Mammon category archive
The New Gilded Age 0
Sam feel it’s necessary to point out that Teddy Roosevelt was not a Marxist.
The New Gilded Age 0
Sarah Anderson runs the numbers.
The Chutzpah Confounds 0
The Trump Organization tries to argue that it isn’t.
The Crypto Con 0
Hal Crowther tries to make sense of the crypto-con. He focuses on Sam Bankman-Fried, whose FTX crypto exchanged failed suddenly and spectacularly, but his serves to cast light on the entire–you can’t call it an industry, can you?–endeavor.
His article is well worth a read. Here’s the opening (emphasis added):
Metastatic Malignancy 0
Robert Reich has qualms about Facebook’s Meta’s and Twitter’s decisions to allow Trump back on their platforms. A snippet; follow the link for the rest of his thoughts on this matter.
With due respect to Nick Clegg, this is rubbish. Trump is far worse than an ugly politician. He’s a dangerous traitor to American democracy.
The Disinformation Superhighway 0
One more time, “social” media isn’t. Rather, however it begins, it ends up being all about the Benjamins.
Via PoliticalProf.
The Crypto Con 0
A picture is worth . . . .
Neoliberal Nihilism 0
Emma and Neil Vallelly discuss his book, Futilitarianism. From the Youtuve page:
. . . Neil Vallelly explores how neoliberalism has transformed the relationship between maximizing utility and the common good. He uses contemporary examples to demonstrate how the practice of utility maximization in neoliberalism traps people in useless and repetitive behaviors that foreclose the possibility of collective happiness. The book maps the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism, develops an original framework for understanding neoliberalism and recounts the lived experience of uselessness in the early 21st century. It argues that countering the futility of neoliberal existence is essential for building an egalitarian, sustainable and hopeful future.
The Microcosm 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Debbie Peterson suggests that George Santos is, in many ways, the personification of this New Gilded Age. A snippet:
The Pandora Papers Investigations (citation at the link–ed.) identified high-level officials, oligarchs, and billionaires from around the world who were shielded with the help of attorneys, commercial real estate brokers, title companies, banks, and company formation agents who were able to act anonymously and, in turn, obscure the identity of their clients. Corrupt overseas corporate investors operate through virtually unidentifiable shell companies and trusts, unrecorded real estate and company formation transactions, and offshore accounts. The service providers who facilitate corruption also escape regulation, supervision, and accountability.
Do please take a look at her article.
The Privatization Scam 0
At the Des Moines Register, Lois Altmaier Crowley exposes the school voucher con. Here’s a bit of her article; follow the link for more.
Privatizing education does not lead to competition that will improve actual learning outcomes for students. Instead, it starts a race to the bottom that crunches school employees’ wages and teacher salaries, leads to hiring of less qualified educators due to turnover, causes costs for oversight (we must check private school start-ups rigorously and often to ensure quality education!), and harms those students whose parents took a chance on the ones that will inevitably fail. Channeling money into private schooling will also be highly inequitable as fewer than half of our counties (Iowa’s–ed.) even have them: Money that could and should be shared across 99 counties would go to less than half of them.
Altmaier does not address this, but I would add that said school voucher con often serves the wishes of those who would replace education with indoctrination.
Driven to Destruction 0
Sam and his crew express a smidgen of skepticism about the hype over self-driving cars.
