Category: Capitalism

Capitalism

Imagine there is no Capitalism – » The Australian Independent Media Network

We see people who are privileged suing for defamation, blocking up court time over miffed egos while the poor are criminalised for being poor but cannot afford the expense of proper representation for their legal struggles.

There are very good reasons that Capitalism works, the lives we live or aspire to live depends on that system designed to create and satisfy the demand for goods and services. But we have to make it work for all of us, not just those who allow the off penny to trickle down to those near the bottom.

Source: Imagine there is no Capitalism – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Capitalism

Why human beings prostitute themselves to corporations, billionaires and foundations – Pearls and Irritations

Raining money Billionaire.

The power of money to distort humanity’s view of our situation only works because human beings prostitute themselves to corporations, billionaires and foundations. If you know anyone who works for the biggest companies of the world in media, finance, and technology, then ask them why aren’t they rebelling inside those companies, to make it less easy for rich white men to fuck up people or planet?

Source: Why human beings prostitute themselves to corporations, billionaires and foundations – Pearls and Irritations

Capitalism

What Is to Be Done? | The Smirking Chimp

There is yet another source of the answer that now responds to the question: what is to be done? The qualities of democracy that have been achieved within the G7, the BRICS, or most other countries, to date have been more formal than substantive. Where elections of representatives occur, the influences of wealth and income inequalities, the social power wielded by CEOs, and their controls over mass media render democracy more symbolic than real. Many people know it; still more feel it. Extending democracy into the economy and specifically into the internal organization of enterprises represents a major step in moving political democracy beyond merely formal and symbolic to substantive and real. And much the same applies to moving socialism beyond its earlier forms.

The old cry to workers of the world to unify—“You have nothing to lose but your chains”—was an early, partial answer to the question: What is to be done? After a century and a half of development and socialisms, we can now provide a much fuller and more specific answer to that question. To get beyond capitalism’s core—the production relations of employer versus employee—we need explicitly to replace those relations with a democratized workplace, to substitute workers’ self-directed cooperatives for hierarchical capitalist business.

Source: What Is to Be Done? | The Smirking Chimp

Capitalism

CEO Performance Pay Is One of Capitalism’s Great Myths

The ratio of CEO pay to worker pay is almost 300 to 1. Are we really supposed to believe CEOs work 300 times harder or create 300 times more value than us?

Source: CEO Performance Pay Is One of Capitalism’s Great Myths

Capitalism

Capitalism Isn’t Just Buying and Selling Things. It’s a System of Domination.

Capitalism’s proponents often defend it by pointing to the virtues of markets. But capitalism isn’t defined by the presence of markets — it’s defined by capitalists’ domination of workers.

Source: Capitalism Isn’t Just Buying and Selling Things. It’s a System of Domination.

Capitalism

Real Estate Magnate Tim Gurner Is a Jerk. But He’s Saying What All Capitalists Really Think.

Real estate CEO Tim Gurner, of “millennial avocado toast” fame, has gone viral again for saying low unemployment has made workers arrogant and joblessness must rise. His remarks reveal a usually unspoken truth: capitalists rely on the subordination of workers.

Source: Real Estate Magnate Tim Gurner Is a Jerk. But He’s Saying What All Capitalists Really Think.

Capitalism

Fixing Australia’s capitalism problem will take action, not words

How times have changed from one job able to support a house a car and a family of four.  To a future in which the extended family will be the norm and the street one affordable communal long house or row of tents. Yes, Australia we are becoming more First Nation and forced to share in order to survive Capitalism, Climate Change, AI, and the destruction of our environment in just 240 years makes a point. In all that time First Nations people couldn’t and still can’t take your land but Mining companies can “Unite and vote Yes against that system called greed and Capitalism”

Action is needed to address the current state of declining living standards under the capitalist framework in order to achieve an equitable future, writes Navishkar Ram.

Source: Fixing Australia’s capitalism problem will take action, not words

Capitalism

Craig Murray: Destitution Capitalism

I remember when begging was illegal and the police would come and move you on, charge you, or take you away. It seems that begging is now the norm in the UK  and being on Welfare is a crime. Robocop certainly indicated that to be the case in Australia

Ordinary U.K. citizens have been propagandised out of the belief that the state should in any way regulate economic activity for the greater good.

Source: Craig Murray: Destitution Capitalism

Capitalism

Capitalist Greed Fueled the Catastrophic Hawaii Wildfires

And it’s not over yet!

Wildfires in Hawaii have killed over 100 people, and hundreds remain missing. From draining historic wetlands to failing to invest in safe energy infrastructure, the capitalist thirst for profits above all else helped create the disaster.

Source: Capitalist Greed Fueled the Catastrophic Hawaii Wildfires

Capitalism

Disaster Capitalists Are Circling Maui Like Buzzards

Like most locals in the close-knit Maui community, the realtor was disgusted by the opportunism.“It’s been bottom-feeders calling us, asking about what kinds of lands we have available,” he said. “This is not the time. It’s unfathomable what people are going through with loss of life, that they would be calling. But I guess that’s America.”

Source: Disaster Capitalists Are Circling Maui Like Buzzards

Capitalism

Opinion | When the Rich Get a Global Rescue Mission and the Drowning Poor Get… Nothing | Common Dreams

Tunisia's National Guard Takes Part In An Operation Against Illegal Migration

A story of two sinking vessels in a world of extreme inequality.

Source: Opinion | When the Rich Get a Global Rescue Mission and the Drowning Poor Get… Nothing | Common Dreams

Capitalism

How the Ineluctable Rise of Worldwide Free Market Capitalism Has Been a Stunning Failure | The Smirking Chimp

The fall of the East India Company was already the predictor that piracy is always bound for failure,

Source: How the Ineluctable Rise of Worldwide Free Market Capitalism Has Been a Stunning Failure | The Smirking Chimp

Capitalism

Don’t give me a home amongst the park trees – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Capitalism has no fundamental justification for its existence other than it’s better organized in keeping workers and families, individualized, locked out, and dependent. In many other countries workers and their unions have representation on corporate boards. However, not here. In Australia it’s war.

Slavery should have taught us the lack of long-term benefits of the Capitalist system years ago. The East India Company was the first corporate organization of workers who sold as products for profit, ” the slave trade”. It was a wholesale exploitation of labor the results of which we currently see in the housing crisis and the casual and precarious nature of work being offered to workers as a benefit, a blessing in expanded free choice and or leisure.

The solution, now being put forward to the current housing crisis is to “share” the space you once called home. Shrink it and share it with your unemployed kids and their families after all there’s a cost-benefit to the extended family. The catchphrase now is the benefit to be found in the extended family. A 180-degree turnaround is once again being peddled as better than the independence of the nuclear family but only if you’re poor, unemployed and there’s a shed out the back or bunk beds in your dining room. Capitalism will try to encourage you to socialize and invest and not the state in welfare or housing to save itself, without changing the system or taxing the rich. Anything to lower the cost of wages and maximize profits by making workers more desperate and become more like First Nation’s people to survive in this country. The gap at the bottom is closing

If circumstances change for some reason in the next 12 months, the person living in a tent under the bridge could be you or me next winter. In a developed and affluent society, a roof over a person’s head is a fundamental right – not a political plaything or a privilege. It’s time our politicians at all levels of government remembered that.

Source: Don’t give me a home amongst the park trees – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Capitalism

No, Arms Dealers Don’t Count as “Environmentally and Socially Responsible” Investments

Arms industries across Europe and North America are trying to get credentialed as “ESG”-friendly options for environmentally and socially conscious investors. That’s absurd. As long as their products are used to perpetuate war, they will remain sin stocks.

Source: No, Arms Dealers Don’t Count as “Environmentally and Socially Responsible” Investments

Capitalism

Automation Could Set Us Free — If We Didn’t Live Under Capitalism

Under capitalism, automation destroys jobs. Under socialism, it would be an instrument of liberation.

Source: Automation Could Set Us Free — If We Didn’t Live Under Capitalism

Capitalism

Smoke and Mirrors: report finds Origin Energy’s suitor Brookfield an aggressive global tax dodger – Michael West

Brookfield Place

Like the British East India Company the pirates are still here and overpowering governments and politicians BEIC is gone but they laid the foundation for what remains.

A global analysis of Canadian financial engineering juggernaut Brookfield, which is close to wrapping its $20bn takeover of Australia’s Origin Energy, reveals a complex global structure and aggressive tax avoidance strategies, reports Callum Foote.

Source: Smoke and Mirrors: report finds Origin Energy’s suitor Brookfield an aggressive global tax dodger – Michael West

Capitalism

The swarm: International consultancies – Pearls and Irritations

Detailed map of the world in all the world's currencies.

Predatory capitalism has become visible across the world as neo-liberalism becomes fully transnational. Consultancies working to authoritarian rules have consumed big business by making executives richer. They may be set to engulf governments and even entire societies.

This litany of world-wide probity scandals suggests something more sinister, more frightening. This interlocking network of advisors provides group-thinking to business and government executives worldwide, the advice is accepted and practiced everywhere. ‘Best practice’ it seems is ‘make as much money as fast as possible, regardless of consequences. Highly intelligent people run international business, yet they act as if the planet is a Monopoly™ game.

Is there a world government of big business? Probably not, but the big consultancies with such international influence must be candidates, coordinating common attitudes and practices. Where does tax avoidance and tax havens and the growing disparity between the few very rich and the numerous poor of the planet fit with this scenario? – right in the middle of course – with 1 trillion dollars moved annually into tax havens with little international regulation.

As citizens we must wonder – over 50 years of scientific evidence of global warming still strenuously denied, seen in the failure of industry and governments to seriously combat it. Why do so few leaders act to stop all CO2 emissions? Do business consultants provide ethical climate advice to address accelerating emissions? – I fear they don’t. If business and governments have but one view, where then is democracy heading? We must first be rid of their pernicious neo-liberal ideology.

Source: The swarm: International consultancies – Pearls and Irritations

Capitalism

Corporate Media Continues to Blow It on Coverage of Debt Ceiling Hostage Situation

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, May 24, 2023.

It’s simple: “Republicans drove up the national debt by giving huge tax breaks to the rich and major corporations—now they’re trying to make the rest of us pay for it.”

As negotiators for the White House and congressional Republicans continue their will-they-or-won’t-they game with the global economy at risk, critics are calling out corporate media coverage of efforts to prevent a devastating U.S. default by raising the debt ceiling.

 

Source: Corporate Media Continues to Blow It on Coverage of Debt Ceiling Hostage Situation

Capitalism

National Times – Panic at PwC: How a tax scandal played out behind… | Facebook

May be an image of 2 people and text

Panic at PwC:

Those heavily redacted emails detailed how dozens of PwC operatives used confidential updates on government tax plans to drum up new clients.

Source: National Times – Panic at PwC: How a tax scandal played out behind… | Facebook

Capitalism

For Supposed Free Marketeers, Capitalists Sure Do Love Manipulating Labor Markets

Former workers at major tech firms are coming forward to say they were paid six figures to do nothing, a strategy to hoard them from rival companies. It’s just one of many ways capitalists manipulate labor markets. The others aren’t so nice.

Source: For Supposed Free Marketeers, Capitalists Sure Do Love Manipulating Labor Markets

Capitalism

Capitalism Is Killing the Planet — and It’s Okay To Be Angry About That | The Smirking Chimp

Anger at the institutions hurtling us toward climate breakdown is not only okay and understandable. In the fight to rein in the climate crisis, it might just be our best hope.

Source: Capitalism Is Killing the Planet — and It’s Okay To Be Angry About That | The Smirking Chimp

Capitalism

Ten Men, $1 Trillion, and the Personalization of American Capitalism – CounterPunch.org

While the US was never an economically egalitarian nation, at least in recent history, it has fallen to become one of the least equal among any countries in the world that likes to consider themselves democracies. Combine this with the decline in social mobility in the US that is getting progressively worse by generation, and it is hard to conclude that the American Dream does exist except for a few.

Source: Ten Men, $1 Trillion, and the Personalization of American Capitalism – CounterPunch.org

Capitalism

Insulin Should Be Produced for Our Health, Not Their Profits

 

People with type 1 diabetes are dependent on insulin — but it doesn’t follow that we should be dependent on corporate insulin manufacturers. We need a new model of insulin manufacturing, one that puts lives before profits.

Source: Insulin Should Be Produced for Our Health, Not Their Profits

Capitalism

Opinion | The Problem Isn’t “Woke Capitalism”—Which Isn’t a Thing—But Corporate Capitalism | Common Dreams

Graphic showing Benjamin Franklin and falling stock prices.

Corporations and institutional investors won’t deviate from maximizing short-term profits and shareholder returns unless they are required to do so by law. And even then, only when the penalty for violating the law multiplied by the probability of getting caught is higher than the profits from continuing with the illegality.

Source: Opinion | The Problem Isn’t “Woke Capitalism”—Which Isn’t a Thing—But Corporate Capitalism | Common Dreams

Capitalism

Capitalism Makes Everyone Bend to Its Will, Rich and Poor Alike

In his new book Mute Compulsion, Søren Mau argues that to understand and end capitalism, we need to analyze how it not only subordinates the poor to the rich but in fact exerts economic power over everyone — including capitalists themselves.

Source: Capitalism Makes Everyone Bend to Its Will, Rich and Poor Alike

Capitalism

The Capitalist Road to Serfdom

Walk into a Bank or BHP and you won’t find Democracy or individuals but we nevertheless support them.

By design, the corporation is not a democratic enterprise. Its management is hierarchical, its imperatives are growth and profit, and its structure is a de facto class system of owners, managers, and workers. You could argue that in the earliest days of capitalism, something like the concept of free enterprise actually existed: firms of various sizes competed, with even the largest dwarfed in both size and influence by most nation states. Today, the world’s biggest companies not only wield monopolistic power and exert considerable political influence, but in many cases have market capitalizations exceeding the GDPs of entire countries.

Source: The Capitalist Road to Serfdom

Capitalism

Qantas shareholders re-Joyce, not taxpayers, passengers and staff – Michael West

Alan Joyce Qantas results presentation

The ebullience with which Qantas chief Alan Joyce announced the airline’s record half year pre-tax profit of $1.4 billion, underscored the jarring disconnect now at play in the company. Michael Sainsbury reports.

Source: Qantas shareholders re-Joyce, not taxpayers, passengers and staff – Michael West

Capitalism

Given our monopoly on housing, it’s no wonder the young hate Baby Boomers like me

Illustration by Simon Letch

And the bank of mum and dad (yes, I’ve done it) is helping prices stay high, while widening the divide between those young people with well-placed parents and those without.

Source: Given our monopoly on housing, it’s no wonder the young hate Baby Boomers like me

Capitalism

Amberjit Endow allegedly duped Deloitte colleagues out of $60m

Amberjit Endow during his time at Deloitte.

Some individuals risk and feed off the greed of their own class and get away with it. Madhoff did it for years and called it “opportunity”. They “serviced” their own status without providing any real services. Ponzi schemes are an exemplar of Capitalism’s shortcut to riches. Trump’s career and history to power was built on the Ponzi principle of cashing in on fake facts.

Some investors estimate the 13-year company veteran’s suspected fraud could involve more than $60 million. Victoria Police is now investigating following a complaint in December, while other investors have made separate complaints to police in NSW.

Source: Amberjit Endow allegedly duped Deloitte colleagues out of $60m

Capitalism

Automation Isn’t the Cause of Unemployment — Capitalism Just Can’t Generate Enough Jobs

Social theorists identify automation as both the main cause of unemployment and the future launchpad for a high-tech post-scarcity world. But, Aaron Benanav argues, the problem is the stagnation of global capitalism and its inability to generate enough jobs.

Source: Automation Isn’t the Cause of Unemployment — Capitalism Just Can’t Generate Enough Jobs

Capitalism

“Soundbite Economics” Obscures Who’s Causing and Profiting From the Crisis

Capitalism’s apologists are throwing around economic concepts like inflation, recession, labor shortages, and supply chain shortages to justify ripping off consumers, raising rents, and depressing wages. Don’t ask them to define their terms.

Source: “Soundbite Economics” Obscures Who’s Causing and Profiting From the Crisis

Capitalism

Jim Chalmers manifesto in favour of values-based capitalism – Pearls and Irritations

Treasurer Jim Chalmers at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Wednesday, January 25, 2023. Image: AAP / Mick Tsikas

Given the LNP’s approach “do nothing” privatise the market Chalmers can’t be all wrong if we judge the LNP did a fantastic job these past 10 years for the country. Nope Nope Nope brought them to government, through government and still echoes in opposition. Abbott never really left the LNP or the Monkey Pod Room. However isn’t Value Based Capitalism a partnership that has never really worked?

Thus, instead of the neo-liberal model that relies purely on market prices to determine the allocation of resources, with no interference by the state, Chalmers argues persuasively that his “values-based capitalism”, based on “well-designed and well-informed markets, can “facilitate flows of capital into priority areas, and ultimately make progress on our collective problems and purpose.”

Source: Jim Chalmers manifesto in favour of values-based capitalism – Pearls and Irritations

Capitalism

Struggle to survive in Torres Strait Island ‘paradise’ – Michael West

$7 for a loaf of bread that’s $2 in Cairns

The Torres Strait Islands are like a tropical paradise to outsiders but for many traditional owners it has more in common with a failed state as they struggle to survive amid the soaring cost of living.

Source: Struggle to survive in Torres Strait Island ‘paradise’ – Michael West

Capitalism

What Makes a Thieving Culture

What makes for a thieving culture? An overabundance of pickpockets? Tsunamis of burglary and shoplifting? Most definitely not.

To truly gauge a society’s larcenous leanings we need to look beyond the nimble-fingered and focus more on the smooth-talkers, the power-suited flimflammers who thrive in any society where significant numbers of people feel a driving need to get rich quick.

Source: What Makes a Thieving Culture

Capitalism

PwC scandal: who’s guarding the guards? Nobody – Michael West

PwC, the Big Four

The Big 4 are too big, too powerful, too secretive, and corrupt. The PwC scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg. The answer is to break them up and force them to incorporate. They thrive in secrecy. Michael West reports.

Source: PwC scandal: who’s guarding the guards? Nobody – Michael West

Capitalism

The Story of Palm Oil Is a Story About Capitalism

Palm oil is in everything: what we eat, wear, read, drive. And like so much else that we consume and can’t disentangle ourselves from, palm oil is enmeshed in global supply chains that rely on brutal working conditions and the destruction of the planet.

Source: The Story of Palm Oil Is a Story About Capitalism

Capitalism

Michael West Media – Byron Bay blue between “Airbnb mafia” and grassroots groups highlights costly housing crisis

Byron Bay blue spotlights tensions between “Airbnb mafia” and grassroots community groups

The market hasn’t “bounced back” it’s been manipulated. Technology has accelerated the corporate invasion of market sectors to plunder and take over areas where once many more middlemen grazed. Uber did it to the taxi industry, Airbnb the Real Estate management market, Amazon the retail industry and so on. Like the East India Company the first corporation, a modern management system can be run from a single office and is able to do what Atlassian did to the rapid registry of shares and even allowed Madoff to create the world’s biggest $64bill Ponzi scheme.

Yes, the global landscape is rapidly changing but not the Capitalist system and its value for the accumulation of private profit, time, and less labour. Where money makes money for those with a generational excess of it and already loaded. They are simply ready to continue investing their wealth rather than productive labour to exist. Labour today can cost less, be done by machines and if socially distributed provide less work and more leisure time for everyone rather than be a means of exploitation.

Pandemic lockdowns crushed Airbnb, Stayz and other short-term rental operators but the market has bounced back sharply, creating tensions in popular tourist destinations between councils, community groups and well-heeled property owners. Callum Foote reports on the case of ritzy Byron Bay.

Source: Michael West Media – investigative journalists – always independent

Capitalism

Turning Influence Into Money in the EU Parliament – CounterPunch.org

It’s petty cash compared with what media influencers like Murdoch’s News Corp and Sky News can achieve. “News” is an illusion that runs second to their primary product of the business of influence and persuasion and worse confusion. The magic it always continues despite regular failures as recently seen in Australia, US and the UK. Money flows from the top down from the capital accumulation of the ever-expanding wealthiest interests and from not the bottom up. Money from the bottom up tends to be a competition among grifters like Trump, QAnon, Alex Jones et al the bottom feeders trying to impress individuals and ambitious smaller fry extreme associations. The camp followers of Capitalism.

It is not as though MEPs are poorly remunerated to begin with, each of them earning about €9,400 a month as well as €4,800 general expenses for which they need not produce receipts. In addition, they are allowed to hold as many other jobs as they want with the nature of their activities often declared in the most general and untransparent way.

Source: Turning Influence Into Money in the EU Parliament – CounterPunch.org

Capitalism

Global Capitalism Will Never Lift Workers Out of Poverty

Because Capitalism is Debt Creation, Not Loan Creation,

Apologists for capitalist globalization claim that global value chains spread prosperity around the world. In reality, they allow firms like Apple to maximize labor exploitation while keeping workers chained to poverty.

Source: Global Capitalism Will Never Lift Workers Out of Poverty

Capitalism

How Capitalism Worms Its Way Into Every Aspect of Our Lives

“The official economy within a capitalist society depends on a background of social relations, social practices, and institutions that are regarded as noneconomic.”

In other words, we live in a society where Elon Musk gets to decide that he’s firing a car into space for fun and that’s how our social wealth is being used.

Nancy Fraser:   whereas there might be many other things that we would prefer to do with that wealth. We might even prefer to produce less wealth and to live more simply, companionably, socially, and easily in a more relaxed way. We could have a much freer and more democratic life. But that’s not compatible with capitalism.

Source: How Capitalism Worms Its Way Into Every Aspect of Our Lives

Capitalism

We Should Celebrate the World’s Population Passing the Eight Billion Mark

Sections of the environmental movement bemoaned the birth of the world’s eight-billionth person, but the Left should have no part in this cynical misanthropy. The cause of food insecurity and climate change is the irrationality of capitalism — not rising populations.

Source: We Should Celebrate the World’s Population Passing the Eight Billion Mark

Capitalism

Billionaire babies: how James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch kept their eyes on the prize – Michael West

The Succesor by Paddy Manning

Australia’s own  MERITOCRACY is a fable. “If they can do it you can too in the land down under” is the myth preached just as you to can win the lottery and some do while the system guarantees you won’t because it’s designed that way. Inheritance ensures an increase in generational poverty and a flow up and an imaginary promise of a better trickle-down in the next decade. Remember Hawke’s promise that no child will be born in poverty well it worked for James and Lachlan

Billionaire media scions Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer have a close friendship which has endured the ups and downs of mega-deals including Australia’s ‘Super League’ war, the collapse of One.Tel, the rise of Realestate.com.au and failure of Channel Ten – some of the best and worst moments of Lachlan’s career. This edited extract from Paddy Manning’s new biography of Lachlan Murdoch sheds new light on their tumultuous business history.

Source: Billionaire babies: how James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch kept their eyes on the prize – Michael West

Capitalism

The Face of Liberal Democracy’s Enemy Is White | The Smirking Chimp

It’s here that we get to the real meat of the issue – the real reason white people are prepared to abandon liberal democracy in order to protect their precious privileges built into our political system.

It’s not that they love their country. It’s not that they love the Constitution. Their opposition to liberal democracy, and all that it costs them politically, does not rest on positive principle.

It rests on laziness.

Most white people don’t want to compete.

Source: The Face of Liberal Democracy’s Enemy Is White | The Smirking Chimp

Capitalism

“Green Capitalism” Is a Lie

Policymakers who have belatedly recognized the peril of climate change now promote incremental, market-based solutions to the crisis. But there’s no way we can prevent ecological disaster without tackling the vested interests at the heart of global capitalism.

Source: “Green Capitalism” Is a Lie

Capitalism

Capitalist Inequality Won’t Last Forever

Karl Marx said this but he didn’t put a date on it. History to date seems to have shown Capitalism is far better able to organize and adapt to any systemic threat it encounters now and over the horizon. Its strength of the organization is far more adaptable and faster than its opposition relies on Democracy to move forward in a system without an accelerator.

You must have an incredibly dismal view of both human agency and human nature to believe that we will continue to live in the future much as we live today.

Source: Capitalist Inequality Won’t Last Forever

Capitalism

Capitalism, the Fourth Great Humility, will consume us all

Just now, I searched online for the Three Great Humiliations of humanity. There were many references to the Century of Humiliation in China, but it turns out Sigmund Freud coined the term.

They are:

1 the discovery by Copernicus and Galileo that we are not the centre of the universe;

2 Darwin’s discovery that we are descended from apes;

 3  Freud’s discovery that we are not in control of our minds.

The Fourth Great Humiliation of our species is upon us. We’re stuck on this beautiful blue gem in space and we’d better learn to live within its limits. If we do, we have a chance at peace, harmony and happiness. We also have a chance to reach a similarly livable planet in the galaxy in the distant future. If we don’t, our prospects are very grim indeed.

Source: Capitalism, the Fourth Great Humility, will consume us all

Capitalism

Claims That Capitalism Is Eradicating Global Poverty Are Wildly Misleading

Boosters of the capitalist system love pointing to statistics suggesting stunning progress in eradicating global poverty. But those metrics set the bar pathetically low — and don’t account for the obscene explosion in global inequality.

Source: Claims That Capitalism Is Eradicating Global Poverty Are Wildly Misleading

Capitalism

Luring Doctors From Poorer Countries is the UK’s Quiet Scandal – scheerpost.com

The UK isn’t the only one “looting” trained professionals from third-world countries Australia is too,

Meanwhile, the voice of Andrew Bolt can be heard crying ” don’t allow our medical professional’s to volunteer” in the case of Ebola in Africa.

While Cuba at times of need sends their professionals to where they are needed most. While our Australian Medical Association retains a post-WW2 attitude that cries out ” don’t let these Imports into practice because how do we know they are sufficiently trained?

Self-interest is reflected over and above the “common good” in our not so  “Free Market Place” What’s left is fear, confusion and disrespect for practitioners.

The looting of artistic and religious objects from Africa and Asia by British invaders in the 19th century causes much rancorous debate about whether the artefacts should be returned to the countries they were originally stolen from. But the discussion is much more muted about equally acquisitive expeditions launched by Britain today that may ultimately cause more suffering than those imperialist ventures long ago.

Source: Luring Doctors From Poorer Countries is the UK’s Quiet Scandal – scheerpost.com

Capitalism, Uncategorized

The Origin of Student Debt: The Danger of Educated Proles

In 1970 Roger Freeman, who also worked for Nixon, revealed the right’s motivation for coming decades of attacks on higher education.

The Origin of Student Debt: The Danger of Educated Proles
Capitalism

The world is ablaze and the oil industry just posted record profits. It’s us or them | Hamilton Nolan | The Guardian

It is useful to think of capitalism as a robotic savant, spectacularly gifted at doing one thing and cripplingly blind to everything else. Global capitalism is an incredible machine for extracting fossil fuels from our planet, refining them, shipping them to every corner of the Earth and making staggering amounts of money doing so. The humming of this machine, the fuel and the money that it spits out, has powered a century of unprecedented production and consumption by the Earth’s first-world nations. Unfortunately the machine is also poisoning us all. But one of its exquisitely evolved functions is to make it almost impossible to turn it off.

The world is ablaze and the oil industry just posted record profits. It’s us or them | Hamilton Nolan | The Guardian