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This is a story as old, and probably older, than civilization and isn’t unique to elites.

It is the question of group interest versus individual interest; or national interest versus internal group interest.

National advantages have to be sustained. If you have a technological lead, you don’t give that lead to another nation which is a competitor. If you have a production lead, you don’t help a competitor improve its production anywhere near close to yours. You may give them something from the prior tech generation, maybe, but never the current one.

This is unfortunate, a better world could be created with more sharing, but that would require a world in which nations and elites don’t compete with each other in devastating ways.

The field is wide open!

The perks of child labor.

Today (April 26, 2023), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Consumer Price Index, Australia – for the March-quarter 2023. It showed that the CPI rose 1.4 per cent in the quarter (down 0.4 points) and over the 12 months by 7 per cent (down 0.8 points). The monthly data, also released today…

Here I go again - visiting the home of my first 20 years, Cornwall.
I went this time last year as soon as the flights had resumed after all that covid bullshit. I flew home and caught covid at the Blue Anchor. I had never been as sick …

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

TheAnalysis discussion April 21 2023,  Debt and the Collapse of Antiquity – Michael Hudson, By Colin Bruce Anthes   Colin Bruce Anthes Welcome to theAnalysis. I’m Colin Bruce Anthes. In a minute, we’ll be taking a first look at Michael Hudson’s new book, The Collapse of Antiquity. Michael Hudson When the emperors cancelled the debts, it was largely Continue Reading

The post Balancing Individualism with Egalitarianism first appeared on Michael Hudson.

Harlan Crow’s company said tenant protections threatened its profits. Thomas twice voted to end them while Crow lavished him with gifts.

Neither does right wing chutzpah: The ghost of the Confederacy hangs heavily over the Tennessee Legislature. Justin Jones, one of two Black members expelled from the state’s House of Representatives in April 2023, had run afoul of House leadership before. In 2019, as a private citizen, he was arrested following his actions in protesting a bust in the state capitol honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and later Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. While the expulsion of Jones and his colleague, Justin J. Pearson, riveted the nation’s attention, a curious and related event in the Legislature’s other branch, the Tennessee Senate, passed nearly unnoticed. On Feb. 3, 2023, two state senators issued a formal proclamation commemorating April 2023 as and encouraging “all Tennesseans to increase their knowledge of this momentous era in the history of this State.” One of the signers is Senate Speaker Randy McNally, who is also the state’s lieutenant governor; the other is Sen. Mark Pody from Lebanon.

The recent Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone presents itself—in...

If you have any question as to whether DeSantis is fit to be president of the United States, his decision to hire this man should answer it. He either did it because he actually believes that the COVID vaccines are dangerous, which makes him a moron or he did it out of a cynical desire to appeal to anti-vax voters. Either way, it was a disgraceful decision and should disqualify him from ever having higher office of any kind: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo personally altered a state-driven study about Covid-19 vaccines last year to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to a newly obtained document. Ladapo’s changes, released as part of a public records request, presented the risks of cardiac death to be more severe than previous versions of the study. He later used the final document in October to bolster disputed claims that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were dangerous to young men.

Peter Dutton’s number two, Sussan Ley, has called on the Albanese Government to allow a third option for the upcoming Voice referendum so voter’s can vote yess. ”Why should the Australian public be forced to choose between yes and no... Read More ›

— Blessed Be the Name of the Market? On the intellectual origins of market society and how the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith became an icon of American capitalism. A recorded conversation between Glory M. Liu, Jacob Soll, and Brad DeLong. The discussion builds on Liu’s new book Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became […]

In what is an important reflection on the political stakes for wider Marxist Feminist theory, Cinzia Arruzza has counselled against the fashionable conflation of racial and patriarchy oppressions within capitalism. Asserting the intersectionality of race, gender, and class is simply not enough in attempting to unpack such oppressions as features of capitalism. Equally an emphasis on relationality can become bland without the capacity to decide on where a relation begins or ends. Significant logical and historical questions can then arise. Is gender oppression a structurally necessary feature of capitalism? Is discrimination based on race in-built into the reproduction of racial capitalism? These are knotty issues that come to prominence and utility when assessing Nancy Fraser’s new book Cannibal Capitalism, the latest text completed in the Past & Present Reading Group.

The post Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Speaking of fascism, TNR made a handy list of “the 10 most fascist things Fox’s top host said on air”: 1. He has promoted the “great replacement theory.” Carlson has repeatedly pushed the “great replacement theory,” which the Southern Poverty Law Center defines as a “racist conspiracy narrative [that] falsely asserts there is an active, ongoing, and covert effort to replace white populations in current white-majority countries.” He has argued that Democrats want to replace white people so they can control the country. 2. He said Vladimir Putin wasn’t so bad. 3. He said the desire to procreate has been “subverted” by birth control and abortion. 4. He complained about “the total collapse of testosterone levels in American men.” Carlson has insisted that masculinity is supposedly on the decline in the United States. While both the theory and his suggested solution—tan your testicles—are ridiculous, they stem from a right-wing belief that attacks on masculinity upset the social order. 5. He said white supremacy is not a real problem. 6.

This essential substance has a history—and future—that’s far from clear.

The post The Strange Life of Glass appeared first on Nautilus.

Leaked documents reveal the GOP megadonor held dual citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis as he lavished the Supreme Court justice with gifts.

The post Clarence Thomas Billionaire Benefactor Harlan Crow Bought Citizenship in Island Tax Haven appeared first on The Intercept.

The Australian government has released the declassified version of its highly anticipated 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR), and the war propagandists are delighted. Sydney Morning Herald’s Matthew Knott, most well-known for being told by former prime minister Paul Keating to “do the right thing and drum yourself out of Australian journalism” over his role in Nine Continue reading »