i guess i must be weird, but among the least interesting things in politics to me are people’s inspiring personal stories.
i do have to confess, though, i think Kamala’s mom has the best name ever. Shamala. i just love the sound of it.
i wish there were less talk of breaking ceilings and more talk of raising floors.
@Canecittadino@mastodon.world Only the future will tell, but I sure like to hope we’re still tabula rosa enough to remedy what we’ve broken and create something better than all the warts that were. We definitely have plenty to work on. I’m glad to sing on the same choir.
The price mechanism was broken not by communists with price controls but by market enthusiasts, when they allowed purchasing power to diverge very far from rough equality, which undermines completely the normative case for price rationing.
@Canecittadino@mastodon.world No offense, but I recommend more atheism. Our duty is to make a decent world for everyone today — included the people we and our forebears historically excluded and abused. But that is the only payment due. We are not bound to suffer because our predecessors sinned.
@Canecittadino@mastodon.world every thing you say is true, but everything is relative. something broke over the last two decades to a degree it wasn’t broken before.
A provocative graph from a provocative essay by @blair_fix, “From Commodity to Asset: The Truth Behind Rising House Prices” https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/08/22/from-commodity-to-asset-the-truth-behind-rising-house-prices/
A graph showing that, (even) at the 10th percentile of US income, income grew faster than consumer goods (consumer goods prices fell relative to incomes) until 1980, when the pattern reverses and consumer prices rise faster than 10th percentile incomes.
from #ZephyrTeachout https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/economists-kamala-harris-price-gouging/679547/
Text: The other big problem with the textbook economics take on price gouging is the assumption that temporarily higher-priced products will find their way to the people who value them the most. That might be true in a world where everyone had the same amount of money to spend. In the world we actually inhabit, that is not the case. During a power outage, a working-class cancer patient who desperately needs to buy the last generator in stock to keep his medications refrigerated might not be able to outbid a healthy millionaire who just wants to run their air conditioner.
When people talk about how all the big social networks are US, Silicon Valley firms, they overlook OnlyFans. cf @drewharwell https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/onlyfans-bryce-adams-top-earners-creator-economy/
I’ve watched most of the Democratic National Convention thus far, and in the moment found it hopeful and inspiring, even the speeches by political figures I dislike.
But I woke up this morning with a kind of hangover, or really nausea, what you get after eating a lot of tasty but empty calories. 1/
"We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.”
It’s a beautiful line. Spoken by a woman worth 10s of millions, on a stage shared over the course of the convention with at least two billionaires.
I’m not saying the sentiments are fake, or trying to call out hypocrisy. I am saying that it takes some work to reconcile these facts, that some consciousness or self-consciousness, something other than pretending it doesn’t matter, would be helpful. 2/
The speeches really were very inspiring!
But my experience of profound, almost fatal, disillusionment with Democratic politics is a story of inspiring words giving cover to profound betrayals. I’m doing everything I possibly can to maintain a willing suspension of disbelief this time, and to be fair, so far the candidate herself has surprised me positively, on several occasions now. 3/
I do envy the other side just a bit, though.
George W. Bush didn’t speak, or even show, at the RNC. Democrats like to chalk that up of evidence that Trump is so terrible an aberration and rupture that leaders of the kinder, gentler Republican Party that came before are cut out or have the decency to cut themselves out. 4/
But another way to look at it is that George W. Bush led the country through a period of terrible error, a period that has left the country fraying at its seams, a circumstance to which his choices contributed. So maybe his not holding a place of honor at a contemporary convention is a way of communicating to the public that there has been some change, some reform. 5/
George Bush’s presidency was neither the start not the end of the period when the United States dismantled itself, both as an industrial power and as a proud, morally cohesive nation. The Iraq War was one of the largest errors of the period. But it was far from the only or earliest one. /fin
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
“I’m suspicious of government, but I’m even more suspicious of new tech that aims to serve a tiny number of private individuals. Believe it or not, it’s actually easier to change the President or political regime than replace Mark Zuckerberg at Meta. (I’m not exaggerating, he literally cannot be fired by the Board, or anyone else.)” #TedGioia https://www.honest-broker.com/p/10-reasons-why-technological-progress
Text: In 1994, a web platforms was: A community run by tech enthusiasts motivated by fun and curiosity to empower users and provide useful information in a democratic and egalitarian manner while promoting good and avoiding evil In 2024, a web platform is: A digital app run by huge global corporations motivated by profits and growth to spy on users and sell their personal data and maximizing ads at the expense of useful information in a manipulative manner while making concessions to dictators and tyrants when necessary Source: Ted Gioia
What symbol best represents the unrepresentable?
Just canceled Amazon Prime.
It feels like a big step. I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave it canceled for very long. If my household can’t shake its purchase habits, I’ll have to give in again. Even with Prime’s price increases, the shipping would cost more.
But I hope I can persuade the collective us to do our part to shop around on equal terms, rather than let prepaid costs + credit card deals suck us into an increasingly enshittified default.
It’s an experiment. We’ll see how long it lasts.
My dear geeky Mastodonians,
What do you use for your 2FA time-based authenticator app?
I used Google Authenticator for years, but then I had my busted iPhone swapped out and lost all my seeds, some of which I did not have recovery codes for, which has been a real drag. I’d like a thing that backs up to iCloud like everything else in some well-encrypted form. I don’t want to use my password manager. In case that is ever compromised, I want a meaningful second factor.
What say you?
sometimes i think it would be best if Netanyahu were to pull an Idi Amin, but Saudi Arabia would find it harder to give sanctuary to Bibi than it did to that other gentleman.
Trump on the other hand has said he might go to Venezuela, by which he usually means El Salvador, if an electoral loss puts him in carceral jeopardy. plausible enough!
“A big reason why the right talks so much about immigration is that to talk about anything else - climate change, the cost of living, failing public services, unaffordable housing, flatlining real wages and so on - would be to bring capitalism into question. And that it must not do.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2024/08/the-end-of-modernity.html
// see also his explanation why the British center-left no longer talks about “modernisation”. they loved to in the 80s and 90s, when “it meant attacking unions and the poor”.
#MattBruenig points out that the current union certification process amounts to a kind of bureaucratic trench warfare that the National Labor Relations Board lacks the resources to adjudicate. We could massively expand its funding, or better yet, streamline the process of certifying a union with card-check, an Obama campaign promise abandoned due to Congressional resistance. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/opinion/starbucks-union-government.html
Text: But even more important is to revive and pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to be certified if a majority of workers sign certification cards. This would assess workers' support or opposition to unionization without requiring the government to run costly elections. The legislation would also allow an arbitrator to approve first contracts when bargaining breaks down, preventing companies from dragging out negotiations endlessly, refusing to sign collective bargaining agreements and then assisting efforts to decertify unions — as has been the case with Starbucks.
This post is hitting my socials right now.
Bernie is a Moses figure.