Game of Thrones, Agency, and the Arrogance of the Present Day
Peter Campbell argues that Game of Thrones represents a major break in literature because the characters have agency. Um, seriously?
Read more...Category Archives: Social values
Edward Snowden Testimony at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Snowden’s big messages were familiar: the lack of effective supervision of the US surveillance state, the scope and methods of surveillance, and the ability of citizens to protect themselves if they use strong enough encryption of their data and their communications. But it was striking to see, even in such a formal setting, how seriously European officials took his remarks.
Read more...Was Marx Right?
We participated in a Room for Debate forum at the New York Times, on the topic of “Was Marx Right?” Readers are likely to say, “But of course!” Yet Marx had such a large opus and his forecasts were so bold that any fair reading has to come to more nuanced conclusion.
Read more...Joe Firestone: Inequality – Envy or Honest Outrage?
Yves here. Even though I applaud Joe for his effort to take on the “class warfare as jealousy” meme, I think it needs to be attacked much more aggressively.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Think Big, Think Bold – A Green New Deal
Yves here. One of the common frustrations expressed by the NC commentariat is that we spend a lot of time on diagnosis and not as much on solutions. I actually don’t think our emphasis on forensics and analysis is misplaced. Too often, people are uncomfortable with examining deep-seated problems and thus rush to devise remedies that are incomplete or worse, counterproductive.
A second frustration, which I sympathize with, is that many of the solutions recommended by economists to our current problems (income disparity, high unemployment, increasing looting of the private sector and government) is based on restoring growth, which will make redistribution and other measures less contentious. Readers correctly point out that more growth is a 20th century remedy, when the 21st century is faces with global warming (meaning an need to start containing and better yet, reducing energy consumption) and resource constraints.
Yanis Varoufakis addresses both issues in his outline of what he calls a “Green New Deal”.
Read more...How Do the Powerful Get the Idea That They ‘Deserve’ More? Lessons from the… Laboratory
The distribution of power and wealth can be, and usually is, highly arbitrary and independent of ‘marginal productivity’, ‘risk taking’ or, indeed, any personal characteristic of those who rise to the top. So how do those at the top convince themselves that they are more deserving?
Read more...Cathy O’Neil: Optimizing for Einstein and Other Homo-Erotic Theories
Yves here. This post may seem to be outside the ambit of normal Naked Capitalism fare. But have faith! As you’ll see, this post discusses how neoliberal thinking has come to drive how some people approach dating and marriage.
Read more...More on Our Terrible Experience with Yoast SEO Review: Yoast Tries to Escalate (Updated)
Normally, I would not continue to give readers the blow-by-blow on our outstanding complaints with the company Yoast, which is best known for its Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin, over a review of our site
Read more...Do Not Hire SEO Firm Yoast: Our Terrible Experience With Yoast SEO Review
Our bad experience with vendor known as Yoast, in a perverse case of synchronicity, illustrates our theme of the crapification of everything. Nevertheless, we suspect you’ll find our shaggy dog story to be entertaining.
Read more...Columbia Tosses Out Star Faculty Researchers for Failing to Pay 80% of Their Own Way
From a reader: “two eminent professors with decades of serious work have been dumped unceremoniously by Columbia because they could no longer bring in the grant millions for the university business to extract rent from. This is Ivy-league neoliberalism at its worst thanks to the spineless Democrats/Obama White House allowing government science funding to get pummeled while Bush’s tax cuts are preserved. “
Read more...Bill Black Slams New York Times for Wink and Nod Endorsement of Criminal Conduct
Bill Black is so steamed about a recent New York Times story on the indictment of former partners of the failed law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf that he’s written two posts about it. And they say a great deal about what is rotten at the New York Times.
Read more...Bill Moyers and Ian Haney Lopez Discuss the Use of the Race Card in Politics
This Bill Moyers segment provides an in-depth discussion of race. Lopez focuses on how both parties use what he calls the racial dog whistle to mobilize voters.
Read more...When “Job Creators” Create Lousy Jobs
On the increased reliance on short term, out of state labor.
Read more...What Good Are Children?
Yves here. This post does a nice job, if unintentionally, of showing the limits of using economics as the lens for viewing well-established social norms and biological urges.
Read more...Teach For America’s Unspoken Alliance with the One Percent
Yves here. Teach for America is a classic example of a ploy used by wealthy right-wing interests: find reputable, well-liked left-leaning organizations that are having financial troubles, rescue them, and turn their agenda to one more to their new patrons’ liking.
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