#also class wars are only productive against the ultra rich

[gavfleetout]

Well this certainly seems like the start of a class war.

Bell riots anyone?

[aion-rsa]

Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism

https://ift.tt/3kOEMpF

This Squid Game article contains MAJOR spoilers.

From the very first game of ddakji out in the real world with Train to Busan actor Gong Yoo, Squid Game poses the question: how far would you go for money? How much of your body, your life, would you trade to keep the wolves at bay and to get to live the life you’ve always dreamed? Once you start, could you stop, even if you wanted to? And in the end, would it even be worth it? While Squid Game depicts an attempt to answer these questions taken to the extreme, they are the same essential questions posed to everyone living under capitalism: What kind of job, what terrible hours, what back-breaking labor, what level of abuse, what work/life imbalance will we tolerate in exchange for what we need or want to live? Unlike many examples of this genre, Squid Game is set in our contemporary reality, which makes its scathing critique of capitalism less of a metaphor for the world we live in and more of a literal depiction of life under capitalism.

Squid Game’s Workers

At the most basic level, the entire competition within Squid Game would not exist without extreme financial distress creating a ready pool of players. It’s no coincidence that Gi-hun’s hard times started when he lost his job, followed by violence against the workers who went on strike. Strike-breakers and physical violence against striking workers may feel like an antiquated idea to an American audience. South Korea, however, has something of an anti-labor reputation, with only 10% of its workers in unions and laws limiting unions to negotiating pay, among other restrictions. In the US, the anti-labor fight is alive and well, though transformed, where it takes the shape of the deceptively named “Right to Work” laws, which benefit corporations and make it harder for unions to operate.

As noted in our review, (most of) the players choose to leave and then willingly return to the arena, which separates Squid Game from other entries in the genre like the Hunger Games series and Escape Room. This element of volition contributes to the series’ primary critical goal. As Mi-nyeo and others brought up early on, they’re getting killed in the real world too, but at least inside they might actually get something for their troubles. 

As an anti-capitalist parable, the only ways to fight back or upend the game in some small way are through acts of solidarity or by turning down the allure of the cash. The final clause in the game’s consent form states that the game can end if a majority of players agree to do so. After the brutal Red Light, Green Light massacre in the first, they do exactly that. The election might as well be a union vote. It’s shocking that the contract for the game included an escape clause at all, but it seems the host and his ilk enjoy at least allowing the illusion of free will if nothing else. The players who didn’t return after the first vote to leave the game, though unseen in this narrative, are perhaps the wisest of all. 

Read more

TV

Squid Game’s Most Heartbreaking Hour is Also Its Best

By Kayti Burt

TV

Squid Game Ending Explained

By Kayti Burt

During tug of war, Gi-hun’s team surprises everyone by winning. Their teamwork, unity of purpose, and superior strategy help them defeat a stronger adversary, which is a basic principle of labor organizing, albeit usually not at the expense of the lives of other workers. Player 1 (Il-nam) and Player 240 (Ji-yeong) each find their own way to beat the game by essentially backing out of the competition during marbles. In exchange for friendship and choosing the circumstances of their own deaths, Ji-yeong and Il-nam each make their own, ethically sound choice under this miserable system. Il-nam gets an asterisk since he was never going to die, but he still found a choice beyond merely “kill” or “be killed” by teaching his Gganbu one “last” lesson and helping him continue on in the game. 

In the end, Gi-hun confounds the VIPs and the Front Man by coming to the precipice of victory and simply walking away. Under capitalism, this group of incredibly rich men simply could not understand how someone could come so close to claiming their prize, and choose not to. But for Gi-hun, human life always had greater value. Gi-hun followed (Player 67) Sae-byeok’s advice and stayed true to himself, refusing to actively take anyone’s life, especially not the life of his friend. 

Squid Game’s Ruling Class

Since the competition only exists because of the worst aspects of capitalism, it’s not surprising that in the end, it is itself a capitalist endeavor. Ultra-wealthy VIPs, who mostly seem to be white, Western men, spectate for a price and bet on the game. In their luxury accommodations, they lounge on silent human “furniture” and mistreat service staff. In one notable example, a VIP threatens to kill a server (who the audience knows to be undercover cop Hwang Jun-ho) if he doesn’t remove his mask, even though the VIP knows it would cost the server his life. 

Perhaps most enraging of all is what Player 1, who turns out to actually be the Host, has to say to Gi-hun a year after the game ends. It all circles back to the game’s existential connection to economics; on the one hand, there is the unshakeable link to a population in which a significant portion of people suffer from dire financial woes. On the other hand, there is the Host and his cronies, the ultra-rich who are so bored from their megarich lives that they decided to bet on deadly human bloodsport for fun just so they could feel something again, as though they were betting on horses. 

In spite of the enormous gulf between the two, the Host attempts to draw comparisons between the ultra-wealthy and the extreme poor, saying both are miserable. His little joke denies the reality of hunger, early death, trauma, and many other ways that being poor is actively harmful, both physically and mentally. It’s the kind of slow death that makes risking a quick one in the arena seem reasonable. He and his buddies were just kind of bored. Moreover, the Host denies the role of economic coercion in players taking part in the game, insisting that everyone was there of their own free will. But what free will can there be for people who owe millions, with families at home to care for and creditors at their back, when someone comes along and offers a solution, even a dangerous one? Anyone who has taken a dodgy job offer to get away from a worse one, or because they’re unemployed and the rent and college loans are due, knows that there is a limit to how truly free our choices can be when we need money, especially if there’s little to no safety net. 

Read more

TV

Why Are Squid Game’s English-Language Actors So Bad?

By Kayti Burt

TV

Best Squid Game Doll Sightings

By Kayti Burt

Throughout the series, it is clear that someone had to be funding Squid Game at a high level. Unlike science fiction or fantasy takes, the show is grounded in our current reality, so the large-scale, high-tech obstacles and the island locale must have cost a pretty penny. Of course for any who see it as unrealistic, consider the example of Jeffrey Epstein, a man who bought an island from the US government and ran a sexual abuse and human trafficking ring not entirely disimilar (though far more pedestrian in its purpose) from this one. 

The Host is able to pay for everything because he works in – you guessed it – banking. It’s a profession where he gained wealth by moving capital around. Given the Korean debt crisis – South Korea has the highest household debt in the world, both in size and growth – his profession makes him a worthy villain, in the same way the Lehman Brothers were after the 2008 crash. The bank executive calls in Gi-hun to offer him investment products and services, because of course someone with 45 billion won can accrue significantly more money passively, and who wouldn’t want that? Gi-hun’s decision to walk away is a callback to his earlier attempt to walk away from Squid Game when millions of dollars was within his grasp.

Throughout the series, the people running the game actively pit the players against one another in much the same way capitalism pits workers against one another. Whether they’re giving the players less food to encourage a fight overnight, the daily influx of cash every time another player dies, or giving them knives for the evening, the mysterious people pulling the strings want the players to fight each other like crabs in a barrel so they can’t work together to figure out what’s going on or take on the guys in red jumpsuits. Though there are notable examples of the players working together to succeed, it is always within the rules of the system. It is never treated as a viable or likely option for the players to team up and take the blood money literally hanging over their heads or to prevent death, merely to redirect it or choose how they will die. No, to win that, they must play the Squid Game’s rules. 

In our society, this kind of worker-vs-worker rhetoric takes the form of employers telling workers their workload is harder or they can’t go on vacation or get a raise because of fellow employees who leave or go on maternity leave.. In reality, these are all normal aspects of managing a business that employers should plan for, and their failure to do so is not the fault of their workers. Much like in Squid Game, it benefits managers and owners if workers are too busy being mad at each other to have time or energy to fight the system and those who make unjust rules in the first place. 

Squid Game’s Managers

The Front Man insists the game is fair, gruesomely hanging the dead bodies of those involved in the organ harvesting scheme because they traded medical knowledge for advanced intel on the game. However, like capitalism, there are many ways that the system is clearly rigged, no matter what the people at the top insist. There’s the obvious corruption in the organ harvesting ring, but even at its “purest” form, the game is not equitable. Sometimes the managers and soldiers in red jumpsuits stand by when unfair things happen, like Deok-su and his cronies stealing food. At other times, the people in charge intervene in player squabbles, like enforcing nonviolence during marbles and elections but encouraging violence at other times. They especially set things up to their own advantage, such as cutting the lights so the players couldn’t see the glass in the penultimate game, or the way they set up the election. Everyone knew how everyone else voted, they shared the total amount of money immediately beforehand, in an attempt to sway votes, calling to mind Amazon’s scare tactics before the recent unionization vote.

Read more

Culture

Squid Game Competitions, As Played By BTS

By Kayti Burt

Movies

Squid Game: Best Deadly Competition TV Shows & Movies to Watch Next

By Kayti Burt and 3 others

Ultimately, much like any manager/employer, the Front Man’s insistence on fairness has nothing to do with the actual value of equality, but rather the capitalist need to ensure betters are happy with the stakes and their chance at a favorable outcome. 

Even the workers, soldiers and managers in red jumpsuits, who seem to be in charge, are ultimately only in power (and alive) so long as they serve the needs of the system. Like so many low-level managers, many wield their tiny amount of power ruthlessly, shooting players with impunity or running their organ harvesting side gig. It soon becomes clear that they’re as expendable as players, if not moreso, and the Front Man shoots them without hesitating. A player asks (and it’s too bad we never learned) what “they” did to the people in red jumpsuits to get them to run this game, but it’s not too hard to guess. They seem to be very young men, who likely needed money and wouldn’t be missed if they never returned. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The biggest trick capitalism ever pulled was convincing workers it’s a zero-sum game, that anything we want but don’t have is the fault of someone else who “took it” from us. Within the game, that means every player was a living obstacle to the money, and that Gi-hun should kill his childhood friend to succeed and celebrate when he’s done. But as we see after he “wins,” even without taking Sang-woo’s life himself, the money isn’t worth it. The greater success would have been both men walking out of the arena alive.

The post Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3CUfVXz

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

...And what about the significant skilled and white-collar migrant workforce? Despite the rhetoric about “shithole countries” or nations “not sending their best,” the toll of the migration brain drain on developing economies has been enormous. According to the Census Bureau’s figures for 2017, about 45 percent of migrants who have arrived in the United States since 2010 are college educated.8 Developing countries are struggling to retain their skilled and professional citizens, often trained at great public cost, because the largest and wealthiest economies that dominate the global market have the wealth to snap them up. Today, Mexico also ranks as one of the world’s biggest exporters of educated professionals, and its economy consequently suffers from a persistent “qualified employment deficit.” This developmental injustice is certainly not limited to Mexico. According to Foreign Policy magazine, “There are more Ethiopian physicians practicing in Chicago today than in all of Ethiopia, a country of 80 million.”9 It is not difficult to see why the political and economic elites of the world’s richest countries would want the world to “send their best,” regardless of the consequences for the rest of the world. But why is the moralizing, pro–open borders Left providing a humanitarian face for this naked self-interest?

...

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.

Trump infamously complained about people coming from third-world “shithole countries” and suggested Norwegians as an example of ideal immigrants. But Norwegians did once come to America in large numbers—when they were desperate and poor. Now that they have a prosperous and relatively egalitarian social democracy, built on public ownership of natural resources, they no longer want to.17 Ultimately, the motivation for mass migration will persist as long as the structural problems underlying it remain in place.

Reducing the tensions of mass migration thus requires improving the prospects of the world’s poor. Mass migration itself will not accomplish this: it creates a race to the bottom for workers in wealthy countries and a brain drain in poor ones. The only real solution is to correct the imbalances in the global economy, and radically restructure a system of globalization that was designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor. This involves, to start with, structural changes to trade policies that prevent necessary, state-led development in emerging economies. Anti-labor trade deals like nafta must also be opposed. It is equally necessary to take on a financial system that funnels capital away from the developing world and into inequality-heightening asset bubbles in rich countries. Finally, although the reckless foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration have been discredited, the temptation to engage in military crusades seems to live on. This should be opposed. U.S.-led foreign invasions have killed millions in the Middle East, created millions of refugees and migrants, and devastated fundamental infrastructure.

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.

Just like the situation Marx described in the England of his day, politicians like Trump rally their base by stirring up anti-immigration sentiment, but they rarely if ever address the structural exploitation—whether at home or abroad—that is the root cause of mass migration. Often, they make these problems worse, expanding the power of employers and capital against labor, while turning the rage of their supporters—often the victims of these forces—against other victims, immigrants. But for all Trump’s anti-immigration bluster, his administration has done virtually nothing to expand the implementation of E-Verify, preferring instead to boast about a border wall that never seems to materialize.18 While families are separated at the border, the administration has turned a blind eye toward employers who use immigrants as pawns in a game of labor arbitrage.

Meanwhile, members of the open-borders Left may try to convince themselves that they are adopting a radical position. But in practice they are just replacing the pursuit of economic equality with the politics of big business, masquerading as a virtuous identitarianism. America, still one of the richest countries in the world, should be able to provide not just full employment but a living wage for all of its people, including in jobs which open borders advocates claim “Americans won’t do.” Employers who exploit migrants for cheap labor illegally—at great risk to the migrants themselves—should be blamed, not the migrants who are simply doing what people have always done when facing economic adversity. By providing inadvertent cover for the ruling elite’s business interests, the Left risks a significant existential crisis, as more and more ordinary people defect to far-right parties. At this moment of crisis, the stakes are too high to keep getting it wrong.

[stozkpile]

i accidentally lost my entire essay that i was writing abt biden and bernie but nothing can stop me so im doing it again.

the only reason biden got this far was due to a bunch of "coincidental" drops from the race RIGHT before super tuesday, and because the red scare tactic american politicians still hold onto make bernie (who is, for most of the world, a center left candidate at most, as american politics is skewed to the upper right) seem unreasonable. let's go over some of the common arguments against him:

1. BERNIE IS A COMMIE: bernie is a self proclaimed socialist. ok. do you really think he, as president (not as king of america. or as dictator. did we all forget what the president does?), will seize the means of production and sentence everyone to work in the gulags? what the hell is wrong with people? he wants to give people free healthcare and free education. and he wants to tax the ULTRA rich into helping/cut military funding.

1. why cant we create more tax brackets? people who make $520,000 a year, $100,000 an HOUR, and $60,000 a MINUTE, are all supposed to pay 37% of that money in taxes. make more tax brackets. tax capital gains more. close tax loopholes. ANYTHING. so much money is being spent on nothing.

2. military funding gets around 685 BILLION dollars a year. if we HALVE that, it'll still be hundreds of billions more than what China (which has over a BILLION people and is the second largest economy in the WORLD) spends on military, which is around 181 billion. that, simply put, is a fuckload of money. we could easily still have the biggest fucking military in the world and provide more help to the people, which i still don't agree with (america feels like a warmongering state to me), but compromises have to be made, right?

BERNIE HAS NO PLAN: and biden does? do you think every american president had a dissertation written about what they would enact if the got the office? bernie, if he wins, will hire cabinet members and staff, who will be better at certain things than he is. bernie is also an experienced politician who has worked multiple blue-collar jobs and was politically active as a youth.

1. bernie is campaigning and trying to win votes. being a president is about representing your country as much as it is having a working brain on your shoulders, which means you have to have a semblance of charisma and marketability. bernie isn't throwing facts and plans at people because thats not what most people want to hear. in fact, that was a weakness of warren's campaign. and any good plan wont be easy to explain during a short speech where youre supposed to rally people, or on a podcast, or on tv. he's passionate and empathetic, which is refreshing, considering how sociopathic politics are in general.

which leads to part 2. bernie probably has a better idea of his plans than people think. hes been doing politics for a long time. he was able to pass a lot of favorable policies as mayor, and has consistently been on the right side of history, even when it wasnt popular. and honestly, even if he's not able to pass as much as he would like as president (because i know american politicians/people who keep american politicians in their pocket are determined to stop him), it will at least represent a change in the american pathos, and itll show them that the disenfranchised finally have power. this scares dems as much as republicans.

BERNIE/HIS SUPPORTERS ARE TOO ANGRY: do you think they're mad for no reason? it's easy to think everyone is too emotional when you don't have to care about politics to survive.

are you five? do you think everyone has to be nice all the time? do you think that if someone has feelings about their argument, that renders their argument invalid? being nice doesn't change things and recent events prove that. trump bullied everyone and became the sole republican candidate.

just because something is legal or illegal doesn't mean it's right or wrong. do you think the civil rights movement was everyone being nice and putting together nicely-worded arguments? do you think stonewall was a fun little party? do you think the civil fucking war was a bunch of people talking to each other very politely about whether black people deserved freedom or not? people died. people were beaten. people were furious. and because of their fury, and their actions, we live in a better time. it can still get better. progress doesn't end. it doesnt have to come to blows anymore, but it wont be nice.

BERNIE HAS NO CHANCE AGAINST TRUMP: "vote blue no matter who." bernie is the only candidate that has a real chance against trump, and we know this because a sizable group of voters who would've voted for him voted for trump instead/didn't vote at all because hillary is so violently unlikable. and hillary still eeked out the popular vote, although she lost the electoral college. we can complain about the electoral college being a thing at all but if hillary still almost won, bernie would do better than she did. if people would vote for ANYONE over trump, then be willing to vote for bernie, because even republicans like him. bernie has working class clout. and nothing infuriates a poor white more than the intellectual elite flaunting their money at them all the time.

trump doesnt have a lot to say about bernie either. trump might think theres no way that bernie would make it to november, or maybe he's "supporting" him in an attempt to drive a wedge between him and the democratic party, or maybe he actually likes him (which would be fucked up lol), but one thing's for sure: bernie will not choke. trump would try to stir him up or attempt to make fun of him, as he does (and let's be honest...trump is very good at bullying people), and bernie would just take it and throw it all back at him. bernie has hutzpah, which is what none of the other candidates have, and what trump's whole campaign is. bernie is also cool, which biden isn't.

biden is:

a well-documented creep

a faux-progressive with a history of repugnant political decisions, including the 1994 crime bill (he changed his reasoning for it later to seem less racist), gutting welfare, opposing school integration in the 70s, and voting for the iraq war

a plagiarist

the kind of guy who lies about his son's death to get an inch (multiple counts, but the most egregious is when he implied his son was killed because of the iraq war in an effort to defend the vote. although he was there, beau biden died of a brain tumor and complications.)

losing his brain faculties, which is very easy to see. he's old. bernie is too, but at least he can string together a sentence.

is winning in states that will ultimately vote red. and republicans hate him.

tl;dr if you dont give a shit, vote bernie. if you give a shit, think critically, and then vote bernie. it isn't over yet.

[billehrman]

Death of the Trump Agenda, Economy and Markets Are Greatly Exaggerated

Waking up each morning and listening to the media/market pundits talking about the many failures and future demise of Trump and his administration is quite frankly getting boring.

I wonder if they and their followership have been short the U.S. stock market since the election. If so, they missed out on two of the strongest quarterly gains in years.

They all continue advise us to sell/short the market today as they have each day since the Trump election. Are they putting their political/social views ahead of the reality that reflation is a global phenomenon; earnings are rising for the first time in a long time; monetary policy remains accommodative: and there is an air of optimism permeating the business community and the public that we have not seen in many, many years — not just here but abroad too? Have you noticed the gains in foreign markets last quarter? Is that a coincidence or is accelerating global growth a reality?

I have never been disillusioned that the process of change would take longer than many expected. I said from the get-go that (unfortunately) healthcare would be first up of the Trump agenda followed by tax legislation and a huge infrastructure program. I never expected any major legislation to be passed much before late fall.

Reducing regulations that stifled businesses and bilateral trade deals would be an ongoing process throughout the year. Last week I said that the failure for the House to pass healthcare legislation should be perceived as a positive as it moved the time frame up to deal with taxes, including repatriation of foreign retained earnings, and the infrastructure program which will have a positive impact on domestic growth beginning later this year. Also I felt that Trump and his team learned from the healthcare experience and would move future bills forward differently gaining support early on from other members of Congress, businesses and, most of all, the people.

Trump must remember that he ran on a populist agenda benefiting the middle classes at the expense of the entrenched establishment and rich. Unfortunately, the establishment controls Congress, so Trump must garner support for his agenda and apply pressure to the establishment, including the ultra conservatives in his party supported by the Koch family, or he will lose more seats in Congress next election. Trump must really clean the swamp even if it takes longer to pass his agenda to “Make America Great” and “America First” become reality. Who can really vote against lower taxes and a huge infrastructure program? Both bills will pass this year.

Fair trade, less regulations, and energy independence are also major components of Trump’s agenda. Changes in trade policies will take years as Wilbur Ross and his team negotiate one-off bilateral deals with each major trade partner. Did you read the NAFTA paper circulating around the White House? Not so bad! Don’t expect the U.S. to cause trade wars; but expect instead some accommodations from our trade partners to buy more U.S, goods, tighten enforcement of existing trade laws, and make large investments in the U.S. to build plants here and hire U.S. employees.

Watch closely what comes out of Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week in Florida as a key to future relations between the two countries. You may be pleasantly surprised. By the way, growth in U.S. domestic energy production as we strive for energy independence will also reduce the future trade deficit boosting reported GNP.

While U.S. reported growth in the first quarter slowed from a strong fourth quarter, growth overseas accelerated boosting global growth above previous expectations. I expect the IMF to raise their global growth forecasts for 2017 and 2018 while also raising their inflation expectations. Expect the key monetary authorities to all remain accommodative staying one step behind as they all look in the rear-view mirror until they see the impact of the Trump agenda on the U.S. economy once passed and not before. The dollar regained strength last week as money flows into the U.S., strengthened buying our treasuries as the interest rate differential with foreign rates had widened. Our yield curve flattened more last week further penalizing the financial stocks. I expect this to be a temporary phenomenon as U.S. growth accelerates as the year progresses. Major city center banks still sell at a discount to tangible book and to the market multiple with above average yields.

Bottom line is to stay the course and be patient as change is a process and takes time. The key is when, not if, it will occur as I see more agreement on the tax and infrastructure parts of Trump’s agenda such that I fully expect passage of both bills by the fall of this year. In the meantime, global growth has accelerated for a host of reasons boosting profitability while interest rates remain low. Not a bad combination for the market as a whole and even better for those groups that benefit most from an acceleration in global growth. It does not hurt the markets that M&A activity has accelerated and it appears that OPEC will extend its cuts for another six months, which boosted energy prices last week.

Our core beliefs remain intact. I expect that first-quarter earnings about to be reported will show further improvement from the fourth-quarter reports, which were the best in many years. I also anticipate that corporations will remain cautious but optimistic until there is more certainty that Trump’s agenda is passed. That is good news, as it will serve to extend the cycle, as there will be few, if any, excesses.

Despite what you hear from the pundits, global economic acceleration is a reality. It will only get stronger once the Trump agenda is passed. Invest in those companies that are leveraged most to accelerating growth, better pricing, adherence to trade laws and less regulation. The Trump agenda is just icing on the cake.

We will continue to offer our point of view, which reflects our thought process on how and where we invest. Paix et Prospérité continues to significantly outperform the markets as we have now done since our inception in 2013 and over my 45-year career. Active management investing is alive and well!

Review all the facts; pause, reflect and consider mindset shifts; update constantly your asset allocation and risk controls; do first hand independent research on each investable idea and…

Invest Accordingly!

Bill

Paix et Prospérité LLC

[insideanairport]

Aeron Bergman,  Alejandra Salinas: Telepathy 传心术 (2018) by INCA Press

❍❍❍

Telepathy 传心术 is an amazing book on the intersection of art and neoliberalism. The book is part of a series titled distinction, after Pierre Bourdieu's iconic book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. A must-read book [for all artists] about the connection of ‘Judgement of taste' and class.

Bergman and Salinas's objective is political and work-centered. They are interested to highlight the distinction between art and neoliberalism in a sociological way. What happens to the greater field of art (artworks, artists, institutions, etc.) under the contemporary dominance of neoliberal hegemony? A similar attempt was made from a cultural stand (rather than a socio-economical stand) in 2012 by Nikos Papastergiadis under the title, Cosmopolitanism and Culture by Polity Press.    

Throughout the book, Bergman and Salinas are referring to neoliberalism as 'neoliberal capitalism’. In some parts, it seems like there are no differences between neoliberalism and capitalism. In other parts, it seems like 'neoliberal capitalism’ is a bigger hybrid monster that is made out of the two (occasionally replacing it with hyper-competition, Kleptomanism, Parasitoid démarche, etc.).

As artists and art writers, they stand next to their contemporaries such as Groys, Osborne and Bishop. In terms of political economy, history and philosophy, they are referring to Aihwa One, Philip Mirowski, Chin-Tao Wu, Reymond Williams, Theodor Adorno, Hanna Arendt and Georg Simmel. In their critical analysis, they are attacking F.A. Hayek -a right-wing European conservative asshole economist- who is brilliantly introduced in the book as ’neoliberalism’s founding thinker’. Hayek’s 1944 book, Road to Serfdom is mentioned as the main intellectual originator of today’s neoliberal ideology. Hayek’s political philosophy is extremely individualist and anti-socialist. Similar to other western colonial libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Garrett Hardin, Hayek is pro-competition, and in favor of private property, free market enterprise and minimal government. He also believes that individualism has created the Western civilization and therefore it has to be preserved and flourished (from the dangers of communism and socialism).

Hayek can be seen as the exact opposite of John Maynard Keynes. Although, as an essentialist, Hayek believed that Nazism was a ’necessary’ outcome of socialism -rather than a 'reaction' to socialism! Like many other European essentialists, he biasedly saw Naziism as a totalitarian socialist movement rather an ultra-nationalist racist movement made to establish the Aryan white race on top of the human pecking order through military force.

Bergman and Salinas cleverly connect the inception of neoliberal ideology to Hayek and the post-war Europe where individualism and market freedom was sold to people as an alternative to other modes of governmentality. The notion of 'being free', 'freedom of movement' and 'freedom of choice' is crucial for them. Out of David Harvey’s neoliberalism, they have discovered another monster that to me seems somehow bigger and mightier. Maybe, from the art and cultural perspective, the situation is more depressing than it seems (something that Chin-Tao Wu argued in Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention Since the 1980’s). Neoliberalism is presented like a huge whirlpool that drags everything cultural inside of it, and along with it race and gender are also sucked in to disappear. Racism here is presented as an outcome of this neoliberal whirlpool, or a signifier of its existence. This class-conscious point of view is so strong that it might dismiss the other forms of social racism, just to blame everything on the neoliberal capitalism and the ruling class that is enforcing it. On the other hand, social racism is not the object of this book, unless it intersects with the neoliberal ideology.

The power of the book lies in the ability to introduce interesting terminology that connects the challenges of cultural production to market-driven business ideas. The writers introduce and dissect phenomena such as the genius artist (Genii), WEIRD art, Vile Maxim (Adam Smith), Skilled versus Deskilled artist, Aesthetics of psychopathy, Pseudo-collaborations and the Law of Janteloven in art. The section on The Law of Janteloven is my personal favorite, firstly because I didn’t know anything about it. And Secondly, due to my experiences in the art field, especially in the last 2 years. Instead of trying to describe it, I decided to quote the whole section of the book here:    

P. 170 Norwegian Janteloven is a strange, related phenomena: it is hyggeling, (cozy), to be well-adjusted to majority opinion! Janteloven promotes nationalist group hegemony as a cover-up to buttress the usual hegemonic structures. Hostility towards difference is implemented across all social classes as a hands-off, efficient form for a self-policing population. The concept of Janteloven comes from the Danish Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose in his 1933 book, En flyktning krysser sitt spor. He captured the oppressive spirit of social adhesion so closely that Janteloven is now in the general vocabulary of Scandinavia. Here are a few key Laws of Jante, the unspoken moral operative: 

"You’re not to think you are smarter than us. You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than us. You’re not to think you are good at anything. You’re not to laugh at us. You’re not to think anyone cares about you. You’re not to think you can teach us anything.”

Who is the us and who is the you in this law? In the case of a foreigner, person of color, and person of nonconforming gender in Norway, this you is easy to identify and developed with oppression in mind. However, in the case of white, heterosexual, male Norwegian, who is you and who is us? You is anyone who judges and acts as an individual using judgement without bannisters. You is anyone who decides that a particular majority taste is disgusting.

Janteloven is expressed in the art ecosystem too: Norway’s hippest, taste-making, popular art gallery is fittingly called Standard, and shows mostly mute, vacant work of self-censuring formalism, completely drained of any threatening content and difference…While it is sometimes argued internally that Janteloven is the reason that there are no 3 Michelin starred restaurants in Norway, in fact, Janteloven is used by Norway to promote itself as the most equal society on earth. It is dark comedy: “more-equal does not mean “equal”, and in fact, Norway is in the top 5 among industrial nations with the fastest increase of social inequality.  

Bergman and Salinas are great in finding hidden problematics in the international art ecosystem and its institutions from Whitney biannual (and its racism and whiteness), Detroit and Seattle art scene (with its billionaire elite) to Norway (with its state-funded educational projects of homogenization that tries to be more equal than all, resulting in significant inequality).

P.110 "Art displaying ambiguous is not always produced, by the artist, primarily for this purpose. Furthermore, ambiguism is often agreeable, enjoyable and legitimately entertaining, rich, full, smart, and fun. This is the result of appealing to the widest base -- and it is therefore difficult to simply dismiss all together. Ambiguism is, after all, the contemporary art of our time.”

In terms of opposition to neoliberalism, they identify religion as a force –not the spiritual/meditative personal type of religion, rather the large religious organizations and governments. The ending chapter of the book presents a question; “if health in fact can be a possible strategy for protest?” Later they identify self-health and aesthetics of health (such as Hollywood yoga and Feng shui) as a sort of market-conformism or extreme nihilism.    

p.23 In the 21st century there are very few fields that develop and utilize value systems parallel to the ruling theology of today: neoliberal capitalism. Two prominent fields that are sometimes capable of such opposition are religion (irony of ironies) and science (not the corporate version.) 

Examples of religious opposition to neoliberal capitalism include Pope Francis' statement to the Wall Street Journal that "capitalism is terrorism against all humanity." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks also spoke out: "Humanity was not created to serve markets. Markets were created to serve humankind." Another powerful example of religious opposition is the Sharia compliant Islamic finance system practiced by Iran, Malaysia, and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a growing banking system outlawing rent-seeking via usury, or ‘riba’.

The book is very insightful and would perpetuate an economic understanding of the effects of neoliberalism on art. On the other hand, it is missing the current negative ‘reactions' that has risen (whether by states or by individual groups/communities) in response to neoliberalism. The example of Norway (Law of Janteloven) was the closest that the book came across these issues, yet not only this problem was presented as ‘cultural’ but the blame was laid solely on neoliberalism which is penetrating into different countries one after another.

Scandinavia is a great example in this case, where the rise of nationalism, racism and fascism seem to be connected to the fear of eroding national sovereignty or the gradual disappearance of the social welfare system. Denmark, for example, is implementing ‘forced assimilation’ to its Muslim migrant population along with fifty other cruel laws on immigration to preserve its Danishness. A mixture of right-wing racism and left-wing strive for a sovereign nation (against neoliberalism) that sometimes leads to nationalism and race-blindness. Wendy Brown presented this idea in her 2010 book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. She mentioned these events as ‘reactionary’ to neoliberalism rather than caused directly by it. ‘Walls’ she said, "are often amount to little more than theatrical props, frequently breached, and blur the distinction between law and lawlessness that they are intended to represent. But if today's walls fail to resolve the conflicts between globalization and national identity, they nonetheless project a stark image of sovereign power.” Étienne Balibar talks about similar issues in regard to the history of left conservatism leading to nationalism: “...every 'social state' in the nineteenth and twentieth century, including the socialist state, has been not only a national state, but a nationalist state also.” (Race, nation, classe. Les Identités ambiguës)

Similar to this case, but reversely, in 1944 Hayek blamed socialism for the creation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Unlike his contemporaries he didn’t see Naziism as a ‘reaction’ to socialism, rather he saw it as a ‘necessary' outcome of socialism. Therefore, he laid the blame on the originator of a reactionary hate movement. He didn't see the hate movement itself as an underlying issue deep into the society. A sort of issue that only comes up in the times of crisis.

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Meet the Trans Woman Running for Pete Sessions’ Seat in Congress

The election of Donald Trump has brought out a great many people interested in trying to take the country back from the Republicans starting in the 2018 mid-term elections. They’ll need all the help they can get as here in Texas the Democrats have a rather deplorable history of turning up at the polls when there’s no president on the ballot. One of the hopefuls is Danielle J Pellett, who will be challenging Pete Sessions of Texas’ 32nd District. We sat down with her on opposite sides of the Internet to get to know the woman who would unseat Sessions, who is well-known as a tough opponent.

  Free Press Houston: What made you decide to run for Congress?

Danielle J Pellett: For far too long, I have been standing in a voting booth and my options were simply a Republican or Libertarian. I wondered where the Democrats were running for office. I kept thinking “someone should do something about that.” This past year, I finally decided that I needed to be the person who stood up to do something about it.

  FPH: More specifically, are you opposing Pete Sessions because of anything he specifically stands for or just because of the direction the Republican Party has taken?

Pellett: As a former conservative, I disagree with the direction that their party has taken. Most notably, some of Sessions’ votes betray core conservative Republican values: shutting down the government repeatedly, refusing to get clean water to Flint, and opposing a raise to minimum wage to get families off of food stamps. We should be fiscally responsible and stop subsidizing Big Oil and make Wall Street answer to why we had to bail them out in 2008.

  FPH: You’ve talked about growing up with Republican/Libertarian ideals, and rather than throwing those by the wayside you feel that some aspects of that simply feel more at home in the Democratic Party than in the GOP. What of your original stances do you find mesh the best with the DNC?

Pellett: I believe in a small government, which means not getting involved in family matters like they did with Terri Schaivo, or overturning the fracking ban they did in Denton. When I was young, I was on the Federal free lunch system and at one point we were on food stamps in order to make ends meet. My parents were not lazy, and their hard-working ethic put the lie to the welfare queen narrative. Despite what Paul Ryan says, those meals didn’t leave me with an empty soul. It fed a child and made them able to study and succeed in life.

What feels like a lifetime ago, I wound up not going to OCS [Officer Candidate School] and getting a commission with the Air Force due to the Air Force core value of Integrity first because of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. As I studied the oath of office and realized that to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, they were some horrific domestic policies that need to change.

We were firing gay military translators as we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, while not putting those wars in the budget and kept asking for “emergency funding” as if it were a surprise that we were still there. We’re supposed to support our troops, but where was the support there?

Finally, I believe in provable facts over political dogma. Pollution is bad, and climate change is real. Drug testing is more expensive to the government than welfare is, and poor people can’t afford drugs. It’s even cheaper to rehabilitate addicts rather than locking them up in jail.

  FPH: You credit Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) with a political awakening in 2001. What about Sen. Sanders’ and your own ideology would be most beneficial to Texans?

Pellett: Bernie Sanders has always been an independent who refuses to be bought out. He likes to tell it as it is, and refuses to let others get away with selling lies such as “Clean Coal” or that massive corporations just like to donate thousands of dollars to candidates and expect nothing in return.

His speech at Liberty University reminds us of our Texas values of working hard and paying our fair share. So when I see the ultra-rich getting away with squirreling away their money in illegal overseas tax shelters, I know that they are not paying their fair share. Instead, they are paying politicians to distract us with these supposed culture wars over abortion, gay marriage, and which bathroom we can pee in.

We used to have our roads and bridges paid for by tax dollars, now you see toll roads being built all over the place. We even have toll roads that are paid off that are still getting government subsidies while the companies that maintain them are collecting toll money.

  FPH: Why do you think so many Representatives end up running unopposed?

Pellett: Just like doing taxes, a lot of things are designed look harder in order to make people feel like they are unable to comprehend or do it. We also have rampant gerrymandering that makes districts nearly impossible to win.

My district right now vaguely looks like a donkey. This was done with regard to the historically low voter turnout in Garland. Due to the tenacity of Victoria Neave and her get-out-the-vote efforts, she won in a district that everyone had assumed was impossible.

  FPH: Texas, particularly Dallas and Houston, is a place where large corporations hold significant sway, and provide a living for many, many people and their families. Is your message in opposition to them, or is there a place where people and corporations come together for the greater good?

Pellett: The economy has been faltering for the past decade. For anyone who has ever played Monopoly, you realize that income inequality will ruin people. Once we have a winner in Monopoly, the game comes to an end. But how does that work in real life?

If a few corporations have all the money and all the resources while the majority of the middle and worker class doesn’t have enough money to make ends meet… then these corporations are now unable to sell their wares to the public. In short, who will be left to buy stuff when everyone is barely scrounging by to have shelter and food?

So what I would say to business interests is this: you have to look at a five-year profit plan rather than just the next quarter. In the short run, shutting down your factories and sending jobs overseas for lower pay seems to do great, but this has happened on a macro scale and has ruined Michigan.

For the greater good, businesses must want to increase their pay to match inflation. Businesses must realize that government should work as a check and balance in order to protect the people. We must remember the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon, West Texas, and the Magnablend plant in Waxahachie that prove we must have and enforce regulations for the safety of the people.

There has to be a balance between helping businesses thrive and making certain that we don’t have poisonous chemicals in our water like they had in Corpus Christi.

  FPH: If you had to pick one issue that was most dire in need of addressing in Texas, what would it be and how would you address it?

Pellett: Education is the linchpin for all of this. We need to teach science without religious bias, we need to teach history without politically-motivated revisionism, and we need to fully explain where babies come from and how to avoid that in order to reduce our teen pregnancy rate.

  FPH: Do you anticipate support from the DNC in your candidacy?

Pellett: I expect that the DNC will support me once I win the primary. I have already reached out to multiple candidate sponsorship programs and political action committees that are dedicated to promoting science and Progressive values that will not cost me my morals and ethics.

There is a way to work from within the system where you can get $27 donations from regular people and you do not have to rely on the backing of the fracking industry in order to compete in a political race.

  FPH: What do you think will be the biggest challenge in your race?

Pellett: I’m up against one of the most powerful people in the Texas Republican Party, who is well known and is instrumental in getting lots of money from wealthy out-of-state donors and from political action committees. In the past two years, Pete Sessions has raised over $2 million. Only 1 percent of that came from small dollar donations, so we know exactly who he answers to.

All I can hope to do is call him out on this while proving that I am the better candidate that understands the values of Texans today and for our next generation.

  FPH: You’re one of a number of trans women nationwide I know are running for office in 2018, including some prominent ones like Brianna Wu. What empowers you the most against the almost-inevitable transphobic backlash?

Pellett: I’m not running because I’m transgender, I’m running because I believe in helping middle and working-class Texans. I just happened to be transgender, and I honestly expect more push back from the fact that I’m an ex-conservative and I know how they think, how they speak, and I know how to destroy their talking points.

  FPH: Being the biased, lamestream media, I probably fucked some of this up, so here’s a small bit where you can say anything you want.

Pellett: My mother, Maria del Rosario, was born with cerebral palsy. It was misdiagnosed as polio when she grew up, and she had the Forrest Gump leg braces and walked with a noticeable limp. She was told all her life that she was an invalid and a cripple, and she couldn’t do the same things that her sisters could.

Naturally, she went ahead and did the thing anyways. She defied my grandfather by walking to Mass every morning before going to Catholic School. She defied my grandfather by going to college and getting a degree in teaching English as a second language to special-needs students.

She defied her family by falling in love with and marrying a gringo, my father David Ellsworth. Her doctor said it would be impossible for her to have a child. I am the product of one stubborn Latina and the man who supported her.

When I started supporting Bernie Sanders at the Texas Democratic Party and wanted to engage in direct democracy through a petition process at the State Convention, everyone told me it was impossible. I defied the naysayers and did three of them.

Meet the Trans Woman Running for Pete Sessions’ Seat in Congress this is a repost