American Mirrors & The Echoes of Empire: The historical record & the Rockefellers’ campaign against Peter Lougheed in Alberta

Coda to the 6-part series Alberta’s Rockefeller Coups Regan Boychuk Since a small and relatively weak people living alongside a great and powerful people necessarily devotes much time to study and observation of its large neighbour, Canadians probably understand Americans better than Americans understand Canadians. This situation has its dangers. (Round Table 1941bp. 353) The act […]

Alberta’s Rockefeller coups, Part 6: The Financial Frauds of American Empire Are Driving Climate Disaster, But Both Could Still Be Thwarted

Regan Boychuk Author’s Note: John D. Rockefeller Sr. had the last laugh about American anti-trust law and the muck-raking media before descending to Dante’s 9th Circle in May 1937. The oil industry’s center of gravity had begun shifting towards Texas after Spindletop in 1901, but Rockefeller coups across North America in 1931, 1935, 1938, and 1940 […]

How trade secrets swallowed your right to know

Originally published at pluralistic.net Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license Cory Doctorow If you’ve never had a fight over the phrase “intellectual property,” count yourself lucky, you normie, you. In the land of Free Software and Free Culture, “IP” is fightin’ words. Not unreasonably, mind you. “IP” was a deliberately ploy, undertaken by […]

Bichler & Nitzan, ‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’

Manuscripts Don’t Burn SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN September 2023 Keywords censorship, ideology, marxism, neoliberalilsm, peer review, plagiarism Citation Bichler, Shimshon, and Nitzan, Jonathan. 2023. ‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’. Review of Capital as Power, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 175–189. Download PDF 1     Flat Reality The French Revolution changed the world. In the new order, the masters […]

Bichler & Nitzan, ‘The Capital as Power Approach: An Invited-then-Rejected Interview’

The Capital as Power Approach An Invited-then-Rejected Interview with Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN September 2023 Keywords capital accumulation, capitalization, interview, Marxism, modes of power, stagflation, systemic fear, value theory Citation Bichler, Shimshon, and Nitzan, Jonathan. 2023. ‘The Capital as Power Approach: An Invited-then-Rejected Interview with Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan […]

Alberta’s Rockefeller Coups, Part 5: Canada is an American Protectorate & Alberta is an Imperial Bezzle

Regan Boychuk Green Party of Alberta energy critic Author’s note Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The suggestion that a semi-secret conspiracy of racists transferred imperial control of Canada from the British to the Americans on the eve of the Second World War seems well worth skepticism. But doubt will melt as we meet the elite […]

A Modern Anarchism (Part 1): Anarchist Analysis

Daniel Baryon Originally published at libcom.org Author’s Note The following is the script of the video I published on my channel Anark. If you would like to watch that video, it is here Minor edits have been made to the script to instead refer to itself as an essay instead of a video. Other than […]

Why Consumption Taxes (VATs) are Insanely Regressive

Originally published at Wealth Economics Steve Roth Following the community of Socks (?s) or “social democrats” out there on the interwebs (this is definitely my economic tribe), in articles, and in books, there’s a particular stance on a particular issue that I find perplexing, even anti-progressive. They’re generally quite keen on using “value-added” consumption/sales taxes […]

How the Sacklers rigged the game

Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Two quotes to ponder as you read “Purdue’s Poison Pill,” Adam Levitin’s forthcoming Texas Law Review paper: “Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.” (W. Guthrie) “Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.” (H. Balzac) (paraphrase) Some background. Purdue was/is the […]

Free Speech For Me, Not You

Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix They say that Americans love two things: freedom … and guns. The trouble with guns is obvious. The trouble with freedom is more subtle, and boils down to doublespeak. When a good old boy defends his ‘freedom’, there’s a good chance he has a hidden […]

Mouré, ‘Costly Efficiencies: Healthcare Spending, COVID-19, and the Public/Private Healthcare Debate’

Costly Efficiencies Healthcare Spending, COVID-19, and the Public/Private Healthcare Debate CHRIS MOURÉ May 2022 Abstract Proponents of private healthcare often claim that the private sector is more ‘efficient’ at delivering healthcare services. This paper tests the privatization thesis in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a large sample of countries, I investigate how healthcare […]

Owen Lynch, ‘ Book Review: Capital as Power’

Originally published at ownlynch.org Owen Lynch Part A: Overview 1. A Need for Better Theory If you are a well-educated person in the 21st century, you probably have conflicted views. On the one hand, the grand socialist project has had… problems… over the last century. Serious problems. Problems that kill and hurt people, and are […]

Making culture rational … with power

Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon A survey of academic writing on the business of culture will show that authors seldomly restrain themselves from making predictions or giving recommendations to the hypothetical economic actor. This offering of future-oriented arguments to an audience should not be surprising. The disciplines of economics, business, management studies […]

Private Equity has sabotaged every attempt to end emergency room “surprise billing”

Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow “Surprise billing” is when you go to the ER and discover that the doc, the specialist, or the test you got were performed by “independent contractors” who are not part of the hospital’s deal with your insurer. It means bills for thousands (literally) for an ice-pack. https://www.healthexec.com/topics/healthcare-economics/5751-ice-pack-hefty-bills-await-patients-just-walking-er The surprise […]

Jeffrey Williamson’s Terms of Trade

Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Jeffrey Williamson‘s (2011) book Trade and Poverty: When the Third World Fell Behind is one of the most interesting attempts to explain the ‘great divergence’ between rich and poor countries. It is a shame, then, that it is marred by his use of Mickey Mouse numbers. In simplified terms, Williamson argues that […]

Suaste Cherizola, ‘From Commodities to Assets’

From Commodities to Assets Capital as Power and the Ontology of Finance JESÚS SUASTE CHERIZOLA May 2021 Abstract Assets are a crucial concept of the practice and mindset of the capitalist class. Critical analyses of capitalism, however, tend to admit that the exchange of commodities is the foundation of the analysis of capitalism. This article […]