- Public Work: Search public domain imagery from The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources.
- Public Work: Search public domain imagery from The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources.
Computer decided to stop working a couple weeks back and only managed to get it back online today. Also happen to be going through another one of those major life upendings.
Both Mythomatic and Garage.Ganzeer taken offline in the meantime. Newsletter likely to commence before they do.
Here's a link to the web edition of the latest RESTRICTED FREQUENCY – 219: The Great Shi(f)t is Upon Us.
In other news, one of my bookshelves made the Shelfies newsletter. Really delightful initiative by authors Jared Shurin and Lavie Tidhar.
A new RESTRICTED FREQUENCY is scheduled. Titled The Great Shi(f)t is Upon Us, it goes out in about 15 hours.
Here's the link to the previous RESTRICTED FREQUENCY – 218: Between Venice, Rome, and Cairo
“The present crisis should be spurring us to reflect upon our behavior and imagine a truly different future for ourselves. But the imaginative and conceptual power necessary to do so has been taken from us by the experts and specialists who have monopolized technological development. There are surely too many who still think we can sit back and let technology solve climate change for us.”
It is indeed frightening how the belief in technology-as-savior is so widespread, when it is in fact technological development that has been the cause of so much destruction, mostly because said technological development has been subservient to capitalist interests, if not developed for them outright.
If ever there was a technological component to the solution, it wouldn't be useful without a complete revolt against the present sociopolitical economy.
“In short, the ideology of technology has become a cause of widespread impoverishment of imagination in today's society.”
Likely even more so with the advent of A.I.
“The wealth held by the twenty-six richest capitalists in the world is equivalent to the total assets belonging to the world's poorest 3.8 billion people, nearly half the world's population.”
And if you're curious who the twenty-six richest capitalists in the world are exactly, here you go:
- Bernard Arnault & Family – $233 billion (France)
- Elon Musk – $195 billion (South Africa/Canada/USA)
- Jeff Bezos – $194 billion (USA)
- Mark Zuckerberg – $177 billion (USA)
- Larry Ellison – $141 billion (USA)
- Warren Buffett – $133 billion (USA)
- Bill Gates – $128 billion (USA)
- Steve Ballmer – $121 billion (USA)
- Mukesh Ambani – $116 billion (India)
- Larry Page – $114 billion (USA)
- Sergey Brin – $110 billion (USA)
- Michael Bloomberg – $106 billion (USA)
- Amancio Ortega – $103 billion (Spain)
- Carlos Slim Helu & Family – $102 billion (Mexico)
- Francoise Bettencourt Meyers & Family – $99.5 billion (France)
- Michael Dell – $91 billion (USA)
- Gautam Adani – $84 billion (India)
- Jim Walton & Family – $78.4 billion (USA)
- Rob Walton & Family – $77.4 billion (USA)
- Jensen Huang – $77 billion (USA)
- Alice Walton – $72.3 billion (USA)
- David Thomson & Family – $67.8 billion (Canada)
- Julia Koch & Family – $64.3 billion (USA)
- Zhong Shanshan – $62.3 billion (China)
- Charles Koch & Family – $58.5 billion (USA)
- Giovanni Ferrero – $57 billion (Italy)
Surprising absolutely no one, 17 of those 26 are American.
That is not to say there is no poverty in America; about 12% of Americans live below the poverty line and a whopping 49% have less than $500 in savings.
“We usually think of capitalism as something that provides wealth and abundance, but the truth is quite the opposite. Capitalism is a system that functions by producing scarcity.”
Perhaps manufacturing scarcity might be the more apt terminology.
All quotes above are from Kohei Saito's brilliant SLOW DOWN: The Degrowth Manifesto.
Happy new year.
“Politicalism is the belief that if we simply select good leaders within a framework of representative democracy, we can leave it up to these politicians and experts to put optimal policies and laws in place for us.”
More from Kohei Saito's excellent SLOW DOWN.
“However, this is the effect of narrowing the field of political action to elections.”
Kohei is an efficient writer and rather than dance around the point he wants to make as is common in much writing undertaken by academics, he gets right to the heart of the matter.
“Representative democracy cannot expand the purview of democracy itself and cannot effect a revolution across all society. Electoral politics always reaches its limit when faced with the power of capital. Politics does not exist separately from the economy—rather, it is subordinate to it.”
Indeed, the only time in America where major policies were undertaken to the benefit of the greater general public was under Franklin D. Roosevelt in the wake of the Great Depression, after the power of capital had already led to its own implosion. Still a case where politics was in essence subordinate to the economy.
The same thing should've ideally happened in the wake of America's 2008 financial crisis (otherwise referred to as the Great Recession), but that's not quite how things worked out despite the ballot box tipping in favor of the socialist-seeming candidate of African American heritage.
“This is why the field of political possibility must be expanded through a social movement that confronts capital directly.”
Kohei Saito, SLOW DOWN: The Degrowth Manifesto.