"Progressives" betray their mandate

 

All of "the squad" voted to fund the Ukrainian war. All. Where is the peace movement? Where is the legislation requiring no NATO for Ukraine, and actual negotiations with Russia? Meanwhile:

Absolutely heart-wrenching pics of deplorable Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Only joking, they are pics of NATO bombing Serbia, Libya and Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/mvMur1s0Up

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 11, 2022

 

Thorstein Veblen and maintenance...

Veblen scholar Jonathon Larson comments on Thorstein Veblen’s 1914 book, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts. :

…maintenance is a chore. The only solution at a public level is to make maintenance a paid routine. Two years working as a surgical orderly taught me the very high value of organized, institutionalized, maintenance routines. Actually, there is no alternative. Better, good maintenance is the poor man’s way to prosperity. If taking care of your toys makes them last twice as long, you become materially more prosperous….

We live in a culture dominated by lies. They make us hated globally, they have successfully destroyed the greatest human achievement ever—the science-based USA industrial classes, they have turned medicine into an almost wholly corrupt scam, they have reduced education to expensive brain damage, etc. In perhaps the towering Leisure Class achievement in recent academic publishing, a guy by the name of Frankfurt wrote a book where he parses the distinction between lying and bullshitting. Hard to top the Leisure Classes when it comes to elevating vice into chin-stroking scholarship. Mere taxonomy, would snort Veblen.

Which is why I argue that the Industrial Revolution was made possible by the Protestant love for truth. You want to produce interchangeable parts, you must devote considerable time to the harsh mistress called accuracy. To survive in an accurate society, you simply must love truth—at least on the job. And so we see that industrialization in Great Britain was brought to us by the DISSENTING Protestants. It is no damn wonder that Marx never even began to understand industrialization and further muddied the waters by labeling it a branch of “capitalism”.

Inventions that would not exist without black women... GPS!

 

Inventions that would not exist without Black Women. pic.twitter.com/OIABdEaqas

— Africa Archives ™ (@Africa_Archives) October 3, 2022

What you don't have, and why

 This short history of socialism explains a lot. Excerpt:

"While visiting Denmark recently, I developed an infection in my hand and wanted to see a doctor. The hotel in the provincial city where I was staying directed me to a local hospital. I was quickly shown into a consulting room, where a nurse questioned me and told me to wait. Only a few minutes passed before a physician entered the room, examined me, and said in excellent English, yes, indeed, I did need an antibiotic. He promptly swiveled in his chair, opened a cabinet behind him, took out a bottle of pills, handed it to me, and told me to take two a day for 10 days. When I thanked him and asked where I should go to pay for the consultation and the medicine, he responded simply, “We have no facilities for that.”

"No facilities for that.

"It’s a phrase that comes back to me every time I’m reminded how, in the world’s richest nation, we still don’t have full national health insurance. And that’s far from the only thing we’re missing. In a multitude of ways, we’re known for having a far weaker social safety net than many other wealthy countries and behind that lies a history in which the Espionage Act played a crucial role."

 

Meanwhile, in Sacramento...

The local electricity provider is publicly-owned SMUD (the Sacramento Municipal Utility District). Surrounding communities use PG&E. SMUD is 35% cheaper than PG&E. PG&E executives, while paid orders-of-magnitude more than SMUD execs, have lately been compelled to consult with criminal attorneys because they might face negligent homicide charges for short-changing maintenance that led to enormous forest fires and explosions of gas pipelines (San Bruno). 

Socialism...works better and is cheaper.

Steve Keen's talk about climate change and economics

 

Can you trust the media?

 

Busting the Deficit Myth

 

Also worth a look: Central Bank Myths (about inflation) Drag Down the Global Economy. The economics that justifies the draconian "inflation fight" really is bunk. Excerpt: "World Bank chief economist Michael Bruno and William Easterly asked, “Is inflation harmful to growth?” With data from 31 countries for 1961-94, they concluded, “The ratio of fervent beliefs to tangible evidence seems unusually high on this topic, despite extensive previous research.”