#david cohen

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Corporate Bullshit

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America is Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:

https://thenewpress.com/books/corporate-bullsht

I found out about this book last fall when David Dayen reviewed it for the The American Prospect; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter, which prompted Hanauer to send me a copy, which I finally got around to reading yesterday (I have gigantic backlog of reading):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed. What's more, we keep falling for it. Every time we try to have nice things, our bosses – and their well-paid Renfields – dust off their talking points from the last go-round, do a little madlibs-style search and replace, and bust it out again.

It's a four-stage plan:

I. First, insist that there is no problem.

Enslaved people are actually happy. Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Higher CO2 levels are imaginary and they're caused by sunspots and they're good for crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer is only a problem if you foolishly decide to hang around outside (this is real!).

II. OK, there's a problem, but it's your fault.

An epidemic of on-the-job maimings is actually an epidemic of sloppy workers. A gigantic housing crash is really a gigantic cohort of greedy, feckless borrowers. Rampant price gouging is actually a problem of too much "spending power" (that is, "money") in the hands of working people.

III. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse.

Equal wages for equal work will cause bosses to fire women and people of color. Protecting people with disabilities will cause bosses to fire disable people. Minimum wages will cause bosses to buy machines and fire "unskilled" workers. Gun control will only increase underground gun sales. Banning carcinogenic pesticides will end agriculture as we know and we'll all starve to death.

IV. This is socialism.

Income tax is socialism. Estate tax is socialism. Medicare and Medicaid are socialism. Food stamps are socialism. Child labor laws are socialism. Public education is socialism. The National Labor Relations Act is socialism. Unions are socialism. Social security is socialism. The Fair Labor Standards Act is socialism. Obamacare is socialism. The Civil Rights Act is socialism. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is socialism. The Family Medical Leave Act is socialism. FDR is a socialist. JFK is a socialist. Lyndon Johnson is a socialist. Carter is a socialist. Clinton is a socialist. Obama is a socialist. Biden is a socialist (Biden: "I beat the socialist. That's how I got the nomination").

Though this playbook has been in existence since the nation's founding, the authors point out that from the New Deal until the Reagan era, it didn't get much traction. But starting in the Reagan years, the well-funded network of billionaire-backed think-tanks, endowed economics chairs, and latter-day propaganda vehicles like Prageru breathed new life into these tactics.

We can see this playing out right now as the corporate world scrambles for a response to the Harris campaign's proposal to address price-gouging. Reading Matt Stoller's dissection of this response, we can see the whole playbook on display:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs

First, corporate apologists insisted that greedflation didn't exist, despite the fact that CEOs kept getting on earnings calls and boasting to their investors about how they were using the excuse of inflation to jack up prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

Or the oil CEOs who boasted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave them cover to just screw us at the pump:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#soak-the-rich

There are all these out-in-the-open commercial entities whose sole purpose is to "advise" large corporations about their prices, which is just a barely disguised euphemism for price-fixing, from meat-packing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

To rents:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

That's stage one: "there's no problem." Stage two is "it's your fault." That's Larry Summers and co insisting that a couple of stimulus checks a couple years ago are responsible for inflation, because it gave you too much "buying power," and so the only possible fix is to jack up interest rates and trigger mass layoffs and sharp wage decreases across the economy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/14/medieval-bloodletters/#its-the-stupid-economy

Stage three is "any attempt to fix this will make it worse." When Isabella Weber pointed out that there was a long history of price-controls being used to fight price-gouging, corporate apologists lost their minds and brigaded her, calling her all kinds of nasty names and insisting that her prescription didn't even warrant serious discussion, because any attempt to control prices would destroy the economy:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-the-millennial-economist-who-took-on-the-world/

You may recognize this as cousin to the response to rent control proposals, which inevitably trigger a barrage of economists screaming that this will not work and will actually reduce the housing supply and drive up prices, which is true, provided that you ignore all evidence and history:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

And stage four is "this is socialism." Look, I am a literal card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America and I can assure you, Kamala Harris is not a socialist (and more's the pity). But that didn't stop the most eminently guillotineable members of the investor class from hair-on-fire, ALL-CAPS denunciations of the Harris proposal as SOCIALISM and Harris herself as a COMMUNIST:

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1824580470052725055

The author's thesis is that by naming the playbook and giving examples of it – for example, showing how the "proof" that minimum wage increases will destroy jobs was also offered as "proof" not to abolish slavery, ban child labor, add fireproofing to textile factories, and pay women and Black people the same as white guys – we can vaccinate ourselves against it.

Certainly, we've reached a moment where the public is increasingly skeptical of claims that we can't fix anything because the economists say that this is the best of all possible worlds, and if that means that we're all going to boil to death in our own skin, so be it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

In other words, after 40 years of subordinating politics to economics, there's a resurgence of belief in politics – that is, doing stuff – rather than hunkering down and waiting for the technocrats to fix everything:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/seeing-like-a-matt

Corporate Bullshit is a brisk and bracing read – I got through it in about an hour in my hammock yesterday – and, in laying out the bullshit playbook's long history of nonsensical predictions and pronouncements, it does make a very good case that we should stop listening to people who quote from it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/19/apologetics-spotters-guide/#narratives

[dadsinsuits]

David L. Cohen

[mostlybrunettes]

[photo-dujenoir]

David Cohen

[3lix13]

Happy Holidays and best wishes to all! Here's hoping the protection payments are on time and the paradox absorbing crumple zones are up to code in the coming new year....!  (tried out the new update from TVPaint Développement for the ink & paint on this after a long stint doing vector art in Toon Boom Harmony)

[everylittoral]

David Cohen

[knittinganddrinkingtea]

Frida Gustavsson by David Cohen de Lara for Elle France June 2017

[hang-on-lil-tomato]

are you JOKING, oh blocked person?

yeah, indigenous/Jewish Executive Producer Taika Waititi shouldn’t have signed off on all that anti indigenous, anti brown person stuff! Terrible terrible. Izzy even called him a “dog”. 😱🤯🙄🙄🙄🙄

I don’t know where this now blocked account is coming from, but this hue and cry of razzism in OFMD is so FUBAR!

do people know it was color blind and accent blind casting to hire Taika as Blackbeard? Like most of the show. Which strives for inclusive casting. real life Blackbeard was most likely WHITE from the early 1700s England.

Real life Stede Bonnet was from the Barbados, and was NOT a kiwi.

Can PoC not play mass murderers? I don’t get this!

[mariocki]

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, 1985)

"Jason Voorhees? You're out of your fucking mind, you've been out in the sun too long! Jason Voorhees is dead! His body was cremated, he's nothing but a handful of ash."

"You know that for sure, mayor? Were you there? Did you see him cremated?"

[khakilike]

The Holy Roller #3, Andy Samberg et al. and Roland Boschi

[news-buzz]

Don’t judge quality of U.S. democracy off Harris-Trump outcome: envoy - National News Buzz

Canadians shouldn’t judge the quality of America’s democracy regardless if Kamala Harris or Donald Trump secure the presidency, the U.S. ambassador to Canada says. David Cohen told Global News on election night America has survived challenging elections in the past, and still remains prominent on the world stage more than 250 years since its creation. “I don’t think that you can judge the…

[ouicestbien]

David Cohen

[photo-dujenoir]

David Cohen

[aanews69]

What happened to San Francisco after Dreamforce? The city's issues resurfaced, prompting a call for permanent solutions. Share your thoughts! #SanFrancisco #DreamforceAftermath #SFCleanup #HomelessIssue Subscribe👇: https://vist.ly/3mhd4nq Get Gear 👉: https://inspiredgear.vista.page/

[head-post]

Global media control gaining momentum

Poland discusses reforming state media while a lawsuit in Greece threatens to silence journalists, with social streaming and media giants collecting user data.

The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) consortium completed a two-day mission to Poland on 16-17 September, holding meetings with the Minister of Justice, Adam Bodnar, the Ministry of Culture, as well as journalists, publishers, regulators, and media law experts.

The mission focused on measures to reform public media, the protection of journalists from Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) and proposals to reform the media landscape in line with the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA).

The meetings discussed changes in the state media after Donald Tusk’s government used legal mechanisms to remove senior figures from the public broadcaster Telewizja Polska S.A. The ministry also said it had swiftly withdrawn 37 SLAPP cases brought by the previous cabinet.

The government has been criticised for being slow to implement reforms and provide legal and financial certainty for the public broadcaster, which has been in a state of “liquidation” since the beginning of the year.

Press freedom in Greek court

MFRR expressed its full support to Greek journalist Stavroula Poulimeni and media outlet Alterthess ahead of their appeal hearing on 19 September. The hearing followed a court ruling. The judgement partially upheld a civil suit seeking damages for Poulimeni’s reporting on the conviction of two Hellas Gold executives for water pollution.

Alterthess was ordered to pay €3,000 to one of the executives in 2023 for reporting on his court conviction in October 2020. The judge ruled that although the sentence was publicly available information, the publication of his name was a breach of his privacy protected by GDPR rules and caused moral damage.

If the judgement stands, the future of judicial journalism and the public’s right of access to court decisions will be jeopardised. Moreover, the court’s ruling risks fuelling new SLAPP aimed at silencing media outlets in Greece, where journalists are already facing increasing legal harassment.

No data protection

Social media companies collect, share, and process vast amounts of information about their users without transparency or oversight, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report.

The document published on Thursday analyses how Meta Platforms, ByteDance’s TikTok, Amazon’s Twitch gaming platform, and other companies manage user data. The FTC concludes that data management and storage policies at many of them are “woefully inadequate.”

Media companies collected data through tracking technologies used in online advertising, by buying information from data brokers, and in other ways, FTC Chair Lina Khan stated.

While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identity theft to stalking.

Data privacy, especially for children and teens, is a hot topic. The US House is considering bills passed by the Senate in July to address the impact of social media on young users. Meta recently released accounts for teens that include enhanced parental control features.

In addition to collecting data, most of the companies reviewed by the FTC collected users’ ages and genders or guessed them based on other information. Some also gathered information about users’ income, education, and marital status.

However, advertising industry groups criticised the report on Thursday. David Cohen, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an advertising and marketing group including Snapchat, TikTok and Amazon, said:

We are disappointed with the FTC’s continued characterisation of the digital advertising industry as engaged in ‘mass commercial surveillance.

Meta recently said it would ban Russian state media from using its apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. The measure was taken after US prosecutors claimed that RT allegedly funded influence campaigns through social media.

Read more HERE

[that-other-smile]

David Cohen