastructure; the replacement income,such as retirement pensions, necessary for supporting an aging popu-lation; and reserves, such as unemployment insurance, for stabilizingthe economy and society in the event of a recession.1

      See especially P. Lindert, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

      Ample evidence has shown that increasing taxes in Western countries along with the states' power to use it during the majority of the 1900s not only reduced inequalities but encouraged growth.

    2. Between 1914 and 1980, inequalities in income and wealth decreasedmarkedly in the Western world as a whole (the United Kingdom,Germany, France, Sweden, and the United States), and in Japan,Russia, China, and India, although in different ways, which we willexplore in a later chapter. Here we will focus on the Western countriesand improve our understanding of how this “great redistribution”took place.

      Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt

  18. bafybeiccxkde65wq2iwuydltwmfwv733h5btvyrzqujyrt5wcfjpg4ihf4.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeiccxkde65wq2iwuydltwmfwv733h5btvyrzqujyrt5wcfjpg4ihf4.ipfs.dweb.link
  19. Apr 2022
    1. ReconfigBehSci. (2020, November 3). As debate on ‘saving the economy versus saving lives’ marches on, it’s worth noting that this type of contrast actually has a name in fallacy research: Https://t.co/N8U4ABWTuh it’s also worth noting that there is now a substantial number of research articles on the topic. 1/n [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1323603017179013130

  20. Mar 2022
  21. Feb 2022
    1. at the very outset a sense of how the elements or “moments” (as Marx prefers to call them) of the capitalist economic system, such as production, labour, wages, profit, consumption, exchange, realization and distribution

      At the onset, if possible - - it would be preferable to have a clear understanding of what and how Marx would define the following three terms: 1. What is capital? 2. What is capitalism? 3. What is a capitalist economic system?

      The list of eight (8) elements or "moments" combined with the phrase "totality of what capital is all about". appears to be somewhat confusing. Did you mean to say what "capitalism is all about"? Or, does "capital" consists of a list of "things" as well as (at least one) process?

      And, are these 8 items all part of one single process - - called "capital" which is then transformed into different elements or "moments" as it circulates? Or, are there 8 separate interrelated processes?

    1. This article is for those who want to keep traveling despite restrictions due to covid. Basically giving tips on how to navigate the multiple governmental restrictions and policies including links to airline or country websites for choosing destinations. Because of this trend in travel advice in covid times, we may see attitudes towards travel shift to travel knowing the risks involved (quarantine, masks requirements, etc.) and hence see tourism rise again. Last minute covid holiday packages. What if the trend for remaining home also stayed the same for next five years and the adventure seekers become the avatars for the folks who want to stay at home.

      The crisis is changing the way how people will enjoy their international holiday, with an extra concern on testing and quarantine expenses and risk taking. That may have an impact on the tourism market, asking the airline companies to provide flexible policies /products and may witness the booming of travel insurance market.

    1. Nursing professionals are facing with severe sleep problems during the covid 19 pandemic time. Nurses were asked to work in an environment that had a more increased level of risk than ever before. Depression and anxiety from the workplace could affect the confidence of healthcare workers in themselves as well as general trust in the healthcare system. This will lead to their turnover intention which may undermine the efforts of the governments to control the COVID-19 pandemic. The rising concern may change the working schedules of healthcare workers, offering more occupational healthcare support.

  22. Jan 2022
  23. Dec 2021
    1. Elsewhere, I have critiqued this ideology on the grounds that there are other stakeholders besides shareholders who, through the provision of capital or labor, make contributions to the business enterprise that help to generate future returns but without a guaranteed share of these returns.101 Through government investments and subsidies, taxpayers regularly pro-vide finance to companies without a guaranteed return. As risk bearers, therefore, taxpayers have a claim on corporate profits if and when they are generated. In addition, through the exercise of skill and effort beyond those levels required to lay claim to their current pay, workers regularly make productive contributions to the companies for which they work without a guaranteed return, but with an expectation of future profits in the forms of higher wages and benefits, more secure employment, and better work conditions. Confronting agency theory with what I call “in-novation theory,” I argue that sharing corporate profits with these other risk-bearers (taxpayers and workers) is essential not only for equitable distribution, but also for sustainable productivity gains that make higher standards of living possible.1

      william lazonick's 'innovation theory', an alternative to 'agency theory'/MSV which argues that if the logic justifying shareholder's rights to profits (they take on risk) is true, workers and taxpayers also have a right to profits

    2. employment generated by ongo-ing government spending, particularly on higher education, healthcare, advanced technology, and physical infrastructure (for example, the inter-state highway system), complemented the employment opportunities provided by the business sector.

      infrastructure and the resulting economic gains can only happen once

  24. Nov 2021
    1. Furthermore, I believe the author is spot on questioning the logic in the circular shape of the Doughnut.

      it is a simple and memorable mnemonic device to indicate both biophysical and socio-economic indicators in the same graphic.

    1. PISA 2018 student questionnaire show that also as regards computer accessat home there are relevant socio-economic differences across European countries.

      PISA 2018

    2. ew Research Centre also in 2019shows that there are striking differenc

      access to broadband internet in US and Europe similar re socio-economic disparity

  25. Oct 2021
    1. And at the end of the day, Gates is not accountable to governments or to communities. He was not elected, and there is no mechanism for him to be recalled, challenged, or held responsible for faulty policies. He could suddenly decide that he was no longer interested in supporting agriculture in Africa. In that case, the new food system Gates is importing to the African continent would collapse. Political and economic systems are being drastically altered, all at the whim of one person, one foundation.In fact, the differences between this situation — powerful individuals and institutions deciding to mess with the social, political, and economic realities of countries — and the earlier form of colonialism are thin. It’s still advertised as “good intent” and the desire to “civilize” an “uncivilized” people. The only difference is that neocolonialism is quieter and more covert. By design, it provokes less outrage. But the essential power structures remain the same.

      Concentrating power to one individual is dangerous. Large portions of the food security of African nations should not be so vulnerable to corporatism.

    2. espite the foundation’s claims to be investing “within” Africa, The Nation “examined 30,000 charitable grants the foundation has awarded over the past two decades and found that more than 88 percent of the donations — $63 billion — have gone to recipients in the wealthiest, whitest nations, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and European countries.”African groups received only 5 percent of their total funding for NGOs.By withholding critical funding from African institutions, Gates ensures that any technologies developed are owned externally to the continent, keeping power consolidated in Global North institutions.

      The money trail speaks for itself.

    3. Powerful Global North governments, corporations, and individuals today don’t need to resort to explicit violence — invasion, seizure, genocide, and enslavement — in order to control other countries. Instead, they can use structural violence — leveraging aid, market access, and philanthropic interventions in order to force lower-income countries to do what they want.

      Economic dependency of the Global South on the Global North is exactly what happens when exploitation of the wolf is disguised under the sheep’s clothing. A case in point is Unilever, the multinational food conglomerate based in the global north. Unilever is spending a significant amount of capital to circularize their entire supply chain. That is laudable. Yet, at the same time, they see Africa is their future growth market. Who benefits from that economic growth? ,,,, a small group of wealthy shareholders in the Global North or Global South. It is important to realize that capitalism has levelled the playing field. Economic exploitation, wealth concentration and extractionism is now democratically open to all!

    4. Typically, what they want is more control over markets. The initial interventions end up creating debt for lower-income countries (because they give more power to Global North corporations). That debt ultimately becomes the most deadly form of leverage, giving Global North governments the justification for more interventions and allowing them to shape economic and trade policy in the way they see fit.In short, colonialism never ended. It just changed form.

      The weaponization of economic leverage points means control can be gotten without spilling blood. Why is Africa perpetually poor in spite of its enormous wealth? Look no further than the wealth of management tier individuals of the Global North mining resource companies.

    1. The Bauhaus began with the metaphor of a church and the Lyonel Feininger depiction of a modern cathedral as a symbol for a new faith in the synthesis of art and technology.

      The fusion of art, technology, and spirituality has been the foundation of my thinking as a designer as I have explored design practice, design education, and design philosophy.

      We mistakenly focused on physical artifacts without fully realizing—and questioning—the values that were being embodied in architecture, built to reinforce our habits and behaviours into social, economic, and political systems. Technology has enabled us to scale, accelerate, and amplify these systems to envelope the globe.

      We have been engaged in social architecture, a form of metaphysical design. It has been a form of colonization that has been built on individualism, specialization, and authoritarianism.

    1. Social: learned helplessness (individuality)Economic: trained incapacities (specialization)Political: bureaucratic intransigence (authoritarianism)

      The neoliberal world order is designed to serve a colonial system of capitalist extraction that only benefits the 1%.

      • Social: learned helplessness (individuality)
      • Economic: trained incapacities (specialization)
      • Political: bureaucratic intransigence (authoritarianism)
    2. accountability, reparations, and radical social change

      The mechanisms of our compliance with the dominant system are designed into the system:

      • Social: learned helplessness (individuality)
      • Economic: trained incapacities (specialization)
      • Political: bureaucratic intransigence (authoritarianism)
    1. Academia: All the Lies: What Went Wrong in the University Model and What Will Come in its Place

      “Students are graduating into a brutal job market.”

      The entreprecariat is designed for learned helplessness (social: individualism), trained incapacities (economic: specialization), and bureaucratic intransigence (political: authoritarianism).


      The Design Problem

      Three diagrams will explain the lack of social engagement in design. If (in Figure 1) we equate the triangle with a design problem, we readily see that industry and its designers are concerned only with the tiny top portion, without addressing themselves to real needs.

      Figure 1: The Design Problem

      (Design for the Real World, 2019. Page 57.)

      The other two figures merely change the caption for the figure.

      • Figure 1: The Design Problem
      • Figure 2: A Country
      • Figure 3: The World
    1. A retrospective of 50 years as a human being on planet Earth.

      The Art of Noticing

      This is a compilation of articles that I had written as a way to process the changes I was observing in the world and, consequently, in myself as a reaction to the events. I have come to think of this process as the art of noticing. This process is in contrast to the expectation that I should be a productive member of society, a target market, and a passive audience for charismatic leaders: celebrities, billionaires, and politicians.

      • Social: fame
      • Economic: wealth
      • Political: power

      An Agent of Change

      To become an agent of change is to recognize that we are not separate, we are not individuals, we are not cogs in a machine. We are complex and diverse. We are designers. We are a creative, collective, self-organizing, learning community.

      We are in a process of becoming—a being journey:

      • Personal resilience
      • Social influence
      • Economic capacity
      • Political agency
      • Ecological harmony

      This is how we shift from an attention economy to an intention economy. Rather than being oriented toward the failures of the past, the uncertainty of the present, or the worries of the future, in a constant state of anxiety, stress, and fear, we are shifting our consciousness to manifest our intention through perception (senses), cognition (mind), emotion (heart), and action (body). We are exploring how we imagine, design, and build the future together.

      We are the builders collective.

      We are one.

    1. This is the abuse of the power of the state to enforce the abuse of power of a tactical military police force to enforce an unlawful provincial court injunction in breach of Indigenous, Canadian, and international law.

      The Canadian genocide operates on the basis of exclusion, division, and disempowerment:

      • Social: learned helplessness
      • Economic: trained incapacities
      • Political: bureaucratic intransigence

      Watch the Canadian Prime Minister make the argument that institutions such as the Federal Government of the Dominion of Canada and the Catholic Church are set in their ways and inherently resistant to change. Change does not come from institutions, designed to maintain the status quo.

      If the issue of changing the name of a building in Parliament is going to take more conversation and more time, clearly time is on the side of Canada, but not on the side of the Indigenous Peoples. Democracy, capitalism, and constitutional monarchy are weapons of the state.

      The goal of white supremacy is to disempower through the ongoing threat of violence to legitimize the social, economic, and political architecture designed to manufacture the consent of the governed to the rule of law and the Crown.

      A culture of learned helplessness, trained incapacities, and bureaucratic intransigence are the social, economic, and political mechanisms of coercion that have worked so effectively over 153 years to design, build, and maintain a genocidal, apartheid state.

      It is not possible to make incremental changes to a killing machine to mitigate the harms. The Nazi regime had to be dismantled. The Canadian genocide ends with the dismantling of the Canadian regime. Declare the claims of the Crown to the land illegitimate. #LandBack

      The solution is simple. But white supremacy is about power. Letting go is hard. Until the mind of the White Supremacist changes, the public relations spectacles will continue, and the violence of the RCMP and the bureaucratic apartheid state will escalate genocide and ecocide.

      Individualism and the illusion of legislative representation disempower the solidarity of collective action, enabling the public consent and complicity in the Canadian genocide with impunity. Change would require agreement, coordination, and collaboration.

      We have a model for change that we can borrow from corporations that have weaponized collective consciousness, action, and governance. The design process has been proven as a successful model for global domination, monopolizing human time, energy, and resources.

      However, with greater disillusionment in the promises of our institutions, we are experiencing multiple systemic failures, leaving us with deep dissatisfaction in the existing reality with no sense of a desirable, feasible, or viable alternative.

      We are all designers. We can reclaim our power from the authoritarians to which we have abdicated our collective power. We can reclaim our social influence, economic capacity, and political agency. Indigenous History: Learning from the past to create a future that works for all

      We invite people to collaborate with us in the process of changing the world by first changing ourselves through the process of design.

      We are exploring how we imagine, design, and build the future together.

      We will begin by recreating our own realities by starting with an understanding of our relationships with each other and to all living beings and to the universe of shared experiences in which we find ourselves.

      We will begin with an appreciation of the complexity, diversity, and unity of this Creation that binds us to each other as neighbours and kin.

      We acknowledge that we are living on the unceded territories of those who have lived on these lands from time immemorial. We seek to share the good things of this earth, taking only what is given, living in reciprocity by giving back more than what we have been given.

  26. Sep 2021
    1. 2015, c. 36, s. 172

      Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, SC 2015, c 36, https://canlii.ca/t/52m2b, s. 172, amends IRPA s. 32(d.5) to say:

      (d.5) the requirement for an employer to provide a prescribed person with prescribed information in relation to a foreign national’s authorization to work in Canada for the employer;

      Previously it had said:

      (d.5) the requirement for an employer to provide a prescribed person with prescribed information in relation to a foreign national’s authorization to work in Canada for the employer, the electronic system by which that information must be provided, the circumstances in which that information may be provided by other means and those other means;

    2. 2015, c. 36, s. 171

      Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, SC 2015, c 36, https://canlii.ca/t/52m2b, s. 171(1) repealed IRPA s. 14(3), which had said: "(3) For the purposes of subsection 11(1.01), the regulations may include provisions respecting the circumstances in which an application may be made by other means and respecting those other means."

      Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, SC 2015, c 36, https://canlii.ca/t/52m2b, s. 171(2) repealed IRPA s. 14(4), which had said:

      (4) The regulations may provide for any matter relating to the application of section 11.1, including (a) the circumstances in which a foreign national is exempt from the requirement to follow the procedures prescribed under that section; (b) the circumstances in which a foreign national is not required to provide certain biometric information; and (c) the processing of the collected biometric information, including creating biometric templates or converting the information into digital biometric formats.

      Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, SC 2015, c 36, https://canlii.ca/t/52m2b, s. 171(3) repealed IRPA s. 14(5), which had said:

      (5) The regulations may require foreign nationals who make an application for a visa or other document under subsection 11(1) and foreign nationals who were issued an invitation under Division 0.1 to apply for permanent residence to make those applications by means of an electronic system and may include provisions respecting that system, respecting the circumstances in which those applications may be made by other means and respecting those other means.

    3. 2015, c. 36, s. 170

      Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, SC 2015, c 36, https://canlii.ca/t/52m2b, s. 170, repealed s. 11.1, which until that point read:

      11.1 A prescribed foreign national who makes an application for a temporary resident visa, study permit or work permit must follow the prescribed procedures for the collection of prescribed biometric information.

    4. 2015, c. 36, s. 169

      Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, SC 2015, c 36, https://canlii.ca/t/52m2b, s. 169(1), adds a new s. 11(1.01):

      (1.01) Despite subsection (1), a foreign national must, before entering Canada, apply for an electronic travel authorization required by the regulations by means of an electronic system, unless the regulations provide that the application may be made by other means. The application may be examined by an officer and, if the officer determines that the foreign national is not inadmissible and meets the requirements of this Act, the authorization may be issued by the officer.

      The section previously read:

      (1.01) Despite subsection (1), a foreign national must, before entering Canada, apply for an electronic travel authorization required by the regulations by means of an electronic system, unless the regulations provide that the application may be made by other means. The application may be examined by the system or by an officer and, if the system or officer determines that the foreign national is not inadmissible and meets the requirements of this Act, the authorization may be issued by the system or officer.

      Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, SC 2015, c 36, https://canlii.ca/t/52m2b, s. 169(2), adds a new subsection: "(1.02) Subject to the regulations, a foreign national who has temporary resident status may apply for a visa or other document during their stay in Canada."

  27. Aug 2021
  28. Jul 2021
    1. The conclusion was obvious: The system was rigged for insiders. The economic recovery took years; the recovery of trust never came.

      Economic recovery for the masses took ages while the economic recovery for the wealthier was nearly instantanous.

      What is the relationship to the recession with the rise of the Tea Party?

      Will the pandemic recession do better since there seems to be more focus on the lower classes than the upper? The upper classes (and certainly the billionaires) apparently did incredibly well.

    1. If the average American is pushed out of the housing market, and most of the available housing is owned by investment groups and corporations, you become beholden to them as your landlord. This fulfills part of the Great Reset’s “new normal” dictum — the part where you will own nothing and be happy. This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s part of WEF’s 2030 agenda.
  29. Jun 2021
    1. In Mexico, it's really hard to get an opportunity. A lot of people are where they are because they know someone [Laughs] or because they've paid to be there and it's really hard trying to be what they would say, the working class. Trying to work your way to a point where you know you're successful and you can say, "I've done a lot of things." But if you're not the cousin of the owner, or if you're not a family member related to somebody in power, it's like you don't have a chance.
    1. He was telling me it was 3,500, but the landlord was keeping 2,500 and giving him 1,000 of it. And I had found out, because the own landlord lady told me, and I had to move and I had to lose my job.

      Return to Mexico - challenges - economic well-being Family relations - father tricking him for more money

  30. May 2021
  31. Apr 2021
    1. This often means asking uncomfortable questions: who is doing the work of data science (and who is not)? Whose goals are prioritized in data science (and whose are not)? And who benefits from data science (and who is either overlooked or actively harmed)?

      I would also add "Who does the work?"

    1. Indian entrepreneurs found ways to set up their own modern factories to rival British products.
      • Some Indian businesspeople responded to the industrialization of the British with their own industrialization to outcompete them
    2. The government also decided to collect taxes directly from peasants, displacing the landed nobles as intermediaries.
      • British took taxes from peasants without letting Indian previous positions of power interfere
      • Peasants had to take out loans from moneylenders
      • Peasants who couldn't pay their loans would have to give up their land
    3. This was a new colonial order, but it was not stable.

      Along with peasants, other sectors of the Indian population were not happy with British rule:

      • Indian people who once had much power and property
      • Indian business people who lost a lot of power in the newly British economy
    4. “Home charges” meant that India ended up balancing Britain’s huge trade deficits with the rest of the world,
      • Part of why Britain wanted its advantageous relationship with India was to pay off its debts to other powers, such as those in the New World.
    5. India was to become a consumer of British manufactures and a supplier of primary staples like cotton, jute, tea, wheat, and vegetable oil seeds.
      • The British economic strategy in India was to buy raw materials from India and sell Indians products, often made from those materials.
      • To do this, the British got rid of taxes and protections for local businesses so they could directly compete with them
      • This strategy succeeded sometimes and caused some traditional production industries to go out of business
      • This arrangement meant that overall, the British got to profit off of the manufacture of these items
    6. the import of British
      • Putting a colonized nation in a trade deficit is a common pattern in imperialism (ex. the colonies and Britain)
    7. Effects in India
      • Increased economic activity in cities associated with the British, like in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, increased those city populations in the early 1800s
      • Indians were segregated from Europeans in these towns
    8. The East India Company’s Monopoly
      • The British started off trying to control just India's trade by setting trading posts on the ocean
      • Around the early 1800s, the East India Company conquered many areas in India and surrounding areas

      Economic control -> political, military control

    9. revenues in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa and to trade free of duties throughout Mughal terri- tory.
      • The East India Company, as a for-profit, wanted to be able to do business without restrictions in India.
      • The best way to guarantee this was to gain political alliances (by paying the Mughal emperor to let them trade), then starting in the second half of the 1700s, control (by later actually conquering areas) of territories.
  32. Mar 2021
    1. largest original film of the quarter was ​The Midnight Sky

      The Midnight Sky is the largest original film showing a strength as well as opportunity to learn from what they did correctly.

    1. Preliminary results from the first year are tantalizing for anyone interested in solutions to address rising inequality in the United States, especially as they manifest along racial and gender lines. Within the first year, the study’s participants obtained jobs at twice the rate of the control group. At the beginning of the study, 28 percent of the participants had full-time employment, and after the first year, that number rose to 40 percent.

      This is what happened when 125 participants were given $500/month over two years to see what would happen.

    1. Eran Segal. (2021, January 22). Israel: 2.4M after 1st dose (27% pop) 78% of all 60+ years old Despite that, we have a problem: Cities of lower socio-economic status and more cases get vaccinated less X: Socioeconomic rank Y: % 60+ years old vaccinated Color: Vaccination need ratio @MDCaspi by covid-19 cases https://t.co/t5vC8hjXA4 [Tweet]. @segal_eran. https://twitter.com/segal_eran/status/1352579515592138753

  33. Feb 2021
    1. Dr Phil Hammond 💙. (2020, December 6). In some parts of the country, 31% of care home staff come from the EU. Some areas already have a 26% vacancy rate. And on January 1, EU recruitment will plummet because workers earn less than the £26,500 threshold. A very predictable recruitment crisis on top of the Covid crisis. [Tweet]. @drphilhammond. https://twitter.com/drphilhammond/status/1335490431837200384

    1. Nick Brown. (2020, November 27). A researcher reads an online news article about a family suicide in another country and writes it up more or less verbatim as a ‘case report’, with a spurious reference to homicide. WTF @wileyglobal? 10.1111/ppc.12686 News article (trans by Google in pic): Https://t.co/uPZeRPN4jg https://t.co/tHW1XQGRyl [Tweet]. @sTeamTraen. https://twitter.com/sTeamTraen/status/1332413218271195137

    1. UK is with EU. (2021, January 18). ..The reason we are in this third lockdown is because of the anti lockdowners like Lord Sumption ..We are going in circles, countries who have done well controlled the virus and now have an economic recovery ..And every life matters #GMB @devisridhar speaking truth to power https://t.co/U3BBV0uUSb [Tweet]. @ukiswitheu. https://twitter.com/ukiswitheu/status/1351089812799950850

    1. Even worse, Shadow Stat's numbers show so much inflation the past 25 years that, as Jim Pethokoukis points out, it implies the economy hasn't grown at all during that time.

      Important Point

      Real economic numbers validate a 25 year period (or more) of manipulated inflation and low growth economy. INCOME INEQUALITY statistics and recent studies ALL validate fuzzy math, rosy picture for the 1% and stagnant dismal picture for average Americans. Trump based his entire campaign and Presidency on Making America Great Again

      Supporting Link

    2. The intellectual cesspool of the inflation truthers

      Powerful Headline (words) from a Washington Post article under Economic Policy. WORDS.....! Words..... When you study Legal Theory you learn that "words" play a significant role in all aspects of social order.

      Controlling the rhetoric with consistent narrative

      This statement simply implies the use of consistent narrative (story) to allow control of the rhetoric. Narrative can be viewed as believable while Rhetoric is a general pejorative. When the rhetoric is mis or dis-information the narrative must be credible.

      Main stream media (MSM) has held a long-term standing across the world as being credible. This standing is eroding. It has eroded considerably over the last 25 years among critical thinkers and the general population has started to take notice.

      I question everything from MSM especially when narrative is duplicated with identical rhetoric across known government media assets. History is a wonderful thing when searching for Truth. Events in historical time periods can be researched, parsed and studied for patterns based on future evidence and outcomes.

      Information "Spin" is real and happens for one purpose, that purpose is to benefit a position, agenda, person, plan, etc., by manipulating (advertising, PR, propaganda) information. Spin is difficult to refute without hard facts. Spin has a short-term shelf life, but that is all it needs to chart a new course, set the "ball" in motion so to say.

      History allows Truth to overcome Spin.

    1. 21st Century Economics (USA)

      Economic Theory of a Market Economy, Characteristics, Pros, and Cons

      Americans and the World believe or want to believe that the United States is built upon a Market Economy.

      Historical context validates a classic Market Economy theory as directed by our Founding Fathers and Constitution. We clearly do not have a pure Market Economy today (2021).

      • To Big to Fail - (Bailouts)
      • Farm Subsidies
      • Political Influence (money, lobbying, tenure)
      • Government Agencies
      • Military/Industrial Complex
      • Federal Reserve (Central Banking)
      • Social Security
      • Medicare
      • Other

      Most Americans lump (through education) the concept of economics and government together, into 3 basic categories; Capitalism, Socialism and Communism.

      The U.S. is a Capitalist Nation with a corresponding market economy.

      Is this statement Fact or Hypothesis ?

      Can we still rely on textbook economic models in the 21st Century?

  34. Jan 2021
  35. Dec 2020
    1. ReconfigBehSci @SciBeh (2020) For those who might think this issue isn't settled yet, the piece include below has further graphs indicating just how much "protecting the economy" is associated with "keeping the virus under control" Twitter. Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1306216113722871808

  36. Nov 2020
  37. Oct 2020
  38. Sep 2020
  39. Aug 2020