Товарищ

[Isabeau]

Steve Marmel (@marmel.bsky.social)

bsky.app

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Good morning, Comrades!

 

[Soen Eber]

Good morning, Comrades!

It's a little more complex than that. The game Europe was playing always left the door open to REALLY BAD THINGS, because the last big war was mostly manageable.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

It's a little more complex than that.

I see you’re new to memes.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Mob Rule

On Social Media and the Universal Experience of Poverty

www.unpopularfront.news

Evernote Link

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Mob Rule

On Social Media and the Universal Experience of Poverty

www.unpopularfront.news

Evernote Link

/me puts this aside for a deeper read in a better reading chair, first ten paragraphs were great.

 

[Isabeau]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Isabeau]

Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social)

If you made this argument back in the day you were smugly dismissed as an economically illiterate lefty...

bsky.app

The Walmart Effect

New research suggests that the company makes the communities it operates in poorer—even taking into account its famous low prices.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

What Happened Here

It's Very Simple Dialectics

www.unpopularfront.news

Evernote Link

 

[Innula Zenovka]

From Patrons to Plutocrats: Why Superyachts are the New Cathedrals

In our historic past, the ultrawealthy invested in public goods. Today, billionaires buy superyachts to escape public duties. It raises an urgent but unanswered question: what are the ultrarich for?

www.forkingpaths.co

Evernote Link

 

[Khamon]

From Patrons to Plutocrats: Why Superyachts are the New Cathedrals

In our historic past, the ultrawealthy invested in public goods. Today, billionaires buy superyachts to escape public duties. It raises an urgent but unanswered question: what are the ultrarich for?

www.forkingpaths.co

Evernote Link

I believe that citizens of democracies genuinely believe that their governments are obligated to maintain money barns. Americans, for example, believe that social security is (or was before Congress cashed it in as the urban legend goes) a vast investment fund rather than understanding the fact that is has always been funded by the current workforce. Communist governments are supposed to operate as an ultra-wealthy patron to the people. It looks good on paper. But no communist party on the planet actually does the job. Aristocrats and Oligarchs must accept the duty privately but, as the article says, it is too easy these days for them to simply relocate when rebellion brews.

 

[Govi]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The False Gospel of Stuff and Status

We have become disciples of a flawed creed. To chase passion and value people is a much wiser way to live; or Ikigai, Detectorists, and the real meaning of life.

www.forkingpaths.co

Evernote Link

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

Slightly less comical.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Power of Myth

The Centrality of Narrative in Contemporary Politics

www.unpopularfront.news

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The False Gotcha

How "Labor Shortage" Arguments Mask Corporate Exploitation

jacipriano.substack.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I’ve got 99 Problems

And Billionaires Are All of Them

jacipriano.substack.com

But here's the thing: for the first time in American history, we're looking at a generation where the majority of billionaire wealth will come from... wait for it... inheritance.

That's right. Forget the story of the scrappy entrepreneur building something new. We're entering an era of American aristocracy, where the defining feature of the ultra-wealthy isn't innovation or creation but having the right parents. This has never happened before in American history. Even during the Gilded Age, most massive fortunes were first-generation (problematic as they were).

But now? We're creating a permanent billionaire class that doesn't even have to pretend to innovate. They just have to be born. And when they do "innovate," it's usually through financial engineering, market manipulation, regulatory capture, and good old-fashioned rent-seeking.

When your business model is based on extracting value rather than creating it, you're not an innovator, you're a parasite with good PR. And increasingly, you're not even a self-made parasite, you're just someone who inherited a successful parasitic operation from daddy.