#for an immigrant child is the goal generational wealth?

[praeteritus-memories-muses]

Name: Diego Brando

Series: Jojo's Bizarre Adventures

Continuity: Manga

Age: 20

Height: 6'2"

Birthday: April 4th 1870

Birthplace: Unnamed countryside, England

Orientation: Bisexual

Species: Human / Stand user

Occupation: Horse Jockey

Father: Dario Brando

Mother: unnamed (deceased)

Stand: Scary Monsters

Bio:

Born to 2nd generation Italian immigrants, Diego was not a wanted child. His parents were dirt poor and couldn't afford to have a child so when he was born, his father tried to drown him in the river only for his mother to come and rescue him. Upon saving the child she grew to love dearly, his father left their home where he resented him greatly for it.

His mother changed their last names to 'Brando' where they worked on a farm and lived in the barn. While they had not a single pence to their name, Diego would learn to bond deeply with horses. Unlike humans, horses were innocent and strong animals. A single horse could kill a man, yet they were respected and strong which was something Diego wished to be. He was so good with horses that at a young age, even the most violent and agressive horses would warm up to him.

As a child, Diego was kind and resourceful due to his upbringing. His mother showered him with love and to keep his dignity even in the worst of times. Though his innocence would be ripped away when his mother hand to feed him boiling hot soup from her hands while everyone just watched. Why did people have to be so cruel? Why were humans despicable as to let an innocent child and his mother suffer in this world and why did absolutely no one want to help them? It made Diego only withdrawl from people and more into horses and other farm animals.

Diego's mother had to do a lot for them to survive, but she held her pride. It was something she made sure her son knew, to always keep his pride even when he was covered in mud. Yet his mother could never see where he's gotten to now, as she passed away when he was only six years old due to a tetanus infection which Diego believed to have come from the humiliation the two of them had to suffer because of the cruelty of humanity.

Following the death of his mother, he was dragged into a dirty orphanage that was arguably worse than a dirty barn. Even on nights he was freezing cold and starving, fire was in his eyes and he refused to die in humilitation. He was going to the top, and he would never be the poor Diego Brando again.

He'd first climb the social ladder by charming a high standing family into being their stable boy. Obviously they never took him in as their son, orphans from the East End were typically adopted for work in a factory, farm or mansion rather than actual love.

Starting as a teenager, he'd enter horse races and built his way further up by earning trophies and awards for his gift with horses. Eventually, he'd earn such a high status that he was deemed 'Prince of horse racing'. Yet it wasn't enough for Diego, he needed more.

He will take any opportunity for wealth and a high status that he married an elderly woman for her money. Yet he isn't cruel entirely, he does have a heart which is why he hasn't poisoned and killed his elderly wife.

Mostly, he will take every opportunity he can to use and even kill people for the sake of his own goals. Diego is standoffish, vain, inconsiderate and overall not exactly the person one would picture as England's prince of horse racing. Yet there is a softer side to him. He can still be the kind boy he was and he does have empathy towards children who are just like him who are pigons forever trapped in their cage known as the East End.

Diego's stand is Scary Monsters. The stand can turn him or anything else into a dinosaur. It's a morphing stand and while premarily Diego is in full control, it can take the form of a Utahraptor with it's colors resembling Diego's favorite colors and his nickname of 'Dio' written all across the back and tail. Diego can control the rate at which someone turns and whether the form is only half. To protect himself, he can even turn himself into a fossil to act as a shield for himself.

In an alternate universe where everything is the same but his stand, Diego's stand is different. His stand in an alternate timeline is The World. The World is a stand that takes a humanoid form in yellow armor that can deal heavy punches and fast precision. The stand's biggest feature is that it can stop time for five seconds, and no one is able to move when time stops unless they have a stand that overrides the time stopping abilities.

Currently, Diego has entered the Steel Ball Run. A horse race run by Steven Steel and the president of the United States, Funny Valentine. The prize is fifty million dollars and Diego needs that so he can be the most sucsessful man in all of England or even the world itself!

[melsie-sims]

Let's meet the first ladies of Plumbob Falls...

As per the rules, I randomized a number between two and eight to decide how many sims would take on the treacherous boat ride across the sea to these unfamiliar lands. I got six, and proceeded to create some founders. They each have pretty different personalities and will be able to focus on different goals for the challenge.

Here are their stories...

Nineka Sale is the fearless leader of the group and she will get shit done! Although she herself was born in SimCity, she is the child of poor immigrants and has a general idea of what it's like to start all over with barely more than the clothes on her back.

Some may say she's a bit young for the position, but her degree in political science from Sim State University and her hands-on experience in judicial activism makes her a perfect candidate! It also helps that she's still young enough to make a ton of babies in the future... (The government didn't mention that part to her...)

She is the only sim allowed to have a job at the beginning of the challenge. Her leadership role automatically unlocks one spot in the political career.

Nineka has the Ambitious, Perfectionist and Outgoing traits. Her aspiration is to be Friend of the World.

Some say Andrea only got in because of her family's social influence. Andrea knows she doesn't have much left in SimCity. Her father has filed for bankruptcy after squandering their wealth on gambling and frivolous purchases. What is she supposed to do now?

She doesn't have very many skills, but she can surely get herself a husband that'll do all of the work for the both of them.

One thing Andy has always enjoyed is reading, especially romance novels. She loves sitting outside in the sun with a good book... and maybe one day she could write her own story. A new land is sure to provide plenty of inspiration!

Andrea has the Romantic, Lazy and Bookworm traits. She has the aspiration to be a bestselling author.

Cooking is Hailey's first love. She's also your go-to for positive vibes! She's always looking on the bright side, and her optimism has finally paid off. When she lost her little café to a fire a few years ago, she had no money to rebuild and no idea what to do next. Her luck turned around when she learned about the group heading across the sea to found a new town.

Hailey will be in charge of keeping the group fed, and maybe one day she'll be able to open up her cafe again in a new location. Regardless of what the future holds, she's sure it'll be an exciting adventure!

Growing a family is also something Hailey wants desperately. After spending most of her childhood in foster care, she can't wait to be a mom to three, four, maybe even five little ones!

Hailey has the Family-Oriented, Foodie and Cheerful traits. Her aspiration is to have a Big Happy Family.

[tobiasdrake]

Dragon’s Eye on DuckTales - The Economics of Scrooge’s Money Bin

Alright, before we can get into the events of “The Great Dime Chase”, I feel like it’s important to finally address the elephant in the room. That’s right, we are going to talk about the iconic Money Bin and how it relates to Scrooge’s status as an “ethical billionaire”.

I’m putting this in its own post because it’s very lengthy and has little to do with the events of the episode itself.

It is impossible to think of Scrooge McDuck without thinking of his iconic Money Bin. This is a massive silo of a vault, filled to bursting with all the liquid wealth Scrooge has in his possession, capped off with a diving board. This is Scrooge’s ultimate ambition: to accumulate as much wealth as he possible can, just so that he can swim in it.

Right off the bat, the money in the Bin is interesting because it’s generally depicted as a huge collection of gold coins. DuckTales takes place in the fictional city of Duckberg situated in what is explicitly stated to be the United States of America. Scrooge is living the ideal of the American Dream: here, even a penniless immigrant child from Scotland can make his fortune. Or so the legend goes.

Here’s the thing: gold coins are not a commonly accepted currency in the United States. Neither is gold itself, actually. In fact, the United States Dollar itself provides the standard for most forms of global currency and has since around the 1970′s. Gold doesn’t really have any meaning as a form of currency anymore.

Arguably, this is for the best as Scrooge’s character goes. In fact, if the contents of Scrooge’s Money Bin were not supposed to be actual currency, but were instead a pile of various shiny baubles and trinkets Scrooge was purchasing with all of his liquid capital, that would actually reflect very well on Scrooge.

Because this is something that’s important to remember when talking about the ethics of billionaires: a person’s net worth is tied up not only in the money they have on hand, but also in their assets. The properties they own, the businesses they’ve invested in, they estates they reside in, any especially valuable possessions, all of these contribute to net worth.

Being a billionaire doesn’t necessarily mean you’re storing millions upon millions of dollars in your checking account. But it doesn’t mean you’re not, either. A billionaire has, on average, about $600 million in liquid capital. This combines with their investments and assets to form their net worth.

This is wealth that billionaires are simply holding onto for the sake of having it, with the goal of growing their wealth. And, unfortunately, that is what we have to qualify the Money Bin as due to the story’s insistence on treating the gold coins within it as liquid currency.

Make no mistake: they may aesthetically be gold coins, but the wealth inside Scrooge’s Money Bin is frequently referred to as spendable money. The gold coin appearance is iconic, but the story consistently treats the Money Bin as though, if you were to make off with a sack full of coins from it, you could pop down to your local Honda dealership and treat yourself to a shiny new sports car. It’s even established that real currency is mixed in there with the gold coins; one later episode revolves around a theft of 87 cents from inside the Bin.

The contents of the Money Bin are not shiny baubles that Scrooge frivolously burns through his liquid capital buying. They are his liquid capital. This is what Scrooge does with his money: he piles it into the Bin and he swims in it.

And that’s the central problem with Scrooge McDuck, the “Ethical Billionaire”.

See, here’s the thing. Personal finance and national/global economics are two very different animals. On a personal level, it is good to save some money for a rainy day. $500 here, $1,000 there, that’s no big deal in the big picture but it can save your life in an emergency.

So we tend to think highly of the idea of saving money. Scrooge saves more money than anybody! That demonstrates how responsible he is with his cash, doesn’t it?

Well. No. Because Scrooge isn’t saving $1,000 for a rainy day. He’s accumulating wealth on a massive scale, with the single goal of adding every cent he can to his Money Bin. He is far beyond the realm of personal responsibility; he’s not saving money, he’s hoarding it.

And that presents a problem because of the way that economics work. See, here’s the thing about money: there is a finite amount of it. There is only so much money to go around. We may decry certain transactions as “wasteful” or “irresponsible”, but when people are spending money for any reason, that is good for the economy.

The strength of the economy is not driven by the amount of wealth that the richest billionaire holds. It’s driven by the amount of wealth that is flowing through it, changing hand after hand.

When you give a dollar to a merchant as part of an iPhone payment, that merchant pays that dollar to an employee. The employee takes the dollar and hands it to the local grocer for this week’s grocery run. The cashier hands it off to the business, who gives that dollar to a local farmer for supplies. The farmer hands that dollar off to his neighbor, a mechanic, for fixing his tractor. The neighbor gives the dollar to a neighborhood kid for mowing his lawn, and the kid puts it in a vending machine to buy a soda.

At an economic level, a dollar cannot be wasted by being spent. Its entire value is in its purchasing power. It is a universally-accepted ticket of purchasing, passed from person to person in exchange for goods and services. As long as money is spent, it continues to circulate through the economy and this is what defines an economy’s strength.

When economies start to falter, when businesses close down and unemployment goes up and homelessness increases and government services shut down, it happens because not enough of the finite money is being circulated through the economy. When people cannot exchange money in a capitalist society, that society breaks down.

This is the dark secret of Scrooge’s Money Bin. Every dollar in his Bin is finite wealth that has been removed from the economy. The 2017 show tries to present this as a mark of Scrooge being an ethical billionaire; Scrooge has no ulterior motives or political agendas or grandiose ambitions beyond collecting money for money’s sake.

But his Money Bin is actually the single most unethical thing that a person can possibly do with wealth. He made his money by being tougher than the toughies, smarter than the smarties, and most importantly, he made it square. But by hoarding it the way he does, he is picking the pockets of society. He fancies himself a cheapskate, but there is nobody on the planet who wastes money more frivolously than Scrooge McDuck.

Every billionaire has a McDuck Money Bin of their own. And we are all the lesser for it.

[albarivas]

ana de armas, cis female, she/her    —    whenever i see alba rivas meandering down agnes street la escalera by pablo alborán starts to play inside my head. maybe it is the vibe they give off. bullet journals, colorful dresses, hairstyles with bandanas ;   you know ? artistic impressions is what keeps them interested in agnes. i heard they are a thirty-three year old teacher at bright future. they look like the kind of person who would make you do a vision board. 

hi again, it’s ella again. okay so i had cameron (the lily james) but tbh she’s a new muse and right now i don’t have the brain to develop a muse from scratch but i still want to write and that’s why i decided to bring alba, one of my oldest muses. i’m so happy to give her a new home and i can’t wait for her to meet all of your characters.

basics

NAME: alba carolina rivas borges

NICKNAME: al, albie

GENDER: cis female

PLACE OF BIRTH: boca raton, florida

DATE OF BIRTH: april 19, 1988

AGE: thirty-thirty

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual

OCCUPATION: teacher at bright future

background

tw: illness, cheating

CHILDHOOD

her story starts between cuba and spain. her mother, carolina, fled from cuba and her father immigrated from spain with no friends or family and only with a few dollars. the two newcomers were matched by fate and just a year later they welcomed their daughter, alba.

two years later, a son completed the rivas family. they didn’t have much and often had to deal with homesickness and many times they considered moving to spain, but eventually they decided to stay.

it was a big change for both julián and carolina. he used to work as a lawyer back in spain and carolina had almost graduated from med school. now in the united states they both had to start from zero.

her mother traveled an hour from boca raton to palm spring every day where she worked cleaning those luxurious houses.  her father got his credentials to become a spanish teacher and taught in the local high school.

alba always knew she didn’t have much. she grew up going with her mom to those huge houses and from a young age she understood what wealth could buy. however, alba never envied those who had a lot more than her. in fact, her childhood best friend was the girl that lived in the house her mother cleaned. the two were inseparable.

ADOLESCENCE AND COLLEGE YEARS

alba excelled as a student. education was something her parents always deemed as important and so she made it her goal to make them proud. 

she earned a spot in a prestigious public high school. as a teenager, she was the model child. always listening to her parents, rarely giving them problems. she had an active social life, she went on a couple of dates and she was part of several groups.

these qualities eventually earned her a place at nyu. moving to new york was something she’d never considered. she liked florida, and her family were there but her parents convinced her that this would be a great opportunity and that she could comeback.

becoming a teacher was her ambition. she admired her father for doing it and she knew from a young age that she wanted to teach children. 

to make ends meet, she got a job as a waitress and she really didn’t have a social life as she worked and studied full time. there was no time for friendship and even less time for dating.

it was during one day at work that she met someone that changed her life. she met another student while she was working who asked her out but she refused, however, he came back and did the same thing every night until one day she finally accepted.

one date turned into two and then three until soon people couldn’t see one without the other. most people thought they wouldn’t last, their personalities and values were too different. he came from a wealthy family, the typical spoiled kid that was set to inherit his parents’ fortune someday, the one that always featured on page six with a different woman every night. meanwhile, alba came from a working-class family, daughter of immigrants who always had to work to get what she had in life. despite the skepticism, they proved everyone wrong.

at twenty-two, alba graduated with a degree in early childhood education and began working as a teacher.

ADULTHOOD

her relationship with this guy (i dont have a name for him lmao) was better than ever and after dating for three years, he proposed and alba said yes as she was convinced she’d found her other half.

however, not everything was perfect. his family didn’t like her and things only got worse after they got engaged. the couple married only a year later. they left new york and moved to florida where they bought one of those houses alba always had dreamed to have and the best part is that they were neighbors with her childhood best friend.

but all good things must come to an end, and soon her fairytale turned into a nightmare. the relationship with her in-laws was awful which eventually caused tension in their marriage. they began to fight more often and he started to spend more time at his office than at home. however, she was determined to make their marriage work, a love like theirs couldn’t end like this, she wouldn’t allow it.

tw cheating: one day, alba returned to their home early and what she saw was heartbreaking. there he was, in bed with none other but her childhood best friend. heartbroken, alba refused to accept any of his excuses and immediately filed for divorce, to the joy of her in-laws. end of tw.

after her divorce, alba moved to california where she started a year course at stanford. she planned to stay there but that when she received news from home.

tw illness: her father was very sick, and her parents had decided to move to islebury, rhode island. without anything holding her back, she packed up her stuff and moved here as well so she could help her mother with her dad. end of tw.

she’s been living here for three years now and works as a teacher at bright future.

personality

She has the ability to see the good in almost anyone or anything and tends to sympathize with even the most unfriendly person. She often hides the extreme depth of feelings from her, even from herself, until circumstances elicit a passionate response. 

She has a deep sense of idealism that comes from a strong personal sense of right and wrong. She sees the world as a place full of possibilities and potentials and is governed by her intuition. She is quite reserved and is not easily manipulated.

She is a good listener and considerate, they try to care for and understand others in a deep way. She can be very calm and intuitive with the people around her, being able to search for hidden meanings in the actions and words of others.

Of course, all of life is not rosy and Alba is not exempt from suffering the same disappointments and frustrations that are common to others. She tends to be a perfectionist and often strives for personal ideals that can be exhausting or very difficult to obtain.

headcanons

she’s a bookworm. her favorite book is the persuasion by jane austen

she speaks fluent spanish

alba has a beautiful white persian cat named nube

she loves wearing bandanas in her hair

claims she’s allergic to strawberries, she’s not. she just hates them and that’s easier than explaining why

connections

Younger brother: I’m gonna make a wanted connection because I love this dynamic. He is two years younger than her and she adores him. She tries to stay in touch with him and in general, they are close.

Ex-best friend: they met as children and grew up together, they knew everything about the other. alba’s mother worked as a housekeeper and she used to go with her sometimes, that’s how they met. this person came from a different background, she lived in one of those expensive houses alba could only dream to own. their friendship was so strong that they even applied to the same university (although her friend was not accepted). alba considered this person as the sister she never had, but then she did the worst thing in the world, she slept with alba’s husband. they haven’t spoken since she found out.

Ex-husband: They divorced two years ago, after alba found out he had been cheating on her with her best friend. they met while she was a student at NYU and were together for three years before getting engaged and married. he comes from a wealthy family, the typical perfect american family. their relationship was never approved by his parents. she hasn’t spoken to him since the divorce.

Best Friendish: Okay, so this is a tricky one because her actual best friend turned into Judas and slept with her husband, but maybe this person is the closest she has to a best friend. she trusts this person and since her divorce, this is the only person that she has been able to speak without limitations.

Bad influence: Alba has never been one to go to many parties or even to drink, but this person is the only one that can convince her to have a good time.

Co-workers/Parents: She works as a teacher at bright future, maybe your character works there or their kids go/went there.

Neighbor: self-explanatory

Unlikely friendship: The two have different personalities, but somehow, both have managed to get along and form a weird friendship.

Hook ups: She’s not really the relationship kind bc she’s always busy but once in a while she hooks up with people ghdghdhgd (open to everyone)

Flirtationship: they act like friends, but cannot help to throw flirty looks or comments at each other.

Unrequited: It could go either way, I’m fine to plot it out. I’m an angst hoe sooo

Bad tinder date: after her divorce, her friends tried to set her up with someone but it didn’t go well. There was nothing wrong about her date, but she wasn’t ready and in the end it was a very uncomfortable situation for them.

One night stand: she was drunk, he/she was drunk too. They didn’t plan it but happened and now whenever they see each other in town it’s a bit awkward.

[betwixtofficial]

Hello! Day 14 question: is about the Mafia Werewolves (I've been waiting to get to them I love the concept so much): what are the main dynamics in the Zaccarda family? What drives Luca to want to take his own family down? What makes him confident he can?

The Zaccardas in general are pretty stereotypical mafia.  A chunk of the family lives in southern Italy,  and a chunk of the family lives in Skyway City,  or the towns west of it.    The family in Italy are big fish in little ponds.   They don’t hold much power beyond the scope of their small city,  but they hold great power over their family,  including the American branch.  When they immigrated to America during the immigration rush in the 1800′s  it was right at the cusp of Skyway City (seattle)  becoming a major western hub.  Their power grew with the city.   (There will be some verrrry loose seattle history here)   They started out involved in the brothels of the logging industry and then very firmly took hold of the burgeoning fake fashion industry sometime in the 60′s.   They run sweatshops and prostitution rings.     Somehow,   (i haven’t figured out yet)  one of them discovered magic and it quickly became a family obsession.   At some point they captured a werewolf.  Figured out how werewolf bites work,  (some werewolves are bitten, some are born),  figured out how to transfer a bite to a serum.  And created a bunch of Mafia werewolves. 

Not all of the Zaccardas are aware that there are werewolves in their midst.  It is reserved for the elite of the family now.  The ones chosen to take power by their elders. Luca is one of these, showing leadership and intelligence from a young age.  Also his very pushy mother had something to do with him being chosen without being properly vetted,  seeing as he has such a strong moral compass.

 Luca is intelligent and thoughtful.   He also has a very strong sense of right and wrong and a very strong sense of familial duty and loyalty that war within him constantly.   For him to turn on his family like this takes an incredible fortitude of conviction.  In his eyes he is doing it for the salvation of his family and that is how he justifies turning on them.  It’s for their own good.    He has the confidence of an oldest child who has been trusted with a lot of responsibility from a young age.  He’s confident because he’s been successful in everything he’s tried previously,  and he has a plan that’s ready to be set in motion.   His goal is to preserve the family status and wealth and cut out everything illegal and immoral and he’s convinced he can do it.

[banshee-in-velvet]

As human-caused climate change becomes an increasingly tangible and impactful part of our lives, climate change deniers are being forced into obscurity. The same political groups, mostly right-wing, who historically discredited the veracity of climate science, are now faced with overwhelming evidence that climate change is real and serious. But these groups are still here, as are their ideologies; they have simply adjusted their messaging. Climate denialism is a dangerous ideology, but the way these groups have appropriated climate change and environmental concerns in the modern age is subtler and even more insidious, shedding light on a resurgent dark legacy of environmentalism that must be confronted and eradicated, called eco-fascism. How do we tackle it?

—

In terms of its political and economic implications, the challenge of climate change is incompatible with the precepts of traditionally right-wing political groups, who are traditionally married to the ideologies of expanded individual liberties, free markets and small government. Climate change inevitably requires governments to spend and regulate more, and for political parties more dogmatically opposed to such action, like the Republican Party in the US, denying that climate change is a problem worth intervening for becomes a convenient and attractive weapon of choice.

Today, the irrefutable evidence of climate change has made climate denialism redundant in most of the world. Climate deniers have very little to stand on anymore, and most major political parties in the world have abandoned denial rhetoric.

But the political precepts of these groups have not changed, and as climate change becomes a larger part of our lives, far-right politicians and groups have started to appropriate environmental narratives to further their goals in other areas. There is growing interest among political scientists in the emergence of what is being termed eco-fascism, an ideology that marries environmentalism with more extreme right-wing social and political trends.

Eco-fascism is not a new phenomenon, but as lawmakers from across the political spectrum begin to internalise the reality of climate change, environmental policy considerations will take on much more prominent roles in legislation. There is a real threat that far-right political parties and extremist groups and individuals could weaponise climate change and environmental concerns to fuel and justify their own social and political vision of the world. This could be in the form of bolder anti-immigration laws, more stringent population control measures or even outright violence and oppression.

Twisting environmental narratives to validate far-right ideologies and violence sounds dystopian, but it is already happening. Often, these justifications are based on inaccurate or nonexistent science, and only serve to satisfy the grievances of unscrupulous leaders or unstable individuals. As climate change begins to take hold of our lives in ever-more intricate ways, a new type of environmentalism could emerge, one that is marked by hatred or distrust of outsiders, tribalism and violence. This brand of environmentalism is dangerous, and it needs to be stamped out early by politicians and public institutions.

Eco-Fascism: The Far-Right & The Environment

In April 2021, the Attorney General of the US state of Arizona sued the Biden administration for failing in its duty to protect the environment. The lawsuit was based on one grievance in particular that the Attorney General’s office had with federal policy: immigration laws.

Biden has made efforts to overturn his predecessor Donald Trump’s regressive immigration policies, including suspending a controversial ruling that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their US immigration hearings. These policies have increased the number of migrants being legally allowed into the US through the southern border, creating some concern amongst Republican politicians traditionally opposed to expanding legal immigration.

As part of his office’s lawsuit, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich insisted that Biden’s new policies neglected an environmental review on how more immigration could increase pollution and emissions, saying: “Migrants need housing, infrastructure, hospitals and schools. They drive cars, purchase goods and use public parks and other facilities. Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality.”

Brnovich, who has in the past publicly misrepresented established climate science, is tapping into a common grievance that populist and right-wing leaders commonly rely on: anti-immigration sentiments among the public. By expressing worries over pollution and overpopulation however, the lawsuit essentially weaponises environmental narratives as tools for political gain.

Environmental concerns have been appropriated by far-right political groups for a long time. The Nazi party famously considered conservation a policy priority, and was among the first political parties in history to champion renewable energy. But the environmentalism that Hitler and his political adherents exhibited was not born out of genuine concern for the Earth and its inhabitants, rather it was employed as a justification behind the party’s racially-motivated Holocaust campaign, citing concerns over the dangers of overpopulation and resource depletion.

The Nazi party used environmentalism as a propaganda tool to recruit more members and improve their public standing, but quickly abandoned any ambition concerning environmental legislation as soon as the war started. Since the days of Nazi Germany, this faux environmentalism has been continuously recycled by far-right and extremist groups as a justification for unjustifiable beliefs.

In more modern times, far-right neo-Nazi groups and radicalised individuals have cloaked themselves in environmental and ecological rhetoric to validate their stances. These groups cite concerns over overpopulation, immigration and multiculturalism as certifiable reasons behind their supremacist views.

In the manifesto of a white supremacist who fatally shot 51 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, the killer identified himself as an eco-fascist and an ethno-nationalist in the same breath. He also equated immigration to ‘environmental warfare.’ That same year, another lone gunman shot and killed 23 people in a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. The gunman claimed to have been inspired by the Christchurch shooter, and he had posted his own manifesto before the attack. The manifesto (named ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ after Al Gore’s environmental documentary) exhibited strong concerns over unabated population growth, resource depletion and environmental degradation, stating that he was attempting to stop a ‘Hispanic invasion of Texas.’

Members of the alt-right are not the only ones who have co-opted environmental concerns to justify their beliefs and actions. Extremist terrorist groups have utilised environmentalism for years as a recruitment and propaganda tool, with some jihadist groups in Eastern Africa and the Middle East banning single-use plastics, providing rations and stipends to farmers suffering from water scarcity and organising reforestation and public cleanup initiatives for local youth.

This, of course, happens against the backdrop of other, less altruistic activities of terrorist groups. In addition to the environmental impact and loss of livelihoods wrought by driving the global arms trade and initiating conflict, a substantial part of global terror groups’ funding comes from the illicit wildlife and charcoal black market, which in 2014 accounted for over USD$200 billion a year.

A Malthusian Trap?

Right-wing political concerns over immigration and further straining of resources are rooted in the more apolitical fear of what overpopulation could entail. These concerns have been around since 18th century British scholar and economist Thomas Malthus proposed his Malthusian mathematical theory of population growth. In Malthus’ view, populations grow exponentially, while sustenance, including food and other basic resources, grow linearly. This would mean that, in the absence of a cataclysmic event that forcefully stops growth or more draconian population control policy, overpopulation will eventually outpace the availability of basic resources needed to survive.

Malthus’ predictions have been proven wrong several times, and his views have been criticised from across the political spectrum as overly pessimistic and even inhumane. Malthusianism becomes dangerous when its questionable science is taken seriously by lawmakers. In the mid-19th century, the British government scrapped many welfare programmes designed to provide food to the poor, basing this decision on a Malthusian argument that helping the poor only leads to these groups having more children and thereby increasing poverty.

Human populations have almost never behaved in the way theorised by Malthus. As a country’s wealth increases and total fertility rates decrease, societies have an overwhelming tendency to reach a new replacement level; it might take some time for fertility rates to readjust, but they are regardless overwhelmingly inclined to do so. This is evident in the world today, where the wealthiest nations with more food security have the lowest fertility rates, and poorer countries with higher food insecurity possess the highest fertility rates. For countries that have implemented forceful population control measures, such as the one-child policy in China, the result has been a looming demographic crisis.

You might also like: Opinion: Getting Real About Net Zero by Jonathon Porritt

Figure 1: World population growth 1700-2100; Our World In Data. Data by United Nations; 2019.

The UN expects the world’s population to grow until around 2100 where it will peak and stabilise at around 11.2 billion. While this is certainly high, it does not spell our inevitable doom. A world with a population of around 11 billion would put very little extra strain on the Earth’s capacity to provide, as long as we humans are able to change our patterns of high consumption and waste, without necessarily having to sacrifice quality of life. For instance, the Earth would be able to carry a much larger population if all of its inhabitants received their electricity from renewable sources, but would not be able to handle nearly as many if that population was entirely reliant on fossil fuels. The effects of climate change will play a much larger role in determining whether the Earth is able to provide for its inhabitants, but population control measures have very little to do with countering climate change. The only way we can really do that is by ending our relationship with fossil fuels.

When Malthusianism intersects with political ideologies rooted in racial or social biases, ideas are proposed that may appear sensible on the surface, but the actual policy that accompanies them is nearly always based on a racialised approach to population control. These efforts generally seek to decrease population numbers of oppressed and poor groups in order to maintain the living standards and safety of wealthier groups.

These views were surprisingly common as recently as the 1960s and 70s, when the world was swept by a wave of overpopulation scares. American ecologist Garrett Hardin, who popularised the concept of the tragedy of the commons in 1968, also introduced the highly controversial idea of lifeboat ethics, which laid out a belief that it was morally excusable to “let struggling nations drown.”

Cloaking themselves in a perceived environmentalism and pragmatism, the policies that these ideas have historically led to have validated twisted and racially-motivated population control campaigns, not far removed from eugenics movements. In the wake of the 1960s overpopulation scare, forced sterilisation campaigns were waged against women of colour in the US and Puerto Rico. In the 1970s, the Indian government forced millions of men from lower castes to participate in compulsory sterilisation programmes. If they did not comply, all social safety nets and government-assured rights were essentially gutted.

While these dark legacies are not all tied to far-right political groups, they are tied to eco-fascism, and the twisted brand of eco-fascism that is resurging today is most definitely aligned with the alt-right. In the manifesto of the Christchurch shooter, Malthusian fears of overpopulation were directly addressed: “There is no green future with never-ending population growth, the ideal green world cannot exist in a world of 100 billion, 50 billion or even 10 billion people.” The El Paso shooter stated in his own manifesto that: “Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. […] So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources,” explicitly referring to non-white immigrants.

While it might seem harmless for political figures and other leaders to sound the alarm about overpopulation’s impact on the environment, these concerns can not only be wildly overblown, but can excuse and validate racist policies and unjustifiable acts of violence.

Eco-Fascism: What Next?

How do we minimise the voices of these resurgent fascist ideologies, while also combating climate change? The answer to this challenge is as complex as the reasons that caused it to emerge in the first place. Countless factors of our modern world- social media and the ubiquity of alternative facts chief among them- have led to the formation of echo chambers online and in real life that only reinforce and embolden these dangerous ideologies, a trend that may have been exacerbated by the induced lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eradicating these ideologies will take time and effort.

But climate change does not care about your political leanings. Or your class, race, gender, nationality or religion. You could not believe in climate change at all, but it would still affect you. To counter these divisive and dangerous ideologies, we must first separate the truths from the untruths, especially online where misinformation can spread like wildfire. We must then ensure that our institutions are bound to facts and are trusted by the public to act as educators. Extreme ideological positioning has no place in the fight against climate change, and the energies and passions of people who fall victim to alt-right messaging need to be redirected towards real environmentalism.

To counter the dangerous rhetoric of these groups, we need to respond with action that proves them wrong. When right-leaning politicians lament increased rates of poverty and joblessness, they often blame overpopulation and immigration. People need to know that it is market failures and runaway capitalism that creates inequality, not too few resources for too many people. It is a mismanagement of natural capital that leads to environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, not immigration. And it is empowering women and supporting democratic governance in poor countries that stabilises population growth, not forceful population control measures.

As climate change creates increased scarcity over the coming decades, it is unknown whether wealthy countries will choose to hoard their resources or share them with the developing world. Will nations with high resilience lock out everybody else, or will they recognise that doing so would only reinforce these abhorrent and extreme ideologies that never really went away? Accepting climate migrants and investing more in improving resilience in developing countries will be important acts of solidarity that not only acknowledge the past responsibilities of wealthy nations, but also work towards building a future more equipped to counter climate change.

What eco-fascism and other extreme environmentalist ideologies fail to understand is that there is no rational argument for isolationism in the face of climate change. Even if a wealthy country is able to reduce its own emissions, climate change will still affect it if it does not assist countries with fewer resources in doing the same.

There is some good news. People, especially young people, are increasingly inclined to band together in the understanding that climate change transcends boundaries. Today’s youth, and all the potential that it represents, cares deeply about climate change and the environment, more than anything else in fact. Youth climate activism is global, and possesses one of the loudest voices. If people, especially the youth, can be swayed from extremism and find a sense of purpose in burgeoning activist movements that are helping to save the world, these dangerous ideologies can be stripped of their fuel: susceptible young minds.

Mobilising public and popular support to counter climate change is crucial to motivating legislators to do what has to be done, but they can also save imperiled youth from dangerous ideological positioning. This is only possible if governments ensure climate change messaging is clear and transparent. Shifting to a low-carbon economy is what will allow population growth to continue and eventually stabilise at a point where a much lower percentage of the world is living in poverty. Giving credence to unfounded overpopulation concerns and magnifying the grievances of extreme political ideologies gets us nowhere closer to solving our problems.

Featured image by: Flickr

[bimbostudies]

hi everyone! here is a list of resources to help keep you sane with everything that’s going on.  right now, it’s really important to take care of each other, so below you’ll find ways to spend your time that are productive and fun.  i know it’s a privilege to be bored, as many are worried about their basic needs, so i’ve included a list of places to donate in this masterpost if you have the means and a list of resources to help with locating and accessing basic needs.  

i hope this helps and please feel free to add your own! 

basic needs resources (us primarily): 

covidconnected.net (california)

covid19 mutual aid fund (masterlist of american mutual aid funds)

emergency resources for students

student mutual aid network

list of mutual aid directives

find your local food bank

homeless shelter directory

if you’re a university student, i’d recommend checking with your university’s basic needs center and seeing what resources they have available.  many have systems similar to food stamps, emergency housing, etc. available

general resources: 

i feel bad worksheet by me (note: i’m not a mental health professional; these are just things that help me)

u.s. suicide prevention/distress hotline

the trevor project, a hotline for queer youth in the united states

how to ask for an extension

soothe yourself masterpost

put your thoughts here

head to toe self care

how to survive bad days

social: 

apps: house party, zoom (free through many universities and schools right now)

netflix party - watch movies with friends

letters: 

prompts if you aren’t sure where to begin 

little things to add to letters

play 800+ board games online for free

play cards against humanity and other card games with friends for free

things to do over a video call to make things less lonely: 

study together!  this is great as a standing appointment with your friends/family/SO because you can work together but it’s not a ton of work

watch movies: use an extension like netflix party to do this

play games like those linked above

start a book club and discuss the reading together every week/every few days/whenever you have time

invent a game to play with your friends

get dressed up and have a fancy dinner party together 

a drinking game (if you are of legal age)

cook the same meal

learn a language together and practice with each other

writing buddies/art buddies: keep each other accountable for the goals you set 

workout buddies: do the same home workout together 

make playlists for your friends

food: 

dress up instant ramen

19 pasta dishes to help you eat your way through your panic stock

mug recipes

more mug recipes

more mug recipes

easy beginner bread recipe

free recipes in general

50 smoothie recipes

easy meal prep recipes

more meal prep recipes

recipes that use canned and frozen foods

study snacks by @areistotle

infused waters by @girl-studying-blog

cheap and delicious recipes by @kimberlystudies 

also would recommend if you’re ordering food in please order from local businesses!

home workouts: 

2 week get shredded challenge by chloe ting (no equipment!)

superhero workouts

30 days of yoga

song workouts!

beginner ballet workouts

best dance/movement workouts

productivity advice/challenges: 

2020 quarantine challenge by @myhoneststudyblr

tips for working from home by @eunoiamaybe

managing energy by @eintsein

studying during quarantine by @cottagestudie

studying with a computer by @vanesastudies

being productive at home by @smartspo

essentials for a study space by @terhangus

eliminating procrastination and distraction by @simply-study

surviving online classes 101 by @starryeize

having discipline by @lovelybluepanda

how to study when you don’t want to by @cals-desk​

sticking to your plans by @study-sprout

tips for online classes by @emmastudies​

self studying by @areistotle​

crafts to try/projects to start/ways to keep busy: 

nanowrimo - write a novel in a month

watch all the marvel movies

start a garden

make a seed starter out of newspaper

11 craft ideas

move around all the furniture in your room!

32 crafts 

home decor crafts

spring clean!

build a rube goldberg machine

100 things to do while stuck inside

21 crafts for when you’re quarantined

21 home improvement projects

20 easy crafts

start a bullet journal/junk journal/dream journal/just in general start journalling 

dye your hair (please be careful and do research on the products you are using)

listen to a podcast - these are free on spotify, youtube, and the podcasts app!

free streaming services rn 

help transcribe anti-slavery documents for this historical archive

transcribe other documents for the library of congress

latimes guide to the internet

start a dungeons and dragons game 

habits to build: 

enforce your time limits on your phone

go for a walk everyday (if this is allowed)

workout every day

stay organized

eat three meals per day 

drink 8 cups of water per day

wake up early/go to sleep early

read every day

free learning resources: 

mit

harvard

khanacademy

scribd made all its ebooks free

duolingo

learn graphic design

here’s a masterpost completely dedicated to learning things for free by @girl-havoced​

language learning resources masterpost by @wonderful-language-sounds​

masterpost of coding websites by @code-bug​

free online courses masterpost by @studyllaire-blog​

places to donate if you’re able: 

covid-19 mutual aid funds: before i jump into orgs, i want to mention mutual aid funds, which are community-driven initiatives in places where the government response hasn’t been enough for many people, like the united states.  consider donating directly to your community

similarly, local food banks and homeless shelters may be needing extra support right now in your area; consider looking into those as places to donate

here’s a guide on starting a mutual aid network in your neighborhood

it’s going down: organizing communities for community care initiatives

covid-19 financial solidarity resource sheet - directly help immunocompromised people or those who have lost their jobs due to covid-19

major orgs: 

find your local foodbank (again, but this time, donate to it)

project c.u.r.e.

direct relief

alight - help refugees

actionaid usa

prevent child abuse

help the most marginalized: 

immigrant workers: we count, donate your stimulus check, immigrant worker safety net fund

incarcerated people: national bail out, freedom for immigrants

indigenous americans: partnership with native americans, flicker fund, decolonizing wealth fund

workers: support for workers, above and beyond solidarity fund, donate personal protective equipment, feed care workers, 

restaurant workers: one fair wage, rwcf

homeless people: coalition for the homeless

artists: foundation for the contemporary arts, artist relief

medical debt relief: healthwell foundation, ripmedicaldebt

another thing you can do!  if you’re able to, consider fostering a pet from a local animal shelter (not a pet store) and caring for them during quarantine

positivity: 

@archivesoflove​ this is kind of a self promo bc i run this blog but it’s just a hub of nice stories, sweet poems, kind works of art, etc. 

some good news, by john krasinski

who’s the cutest?

how to fall back in love with life

good news network

little things that help moods

infinite jukebox

giant panda cam

[deniscollins]

Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise

Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being, which have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation. In Finland, paying higher taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools. Should the U.S. adopt the Finland’s version of capitalism: (1) Yes, (2) No?

Two years ago we were living in a pleasant neighborhood in Brooklyn. We were experienced professionals, enjoying a privileged life. We’d just had a baby. She was our first, and much wanted. We were United States citizens and our future as a family should have seemed bright. But we felt deeply insecure and anxious.

Our income was trickling in unreliably from temporary gigs as independent contractors. Our access to health insurance was a constant source of anxiety, as we scrambled year after year among private employer plans, exorbitant plans for freelancers, and complicated and expensive Obamacare plans. With a child, we’d soon face overwhelming day-care costs. Never mind the bankruptcy-sized bills for education ahead, whether for housing in a good public-school district or for private-school tuition. And then there’d be college. In other words, we suffered from the same stressors that are swamping more and more of Americans, even the relatively privileged.

As we contemplated all this, one of us, Anu, was offered a job back in her hometown: Helsinki, Finland.

Finland, of course, is one of those Nordic countries that we hear some Americans, including President Trump, describe as unsustainable and oppressive — “socialist nanny states.” As we considered settling there, we canvassed Trevor’s family — he was raised in Arlington, Va. — and our American friends. They didn’t seem to think we’d be moving to a Soviet-style autocracy. In fact, many of them encouraged us to go. Even a venture capitalist we knew in Silicon Valley who has three children sounded envious: “I’d move to Finland in a heartbeat.”

So we went.

We’ve now been living in Finland for more than a year. The difference between our lives here and in the States has been tremendous, but perhaps not in the way many Americans might imagine. What we’ve experienced is an increase in personal freedom. Our lives are just much more manageable. To be sure, our days are still full of challenges — raising a child, helping elderly parents, juggling the demands of daily logistics and work.

But in Finland, we are automatically covered, no matter what, by taxpayer-funded universal health care that equals the United States’ in quality (despite the misleading claims you hear to the contrary), all without piles of confusing paperwork or haggling over huge bills. Our child attends a fabulous, highly professional and ethnically diverse public day-care center that amazes us with its enrichment activities and professionalism. The price? About $300 a month — the maximum for public day care, because in Finland day-care fees are subsidized for all families.

And if we stay here, our daughter will be able to attend one of the world’s best K-12 education systems at no cost to us, regardless of the neighborhood we live in. College would also be tuition free. If we have another child, we will automatically get paid parental leave, funded largely through taxes, for nearly a year, which can be shared between parents. Annual paid vacations here of four, five or even six weeks are also the norm.

Compared with our life in the United States, this is fantastic. Nevertheless, to many people in America, the Finnish system may still conjure impressions of dysfunction and authoritarianism. Yet Finnish citizens report extraordinarily high levels of life satisfaction; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked them highest in the world, followed by Norwegians, Danes, Swiss and Icelanders. This year, the World Happiness Report also announced Finland to be the happiest country on earth, for the second year in a row.

But surely, many in the United States will conclude, Finnish citizens and businesses must be paying a steep price in lost freedoms, opportunity and wealth. Yes, Finland faces its own economic challenges, and Finns are notorious complainers whenever anything goes wrong. But under its current system, Finland has become one of the world’s wealthiest societies, and like the other Nordic countries, it is home to many hugely successful global companies.

In fact, a recent report by the chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management came to a surprising conclusion: The Nordic region is not only “just as business-friendly as the U.S.” but also better on key free-market indexes, including greater protection of private property, less impact on competition from government controls and more openness to trade and capital flows. According to the World Bank, doing business in Denmark and Norway is actually easier overall than it is in the United States.

Finland also has high levels of economic mobility across generations. A 2018 World Bank report revealed that children in Finland have a much better chance of escaping the economic class of their parents and pursuing their own success than do children in the United States.

Finally, and perhaps most shockingly, the nonpartisan watchdog group Freedom House has determined that citizens of Finland actually enjoy higher levels of personal and political freedom, and more secure political rights, than citizens of the United States.

What to make of all this? For starters, politicians in the United States might want to think twice about calling the Nordics “socialist.” From our perch, the term seems to have more currency on the other side of the Atlantic than it does here.

In the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are often demonized as dangerous radicals. In Finland, many of their policy ideas would seem normal — and not particularly socialist.

When Mr. Sanders ran for president in 2016, what surprised our Finnish friends was that the United States, a country with so much wealth and successful capitalist enterprise, had not already set up some sort of universal public health care program and access to tuition-free college. Such programs tend to be seen by Nordic people as the bare basics required for any business-friendly nation to compete in the 21st century.

Even more peculiar is that in Finland, you don’t really see the kind of socialist movement that has been gaining popularity in some of the more radical fringes of the left in America, especially around goals such as curtailing free markets and even nationalizing the means of production. The irony is that if you championed socialism like this in Finland, you’d get few takers.

So what could explain this — the weird fact that actual socialism seems so much more popular in the capitalist United States than in supposedly socialist Finland?

A socialist revolution was attempted once in Finland. But that was more than a hundred years ago. Finland was in the process of industrializing when the Russian empire collapsed and Finland gained independence. Finnish urban and rural workers and tenant farmers, fed up with their miserable working conditions, rose up in rebellion. The response from Finland’s capitalists, conservative landowners and members of the middle and upper class was swift and violent. Civil war broke out and mass murder followed. After months of fighting, the capitalists and conservatives crushed the socialist uprising. More than 35,000 people lay dead. Traumatized and impoverished, Finns spent decades trying to recover and rebuild.

So what became of socialism in Finland after that? According to a prominent Finnish political historian, Pauli Kettunen of the University of Helsinki, after the civil war Finnish employers promoted the ideal of “an independent freeholder farmer and his individual will to work” and successfully used this idea of heroic individualism to weaken worker unions. Although socialists returned to playing a role in Finnish politics, during the first half of the 20th century, Finland prevented socialism from becoming a revolutionary force — and did so in a way that sounds downright American.

Finland fell into another bloody conflict as it fought off, at great cost, the Communist Soviet Union next door during World War II. After the war, worker unions gained strength, bringing back socialist sympathies as the country entered a more industrial and international era. This is when Finnish history took an unexpected turn.

Finnish employers had become painfully aware of the threats socialism continued to pose to capitalism. They also found themselves under increasing pressure from politicians representing the needs of workers. Wanting to avoid further conflicts, and to protect their private property and new industries, Finnish capitalists changed tactics. Instead of exploiting workers and trying to keep them down, after World War II, Finland’s capitalists cooperated with government to map out long-term strategies and discussed these plans with unions to get workers onboard.

More astonishingly, Finnish capitalists also realized that it would be in their own long-term interests to accept steep progressive tax hikes. The taxes would help pay for new government programs to keep workers healthy and productive — and this would build a more beneficial labor market. These programs became the universal taxpayer-funded services of Finland today, including public health care, public day care and education, paid parental leaves, unemployment insurance and the like.

If these moves by Finnish capitalists sound hard to imagine, it’s because people in the United States have been peddled a myth that universal government programs like these can’t coexist with profitable private-sector businesses and robust economic growth. As if to reinforce the impossibility of such synergies, last fall the Trump administration released a peculiar report arguing that “socialism” had negatively affected Nordic living standards.

However, a 2006 study by the Finnish researchers Markus Jantti, Juho Saari and Juhana Vartiainen demonstrates the opposite. First, throughout the 20th century Finland remained — and remains to this day — a country and an economy committed to markets, private businesses and capitalism.

Even more intriguing, these scholars demonstrate that Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being. These services have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation.

With Finland’s stable foundation for growth and disruption, its small but dynamic free-market economy has punched far above its weight. Some of the country’s most notable businesses have included the world’s largest mobile phone company, one of the world’s largest elevator manufacturers and two of the world’s most successful mobile gaming companies. Visit Finland today and it’s obvious that the much-heralded quality of life is taking place within a bustling economy of upscale shopping malls, fancy cars and internationally competitive private companies.

The other Nordic countries have been practicing this form of capitalism even longer than Finland, with even more success. As early as the 1930s, according to Pauli Kettunen, employers across the Nordic region watched the disaster of the Great Depression unfold. For enough of them the lesson was clear: The smart choice was to compromise and pursue the Nordic approach to capitalism.

The Nordic countries are all different from one another, and all have their faults, foibles, unique histories and civic disagreements. Contentious battles between strong unions and employers help keep the system in balance. Often it gets messy: Just this week, the Finnish prime minister resigned amid a labor dispute.

But the Nordic nations as a whole, including a majority of their business elites, have arrived at a simple formula: Capitalism works better if employees get paid decent wages and are supported by high-quality, democratically accountable public services that enable everyone to live healthy, dignified lives and to enjoy real equality of opportunity for themselves and their children. For us, that has meant an increase in our personal freedoms and our political rights — not the other way around.

Yes, this requires capitalists and corporations to pay fairer wages and more taxes than their American counterparts currently do. Nordic citizens generally pay more taxes, too. And yes, this might sound scandalous in the United States, where business leaders and economists perpetually warn that tax increases would slow growth and reduce incentives to invest.

Here’s the funny thing, though: Over the past 50 years, if you had invested in a basket of Nordic equities, you would have earned a higher annual real return than the American stock market during the same half-century, according to global equities data published by Credit Suisse.

Nordic capitalists are not dumb. They know that they will still earn very handsome financial returns even after paying their taxes. They keep enough of their profits to live in luxury, wield influence and acquire social status. There are several dozen Nordic billionaires. Nordic citizens are not dumb, either. If you’re a member of the robust middle class in Finland, you generally get a better overall deal for your combined taxes and personal expenditures, as well as higher-quality outcomes, than your American counterparts — and with far less hassle.

Why would the wealthy in Nordic countries go along with this? Some Nordic capitalists actually believe in equality of opportunity and recognize the value of a society that invests in all of its people. But there is a more prosaic reason, too: Paying taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated.

While companies in the United States struggle to administer health plans and to find workers who are sufficiently educated, Nordic societies have demanded that their governments provide high-quality public services for all citizens. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools.

There’s a big lesson here: When capitalists perceive government as a logistical ally rather than an ideological foe and when all citizens have a stake in high-quality public institutions, it’s amazing how well government can get things done.

Ultimately, when we mislabel what goes on in Nordic nations as socialism, we blind ourselves to what the Nordic region really is: a laboratory where capitalists invest in long-term stability and human flourishing while maintaining healthy profits.

Capitalists in the United States have taken a different path. They’ve slashed taxes, weakened government, crushed unions and privatized essential services in the pursuit of excess profits. All of this leaves workers painfully vulnerable to capitalism’s dynamic disruptions. Even well-positioned Americans now struggle under debilitating pressures, and a majority inhabit a treacherous Wild West where poverty, homelessness, medical bankruptcy, addiction and incarceration can be just a bit of bad luck away. Americans are told that this is freedom and that it is the most heroic way to live. It’s the same message Finns were fed a century ago.

But is this approach the most effective or even the most profitable way for capitalists in the United States to do business? It should come as no surprise that resentment and fear have become rampant in the United States, and that President Trump got elected on a promise to turn the clock backward on globalization. Nor is it surprising that American workers are fighting back; the number of workers involved in strikes last year in the United States was the highest since the 1980s, and this year’s General Motors strike was the company’s longest in nearly 50 years. Nor should it surprise anyone that fully half of the rising generation of Americans, aged 18 to 29, according to Gallup polling, have a positive view of socialism.

The prospect of a future full of socialists seems finally to be getting the attention of some American business leaders. For years the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has been warning his “fellow zillionaires” that “the pitchforks are coming for us.” Warren Buffett has been calling for higher taxes on the rich, and this year the hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio admitted that “capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people.” Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus of Young & Rubicam, has put it perhaps most succinctly: He sees capitalism “slowly committing suicide.”In recent months such concerns have spread throughout the capitalist establishment. The Financial Times rocked its business-friendly readership with a high-profile series admitting that capitalism has indeed become “rigged” and that it desperately needs a “reset,” to restore truly free markets and bring back real opportunity. Leading captains of finance and industry in the United States rocked the business world, too, with a joint declaration from the Business Roundtable that they will now prioritize not only profits but also “employees, customers, shareholders and the communities.” They are calling this “stakeholder capitalism.”

If these titans of industry are serious about finding a more sustainable approach, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. They can simply consult their Nordic counterparts. If they do, they might realize that the success of Nordic capitalism is not due to businesses doing more to help communities. In a way, it’s the opposite: Nordic capitalists do less. What Nordic businesses do is focus on business — including good-faith negotiations with their unions — while letting citizens vote for politicians who use government to deliver a set of robust universal public services.

This, in fact, may be closer to what a majority of people in the United States actually want, at least according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center this year. Respondents said that the American government should spend more on health care and education, for example, to improve the quality of life for future generations.

But the poll also revealed that Americans feel deeply pessimistic about the nation’s future and fear that worse political conflict is coming. Some military analysts and historians agree and put the odds of a civil war breaking out in the United States frighteningly high.

Right now might be an opportune moment for American capitalists to pause and ask themselves what kind of long-term cost-benefit calculation makes the most sense. Business leaders focused on the long game could do a lot worse than starting with a fact-finding trip to Finland.

Here in Helsinki, our family is facing our second Nordic winter and the notorious darkness it brings. Our Finnish friends keep asking how we handled the first one and whether we can survive another. Our answer is always the same. As we push our 2-year-old daughter in her stroller through the dismal, icy streets to her wonderful, affordable day-care center or to our friendly, professional and completely free pediatric health center, before heading to work in an innovative economy where a vast majority of people have a decent quality of life, the winter doesn’t matter one bit. It can actually make you happy.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 10 Mar 2020 (Pandemic firewalls, water neoliberalism meets covid, Piketty backs Sanders, Sonos stops bricking, Brave vs canvas attacks)

Today's links

Safe and moral societies need "firewalls" between immigration and public services: The UK's "hostile environment" puts everyone at risk.

Detroit will reconnect water services during the Covid-19 emergency: But it's $25/month thereafter.

Thomas Piketty endorses Sanders: both his program and his electability.

Sonos "recycling mode" no longer bricks working speakers: Fire the person who came up with this deeply shitty idea.

Brave will randomize browser profiles to fight fingerprinting attacks: More from the most privacy-friendly browser.

This day in history: 2005, 2010

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Safe and moral societies need "firewalls" between immigration and public services (permalink)

The UK took the decision to "create a hostile environment" for migrants, which entails denying medical care to those who can't prove their entitlement to it. Seeking care in the UK comes with threats to your residency and/or titanic bills.

http://crookedtimber.org/2020/03/10/covid-19-and-migration-we-need-a-firewall/

This creates enormous deterrents to seeking medical care, which means that migrants – disproportionately found in low-waged jobs including cleaning and food service – are less likely to seek care or present themselves for testing if they develop symptoms. It also means that they're not entitled to paid leave, which means that potentially infectious people are being incentivised to turn up for work.

In "The Ethics of Immigration," Joseph Carens argues for a "firewall" between public services and immigration enforcement, specifically to address situations like these (and also related issues, like spousal abuse, child abuse, etc).

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-ethics-of-immigration-9780199933839

A civilised society shouldn't put people at risk of violence in order to attain its immigration goals.

A healthy society – one that contains the spread of pandemics – can't afford to put its immigration goals ahead of these matters.

It's both ethical and pragmatic.

Likewise (and doubly so) for the refugee gulags created Greece and Australia. It's not only inhumane to deprive the people in these camps of care – it's also a way to create and sustain reservoirs of illness that will spread into your general population.

As Chris Bertram writes, "[Authoritarians will] use COVID-19 to advance their nationalist and anti-immigrant agenda. Journalists need to ask them what they are doing to stop that very agenda from having consequences that shame and endanger us all."

Detroit will reconnect water services during the Covid-19 emergency (permalink)

Michigan has been a living laboratory for neoliberal cruelty, as gerrymandering has allowed the rich white people to dominate the state, stripmine its public assets, and privatize its services, leading to mass evictions (and the lead crisis in Flint).

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/detroit-to-restore-water-service-to-unpaid-homes-to-allow-people-to-wash-their-hands-to-avoid-coronavirus

In Detroit, many people are without (substandard) water, as they've been faced with the choice of paying rent or paying the water bill. This means that they can't wash their hands. So the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit have teamed up to turn on peoples' water during the crisis. The reconnection fee of $25 (a tax on poor people) will be picked up by the state. But it will be $25/month afterwards.

Many people will be able to afford the $25/month. Some will not. Who doesn't have $25/month for water? The poorest, most vulnerable people, who are disproportionately likely to be immunocompromised and susceptible to Covid-19.

Michigan – whose neoliberal belief in "moral hazard" dictates that poor people should not have benefits – has engineered a situation in which the state is full of desperately poor people who will sicken the people around them.

If you or someone you love in Detroit has no water, you can get your service reconnected starting tomorrow at 313-386-9727.

Thomas Piketty endorses Sanders (permalink)

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century quantified the rise of inequality, provided evidence for the policies that create and preserve it, and warned of the social instability it engenders (that is, guillotines).

https://boingboing.net/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-t.html

Piketty's Capital was notable for laying out a rigorous, quantitative basis for the left's concerns over inequality, and it also rebutted the right's idea that inequality was an emergent property of meritocracy. Boris Johnson once told City bankers: when you shake a cornflake box, the big flakes rise to the top and the little flakes sink to the bottom.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/28/boris-johnson-iq-comments

Piketty showed that the most reliable predictor of increased wealth over time wasn't accomplishment, it was wealth. Rich people get richer, regardless of whether they contribute to society. Poor people generally don't, no matter what they contribute.

Today, Piketty has endorsed Bernie Sanders's candidacy, policies, and electability, applying the same rigor to these that he applied to his time-series data on capital flows and inequality.

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2020/03/10/sanders-to-the-aid-of-democracy-in-the-united-states/

It "is not an 'extremist' statement" to say that Medicare for All will "enable the American population to be cared for more efficiently and more cheaply than the present private and extremely unequal system."

"Sanders is right when he proposes large-scale public investment in favour of education and public universities…The failure of [Reagan-style education policy] is patent today with growth of national income per capita being halved and an unprecedented rise in inequality."

Piketty endorses a $15 federal minimum wage: "Learn from the experiences in co-management and voting rights for employees on the Boards of Directors of firms implemented successfully in Germany and in Sweden for decades."

On a wealth tax that tops at 8%: "this corresponds to the reality of the excessive concentration of wealth in the United States and the fiscal and administrative capacities of the American federal state, which has already been demonstrated historically."

And on polls: "The problem of the repeated assertions that Biden would be better placed to beat Trump is that they have no objective factual basis… Sanders mobilises the working-class electorate more than Biden.. mobilises the vast majority of the Latino vote and crushes Biden amongst the 18-29 years age group, as he does in the 30-44 years group…Sanders has the best scores amongst the underprivileged… whereas Biden, on the contrary, has the best scores amongst the most privileged.

"The highest potential for mobilisation is amongst the most underprivileged social categories.

"…The cynical, and unfortunately very commonplace vision amongst the Democratic elites, that nothing can be done to mobilise further the working-class vote, is extremely dangerous. This cynicism weakens the legitimacy of the democratic electoral system itself."

If you (like me) loved Warren's campaign because it appealed to the wonk in you, then this should be of real significance. Piketty is the wonk's wonk, an expert whose key work is a 15-year-long study of 300 years' worth of capital flows, which shifted the global debate.

Piketty's endorsement of Warren's wealth tax was hugely important. His endorsement of Sanders' entire program, and Sanders' electability, is even more important at this phase of the battle to abolish Trumpism and save our planet.

(Image: Sue Gardner, CC BY-SA)

Sonos "recycling mode" no longer bricks working speakers (permalink)

When you get rid of a Sonos product – either through a trade in or disposal – the company advised you to trigger "recycling mode" to wipe your account data. But this didn't wipe the speaker – it bricked it.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/sonos-backtracks-on-bricking-your-trade-ins-will-allow-reuse/

IOW: invoking the Sonos "recycling mode" made your device into e-waste (if you want to wipe your personal data, you could just factory reset the speaker).

Thankfully, the company has seen the error of its ways. The app no longer has the "recycle mode" option. The company is working on an alternative (which, one hopes, will not be as malicious and deceptive as the previous version). The reason for bricking devices is obvious: it eliminates competition from used devices. The reasons not to do it are also obvious: it's terrible.

Whomever came up with this policy at Sonos is a colossal asshole. The whole company should be ashamed. I am a Sonos customer (bought Sonos One speakers when they started making a model with no mic) and I enjoy them, but I don't know that I'll ever trust the company.

Brave will randomize browser profiles to fight fingerprinting attacks (permalink)

Brave is one of the two browsers I use every day (the other is Firefox). I really like the company's approach to privacy and user-control, which is deeply embedded in their culture (unlike Mozilla, Brave fought against DRM in browsers at the W3C, for example).

One of the risks to web privacy is "canvas" or "fingerprinting" attacks, which identifies users by the unique attributes of their browsers (version, OS, fonts, plugins, screen size, etc). EFF has been sounding the alarm about this for years.

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

This has gone from "theoretical risk" to "main tool for user tracking" in a few short years. Browsers take different approaches to fighting these attacks, but I like Brave's: it's going to randomize browser data when it's requested by servers.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-to-generate-random-browser-fingerprints-to-preserve-user-privacy/

Brave says the other tactics used to block fingerprinting are "useless" and describes how randomization is more effective, citing peer-reviewed studies to support its case.

https://brave.com/whats-brave-done-for-my-privacy-lately-episode3/

This is the kind of best-practice that ever browser vendor should be adopting. Of course, we also need a federal privacy bill with a private right of action, and until we get one, this is doubly important.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Israeli Army thinks D&D players are weak-minded security risks https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3052074,00.html

#10yrsago TSA analyst indicted for tampering with terrorist watchlists https://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/339185/former_tsa_analyst_charged_computer_tampering/

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/) and Slashdot (https://slashdot.org).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

LA Times Festival of Books: 18 April 2020, Los Angeles. https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[mokonahapuuuuuu]

The Asian Dream - An Essay of Asian Cultural Assimilation

(Note: didn’t know how to write the conclusion, so here it is...!)

‘Joy Luck Club’ by Amy Tan is a great example of cultural assimilation of Asian immigrant children. As people from other cultures move to America, and Canada, there is a clash of beliefs and values which is different from Westernized values of individuality.

America has the notion of the ‘American Dream’. To achieve your ambitions and goals and become even greater than you were before in your motherland. Most Southeast Asians do not have this concept.

Confucianism was a major philosophy in China which follows: use the right relationships to produce social order, respect for family and older generations, and act in morally correct ways. It also emphasizes on the concept of shame, which brings social order within society and families to keep the younger generation in line. To keep the family honour, everyone has to be in line. If one goes down, we all go down.

An Asian child must show filial piety. You must show respect to your elders, and you must also take care of them in old age, and you must display sorrow for their death and provide offerings to their memorial.

With this notion of social order and to be morally correct, taboos are much more intense, and in this day includes a religious stigma some of the time. This includes abstinence until marriage (for both genders), no same gender relationships. If there is intimacy before marriage, there will be severe consequences from the older generation, even to the male gender. If a child was conceived out of wedlock, the stigma is much more intense in a Southeast Asian community, hence the notion of family and the opinion of others.

Socioeconomic status is also a major role in Asian societies. With society open about wealth, Asian children aren’t afraid to talk about it. In dating, a Mainland Chinese girl may ask how rich is someone. She is saying “are you reliable?”, “can you provide for me and our future family?”

There is no government assistance like employment insurance if someone was in poverty in a third world country. In other third world countries, finding someone who is well off could help you from not starving. With the concept of shame in mind, if you were in poverty and had kids, the community would shame you for not thinking things through in the first place. If someone was homeless, the religious stigma is far more severe than it is in North America.

Since wealth is associated with providing for your family and to bring family honour within success in the business world, the Asian parent wants their child to do well in school to have a high paying job. Such as to be a doctor or a lawyer. With the ‘age equals wisdom’ concept in mind, when the immigrants came over and realize their boss was younger than them, the humiliation was mortifying to deal with.

Since the opinion of the community is so valued, being stoic helps you in hard times. Confucius also had a philosophy, “the more you keep your emotions in, the higher you climb up the mountain”. With this notion, it often back clashes on psychology, such as anxiety and depression. To this day, the stigma of mental health still exist within most Asian societies. If it’s something you can’t see, taste, smell, hear, or touch, why believe in it at all?

[hamsahands]

Prison Abolition 101

The iconic activist Angela Davis tells us that prison reforms will always fall short because the prison itself is a reform, a reform from the heavy reliance on bodily and capital punishments. The history of prisons is prison reform. What if I told you that the prison system is not broken, but works exactly as it was intended to.

There is a quasi religious belief that we need prisons. We seem to forget the autonomous Black towns that would have thrived during Reconstruction had it not been for deeply ingrained white supremacy (see Black codes). We think prisons are integral to the structure of our society when they don't have to be, which is when we arrive at prison abolition.

While prison abolition seeks to end mass criminalization, incarceration, and policing in all of its forms, it's also unlearning the mentalities of fear, racism, and punishment that gave rise to the construction of prisons in the first place.

To live in the United States is to live in a state of perpetual, collective fear. Social media and news outlets pumping paranoia into our consciousness in 24 hour news cycles. We live in a united state of anxiety. Fear feeds into implicit bias, which inherently impairs policing, leading to criminalization, deportation, and mass incarceration.

We are afraid we're not safe, and we should contend with the notion of safety. Does our safety rely on the presence of police and prisons, or can our communities cultivate that safety on their own, if socioeconomic needs are addressed.

Prison abolition is a collective imagining of a world in which all of our physical (health), mental, social and economic needs are met. Famed abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes this as a world where interpersonal harm, economic need, and social and health vulnerability are things of the past.

Prison abolition is understanding the symbiotic relationship between institutional violence, state violence, and intimate violence, as well as recognizing the tensions that allow them to fester. It's being mindful of racism, sexism, and toxic masculinity when raising our kids. Political theorist Cedric Robinson tells us that experience is important, but consciousness is what matters. Prison abolition is not just a new socioeconomic order, but a consistent, ubiquitous practice of mindfulness.

Abolition means not using prisons to solve social issues. It means dismantling white supremacy on an institutional, political, economic and social level. It means not criminalizing queerness and targeting trans and gendernonconforming persons. While also addressing job discrimination, transphobia, and toxic masculinity which exacerbate the rates of incarceration, suicide, and murder of trans people.

It means not criminalizing drug addiction, homelessness and immigration. Immigrants and migrants generate huge profits for privatized detention centers, which are often unsanitary, overpacked, and rife with abuse. It's not using prisons to address poverty in what sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls the carceral management of the poor.

It means addressing violence with restorative justice practices, and understanding that violence harms both the perpetrator and the victim. It's thinking of 'crime' differently, for instance, vagrancy as a symptom of economic inequality instead of criminality. Prisons simply isolate the symptoms of social ailments, but abolition aims to cure the ailment itself.

While abolition inherently involves compassion, there are people with violent intentions who try (and succeed) to inflict irreparable harm, and they're not going away any time soon. However, prison abolition is not an immediate solution, but a gradually practiced methodology. It is not simply a new solution, but a new order to how we organize and maintain our relationships, communities, and societies.

'But what about murderers and rapists?' As if politicians, police, priests, and presidents have never fit into that demographic yet never see the inside of a cell. The carceral system cannot be redeemed because its main source of profit is disproportionately black and brown, while eating the poor of all colors and ethnicities for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Abolition is the solution because the criminal law system can be bought. It let's men with $500 million fortunes like Jeffrey Epstein serve 13 months work release for soliciting a 17 year old girl for prostitution, only 3 years after a parent of a 14 year old girl complained to the police that Epstein molested her child. But poor black men like Eric Garner take their last unassisted breaths on the pavement with a cop's arm around their neck for selling cigarettes. The disparity is disgusting, and it is intrinsic to an inherently racist prison industrial complex.

Abolition also means imagining what kind of an economy we should have as the richest country in the history of the world. Abolition undoubtedly means destroying the plutocratic capitalist class that owns 95% of this country's wealth, and redistributing that wealth amongst the people.

Abolition is a lot to process for people who have never imagined a world without prisons and police, and by no means do I think any of this will happen overnight or even in my lifetime (I'm 25). I also realize that most of this is broad, but abolitionists have developed specific tactics to address immediate needs that work toward education, divestment, decarceration, and harm reduction. While I will celebrate (most) prison reforms in the meantime, for me and other likeminded individuals, abolition will always remain the goal.

https://www.blackandpink.org/

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a weekly collaboration between FiveThirtyEight and ABC News. With 5,000 people seemingly thinking about challenging President Trump in 2020 — Democrats and even some Republicans — we’re keeping tabs on the field as it develops. Each week, we’ll run through what the potential candidates are up to — who’s getting closer to officially jumping in the ring and who’s getting further away.

While all eyes were fixated on the the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report Thursday, the Democratic presidential field continued to plug away, despite roundly criticizing Attorney General William Barr’s press conference and expressing a desire to learn more about redacted portions of the report. As was the case in 2018, Democrats appear to be aware that their strongest pitch to voters is one focused on issues like health care, the economy and immigration — so despite the developments in the investigation, the report continues to play only a peripheral role.

Here’s the weekly candidate roundup:

April 12-18, 2019

Stacey Abrams (D)

The former Georgia gubernatorial candidate said she would make a decision on a potential 2020 Senate run in the next few weeks, but that a decision on a presidential campaign could take longer.

“I do not believe that there is the type of urgency that some seem to believe there is,” Abrams said in an interview with The Root.

She was also critical of the media’s coverage of her 2018 race, refraining from ascribing the issues she saw to “racism,” but saying there was “a very narrow and immature ability to navigate the story of my campaign.”

Joe Biden (D)

Biden eulogized the late South Carolina Democratic Sen. Fritz Hollings on Tuesday, discussing, apparently in reference to Hollings’ one-time pro-segregation views, the ways that “people can change.”

“We can learn from the past and build a better future,” the former vice president added.

President Trump predicted that Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders would be a “finalist” to run against him in next year’s election. “I look forward to facing whoever it may be. May God Rest Their Soul!” Trump tweeted Tuesday.

On Thursday, Biden traveled to Massachusetts where he took part in a rally in support of striking Stop & Shop supermarket workers.

Cory Booker (D)

An analysis by the Associated Press found that Booker and Sen. Kamala Harris have each missed the most Senate votes this year among their colleagues running for president. The pair has missed 16 of the chamber’s 77 votes this session.

The New Jersey senator announced a plan to expand the earned income tax credit during an event in Iowa on Monday, saying that it would boost the economy and benefit more than 150 million people. Booker’s plan pays for the credit by increasing taxes on capital gains.

Booker additionally called for voting rights reforms during a visit to Georgia on Wednesday, including automatic voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday and restoring the Voting Rights Act protections that were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Pete Buttigieg (D)

Buttigieg officially launched his presidential campaign last weekend with a rally in his native South Bend, Indiana, where he acknowledged — even as his popularity grows — “the audacity of [running for president] as a Midwestern millennial mayor.”

It is “more than a little bold — at age 37 — to seek the highest office in the land,” he said.

The South Bend mayor also encountered some of his campaign’s first hecklers this week, as he was confronted in Iowa by anti-gay protesters, and announced that he and his husband are interested in having a child at some point in the near future.

Julian Castro (D)

The former Housing and Urban Development secretary raised a relatively meager $1.1 million during the year’s first quarter, placing him behind nearly every major candidate in the Democratic field.

The New York Times reported on Castro’s struggle to catch on with voters at this point in the campaign, noting that the candidate himself doesn’t seem bothered by his position in the field.

“People are going to have their moments,” he said. “I would rather have my moment closer to the actual election than right now.”

John Delaney (D)

Delaney and Booker’s campaign were involved in a minor dust-up after a Booker fundraising email earlier this week made reference to “one of the other Democrats in this race… giv[ing] over $11 million of his own money to his campaign,” a fact that can only be attributed to Delaney.

A spokesperson for the former Maryland congressman jabbed back, saying, “If I had Booker’s numbers, I’d go negative too.”

On Tuesday, Delaney announced a plan to create a cabinet level Department of Cybersecurity, noting in a press release, “Currently our cybersecurity efforts are spread across multiple agencies, but by creating a new department we can centralize our mission, focus our goals and efforts, and create accountability.”

Tulsi Gabbard (D)

In visit to Iowa this week, Gabbard touted her experience in the National Guard and said she was disappointed in Trump’s decision to veto a bipartisan congressional resolution calling for an end to U.S. military involvement in Yemen.

The Hawaii congresswoman also criticized Trump in a Fox News appearance, saying that his administration’s efforts to force “regime change” in Venezuela were “directly undermining” its effort to denuclearize North Korea. In the same interview, Gabbard said that it is “impossible for Kim Jong Un to believe [the Trump administration] when they tell him, ‘Don’t worry. Get rid of your nuclear weapons. We’re not going to come after you.'”

Kirsten Gillibrand (D)

Gillibrand’s $3 million raised from donors for 2020 during the year’s first quarter placed her last among the group of six U.S. senators running for the presidential nomination; but she also transferred nearly $10 million from her 2018 Senate committee into her 2020 campaign, placing her among the top tier of candidates in cash-on-hand entering the second quarter.

BuzzFeed News reported Monday that the New York senator is endorsing proposals included in a new report that analyzes the racial wealth divide. The proposals include postal banking, government run trust accounts and the formation of a commission to study slavery reparations.

Kamala Harris (D)

Harris admitted that she regrets the support she lent an anti-truancy law while serving as California’s attorney general — specifically the law’s threat to prosecute parents for their children’s absences. The senator noted, however, that her office never jailed a parent for a violation of the law.

Harris released 15 years of tax returns earlier in the week. Harris and her husband, attorney Douglas Emhoff, reported nearly $1.9 million in income in 2018, paying an effective tax rate of 37 percent.

John Hickenlooper (D)

Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, Hickenlooper, the state’s former governor, met with survivors as he campaigns on his gun control record, including a ban on high-capacity magazines and private sale background check requirement.

Hickenlooper additionally discussed mental health measures with the group, citing recent suicides by survivors of last year’s shooting at Parkland High School in Florida.

Larry Hogan (R)

Amid speculation that he might run against Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is scheduled to be in the New Hampshire next week. Hogan will headline the New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ “Politics and Eggs” on April 23.

Jay Inslee (D)

In a New York Magazine interview, the Washington governor, who is running a campaign prioritizing climate change, said that any attempt by Trump to run on his environmental record “would not be successful.”

Inslee was also critical of one of his constituents, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is considering an independent presidential run. Inslee pointed to Schultz’s scant voting history.

“The son of a gun doesn’t even vote,” Inslee said. “You want to be president and you don’t even vote? You know, that’s just for the little people. In Howard’s life, voting is just for the little people. I don’t think his candidacy is going to soar.”

John Kasich (R)

On the heels of former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld’s announcement to officially enter the GOP race, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich said on CNN that he still hasn’t ruled out his own primary challenge to Trump.

“All of my options remain on the table,” said Kasich, who previously ran for president in 2016. “I don’t wake up every day looking at polls or thinking about me and my political future. I just want to be a good voice.”

Amy Klobuchar (D)

The Minnesota senator made her second trip to Florida as a presidential candidate this week, speaking about health care in Miami and meeting with Democratic leaders from the state House in Tallahassee.

Fox News also announced that Klobuchar will appear on the network for a forum on May 8. The Klobuchar appearance follows a Sanders town hall on Fox News on Monday.

Terry McAuliffe (D)

McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia, announced on Wednesday evening that he would not run for president, choosing instead to assist Democrats in his home state trying to win back the state’s legislative chambers.

Despite his decision, McAuliffe said he feels he would have been able to beat Trump “like a rented mule,” but that he was concerned about the problems he sees plaguing Virginia — an apparent reference to the blackface scandal and sexual harassment allegation that rocked Democratic leadership earlier this year.

Seth Moulton (D)

Moulton, who was spotted in his Massachusetts hometown this week filming a presidential announcement video, is hiring staff for a potential campaign, Politico reported; he is expected to make a public announcement next week.

Beto O’Rourke (D)

The former congressman continued his breakneck-paced campaign this week, making stops in South Carolina and the Super Tuesday battleground of Virginia.

Like other 2020 Democrats, O’Rourke spent most of the week defending the contents of years of tax returns. One headline emerging from the 10 years of filings that O’Rourke dropped on Monday: He appears to have given the smallest percentage of his family’s income to charity out of the 2020 field ( 0.3 percent in 2017), according to ABC News.

A voter confronted O’Rourke about his stingy charitable donations on the trail Wednesday, and the 2020 hopeful responded by saying:

“I’ve served in public office since 2005. I do my best to contribute to the success of my community, of my state, and now, of my country. There are ways that I do this that are measurable and there are ways that I do this that are immeasurable. There are charities that we donate to that we’ve recorded and itemized, others that we have donated to that we have not.”

Tim Ryan (D)

Ryan took a page out of Elizabeth Warren’s book this week and introduced legislation which would require the Justice Department to create training in a variety of areas for law enforcement officers.

He also took a veiled shot at some of the more progressive Democrats in the 2020 field, telling CNN that he’s “concerned” about a growing socialist wing of the party.

“I’m concerned about it. Because if we are going to de-carbonize the American economy, it’s not going to be some centralized bureaucracy in Washington, DC, that’s going to make it happen,” Ryan said. “It’s going to be part targeted government investments that do need to be robust. But it’s going to be the free market that’s going — at the end of the day — is going to make that happen.”

Bernie Sanders (D)

Bernie Sanders had a big week. Not only did he release years of tax returns, but Sanders also seems to have kick-started another Democratic trend: appearing on Fox News.

According to tax filings released by the campaign, Sanders, who has made a career out of railing against the ultra wealthy, is officially now a millionaire himself.

The runner up for the 2016 Democratic nomination reported an adjusted gross income of nearly $561,293 in 2018, and paid $145,840 in taxes for a 26 percent effective tax rate. And in 2016 and 2017, Sanders reported raking in $1.06 million and $1.13 million in adjusted gross income, respectively, paying a 35 percent and 30 percent effective rate, according to ABC News.

Tax filings aside, Sanders’ Fox News town hall on Monday broke ratings records for the 2020 cycle so far. And it looks like more Democrats are set to follow his lead, with Sen. Amy Klobuchar quickly announcing her own Fox town hall.

Eric Swalwell (D)

Rep. Eric Swalwell held another kick off rally in his hometown of Dublin, California, on Sunday, days after he officially kicked off his campaign a few miles away from last year’s school shooting in Parkland.

Elizabeth Warren (D)

Warren continued her string of major policy proposal announcements, which have defined her campaign and aspects of the entire 2020 Democratic race as of late. She introduced the “Accountable Capitalism Act” this week, a bill that “aims to reverse the harmful trends over the last 30 years,” according to the senator’s website.

Bill Weld (R)

It’s official — Trump won’t run unopposed for reelection in 2020. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld jumped into the race on Monday, becoming the first Republican to challenge a sitting president for the party nomination since Pat Buchanan ran against President George H. W. Bush in 1992.

Weld, who ran for vice president in 2016 on the Libertarian ticket under Gary Johnson, told ABC News that he would’ve been “ashamed of myself if hadn’t raised my hand and said count me in.”

The former two-term governor also said he’ll focus on Republican primaries where independents can vote, while hoping his pitch that the president is ignoring key issues like climate change and the debt will resonate with moderate Republicans.

“The president is just not dealing with serious issues such as global warming and climate change. That’s a real threat to us as a country,” Weld said. “And for the president to just say it’s a hoax, that’s not responsible government.”

Weld spent his first week on the trail campaigning across New Hampshire.

Marianne Williamson (D)

Democratic presidential hopeful and spiritual book author Marianne Williamson participated in her first CNN town hall on Sunday.

On health care, Williamson saidd that her approach as president would be broader than just Medicare for All, according to CNN.

“That will save a lot of money. There’s so much about our diet, our lifestyle and so much about the economic stress that actually causes the very conditions that produce illness. That’s why if we’re going to talk about health in America, we have to talk about the foods, toxins. We have to talk about our environmental policies. We need to go a lot deeper.”

Andrew Yang (D)

Andrew Yang held a rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on Monday, drawing a “large and diverse crowd,” according to Business Insider.

“The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math,” Yang told the raucous crowd.

The D.C. rally came on the heels of perhaps Yang’s biggest media appearance yet with his CNN town hall on Sunday.

On combating the opioid epidemic, Yang said he supports decriminalizing heroin and other opiates. “We need to decriminalize opiates for personal use,” Yang said. “I’m also for the legalization of cannabis,” he said during Sunday’s town hall.

[coffeebased]

It’s been a whole year since I posted last. Part of me wants to apologise for being gone so long, but mostly I’m just glad that I’m here.

Instead of doing a GIANT 2018 READING POST, I’m going to chop it up into three posts:

Favourite Books Read in 2018

2018 Reading Data and Goal-setting for 2019

2013-2018 Reading Data Trends

I was going to do a bigass one like I usually do but it just felt so daunting. Probably because I read 256 books in 2018 and it was pretty tempting to just close that Excel sheet and move on to an empty one for 2019. But what is the point of an unexamined life, anyway?

So this post is basically a listicle with summaries grabbed from Goodreads, as well as the complete list of the books I read in 2018. I really enjoyed all these books immensely and they’re all in my personal canon now.

My Top 10 Reads for 2018:

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.In this fresh, authoritative version—the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman—this stirring tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic comes alive in an entirely new way. Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, this engrossing translation matches the number of lines in the Greek original, thus striding at Homer’s sprightly pace and singing with a voice that echoes Homer’s music.

Circe by Madeline Miller

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

3. The World of the Five Gods by Lois McMaster Bujold

A man broken in body and spirit, Cazaril, has returned to the noble household he once served as page, and is named, to his great surprise, as the secretary-tutor to the beautiful, strong-willed sister of the impetuous boy who is next in line to rule.

It is an assignment Cazaril dreads, for it will ultimately lead him to the place he fears most, the royal court of Cardegoss, where the powerful enemies, who once placed him in chains, now occupy lofty positions. In addition to the traitorous intrigues of villains, Cazaril and the Royesse Iselle, are faced with a sinister curse that hangs like a sword over the entire blighted House of Chalion and all who stand in their circle. Only by employing the darkest, most forbidden of magics, can Cazaril hope to protect his royal charge—an act that will mark the loyal, damaged servant as a tool of the miraculous, and trap him, flesh and soul, in a maze of demonic paradox, damnation, and death

4. Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal, Translated by Harold Augenbraum

In more than a century since its appearance, José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere has become widely known as the great novel of the Philippines. A passionate love story set against the ugly political backdrop of repression, torture, and murder, “The Noli,” as it is called in the Philippines, was the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism, and Rizal became a guiding conscience—and martyr—for the revolution that would subsequently rise up in the Spanish province.

5. America is Not The Heart by Elaine Castillo

Three generations of women from one immigrant family trying to reconcile the home they left behind with the life they’re building in America.

How many lives can one person lead in a single lifetime? When Hero de Vera arrives in America, disowned by her parents in the Philippines, she’s already on her third. Her uncle, Pol, who has offered her a fresh start and a place to stay in the Bay Area, knows not to ask about her past. And his younger wife, Paz, has learned enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. Only their daughter Roni asks Hero why her hands seem to constantly ache.

Illuminating the violent political history of the Philippines in the 1980s and 1990s and the insular immigrant communities that spring up in the suburban United States with an uncanny ear for the unspoken intimacies and pain that get buried by the duties of everyday life and family ritual, Castillo delivers a powerful, increasingly relevant novel about the promise of the American dream and the unshakable power of the past. In a voice as immediate and startling as those of Junot Diaz and NoViolet Bulawayo, America Is Not the Heart is a sprawling, soulful telenovela of a debut novel. With exuberance, muscularity, and tenderness, here is a family saga; an origin story; a romance; a narrative of two nations and the people who leave home to grasp at another, sometimes turning back.

6. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk W. Johnson

A rollicking true-crime adventure and a thought-provoking exploration of the human drive to possess natural beauty for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.

On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London’s Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin’s obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins–some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin’s, Alfred Russel Wallace, who’d risked everything to gather them–and escaped into the darkness.

Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man’s relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man’s destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.

7. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

An unforgettable memoir in the tradition of The Glass Castle about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes and the will to change it.

8. The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 7 and 8 by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, André Lima Araújo, Matt Wilson, Kris Anka, Jen Bartel

In the past: awful stuff. In the present: awful stuff. But, increasingly, answers.

Modernist poets trapped in an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery. The Romantics gathering in Lake Geneva to resurrect the dead. What really happened during the fall of Rome. The Lucifer who was a nun, hearing Ananke’s Black Death confession. As we approach the end, we start to see the full picture. Also includes the delights of the WicDiv Christmas Annual and the Comedy special.

9. Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads

Mister Miracle is magical, dark, intimate and unlike anything you’ve read before.

Scott Free is the greatest escape artist who ever lived. So great, he escaped Granny Goodness’ gruesome orphanage and the dangers of Apokolips to travel across galaxies and set up a new life on Earth with his wife, Big Barda. Using the stage alter ego of Mister Miracle, he has made quite a career for himself showing off his acrobatic escape techniques. He even caught the attention of the Justice League, who has counted him among its ranks.

You might say Scott Free has everything–so why isn’t it enough? Mister Miracle has mastered every illusion, achieved every stunt, pulled off every trick–except one. He has never escaped death. Is it even possible? Our hero is going to have to kill himself if he wants to find out.

10. The Band, #1–2

Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best — the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld.

Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk – or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay’s door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.

It’s time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld.

PHEW. Did you guys read any of those books? Did you like them? Hit me up!

The books I read in 2018:

Okay, thank you for reading. Keep a weather eye out for the next post, hopefully very soon.

My Ten Favourite Books from 2018 It's been a whole year since I posted last. Part of me wants to apologise for being gone so long, but mostly I'm just glad that I'm here.

[arcticdementor]

Of course, the Reaganite project did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reagan—and his successors from both parties—used the same triumphalist rhetoric to sell the hollowing out of trade unions, the deregulation of banks, the expansion of outsourcing, and the globalization of markets away from the deadweight of national economic interests. Central to this project was a neoliberal attack on national barriers to the flow of labor and capital. At home, Reagan also oversaw one of the most significant pro-migration reforms in American history, the 1986 “Reagan Amnesty” that expanded the labor market by allowing millions of illegal migrants to gain legal status.

Popular movements against different elements of this post–Cold War vision came initially from the Left in the form of the anti-globalization movements and later Occupy Wall Street. But, lacking the bargaining power to challenge international capital, protest movements went nowhere. The globalized and financialized economic system held firm despite all the devastation it wreaked, even through the 2008 financial crisis.

Today, by far the most visible anti-globalization movement takes the form of the anti-migrant backlash led by Donald Trump and other “populists.” The Left, meanwhile, seems to have no option but to recoil in horror at Trump’s “Muslim ban” and news stories about ICE hunting down migrant families; it can only react against whatever Trump is doing. If Trump is for immigration controls, then the Left will demand the opposite. And so today talk of “open borders” has entered mainstream liberal discourse, where once it was confined to radical free market think tanks and libertarian anarchist circles.

While no serious political party of the Left is offering concrete proposals for a truly borderless society, by embracing the moral arguments of the open-borders Left and the economic arguments of free market think tanks, the Left has painted itself into a corner. If “no human is illegal!,” as the protest chant goes, the Left is implicitly accepting the moral case for no borders or sovereign nations at all. But what implications will unlimited migration have for projects like universal public health care and education, or a federal jobs guarantee? And how will progressives convincingly explain these goals to the public?

…

The transformation of open borders into a “Left” position is a very new phenomenon and runs counter to the history of the organized Left in fundamental ways. Open borders has long been a rallying cry of the business and free market Right. Drawing from neoclassical economists, these groups have advocated for liberalizing migration on the grounds of market rationality and economic freedom. They oppose limits on migration for the same reasons that they oppose restrictions on the movement of capital. The Koch-funded Cato Institute, which also advocates lifting legal restrictions on child labor, has churned out radical open borders advocacy for decades, arguing that support for open borders is a fundamental tenet of libertarianism, and “Forget the wall already, it’s time for the U.S. to have open borders.” The Adam Smith Institute has done much the same, arguing that “Immigration restrictions make us poorer.”

Following Reagan and figures like Milton Friedman, George W. Bush championed liberalizing migration before, during, and after his presidency. Grover Norquist, a zealous advocate of Trump’s (and Bush’s and Reagan’s) tax cuts, has for years railed against the illiberalism of the trade unions, reminding us, “Hostility to immigration has traditionally been a union cause.”

He’s not wrong. From the first law restricting immigration in 1882 to Cesar Chavez and the famously multiethnic United Farm Workers protesting against employers’ use and encouragement of illegal migration in 1969, trade unions have often opposed mass migration. They saw the deliberate importation of illegal, low-wage workers as weakening labor’s bargaining power and as a form of exploitation. There is no getting around the fact that the power of unions relies by definition on their ability to restrict and withdraw the supply of labor, which becomes impossible if an entire workforce can be easily and cheaply replaced. Open borders and mass immigration are a victory for the bosses.

…

Today’s well-intentioned activists have become the useful idiots of big business. With their adoption of “open borders” advocacy—and a fierce moral absolutism that regards any limit to migration as an unspeakable evil—any criticism of the exploitative system of mass migration is effectively dismissed as blasphemy. Even solidly leftist politicians, like Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, are accused of “nativism” by critics if they recognize the legitimacy of borders or migration restriction at any point. This open borders radicalism ultimately benefits the elites within the most powerful countries in the world, further disempowers organized labor, robs the developing world of desperately needed professionals, and turns workers against workers.

…

It has now become a common slogan among advocates of open borders—and many mainstream commentators—that “there is no migrant crisis.” But whether they like it or not, radically transformative levels of mass migration are unpopular across every section of society and throughout the world. And the people among whom it is unpopular, the citizenry, have the right to vote. Thus migration increasingly presents a crisis that is fundamental to democracy. Any political party wishing to govern will either have to accept the will of the people, or it will have to repress dissent in order to impose the open borders agenda. Many on the libertarian Left are among the most aggressive advocates of the latter. And for what? To provide moral cover for exploitation? To ensure that left-wing parties that could actually address any of these issues at a deeper international level remain out of power?

The immigration expansionists have two key weapons. One is the big business and financial interests all working on their side, but an equally powerful weapon—wielded more expertly by the left-leaning immigration expansionists—is moral blackmail and public shame. People are right to see the mistreatment of migrants as morally wrong. Many people are concerned about the growth of racism and callousness toward minorities that often accompanies anti-immigration sentiment. But the open borders position does not even live up to its own professed moral code.

There are many economic pros and cons to high immigration, but it is more likely to negatively impact low-skilled and low-paid native workers while benefiting wealthier native workers and the corporate sector. As George J. Borjas has argued, it functions as a kind of upward wealth redistribution. A 2017 study by the National Academy of Sciences called “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration” found that current immigration policies have resulted in disproportionately negative effects on poor and minority Americans, a finding that would have come as no surprise to figures like Marcus Garvey or Frederick Douglass. No doubt they, too, would have to be considered “anti-immigrant” by today’s standards for warning of this.

…

As the child of migrants, and someone who has spent most of my life in a country with persistently high levels of emigration—Ireland—I have always viewed the migration question differently than my well-intentioned friends on the left in large, world-dominating economies. When austerity and unemployment hit Ireland—after billions in public money was used to bail out the financial sector in 2008—I watched my entire peer group leave and never return. This isn’t just a technical matter. It touches the heart and soul of a nation, like a war. It means the constant hemorrhaging of idealistic and energetic young generations, who normally rejuvenate and reimagine a society. In Ireland, as in every high-emigration country, there have always been anti-emigration campaigns and movements, led by the Left, demanding full employment in times of recession. But they’re rarely strong enough to withstand the forces of the global market. Meanwhile, the guilty and nervous elites in office during a period of popular anger are only too happy to see a potentially radical generation scatter across the world.

I’m always amazed at the arrogance and the strangely imperial mentality of British and American pro–open borders progressives who believe that they are performing an act of enlightened charity when they “welcome” PhDs from eastern Europe or Central America driving them around and serving them food. In the wealthiest nations, open borders advocacy seems to function as a fanatical cult among true believers—a product of big business and free market lobbying is carried along by a larger group of the urban creative, tech, media, and knowledge economy class, who are serving their own objective class interests by keeping their transient lifestyles cheap and their careers intact as they parrot the institutional ideology of their industries. The truth is that mass migration is a tragedy, and upper-middle-class moralizing about it is a farce. Perhaps the ultra-wealthy can afford to live in the borderless world they aggressively advocate for, but most people need—and want—a coherent, sovereign political body to defend their rights as citizens.

…

If open borders is “a Koch brothers proposal,” then what would an authentic Left position on immigration look like? In this case, instead of channeling Milton Friedman, the Left should take its bearings from its own long traditions. Progressives should focus on addressing the systemic exploitation at the root of mass migration rather than retreating to a shallow moralism that legitimates these exploitative forces. This does not mean that leftists should ignore injustices against immigrants. They should vigorously defend migrants against inhumane treatment. At the same time, any sincere Left must take a hard line against the corporate, financial, and other actors who create the desperate circumstances underlying mass migration (which, in turn, produces the populist reaction against it). Only a strong national Left in the small and developing nations—acting in concert with a Left committed to ending financialization and global labor exploitation in the larger economies—could have any hope of addressing these problems.

To begin with, the Left must stop citing the latest Cato Institute propaganda in order to ignore the effects of immigration on domestic labor, especially the working poor who are likely to suffer disproportionately from expanding the labor pool. Immigration policies should be designed to ensure that the bargaining power of workers is not significantly imperiled. This is especially true in times of wage stagnation, weak unions, and massive inequality.

With respect to illegal immigration, the Left should support efforts to make E-Verify mandatory and push for stiff penalties on employers who fail to comply. Employers, not immigrants, should be the primary focus of enforcement efforts. These employers take advantage of immigrants who lack ordinary legal protections in order to perpetuate a race to the bottom in wages while also evading payroll taxes and the provision of other benefits. Such incentives must be eliminated if any workers are to be treated fairly.

…

Marx’s argument that the English working class should see Irish nationhood as a potential compliment to their struggle, rather than as a threat to their identity, should resonate today, as we witness the rise of various identity movements around the world. The comforting delusion that immigrants come here because they love America is incredibly naïve—as naïve as suggesting that the nineteenth-century Irish immigrants Marx described loved England. Most migrants emigrate out of economic necessity, and the vast majority would prefer to have better opportunities at home, among their own family and friends. But such opportunities are impossible within the current shape of globalization.

[aishnidoh]

1. Andrew Carnegie (goal setter)

Andrew Carnegie was an American entrepreneur who actually immigrated from Scotland. Born into the lower class, Carnegie and his family immigrated to Pennsylvania, where they lived a better lifestyle. Carnegie later founded the Carnegie Steel Company, growing it to become one of the largest companies in U.S. history.

In addition to the success of his company, Carnegie became a very successful angel investor. Using the money made through his steel company, he invested in various car companies, messenger services, and land that contained oil reserves. Upon his death in 1919, Carnegie had an estimated net worth of $350 million, which, in 2021 dollars, would be worth nearly $5.5 billion.

Interview

Creative vision is the first of three principles Carnegie raises. What exactly does creative vision mean? Carnegie breaks it down into ten fundamental attitudes, which in aggregate form the basis for creative vision. 

“The organized thinker never gives up anything he undertakes until he has exhausted every effort to finish it.” 

Controlled attention is the final principle. Controlled attention is in some ways an offshoot of the other two. According to Carnegie, if you orient your mind in a specific way, all your attention starts to siphon in a specific direction. “Controlled attention magnetized the brain with the nature of one’s dominating thoughts, aims, and purposes, thus causing one to be always in search of every necessary thing that is related to one’s dominating thoughts.”

“A man will always be more effective when engaged in the sort of work he likes best. That is why one’s major purpose in life should be of his own choice. People who drift through life performing work they do not like, merely because they must have an income as a means of living, seldom get more than a living from their labor. You see, this sort of labor does not inspire one to perform service in an obsessional desire to work. It is one of the tragedies of civilization that we have not found a way to give every man the sort of work he likes best to do.”

2. Henry Ford (efficient)

Unlike Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford was a natural-born citizen who grew up in Michigan. Born into a family that originated from England and Ireland, he was well off, though not wealthy. Ford was a hard-working man and eventually completed an apprenticeship with the Detroit Dry Dock Company. In 1891, he met with Thomas Edison and told him about his concept of the automobile. Edison liked the idea and let Ford use his warehouse to develop and manufacture two prototypes.

Using the prototypes, Ford soon founded the Detroit Automobile Company. The company was short-lived, however, since the product did not meet Ford's standards. He went on to found the Cadillac Motor Car Company, which also failed, before starting the Ford Motor Company for which he is famous. His third attempt at a car company made him very successful, and the company remains a going concern with annual sales of over $155.9 billion.

Interview

Like many another he had entertained his mind with ideas of having lived before. The thing that really mattered, he said, was what experience we got from a former life and what we gathered in this to pass on to help other people for their next life. It is the sum of what we carry on from one generation to another that makes the essence of experience the thing, he said.

As we passed on to lighter themes I asked him if in a future incarnation he would leave old-fashioned things like motor-cars and concentrate on a small aeroplane with, say, a gyroscope. He replied that he did not know anything about that or what he would like in another life.

'The only thing is,' said Henry Ford, 'I should like to be sure of having the same wife.' 'That's the difference between you and me, Mr. Ford,' his interviewer ventured to say, 'I hope that my own wife will have better luck in the next world.' 'There you are, Henry,' said Mrs. Ford, who was sitting near, 'you only think of yourself, but your friend thinks of his wife.' 'It means the same thing,' said Henry Ford, delighted with the turn the talk had taken, and he put out his hand and we shook hands, and the conversation grew in warmth.

3. Ophra Winfrey (persistent)

Oprah Winfrey is a shining example of an American success story. While she did not reveal her past until 1986, Winfrey was a victim of sexual assault at the age of nine and became pregnant at the age of 14 before losing the child during childbirth.

These early trials and tribulations gave her the perspective and confidence that helped her land her first TV show in 1983. From there, Winfrey steadily grew her brand and her empire, founding Harpo Studios, a multimedia company, in 1988.The company, through ad revenue and other revenue streams, has steadily grown to over 12,500 employees.

Winfrey co-founded Oxygen Media, another media company that attracts millions of annual television viewers.Winfrey, a TV personality turned entrepreneur, has a net worth of $2.6 billion as of Jan. 13, 2021

Interview

“It’s another situation I’ve got myself in,” she laughs, “but I care about injustice and if I get the opportunity to flag it, I will, every time. I’ll stand up there.” Ironically, the charismatic icon is more grounded than ever. Oprah recognises she cannot do everything alone, as she once thought she could, and accepts that when it comes to real change, we all have a long way to go, and a lot to contribute. "It's a significant moment in time for all of us. Society will never revert to how it was. It can't and it won't"“It’s a significant moment in history for all of us,” she utters in her famously rich tones. “Society as an entity will never be the same again, and will never revert to how it was. It can’t, and it won’t.”The truth is, Oprah is already a leader who empowers and emboldens her supporters, so it’s understandable that she isn’t willing to risk it all for a spin of the Washington wheel. If the media is the natural successor to the power of politics, then Oprah, who owns her own cable channel, OWN, and is a special correspondent for current affairs show 60 Minutes, is already an unrivalled leader. Perhaps part of that is because—unlike the current US President and so many others at the top table—Oprah was not born into wealth; she has worked tirelessly over the past four decades to build her formidable empire.

4. Bill Gates (risk taker)

Bill Gates, one of the most well-known American technology entrepreneurs, is the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of over $133 billion as of Jan. 13, 2021.Gates grew up in Seattle, Wash., and began tinkering with personal computers at an early age with friends such as Paul Allen. Showing a ton of aptitude and promise, Gates enrolled in Harvard, where he met Steve Ballmer before dropping out to start Microsoft.

Gates, with the help of Allen, Ballmer, and others, built Microsoft to become one of the world's largest and most influential tech companies. In 2020, Gates only recently stepped down from the board of Microsoft, which is valued at over a trillion dollars based on its market capitalization. He is decided to refocus his personal efforts on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Interview

Pretty quickly we decided that we ought to get out there and really help these guys get their act together. I never became an employee. Paul was their Vice President of Software. But I moved out and whatever I did from the inside, I did on behalf of Microsoft. I got out there and alot of what I started doing at first was actually enhancing the BASIC. 537

DA: Let me ask this Bill. You mentioned that, even before this, you and Paul had had many discussions about the future. How did this work affect what you thought the future was going to hold?

BG: Well, Paul had talked about the microprocessor and where that would go and so we had formulated this idea that everybody would have kind of a computer as a tool somehow. Not just for business, but also for something they would play around with as a home device. We knew that however it got started, that there would be certain standards built-up around it, about how you programmed things. We wanted to be part of that excitement. And so we saw this machine as just the beginning of an era. And this company was a wild company. I mean they were actually bankrupt before they did this because they had gotten screwed up doing Kit Calculators which had been their thing they had done after model rocketry.

MITS actually stands for "Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems", funny little things you stick on top of the rocket that tells you what the temperature is at the top of the flight or eventually, they had ones that would take pictures. So, they had done okay in that and then got into Kit Calculators. But was wiped out by Bomar and TI. And then just as a desperate thing, they did Kit Computers. When these computers came out at $360, the price of the 8080 chip was $360. So people kept saying, "They must be broken chips, it must be fake." And, of course, when they put these kits together, they didn't preassemble them, so if you miss one part -- a lot of people had a hard time putting these things together. But, a lot of people got it done and eventually went on to buy the Teletype and BASIC, and actually get a running system. So we thought, "Hey, are we really on to something here? We think so." And MITS was just great because it was just a center of activity for those first few years. We went around the country in this big van, big blue van, they had, with these machines starting up user groups and demonstrating things. Actually, before we even shipped BASIC, somebody stole the demo copy out of the van and started copying it around and sending it to different computer clubs. There was a real phenomenon taking place there, right around this Altair computer. In fact, the MITS guys were kind of upset when people would imitate this computer, same plug-in bus for peripherals -- things like that. They really weren't sure what to do about it.

5.Larry Page (committed)

Larry Page is the co-founder of Google, the world's number one search engine. Google was started by Page and his co-founder Sergey Brin while they were doctorate students at Stanford University.12 With an initial investment of just $100,000, the two partners quickly grew Google into a multinational conglomerate.In 2015, Google was restructured to form the parent company Alphabet Inc., with Page serving as CEO.Page has a net worth of $82.0 billion as of Jan 13, 2021.

Interview

Looking forward 100 years from now at the possibilities that are opening up, he says: “We could probably solve a lot of the issues we have as humans.”It is a decade on from the first flush of idealism that accompanied its stock market listing, and all Google’s talk of “don’t be evil” and “making the world a better place” has come to sound somewhat quaint. Its power and wealth have stirred resentment and brought a backlash, in Europe in particular, where it is under investigation for how it wields its monopoly power in internet search.

Page, however, is not shrinking an inch from the altruistic principles or the outsized ambitions that he and co-founder Sergey Brin laid down in seemingly more innocent times. “The societal goal is our primary goal,” he says. “We’ve always tried to say that with Google. I think we’ve not succeeded as much as we’d like.”

Even Google’s famously far-reaching mission statement, to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, is not big enough for what he now has in mind. The aim: to use the money that is spouting from its search advertising business to stake out positions in boom industries of the future, from biotech to robotics.

Asked whether this means Google needs a new mission statement, he says: “I think we do, probably.” As to what it should be: “We’re still trying to work that out.”

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/092315/top-5-most-successful-american-entrepreneurs.asp

https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/entrepreneur-traits

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/07/30/andrew-carnegie-on-achieving-wealth-and-prosperity/amp/

https://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/Story/0,,127365,00.html

https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/culture/celebrities/interview-oprah-winfrey

https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/3173f19e-5fbc-11e4-8c27-00144feabdc0

[whoisblackamerica]

Possible Solution?

The Ethnic Discovery Project

    As a young girl, I grew up in a loving household where my parents made sure that my siblings and I were cultured and knew where we came from. As much as they, my parents, could. And I, being the typical naive, young child, I thought that what they told was all there was to our heritage and culture. That my family’s history began with slavery and we’ve always been from the United States. Once I started getting older, I noticed that classmates of mine, white and other people of color, were able to trace back their lineage and family trees miles farther than I was able to. Other African American youths suffer from this confusion too, and in turn can affect them in different ways. 

In the black community, there is an issue with self-identification, in which we don’t know where we come from because of the culture lost during the slave trade.  More specifically, Black people in America face an identity crisis through loss of ancestry, negative stereotypes and images, and low self-esteem. The issue developed once the first Africans were brought to America in 1619. Along with being forced into labor, they were also forced to drop their African customs and cultures. This issue became more prevalent during the civil rights movement because that was, arguably, the birth of Black Nationalism. Black people in America face an identity crisis through loss of ancestry which was scientifically proven to contribute to low-self esteem. I propose that we create a non-profit organization of people who will dedicate time to searching archives and documents, specifically those that are made by, kept by, and created by other African Americans, for people to discover more about their personal heritage, thus finally filling the void that was created by slavery. We could build our own genealogy site, or offer to work with existing ones. This resource would be a cheap, maybe even free, source for curious people who want to know where their family is from, and who right fully deserves it. I think that people who have faced hundreds of years of oppression, racism, and discrimination are owed a lot for their perseverance. However, this resource wouldn’t be limited to only people who identify as African-American, but it would also be for the benefit of  all mixed-raced people.

   Black America has dealt with a lot of oppression since slavery, before and after it was abolished. Some significant events to note are the L.A. riots that were triggered by the brutal beating of Rodney King, the recent police brutality against black people in the past decade, and the gang violence within the black youth, across the country. With the constant fighting within the community and outside of it, it’s very difficult for things to get done to positively uplift out people. Thus, the self-esteem and mental well being of our people is affected. It’s no secret in the black community that our racial identity directly affects our dignity and self-respect. I have known plenty of people, including myself, who felt as if they were worth less because they were born black or a person of color, almost as if being white was so much easier and our lives would actually be worth living. The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism agrees and propose that, “Understanding identity, or individuals' beliefs about the groups to which they belong can help explain variation in their physical and mental health, educational attainment, income levels, and wealth.” (Mason) A general definition of Identity would be a distinguished idea of an individual through certain traits and qualities. The difference between being black in America and being black in Africa is that Black America is only color but Black in Africa is surrounded by language, cuisine, and customs, that many people of my generation and many generations before us haven’t gotten the chance to experience or discover. The Encyclopedia of African American Society states that, “The earliest studies that measured racial identity among African Americans were originally attempts to study black self-esteem. These studies were based on the concept of "reflective appraisal"—the idea that people develop a self-concept based on the way that other people view them.” (Jaynes)

To go further into the actual source of this self-hatred, we can discuss the role that stereotypes and the false representations of African Americans in the United States. White people further influenced the questioning of who we are, by making us feel like less than people. Things like the Three-Fifths compromise (which was a decision agreed upon in 1787 that stated that for population counting purposes for the House of Representatives, slaves would count as 3/5ths of a person or 3 out of every 5 slaves as a person) and not being able to vote in a country we were forced in are just a few examples. Additionally, black youth aren’t being taught the whole truth about slavery. They are learning the watered-down version of American History that is meant to spark patriotism in young one’s minds. I viewed a film in my African American history classed titled: Ethnic Notions: Black Images in the White Mind. The film’s narrator mentioned

“Contained in these cultural images is the history of our national conscience striving to reconcile the paradox of racism in a nation founded on human equality - a conscience coping with this profound contradiction … through caricature. What were the consequences of these caricatures? How did they mold and mirror the reality of racial tensions in America for more than 100 years?” (Notions)

Now think about this. How could this nation have been founded on equality, when it literally was not founded on equality. Additionally, The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History by Colin A. Palmer explains,

“In the history of race relations in the United States, stereotypes preceded and accompanied the origins and legalization of slavery. Equipped with stereotypes, whites fastened the dogma of inferiority on Africans and African Americans. With the termination of slavery, stereotypes were then extensively employed to legitimate segregationist policies. Throughout the course of American history, such ingrained stereotypes have subverted black identity and seriously undermined the formation of a biracial society based on egalitarian practices. “ (Palmer)

Images like the Mamie, and exaggerated black face were prevalent before the 1960s. After that, black people stopped viewing themselves under the white’s eyes. Because of the civil rights movement, black people began to care more about their people as a whole rather than an “every man for himself” type of mentality. The Encyclopedia of African American Society found that “In fact, when black researchers began to develop their own theories of racial identity, they found that African Americans' sense of self came mainly from the messages they received from parents and friends, not the negative views of whites.” (Jaynes)

To address this issue, I suggest we create a non-profit organization, that’s goal is to search the archives, documents, and records of African Americans from 1619 (the first slaves brought to America in Jamestown, Virginia) to now, to help people discover more about themselves, the families they came from, and the cultures they may have lost during history. The difference between this organization and other ancestry and genealogy sites (ancestry.com, 23andme.com, etc.) is that this won’t stop with finding out where these people’s DNA leads to and is made up of but it will also teach them about the cultures of that area, and hopefully connect them with other people from there. It would be ideal if this organization could partner with a genealogy website, to provide these people with discounted DNA tests or maybe even free. If that is unable to happen, it would be in our best interest to find a laboratory or a scientist willing to do this for little to no money/profit. This organization would mostly have to rely on government funding, fundraisers, and donations because they wouldn’t be selling anything or making a profit. This would be specifically a non-profit, because its main goal would be to enrich the lives of our people and make them more comfortable in their own skin, even when surrounded by the constant negativity around them. This organization could have many benefits, such as creating a larger sense of community, because its black people helping other black people discover themselves and open their minds to a whole new side of them that they hadn’t discovered. There could be offices in place with high populations/concentrations of black people and mixed-race (with black) people, for convenience for them. The amount of offices would depend of the money and revenue that the organization gathers. If they were only able to have a few, let’s say 6 offices with one being the headquarters, would be 1)New York, New York, that has the highest number of black people (at 8,175,133 people!)  2)Detroit, Michigan, which has the highest percentage of the total population of the city at 84.3%, 3) Jackson, Mississippi, 4) Miami Gardens, Florida, 5) Beaumont, Texas, and finally 6) Los Angeles, California.  Unfortunately, the West coast would only have only one official office because the majority of black Americans live in the southern part of the United States and the East coast. Los Angeles, like New York, is a “melting pot” (for lack of a better term), with many different kinds of people, such as mixed-race people and immigrants living there. The headquarters would be in New York, because I feel as though by serving the most amount of black people in America, they would dedicate a lot of time to the cause.  We could collaborate with AfricanAncestry.com,  which is a genealogy website dedicated to find African DNA lineages. On their website they claim that, “African Ancestry uses the world’s largest database of African DNA lineages to determine your country and ethnic group of origin, all with a simple swab of your cheek.” (AfricanAncestry.com homepage) Having a black-owned and black-ran genealogy testing service would provide more credibility to the organization, and attract more black people.

    Unfortunately, African Ancestry’s tests range anywhere from $274.00 (for 2 or $299.00 for one) to $680.00. That is an astronomical price to pay for something that should be in your right as a human being to know. On the website, 23andme.com's services’ prices range from $99 for just the ancestry service to $199 for the “Health + Ancestry” Service. Though, along with ancestrydna.com, they are known for giving somewhat vague results occasionally. ( i.e. broadly sub-Saharan African, or broadly East Asian) The main issues with genealogy test is that it doesn’t address the whole issue that we are presented with. Sure, we get the satisfaction of learning a little about where our ancestors we’re from up until today, but it doesn’t connect us to the culture in anyway. There are also things that have nothing to do with genealogy, but more about the identification itself and not the physically scientific aspect of things. The Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity, or the MIBI for short, is a tool used to asses racial and ethic identity among African Americans in the United States. Patrick L. Mason, a Professor and the Director of African American Studies at the University of Florida states that, “According to the MIBI and the model on which it is based, the Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity (MMRI), the unique sociocultural history of black Americans both psychologically unifies the group and creates variability in the ways blacks identify with their race. To capture similarities and distinctions across blacks, the MIBI measures racial identity along three dimensions: (1) centrality, (2) regard, and (3) ideology” (Mason).  The issues with this test and others like this is that it only focuses on blacks personal identification in comparison to other blacks, which doesn’t really have anything to do with the issue, which is not knowing the actual places we come from. These tests only asses the effect of the problem. That doesn’t change the fact that it could be very eye opening and interesting to observe, it just isn’t enough.

   Overall, we have plenty of resources to make this proposal happen, however, our current political climate might prevent this from being an easy task. As long as we keep advancing through history and fighting for each other and our rights, anything is possible. Obviously, the psychological well being of African Americans wouldn’t magically become 100% better after my proposed solution, but, it is a huge step in the right direction, and hopefully others think so too.