#does it REALLY offer stability in the economic crisis?

[aheathen-conceivably]

Ok so I read the post on your thoughts on Gio and the American Dream and I hate to say it … as an immigrant, I understand him.

I also come from a culture where women tend to their male partner's needs and I don't believe he wants to turn Jo into a subservient wife. He fell in love with a lively, free, and wild Jo and loves that aspect of her.

At the end of the day she loves him too so why would she leave? I understand she doesn't like to be dependent of him but where else would she go? There are no parties or glamour, which was her whole thing, anymore. At least the farm offers stability in the economic crisis.

Point is, I understand Gio as an immigrant, but don't understand Jo as a woman.

BABES! We���ve got another one…

(As in me being touched and having no other means to say how much I love y’all takes other than to give them a standing ovation in GIF form).

But you know…there’s a whole lot to break down here, friend, especially about Jo. I think you know what that means! Under the cut we go….

First and foremost, I very much appreciate you saying you understand that aspect of Gio. I did in part write him as a commentary on the immigrant experience in America (filtered through his own personality/character of course), and so to know that is relatable means a lot to me. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell y’all his journey is far from over, and you can already see the cracks in his outlook beginning to form. Whenever Jo is depressed he says this quite vividly:

Because you are very, very correct. This isn’t about molding Jo into some subservient housewife, or even eroding those exact qualities that he loves in her. This is about Gio attempting to square what he’s been taught/believes will bring his life happiness and meaning with his own experience and emotions. It’s about the myth of the American dream and the perfect housewife and the very real struggle of those things existing as actual, lived realities.

Because at the root of it, Gio is amalgamating an understanding of his own family unit and what he knows he doesn’t want in this country. He has seen another methods of “making it” in America, and so he thinks if only he can make the “right” choices, he can avoid that, and become the respected and happy man that he wants to be.

Now onto Jo, boy oh boy, Jo….

I think one of the core misunderstandings here is that Jo wants stability. This is kind of the crux built into her desire for control and her never-ending failure to achieve it. She wants to control her surroundings, to make sure nothing and no one can hurt her, but she also wants to feel in a way that is hard to find in a stable, heavily domesticated life. On the flip side, despite whatever imaginary dream Gio has, he’s the same way. They both want a life filled with excitement and new experiences, new people and rushes of emotions. This is one of the ways they differ heavily from Antoine and Zelda.

Now on one level, this is simply the way Josephine is. She’s high energy, fun loving, and insatiable. But on a deeper level, this is tied into her experiences not only as a woman, but as a daughter. She has a brief moment of clarity in that last post where she realizes:

Now I have chosen not to go too in-depth on Josephine’s trauma, but you can see her lay out the course of events here and also her deep hesitation to any of it here. Josephine is still only a teenager in that second post. Her mother not only told her things like that (“this is the weight that prejudice and expectation have placed upon us”) but also “what do you want to be then? Some glorified maid to a man?” (Which, frankly, I can write another Ted Talk about the juxtaposition here, but I think ya'll can pull some threads).

So when you see Josephine’s struggle with control, this is heavily rooted in bodily autonomy. Now all things considered, Josephine has managed to make great strides toward reclaiming this and reasserting not only her sexuality, but also her sense of self in her body. Gio knows this. We see him recognize and respect it quite clearly in that last post. He’s been part of that process for her, and that only adds another element of love, trust, and safety between them.

But on a fundamental level, neither Gio nor Josephine has made the connection between that trauma, her own personality, and why she hates her life now so much:

Here’s the issue right now: Josephine doesn’t feel like she’s living her own life. We have seen how she would like to live in the 20s not just in the parties and glamour, but when she was managing bands. She wants to be fulfilled professionally, through helping people/places she believes in and bettering her own life by bettering theirs. That’s how she gets her joy, and that’s what she would chose to do if given the chance.

And right now, she does not feel like she gets to chose. You’re correct in that part of that is coming from the current economic situation. Again, she sees that herself here. She knows what demons are waiting outside her window, and how easily poverty can make them rearise. That only makes it worse. It doesn’t make the smell of bread (domestic security) any better or more comforting. It makes it bitter, because she didn’t chose it. She was backed into a corner by circumstance (and, as she can sense, by the choices men made for her without telling her), and now she feels like she can’t say no. That’s her ultimate trigger.

Now whether or not that loss of control is simply perceived, or should be offset by how “lucky” she is to be in a stable position in such precarious economic times, we might all have different options on. Even more, I’m sure each of us would answer differently for ourselves in that situation. I know I would. But for Josephine? Not only is this a life she will never find joy in, because even without her trauma, she is an ambitious, restless, and outgoing person with different goals for herself; but that added memory and pain makes her reaction to it all the more volatile.

Perhaps most importantly, Jo feels as though her life is being controlled again, whether by Gio, the reality of the world outside her window, or by her own guilt/love that makes her feel beholden to the people around her (just like it did to her mother). Because you’re right, she does love him. She wouldn’t leave because she doesn’t. If she leaves now, it would leave because she panicked, because she feels like she’s lost all the autonomy she worked so hard to regain and she’ll never feel the fulfillment she felt when she was successfully independent ever again. That’s the element I hope we can understand, even if it’s not what we would do.

[thatonebirdwrites]

https://daybreakgame.org/

A friend of mine played this game with me. I must say it is probably the best cooperative game I've ever played.

Consider this a board game review. lol

Daybreak, the Board Game

Daybreak required us to really consider each project and its impact on our countries, other countries, and the world at large. It also got us talking about what these projects may look like in real life.

This link shows the cards: Explore Cards, and all of the cards are real solutions that have been either implemented to some degrees of success or offered as a solution by experts studying the climate crisis and the needs of various communities. (See the Drawdown book for more on each of these project ideas).

So to explore all sorts of possible solutions? That was fascinating in of itself.

The crisis cards and global project cards also let us explore some of the larger impacts on the planet itself and all the species living on it. This generated some interesting conversations on what it'd look like if such global wide solutions were adopted and adhered to by majority if not all countries.

We also discussed what drawdown looks like. Drawdown is where emissions equal the amount of carbon sequestered, and thus the global temperature ceases to rise. It's a stabilizing of the climate, and requires all of us to work together to achieve.

I do not believe capitalism will ever solve the climate crisis. What we need is a very different system for our economic needs -- capitalism caused the crisis and thus cannot be the solution. We also need a different approach for the social and infrastructure and ecological components of the Earth and society; that will require something beyond just democracy or socialist approaches.

We need to utilize our imagination to find a solution that works best for each region, and this game really does a good job of exploring that.

The game is a bit on the complex side, but the rulebook and FAQ sheet on the website does a great job of explaining how the game works and how to play it. The website also has a video showing the creators playing it for those that prefer a visual method for learning the rules.

Once you have a handle on the rules, it's pretty fun. The following is a basic overview of the rules.

There are six rounds in total.

Each round consists of these Four Parts:

Global - this is where you lay out the crisis cards (only one is flipped up for us to counter, the rest are unknown). You also lay out two possible global projects and decide as a group which one to use. The other is discarded.

Local - this stage is where you play your local projects. You'll receive five cards (unless you have too many communities in crisis, as this will lower the card amount). Each card has a set of actions on it that can help with lowering emissions, converting fossil fuels to renewable energy, regulations to improve quality of life and/or mitigate the effects of the climate crisis, projects that provide more trees or more clean water, projects that assist with building resilient infrastructure and/or communities, projects that improve ecological resiliency, etc...

NOTE For Local: Working with other players to decide on local projects, especially if a card can help mitigate the climate crisis cards, is as important as working to improve your country. This stage takes the longest, and everyone implements their project cards simultaneously. You'll also want to use some cards to tuck under the global project to activate it or the visible crisis card to mitigate it.

Emissions - this is where you total up your emissions and put it in the emissions section of your board. Then you sequester the carbon in the sea, forests, or mitigated action token. Any left over gets added to the thermometer and if enough is added, may cause a temperature rise (meaning more dice rolls for environmental impact and more crisis cards).

Crisis Cards - resolve your crisis cards and the dice rolls for environmental impact.

Check if you won or not. If not, raise your energy needs by the specified amount for that country, and start a new round.

If you fail to meet drawdown by end of round six, everyone loses. If the temperature rises to its highest level before end of round six, everyone loses.

If you meet drawdown before the end of round six, then everyone wins.

So that's the main game! There's also challenge cards to add more complexity or increase the challenge. These cards are based on real life complexities.

This game really forces you to think as a group on how best to save our planet.

Honestly, if we don't save our planet, then we're going to make it inhabitable for future humanity and most other species.

It's only when we take care of our planet that we will ever truly thrive. Because right now? We are not thriving as a species; we are slowly killing ourselves and the species we rely on for existence.

We need to revitalize our imagination and implement a diverse set of solutions. This game really digs into that, which is not something I've seen done prior. So Kudos to the makers of this game for doing such lovely research and designing.

You can play this game solo or with up to four players.

So overall, this game has been an excellent and positive way to discuss these issues and imagine possible futures.

I give it a 10 out of 10.

[argyrocratie]

“Crisis Of Their Own Legitimacy” (X)                                        

The following interview with Tom Nomad and Peter Gelderloos offers up an anarchist analysis of the ongoing political fallout of Trump’s recent indictment and its impact on both the political landscape and the upcoming 2024 election cycle.

IGD: What does the current wave of indictments against Trump say about the current state of the elites in the US? Is this a move by the Democrats and their section of the ruling class to remove Trump by legal means, or just the slow mechanisms of the legal apparatus catching up with Trump? What can we learn from the growing divisions with the ruling class?

_

Tom Nomad: I think there are really two things going on here, and neither are able to be explained simply by saying Democrats are trying to get rid of Trump; it is more important than that. For Trump to be indicted federally like this means that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has determined that it is in the “best interest of the public” to prosecute these charges, and that this public benefit outweighs the potential for social or political unrest. The DOJ was caught in a difficult place. If they tried to just indict him for everything, without extreme due process, and a really specific harm that they could point to as a result of his actions, then the fear is that MAGA rage would be stirred up. If they just let this slide, then it creates what in economics is called moral hazard, the idea that because someone was bailed out for previous egregious actions, then they can continue to do those actions and get bailed out in the future; this was the argument against economic bailouts in 2008 for example.

This tells me that the calculus in relation to both the strength and loyalty of his base, and the severity of his actions, has shifted, with the harm being seen as more concrete and significant, and the backlash seeming less likely. Right after January 6th this would have been impossible without significant violence. But, Trump has been losing support, and losing influence among his supporters; there is a MAGA after Trump discussion. The shift in his support, coupled with the fear of future presidents acting in this way, is largely what is driving these charges being filed right now.

That also tells me that we are seeing a situation not unlike that which existed around the New Deal, where different elements of the capitalist class were making different calculations about the best actions to take to preserve the system in the wake of the Great Depression. In the early 30s, the anti-New Deal crowd was arguing that the creation of social services would create dependent citizens that the wealthy would need to support for decades, while Roosevelt and some of the more progressive capitalists were arguing that without these services capitalism would be destroyed in the near future through workers’ actions. In this scenario, most of the capitalist class decided that it made more sense to save themselves in the long run, and took actions that are still seen by some as a betrayal of their class interests.

I think that in this scenario, the calculation is similar in a way. The DOJ is concerned that a continuation of this politics of animus, overt distortion, and combative existential conflict will shatter the stability of the political system, and they are correct. So, they are calculating that the short term political unrest that could result here is more manageable than the far longer term crisis in legitimacy that results from them not doing anything and letting Trump off.

_

Peter Gelderloos: Both the Democrats and Republicans are trying to restore and revitalize state power in the face of a major crisis of governance. This crisis, of course, is just another facet of the broader crisis engulfing the planet at the moment, but because as they are prioritizing the crisis of their own legitimacy and effectiveness to rule, they risk excluding or failing to grasp the general crisis – and may well exacerbate it.

The January 6th far-Right tantrum, the leaking of state secrets by right-wing grifters, and also the insurrections against police violence and racism frame the panorama: the State is suffering a crisis of legitimacy and effectiveness. The Democrats are generally able to see this crisis more clearly and effectively, whereas the Republicans have generally been more effective at organizing responses to the crisis.

The Democrats understand that state power needs to be restored and relegitimized in a strategic way. In response to the anti-police insurrections, that meant symbolic gestures validating some of the concerns of those movements, and then the well developed machinery of NGOs and elections to pacify them and reintegrate them into a slightly modified version of the system of policing and white supremacy: the abolition to reform pipeline.

With regards to the far-Right and the growing prospects of a civil war, the institutional Left has responded with the less imaginative but necessary, from a ruling class perspective, response: fortifying the mythology of the rule of law and fortifying the institutions that uphold that mythology. In this vein, it is important to also mention the legal action against Fox News, alongside the prosecution of Trump. However, they have not been very strategic or thorough in carrying this strategy out in a way that does not empower or provoke a backlash from the elements of the ruling class that are destabilizing the institutions of government nor from the portions of society most likely to lead the charge into civil war.

The Republicans have been much more effective at taking actions that mobilize and motivate, even as they bear primary responsibility for destabilizing the State by refusing to view the crisis objectively, acknowledging the institutional needs of the State as surpassing their own specific, ideological campaign.

One can trace an ironic beginning to this campaign in their impeachment of Bill Clinton. This was an attempt to create a moral panic, originating with the so-called Moral Majority, the Christian far-Right that was already taking the Party in a different direction since the Reagan years. The moral panic that has since evolved into a race panic as Republicans unrepetentantly embrace white supremacy in its most reactionary form: the idea that whiteness (and its attendant heteropatriarchy) is under attack, surrounded by a dangerous, savage, implacable Other it needs to defend itself from.

This reactionary version of whiteness has always existed alongside a progressive version of whiteness, and both have been strategically necessary for the global implantation of capitalism. But the reactionary, paranoid whiteness has been most effective at motivating settlers to brutalize and conquer new territory, motivating elements of the lower and middle classes to purge society of revolutionary threats, and motivating the proles to go to war against some external enemy. In the current context, however, it only destabilizes the institutions of government while creating an echo chamber that makes it exceedingly difficult for Republicans to change strategy, because currently, the whole map has been conquered, and revolutionary threats are so incipient and lacking in consciousness or historical memory that the Democratic strategy of co-opting them is far more effective. Moreover, there aren’t any hot wars that the military needs help recruiting for.

Therefore, the reactionary whiteness the Republicans are promoting so effectively has no strategic targets, and is instead being directed at the institutions of government itself or other members of the ruling class, or it is being directed at other portions of society who are engaging in usually light forms of dissidence that the Left has not had much trouble in pacifying. By attacking them, the Right is potentially radicalizing them, increasing their fortitude and resistance, and creating the highly destabilizing image of a civil war on the horizon.

(...)

[newlifemortgages]

The Rollercoaster Ride Of Ontario's Housing Market

The Rollercoaster Ride Of Ontario's Housing Market This year Ontario's housing market has been on an epic roller coaster ride. From plummeting prices to slight upticks, it's been a wild ride. But fear not! We're here to make sense of it all and get you up to speed—you don't even need a seat belt! So hang onto your wallets, and let's buckle up for a wild ride of ups and downs. Who knows what the future holds, but we'll be here to help you navigate it all! So sit back, relax, and let's dive into Ontario's housing market!

Let's start with the facts, shall we? According to WOWA.ca, the average home price in Ontario for the month of March 2023 was a mind-boggling $881,946, which is up 2% from the previous month. Can you believe it? It's the highest it's been since May 2022! I mean, who needs a kidney when you can own a 500-square-foot condo in Toronto? Am I right?

The current housing market in Ontario is a rollercoaster of emotions. One moment you're excited at the prospect of owning your own home, and the next, you're contemplating selling your kidney on the black market. While trends and data can be helpful, it's still important to approach them with skepticism.

But here's the good news, for homeowners at least. There has been a slight uptick in home sales in Ontario. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), home sales increased by 2.3% from January to February 2023. Now, these numbers aren't staggering, but they do suggest that there might be some light at the end of the tunnel.

However, let's not get too carried away just yet. Admittedly, the data could suggest that the market is finally finding its footing. You might be thinking, 'The worst is over! It's time to throw caution to the wind and buy that dream house!' But hold your horses, folks. Let's consider the bigger picture.

Paraphrasing the wise words of Yogi Berra, 'It ain't over 'til it's over.' There are predictions that home prices will continue to fall before eventually stabilizing. In fact, two banks predict that home prices will drop by 25% by the end of 2023. And a study by Desjardins Economic Studies predicted up to a staggering 50% in some small towns like Bancroft.

So if you're looking for a bargain, maybe it's time to consider a move to a cozy little town called Bancroft.

The lack of supply has been driving up prices to ridiculous levels. I mean, how can people pay $1.5 million for a one-bedroom condo? It's madness

So, what's the solution, you ask? Well, as much as it pains me to say it, there's no easy fix to this problem. We need to start building more homes, plain and simple. And I'm not just talking about luxury condos for the 1%. We need affordable housing options for everyone, from young families to seniors on fixed incomes.

Now, I'm not an urban planner or anything, but I do know that we can't keep ignoring this issue. We need to get creative, think outside the box, and come up with some innovative solutions. Maybe we start building homes out of recycled materials. Or maybe we turn all of those vacant office buildings into affordable apartments. Who knows? The point is we need to start thinking differently if we want to solve this housing crisis once and for all.

Ah, the housing market can be a rollercoaster of highs and lows! So if you've got your eye on a property, now may be the time to invest - unless, of course you think Lady Luck is on your side and want to risk it all for an even bigger win. Remember though, the market could suddenly take off, and you could get left in the dust, so if you're planning on buying and living there for a while, it may be wise to nab that offer before someone else does! Cause when it comes to real estate, fortune really does favour the bold!

Well, everybody, that's all for today! We've talked about Ontario's housing market and how it's been fluctuating, like my two-year-old daughter's mood swings, from the ridiculous prices of homes to considering the sale of our kidneys. Sure, the market is unpredictable, just like trying to predict the weather in Canada! One day it can be sunny and bright real estate weather, and then the next moment, you could find yourself in a full-blown storm of uncertainty. So, be optimistic, but also be skeptical when it comes to this housing market. Always do your research and make informed decisions. As a mortgage agent, I've seen some interesting things in my day. But if you think you can just sit on your couch, twiddle your thumbs, and wait for the perfect moment to buy a house, you might be waiting a while. Life is short, my friends. And if you wait too long, you might just lose your marbles. So, be a tad skeptical, but also embrace the ride. Maybe the housing market will crash tomorrow, or maybe it won't. But either way, we need to enjoy life while we can. You've got to take action! You've got to be daring! You've got to be bold!

Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we'll discuss whether avocado toast is really the reason millennials can't afford homes.

https://www.newlifemortgages.ca/index.php/blog/post/153/the-rollercoaster-ride-of-ontario%E2%80%99s-housing-market

Dallas Martin

519-495-7250

The Mortgage FirmLicense# 13466

Mortgage Agent Level 2 -M17001133

[foreverlogical]

It still hurts to swallow or drink. Water tastes off. She can’t sleep. She buried herself under blankets all weekend, but she couldn’t stay warm. Then came the pounding headache, the blocked sinuses. So far, she’s spent more than a week in self-isolation, toggling between British TV dramas and news reports about the rioters who wanted to assassinate her colleagues in Congress. Her husband’s symptoms are the same, but he is older than her and in a high-risk group. It’s been five days since they tested positive, nine days since the insurrection. Pramila Jayapal, the 55-year-old representative from Washington, told me that her anger is “next-level.”

Jayapal received her first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine on January 4, and she tested negative for the coronavirus on January 5, the night before she entered the Capitol. She believes that she contracted it last Wednesday when she huddled inside a room with about 100 of her congressional colleagues, including multiple Republicans who refused to wear masks.

Jayapal wasn’t on the House floor the day of the attack; she was up in the gallery. Five weeks prior, she had undergone knee-replacement surgery. When the mob advanced and Capitol Police officers instructed those in the gallery to move toward the exit, she had to use a cane for balance and ducked under railings, while the lawmakers and journalists around her crawled on their hands and knees toward the door.

[Read: It was supposed to be so much worse.]

Once they got to the exit, she sat on the floor of the gallery and pushed her legs out straight into the aisle between seats; it was the only way she could sit. She heard glass breaking, then a single gunshot. Beside her, Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester began praying with her hands in the air: Peace. Peace in the land. Peace in this country. Peace in this world. Jayapal felt her knee beginning to swell. She heard pounding on the gallery doors. “We were afraid that nobody was going to come and get us,” Jayapal said.

A single officer opened the gallery door, shouting at people to leave. Outside, Jayapal and the rest of the evacuees passed five or six rioters lying spread-eagle on the floor, surrounded by more officers with their guns drawn. Representative Mikie Sherrill offered Jayapal her arm for stability as the group descended three flights of stairs to the Capitol basement.

Oh my god, this is a disaster, Jayapal thought when she arrived in the safe room. More than 100 lawmakers had packed into the blue-carpeted space, with, by her estimate, no more than three feet of distance between everyone, let alone six. They chatted quietly in groups loosely segregated by party, and half a dozen Republicans were not wearing masks. Jayapal sat down on a chair to rest her knee, and a helpful staffer brought her an ice pack. Looking around the room, it hit her: “I just knew that several of us would get COVID.”

Across the room, near a row of folding tables, Rochester, a 58-year-old member of the Congressional Black Caucus, approached a passel of maskless Republicans, including the QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. Rochester offered them blue surgical masks, but they refused. “I’m not trying to get political here,” Mullin said, before waving Rochester away. Greene crossed her arms, smiling, while the others, all men, stared at their phones or laughed at some out-of-earshot joke.

“I wasn’t mad or frustrated. I was just thinking about how many people I could get to put on a mask,” Rochester told my colleague Edward-Isaac Dovere this week. Jayapal, however, was livid. “Thirty-two hundred people are dying every day from COVID, and we have these people taking it like a joke,” she told me. She’d been trying hard to stay healthy, to take every precaution, not least to protect her husband, Steve. “And here we are in a lockdown after a white-nationalist, insurgent attack on the Capitol, and we’re forced into this room with them,” she said. “They’re refusing to wear masks and mocking us for it.”

[Read: I asked my colleagues to wear masks. They laughed.]

Just after 4 a.m. that Thursday, Jayapal left the Capitol and went home to quarantine in a guest bedroom of her Washington, D.C., apartment. On Monday, she and her husband both tested positive for the virus. So far, a total of six lawmakers have tested positive after last week’s attack, including the 75-year-old cancer survivor Bonnie Watson Coleman. In refusing to wear masks, Republicans created “a superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack,” Jayapal said in a statement announcing her diagnosis. She and other members of Congress called for fines to be levied against any lawmaker who refuses to wear a mask in the Capitol going forward—a rule that the House took up and passed on Tuesday night.

The next few days will be very important for gauging the course of Jayapal’s illness, her doctor told her. She will have to record her blood-oxygen levels three times a day. She will stay in isolation for another week, and even then, she will be able to leave the apartment only if she hasn’t experienced any symptoms for 24 hours.

Immediately after President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, Congress will need to pass legislation to address the COVID-19 crisis and the corresponding economic devastation, she said. But lawmakers must also find a way to address the growing threat from extremist groups, stop the spread of misinformation, and reckon with the willful ignorance and cruelty of their colleagues. “All of us are grappling with how we deal with Republican colleagues who now belong to a caucus that really is unhinged,” she said. “It’s not like these are reasonable people who are willing to look at science or be convinced of anything.” So what does that mean for America? I asked. She paused to consider her answer. “We as a country are in a really precarious position.”

VISIT WEBSITE

[louisedebelgique]

Timeline

The timeline is subjected to improvement and changes if I plot with other players and/or if I decide to go more in depth into Louise’s past.

11th october 1992

The crown prince Albert who was 34 years old and his wife Anne finally welcomed a child into the world. Princess Louise Astrid Charlotte’s birth had been awaited like the second coming of Christ. All the kingdom rejoiced and King Léopold granted special amnesty to lower offenders and even lifted taxes for a month to celebrate the birth of his fist grand child. The baby became second in line and crushed her uncle’s hope of ever ascending to the throne of Belgium.

1996

Louise was excited to welcome a new baby brother. Prince Léopold joined the family and the court breathed a sight of relief. They had a spare heir, in case something was to happen to the princess. 

1998

The princess enrolled in a prestigious private school near Brussels who teaches in both French and Dutch. She stayed in that school for six years.

2000

The royal family welcomed its third child, Princess Joséphine. Queen Anne had a difficult pregnancy and all were relieved that both mother and baby made it. From that moment, Albert and Anne’s attention was mostly divided between their two daughters. 

2004

Louise entered secondary education. She enrolled in a new school for six years. That time, it was a French International school but the princess still had languages lessons in Dutch and German in and outside of school. 

2007

King Léopold passed away peacefully due to old age. Louise’s father Albert became king and she inherited the title of crown princess at the age of fourteen years old. It was a pivotal moment in her life. She became first in line but was still a teenager. It made her unable to enjoy a carefree life like a normal child would have.

Winter 2008

At the age of sixteen years old, Louise abide by the tradition and had a debutante ball where she was officially presented at court. * I’m up for plotting if someone wants to be her date. Else I hc that it was some Belgian noble. 

Summer 2010

Louise graduated the equivalent of Belgium high school with a general diploma and a minor focus on arts. 

Autumn 2010

Louise moved to Paris in her mother’s old flat to study at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts in a five years program. It was the first time, she really connected with people outside of her social circle. Of course, she had security discreetly following her ( two special agents also enrolled at the school under fake names to be able to protect her) but she was relatively free. She made friends who had no title or money. For her safety and to be accepted by her peers, she used her grandmother’s name and pretended to be Louise de Liedekerke. The ruse held some time but anyone who was smart could discover the truth. During three years, she alternated between a normal-ish student life, occasionally visiting the French court and returning to Brussels. After three years, she earned her first diploma (Diplôme de premier cycle).       

Autumn 2013 - Summer 2014

Louise did a year abroad in Italy in a partner school, Universita di Venizia. It was part of the program to spend a year travelling and studying abroad. She picked Italy because it is the home of renaissance masters. She kept using the de Liedekerke alias while in Italy. She was invited a couple of times at the Italian court, as they had been made aware of her stay in their country. That year was a dream for the artist in her but was harder on her social life as she didn’t speak Italian. 

Autumn 2014 - Summer 2015

She returned to Paris for her final year at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. She graduated with a second diploma (Diplôme national supérieur d’arts plastiques).  

Spring 2016

After working on a top secret project for several months and having her parents’ authorisation, Louise opened an Art gallery in Brussels with a friend. She alternated between her work there and her royal obligations for over three years. Everything was going well and she was happy with her life.

September 2019 (death tw) 

Her parents got into a terrible helicopter crash while they were on their way to an event. Louise and her siblings were immediately rushed into a bunker while officials debated whether it was an accident or not. They stayed in the bunker for a little over a day before it was deemed safe for the royal children to come out. It was the worst day of her life. They had been told that their mother died at the scene and that their father was in critical condition. Rumours were circulating about the accident and the public was panicking and asking for transparency. There were even parts of Belgium with a little unrest after a day of the palace deafening silence on the accident. After Louise emerged from the bunker, she had to address the nation and tell her people about Queen Anne’s passing and the King being in the hospital. She does not remember much from the days following the accident. Queen mother Wilhelmina came to be with her grandchildren and offer support to Louise who was entrusted with the regency while Albert was in the hospital. The dukes and influential people from all over Belgium started to plot and circle around the princess, smelling the blood in the water. At only twenty-six years old, she was not ready to assume leadership. She froze all political and non essential decisions while trying to figure out what to do and hoping for her father’s condition to improve.

12th October 2019

The palace needed time to organise a state funeral for the deceased queen. An investigation around the crash had also be opened and the police needed to finish some elements of it before the royal family would be able to bury Anne. Everyone tried to make it as quickly as possible so the Nation could grieve. They picked the 12th as the 11th was Louise’s birthday and it would be too cruel to bury her mother that day. Royals, Nobles, Politics, and influential people from all around Europe and some beyond came to Brussels to say goodbye to the queen. With King Albert in a coma, all the attention was on Louise and her siblings. 

October 2019

The Belgian court had had the decency to wait until the funeral to publicly voice their opinions and ideas in the press but as soon as Anne was underground, they unleashed hell. Louise and her grandmother worked out the terms of the regency to try to secure the throne and bring some stability to the kingdom. The accident had caused instability, unrest and the beginning of an economical crisis on top of the political one. Louise entrusted the Duke of Flanders and a couple of her father’s old advisers and friends to help her with the Regency. For several months she worked to stabilise the country. Once they had domestic affairs under control, they started to worry about France and their habit of invading their neighbours. 

February 2020

Albert was still in a coma and the situation might persist for a while. Louise and the regency council needed to strengthen their alliances in case of a French invasion. The princess reluctantly left her cousin Frederik and her grandmother in charge while she flew to Phuket in hope to find allies and secure a husband.  

[siriusist]

What books are you currently reading? :)

Some of these I’m currently reading are books I’ve already read/ started reading, but had to put aside or haven’t reread in a long time. Others are books I’ve read for the first time, but I’m trying to catch up on as well. Lastly, I’ve got some books coming in the mail. I’ll note all categories below.

(Note: Books I’ve already read and rereading have an asterisk next to them, so you know they’re really good. xD)

Books I’m Currently Rereading:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque*: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.’

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller* (TW: As a novel and as someone who experienced underage sexual abuse, I acknowledge this could be very triggering and there are sections I have to skip by. However, the film starring Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett is so fantastic, and the material provided here so dark and so twisted, it’s a fantastic example of a double-twist and a fucked-up unreliable narrator): Notes on a Scandal is a 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. It is about a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with an underage pupil. 

Jane Austen’s Persuasion* (Note: This is my favourite Jane Austen novel): ‘Of all Jane Austen’s great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen she fell in love with—and was engaged to—a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to be persuaded to give him up. Now, eight years later, Wentworth has returned to the neighborhood, a rich man and still unwed. Anne’s never-diminished love is muffled by her pride, and he seems cold and unforgiving. What happens as the two are thrown together in the social world of Bath—and as an eager new suitor appears for Anne—is touchingly and wittily told in a masterpiece that is also one of the most entrancing novels in the English language.’

Books I’ve Started Reading, But Had to Put Aside at One Point:

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy: ‘Dopesick is an unflinching look at the opioid crisis in the US, which is predicted to kill more Americans in a decade than HIV has since it emerged in the 1980s.'

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson: ‘Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind.’

Me by Elton John: ‘In his first and only official autobiography, music icon Elton John reveals the truth about his extraordinary life, which is also the subject of the smash-hit film Rocketman.’

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.’

Intellectual Property by Siva Vaidhyanathan: ‘We all create intellectual property. We all use intellectual property. Intellectual property is the most pervasive yet least understood way we regulate expression. Despite its importance to so many aspects of the global economy and daily life, intellectual property policy remains a confusing and arcane subject. This engaging book clarifies both the basic terms and the major conflicts surrounding these fascinating areas of law, offering a layman's introduction to copyright, patents, trademarks, and other forms of knowledge falling under the purview of intellectual property rights. Using vivid examples, noted media expert Siva Vaidhyanathan illustrates the powers and limits of intellectual property, distilling with grace and wit the complex tangle of laws, policies, and values governing the dissemination of ideas, expressions, inventions, creativity, and data collection in the modern world.’

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky: ‘The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th-century Russia, that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual, theological drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, judgment, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia, with a plot which revolves around the subject of patricide.’

The Balkans by Mark Mazower: ‘Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zone of endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazower sheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whose troubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing on events from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkans reveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of current conflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’s history, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse of communism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuing search for stability in southeastern Europe.’

Books I’m Reading for the First Time:

Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel (This is a guilty pleasure basically because I’m a True Crime nerd: It’s basically that Blanchard case in a novel form): ‘For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair, and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score. Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.’

The Plague by Albert Camus: ‘A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.’

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: ‘A Moveable Feast is a memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling young expat journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. The book, first published in 1964, describes the author's apprenticeship as a young writer while he was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson.’

Books Coming in the Mail:

The Outsider by Albert Camus: ‘L'Étranger is a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of Camus's philosophy, absurdism coupled with that of existentialism, though Camus personally rejected the latter label.’

Becoming by Michelle Obama: ‘Becoming is the memoir of former United States first lady Michelle Obama published in 2018. Described by the author as a deeply personal experience, the book talks about her roots and how she found her voice, as well as her time in the White House, her public health campaign, and her role as a mother.’

Things Fall Apart: A Novel by Chinua Achebe*: ‘Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. Its story chronicles pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century.’

E.M. Forster’s Maurice* (I accidentally ordered a copy when I already own one I couldn’t find and thought I had to donate moving home from uni. Whoops xD (But seriously you can never have too many copies of this book): ‘Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays through university and beyond. It was written in 1913–1914, and revised in 1932 and 1959–1960.’

Howard’s End by E.M. Forster: ‘Howard’s End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. Howards End is considered by many to be Forster's masterpiece. ‘

War and Peace by Tolstoy: ‘War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.’

I’m also hoping to order The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole and How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi next time I get some cash in my pocket; the fact that the library still isn’t open locally and shows no sign of opening soon is wrecking havoc with any budgeting I might usually do. xD But hopefully this gives you some ideas for books to search out! <3

[yes-crisitunity]

Coronavirus and other things

Bart: Cheer up Homer Homer: Can't Bart: Okay! Marge: What if you pretended this couch were a bar? Then you could spend more nights at home with us, eh! Homer: I'm not going to dignify that with an answer. Lisa: Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for "crisis" as they do for "opportunity"? Homer: Yes! Crisitunity! 

The Simpsons, Season 6, Episode 11 - Fear of Flying 

Yesterday afternoon, the Prime Minister announced that we should never see our friends again and live in a constant hazy mix of anxiety and mania. 

Skip 24 hours forward in bizarro-hell world, and Boris' "thick neck and broad, Germanic forehead" was joined by everyone's least favourite A-Level Economics student, Rishi Sunak. (Also present was the ex-President of GlaxoSmithKline, and current Chief Scientific Officer, Sir Patrick Vallance). Rishi proceeded to spit some absolute fire from the AQA AS Economics textbook about "fixed costs" and, at one point, I even thought he was going to tell us the individual components of aggregate demand. 

He also said that this was "not a time for ideology". A sentence, which if ever uttered tends to precede utter bullshit, that even those unfamiliar with Slavoj Zizek would be able to call out as "pure ideology itself". Which brings us on to the support package of "£330 billion". As I know many others have explained (and in great detail), the package of measures were completely targeted at satiating capital, and did practically nothing for labour.

Now why would we expect anything different? Rishi, after all, used to work for Goldman Sachs, and then the incredibly creepily named "Children's Investment Fund Management". I'll call it CIFM for ease. Now CIFM is a British hedge fund, founded in 2003. Interestingly, it is owned by a holding company based in the notably tax compliant Cayman Islands. It's not really clear what CFIM actually do, apart from funnel dark money to arseholes, but I can tell you what they don't do, and that's invest in a better future for children. Rishi's ex-boss at CIFM, Sir (oh he's a knight, I wonder why) Chris Hohn, paid himself over £200 million in both 2017 and 2019 (he probably did it more but I only checked the first page of google results).

You might think, where is this going, are you just rambling, have you been driven crazy by the less than one day of isolation? The answers are: somewhere, yes and yes. 

But, that somewhere is climate change. 

So, Chris likes to think of himself as a bit of an "activist investor" - a term that makes me physically sick. In late 2019, during the extended Extinction Rebellion protests, Chris and CIFM donated £50,000 and £150,000, respectively, to XR. What’s a guy like this, absolute piece of shit, to the bone capitalist, giving £200,000 to a group which is, ostensibly, anti-establishment. Seems a bit odd, no? 

XR push the exact same line that our big special boy the chancellor did in today's briefing on the coronavirus, that being they proclaim climate change is an issue "Beyond Politics". How asinine. Ultimately, this all points to a much larger screed, which has been well pointed out by many others, that being the neoliberal consensus. 

But the bit I want to examine in this is the crisis aspect of it. In his seminal (both definitions of the word) text Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman remarks that “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” His quote tends to chime with the theory of punctuated equilibrium, a way of understanding policy change which originated from evolutionary science. It portrays policy as, appearing to be, largely stable for long periods of time, only to be punctuated by a quick and dramatic change. 

It's fairly simple, some might even consider it "common sense". Basically, periods which exhibit stability in policy over time can be explained by stable interactions between legislators and special interest groups, and drastic change is as a result of a shift in the agenda.

Of course, as one of the most notable figures of neoliberalism, it is only logical that this would be Friedman’s view on the impact of crises on policy change. But, to my mind, crises are, in fact, neither the sole nor most important reason for policy change, rather they can be a contributing factor toward change in some instances. AKA it depends. 

Although policy change is a phenomenon in and of itself, it may be best understood through its relationship to periods of stability. This requires us to question just what we mean when we discuss change, or the lack thereof.

So, what am I getting at again?

None of this is a change in government policy, both with regard to the coronavirus, and climate change. The coronavirus has offered an opportunity for the Government to implement a wide ranging package of tax cuts and support to capital, whilst continuing to punish and alienate labour. So nothing’s fundamentally changed in their approach, its just been ramped up. 

Likewise, climate change. Groups like XR have, admirably, managed to expand the general discourse to include climate. Sadly, all they've done is make it another "political football" that just needs to be sorted out by some sensible people. They fundamentally do not identify any of the malefactors in our society who are responsible, and as such have no possible solution to the problem. It's all well and good saying "tell the truth" and "act now", but what does that actually mean? A quote which sticks out in my mind regarding XR comes from Chomsky: "power knows the truth already, and is busy concealing it".

So, how to tie this neatly in a bow?

Well I could just say this is an experimental and ground breaking new format of writing where I just do whatever I want and call it art, and you must respect it by the way, or I could put in the effort and properly conclude this.

ENDS

[jeanjauthor]

This.

Whole.

Thread.

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Thread unroller: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1231411476805672961.html

We have answers to the question "How do we pay for Medicare 4 All?" Some of them quite detailed. No one has managed to come up with an answer to "How do we afford not having it?" We as a nation literally cannot pay for healthcare. This is a huge ongoing crisis. The closest we can come to answering it is to pretend that, well, the fallout of individuals not being able to afford healthcare is limited to those individuals. This is a lie. It costs everyone. It drags the precious economy down. The person who goes bankrupt because of medical expenses and loses their house... that's a blow to the neighborhood they lived in. A bank has replaced a profitable asset (a mortgage) with a depreciating asset (an empty house). The family struggling to pay for healthcare is paying money into a system that doesn't actually produce anything except profit for the top. Take away that struggle, they are doing business with their neighbors. Ordering products. Buying services. Creating jobs! Defaulted medical bills (including from those much-exaggerated can't-refuse-anybody free ER visits that the right likes to pretend is the same as free healthcare) get passed onto everybody else, meaning we're already "socializing" costs, but inefficiently. ERs don't do routine preventative and diagnostic services or non-emergency treatment of chronic conditions, which means by the time someone winds up in an ER, the care they need is 1) more expensive and 2) less effective. 

All of this is a huge drain on the stuff that the people gibbering about the terrible specter of socialism actually do care about: productivity! Consumer confidence! The freedom of the marketplace! Socialize the medical system and we will be paying less money for better outcomes. We're already spending more money on healthcare, collectively, than it would take to treat everyone for real. And for all that money, we get the worst healthcare in the so-called developed world. If we could be getting more while paying less, THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE FREE MARKET demands that's what we do. Market economics dictates that we adopt socialized medicine. Anybody who disagrees doesn't actually care about what they're telling you they care about. "But people will have to wait for treatment!" They do already, sometimes until they die. "But there will be rationing." There already is rationing and it's killing people. "But the government will decide what treatment you get." Less so than for-profit insurance companies do now. Universal healthcare, free at point of service, paid for by public money, is the best deal we could take. We would pay less and get more. And it would make the "free market" freer by removing artificial constraints on things like job mobility. "Private industry is more efficient than the government." Efficient at what? For insurance companies, it's making money. This efficiency comes in the form of them taking more profit by charging more and providing less.

It's efficient *against us*.

Of course, replacing most of the concept of health insurance with a public institution will displace some jobs, and we should take care of the people affected by that but "socialism" is a better solution than propping up an industry that is robbing and killing us. Our concept of business ethics right now is that the main fiduciary duty of a company is to generate ever-growing profits for its stakeholders. This means a for-profit insurance company is doing wrong when it takes care of us. Its "job" is to take our money and keep it. Any money that an insurance company spends on paying for actual health care is regarded in the business world as a failure, with some failure being inevitable, but regrettable nonetheless. They will take more and give less, if they can get away with it. Now, the ideal of the free market is that if they jerk us around we can take our business elsewhere, but healthcare is so expensive and byzantine that most of us can't afford it, except when subsidized by an employer who has the benefit of negotiating in bulk on our behalf. But this leaves us in a pinch where if our employer isn't great we can't "vote our wallets" by leaving because we need the healthcare and if our healthcare (which we didn't get to pick directly) isn't great we can't "vote our wallets" because we need the paycheck.

In theory an employer offering bad healthcare benefits is a bad employer who should be "corrected" in the market by leaving their employ, but jobs aren't fungible, we can't just leave and go across the street to another employer with the same circumstances but better insurance. This makes the "free market" as it applies to health insurance NOT REALLY VERY FREE AT ALL.

Our nominal power to negotiate and force companies to compete for our business is severely constrained and diluted by circumstances. If a restaurant, movie studio, or video game company wants our business, it has to contend with the fact that we could stay home and feed or entertain ourselves in lots of other ways, on top of there being other restaurants and media companies. But the alternative to healthcare is stay home and administer home remedies and hope you don't die of an infected tooth or hangnail that spreads, or untreated cancer, or whatever. We aren't really "customers" with the same choice. So the fact that the consequences of voting our wallet and staying home means we might die and the fact that our negotiation ability is at a remove through our jobs (which, again, without which we might lose our ability to secure food and shelter and healthcare, and maybe die)... ...means that the vaunted competition that is supposed to make the free market efficient and fair just doesn't happen. It doesn't apply.

We are at the mercy of corporations who, again, are instructed by society that their highest good is separating us from our money. And it doesn't have to be this way! We could eliminate the whole predatory, unnecessary layer that is the for-profit health insurance complex and replace it with a public agency whose highest good is getting the most treatment for the least money. And at that point, multiple massive distortions of the "free market" disappear.

We gain more power to change jobs if another employer is offering us a better deal. Free market competition! Great, right? We've got more money that we can spend on things we want. We don't have people losing cars and houses and apartments and education plans and jobs because they had a medical emergency they couldn't pay for. We eliminate a lot of bankruptcies. Financial planning becomes more predictable. Consumer confidence goes up. Spending goes up.

Every business that is providing something people want benefits from the increased stability! Demand for basically everything rises! Jobs are created! Workers are less stressed and fearful and exhausted and so are working better! Where's the downside for "capitalism"? I'm a fan of the free market. I think customers benefit when companies compete for their money. I think companies benefit when workers compete for their money. But our for-profit healthcare system distorts this whole thing so badly that this is basically not happening now. If you like "capitalism" in the sense of a market-based economy where entities compete to trade what they have for what they want... a little "socialism" around the edges is a good thing, a necessary thing. If we could decouple our thinking in the business world from the current fiduciary duty we choose to imagine businesses owe, then "profit" becomes the reward for doing a good job at whatever the business does, and that's FINE. It's good, it's great, it's the ideal. 

But we can't there as long as we're treating everything as though it's just another fungible option among many where people could freely vote their wallets. We can stay home from the movies if the options stink, go watch a play or a TV show. Can't do that with cancer treatment. Democratic socialism, social democracy... related and overlapping concepts, I'm not actually that interested in wanking over the distinctions. The point is, you can have social features on a market economy. And you can't have a market economy for long without them. In the competition that makes a market economy work, the reward for winning is also the means by which the game is played, which means each round is *less* competitive than the one that came before. Competition is a finite resource, which means it's unsustainable. The more that this competition extends into areas in which negotiation and competition are stifled, the faster the process by which the competition breaks down becomes until the "free market" becomes a fiefdom of company towns. And so the distortion caused by our for-profit healthcare industry is speeding up the demise of the free market. A public option would slow that down. Eliminating health insurance as it exists now and replacing it with some form of single payer system would go much further. 

To make a long story short (TOO LATE!) - we can't afford to keep the health insurance industry around. Can't afford it. How do we pay for it? Nobody has an answer for that. We can figure out how to pay for Medicare 4 All, but not how to pay for health insurance. And while we're figuring out how to pay for healthcare under the private insurance model, we should ask... wait, what are we paying for? Mostly to prop up an industry whose goal is that we should continue paying them to exist. Literally no purpose. They produce nothing.

[stoweboyd]

Connecting the Dots for Journalism

In Down and Out in the Gig Economy, Jacob Silverman lays out part memoir, part economic analysis of the lot of freelance journalists. He is one:

In truth, freelance journalism, as a career, is mostly an anachronism. Given the rock-bottom rates on offer, few writers actually support themselves with full-time freelancing. A lucky handful churn out features for the New York Times Magazine and GQ for $2 a word and then deliver half-apologetic aw-shucks accounts of their success on the Longform podcast, which dispenses romantic tales of literary striving to a mass of naive supplicants.

But for most of us, freelance journalism is a monetized hobby, separate from whatever real income one earns. The ideal relationship for a freelance journalist to their work becomes a kind of excited amateurism. They should hope for professional success and acceptance but always keep a backup plan or three in mind. They will likely not be welcomed past the gates of full-time employment. By year five or six, they might be rebranding themselves as “editorial consultants” or “content strategists,” realizing that any genuine fiscal opportunity lies in shepherding corporate content to life.

It’s worth asking what this dynamic does to journalism—the stories untold, the investigations never performed because a shift behind the bar pays better or because the publication won’t pay for a train ticket. Nor is there much room for career development or mentorship when editors, often operating under page-view or production quotas of their own, are disconnected from their labor force. But then, gig economies are ersatz structures, designed to skirt labor laws and offload risk and expense onto workers themselves. They serve the whims of capital, which—if the recent wave of private equity–led media takeovers is anything to go by—seems to be focused on extracting whatever last profits it can before leaving the news industry’s desiccated corpse by the roadside.

Match this with the more analytic take of Keach Hagey, Lukas Alpert, and Yaryna Serkez in In News Industry, a Stark Divide Between Haves and Have-Nots, and you can see the US newspaper industry —print and digital — is in free fall, except for a few national players:

After suffering a historic meltdown a decade ago in the financial crisis, American newspapers began racing to transform into digital businesses, hoping that strategy would save them from the accelerating decline of print.

The results are in: A stark divide has emerged between a handful of national players that have managed to stabilize their businesses and local outlets for which time is running out, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of circulation, advertising, financial and employment data.

Local papers have suffered sharper declines in circulation than national outlets and greater incursions into their online advertising businesses from tech giants such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. The data also shows that they are having a much more difficult time converting readers into paying digital customers.

The result has been a parade of newspaper closures and large-scale layoffs. Nearly 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, leaving 200 counties with no newspaper and roughly half the counties in the country with only one, according to a University of North Carolina study.

Meanwhile, about 400 online-only local news sites have sprung up to fill the void, disproportionately clustered in big cities and affluent areas, the UNC study found.

The shrinking of the local news landscape is leaving Americans with less information about what's happening close to them, a fact Facebook recently acknowledged as it struggled to expand its local-news product but couldn’t find enough stories. Local TV news is still a major, if declining, source of news for Americans, but local newspapers are vanishing.

As the WSJ writers point out, the online jobs are coastal, and the declining print newspapers' jobs are distributed across the country, resulting in swathes of the country with no reporting:

Newspaper jobs declined by 60% from 465,000 employees to 183,000 employees between 1990 and 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since January, more than 1,000 newspaper jobs have disappeared through layoffs and buyouts.

Jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s internet publishing and broadcasting category, the best measure of online news employment available, rose from 29,000 to 197,800 during the same period. Those jobs have been highly concentrated in New York and California, according to a Journal analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

That would leave large swaths of America with radically diminished access to local news. A future without newspapers, Mr. Mele of the Shorenstein Center, says, is “actually a crisis for democracy.”

At many outlets, no amount of job cuts could save them. Openings of online-only news sites haven’t made up for flood of newspaper closures. The result is that rural areas and poor neighborhoods are fast becoming news deserts.

So, we have an enormous hollowing out of the news industry (and by extension, journalism as a whole), with really bad outcomes for our society. No matter your political affiliation, a wholesale collapse of local coverage must be considered negative. At the same time, more of the work that does remain is being shopped out to freelancers in a gig economy model, with decreasing pay and increasing precarity.

These trends point toward a not-too-distant future with only a few newspapers that succeed in making the transition to a future based on paid subscriptions for digital (and some print) content, like the NY Times, the WSJ, and the WaPo. Nearly all other regional papers are trending down, and fast. Online journalismish jobs are rising but at a rate that is slower than the fall of traditional work.

And how many journos can eke out an existence with a paid newsletter? Not many.

In a few years, these people -- and Jacob -- might be working in in corporate PR, starting a brewery, or installing solar panels as part of a national infrastructure job.

Just at the point that I was posting this story, I read this: Entire staff of New Orleans Times-Picayune laid off, with about 65 writing and editing staff axed.

[luxurymykonosuk]

Who Wants to Buy Mykonos Villas?

So who wants to buy luxury villas in Mykonos? While it is true that Greece is still in the middle of a severe economic crisis, it does seem that the Mykonos real estate market has been literally thriving. No crisis here, whatsoever!

Mykonos has been for long one of the best holiday destinations in the world, loved and frequented by some of the biggest celebrities out there. But it's not just about celebrities; a lot of ordinary folks have made their way to Mykonos and have purchased luxury accommodation in Mykonos.

Many would prefer to rent a villa in Mykonos, rather than stay here, as they are here for the short-term. But what is clear is that there is a huge amount of interest in Mykonos villas. Everyone wants a piece of them.

Luxury villa Mykonos

Indeed, in spite of the severity of the economic crisis in Greece, in spite of the protests, demonstrations, referendums and elections, Greece still saw a tourist inflow of 22 million in 2015, which is remarkable really.

No surprises for guessing that most tourists to Greece spent most of their time on the Greek Islands, including Mykonos, which have been pretty much insulated from the whole economic crisis. Today, thousands of tourists are flying every day to the Greek islands. Many hope to buy holiday homes here.

Indeed, foreign investors and buyers are lining up to buy properties on popular Greek islands such as Mykonos. The demand has never been higher. There is great demand for holiday homes on the Greek islands. Mykonos, along with Santorini, is perhaps the favourite choice of foreigners who wish to buy a summer home on a Greek island.

Generally, the same nationalities that visit the holiday destinations in Greece are the ones who buy luxury villas here. Britons are among the biggest buyers of Mykonos villas, no surprises there, as British tourists here in Mykonos are quite common. One sees them here, there and everywhere.

Mykonos attracts buyers from across Europe, not just from Britain - from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, France, Russia and Germany. There is a lot of demand for Mykonos real estate from China, Israel, India and Turkey as well.

Mykonos villas for rent

In fact, wealthy individuals from emerging economies generally show a lot of interest in Greek Islands, and the recent economic crisis hasn't stemmed the demand even one bit. Luxury accommodation in Mykonos that cost over $1 million are bought almost every other day.

Indeed, wealthy Chinese buyers have recently become very prominent here, with most buying luxury villas in Mykonos in all-cash deals. There is a lot of demand for cottages that have a direct view of the sea. Newly built or newish beachfront Mykonos villages are incredibly popular.

Many foreign investors in Mykonos have benefited from the currency exchange rate, which is in their favour. Some are attracted by the Golden Visa offered by Greek government to non-European Union nationals.

This guarantees foreigners the right to a renewable residency permit for an investment of 250,000 EUR in properties in Greece. They are also given the right to travel to all European nations subject to the Schengen agreement.

Many wealthy Chinese and Hong Kong bankers, hedge fund managers and business executives have been buying Mykonos real estate for this reason.

Things are certainly looking good for the Mykonos real estate market. The interest is high and buying activity couldn't have been better. It is expected to get much better when the Greek economy stages a recovery, which should happen soon.

In fact, experts predict Greece to stabilize in the near-term and for things to get back to how they were when the goings were good. But this is still a work in progress.

[onlinebankinginyork]

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[alexandrabracken]

A little bit more about the Special Edition short stories...

Hi guys! I hope your holidays were wonderful! I haven’t been around much, as I’ve been trying to figure out a social media strategy that helps me stay in touch with everyone but also preserves some balance in my life. Stepping away from social to work on TDL really helped my emotional and mental health, but I don’t want to disappear on you completely as I’ve always really loved chatting with you guys over here. You might hear from me a little less on Tumblr and Twitter especially, but I’ll still be checking in with updates and tidbits—like today! Since I’m no longer taking Asks and I don’t have as many opportunities to get into talking about the story behind the stories as I used to, I wanted to share a little bit more about the short stories in the special editions before they hit bookshelves on January 2nd. These are a bit spoiler-y as they get into what ideas or questions I wanted to focus on in each story, so you might want to come back and read this after reading the stories if you hate spoilers. Or, maybe they’ll help you decide if you want to read them? In any case, putting them under a cut…

TDM/Cole + Liam: My mini playlist for Liam and Cole’s story is called “The Boys” which is how I think of this one in my mind. The story is designed to answer a few questions that I couldn’t truly get to in the series, at least not in a meaningful way. The biggest of those questions being why the dynamic between Liam, Cole, and Harry is so complicated, and why Cole and Harry had their falling out. I jokingly told my editor that there were some East of Eden vibes to this one, which maybe isn’t completely off. Another question I wanted to tackle was why Liam was SO anti-Children’s League in TDM/NF, even though you could argue that the organization operates in a morally gray area versus being all-out bad (at least as far as they know). It was really interesting to get to explore the League in its infancy and compare it to the more established, more disciplined League we see later. Liam and Cole kill me because they love each other so much but it’s like they operate on two different frequencies. I have a relationship like this in my life, and while sometimes it clicks and is wonderful, other times it allows for hurt feelings and misunderstandings. Liam and Harry have such similar dispositions, and Cole saw himself as the protector of their family from a young age, and his own secret—and fear of his family’s rejection—tears him up inside. You might remember that this story was originally centered on the Betty crew in the days leading up to when they crossed paths with Ruby; ultimately, this felt like a bigger emotional story and it gave me the opportunity to write a bit more about Cole. I think you’ll find a different Liam and Cole here than you’re used to—I would describe them both as being very raw.

NF/Vida: Vida’s story, in a way, serves as a parallel to an aspect of In Time. Specifically, the horrible choices that people are asked to make in times of great economic and social strife. The central question of In Time is “Why would someone ever become a skip tracer and hunt kids?” whereas here it’s “What circumstances would prompt one sister to turn her younger sister into the PSFs?”  Fear and desperation are two of the most powerful human emotions/motivations, and it can drive people to do things they might never be capable of otherwise. In fact, fear and desperation are THE two primary forces in TDM world, especially at the beginning of the IAAN crisis. I’d never written anything set during that first year where everything truly went to shit in American and people of all walks of life were suddenly without their kids, homes, money, and jobs. Just after the big collapse is suffering, hopelessness, boredom, and anger that has no place to go. With the exception of one person in this story, no one is wholly good or bad, they’re just messy humans surviving the only way(s) they know how. All of it was interesting to portray through the eyes of a twelve-year-old only at the edge of really understanding what’s happening in the world. One important thread in Vida’s story is way the world fails young women and girls—especially young WoC—asking more of them just to survive and often leaving them incredibly vulnerable. In this instance, leaving them vulnerable to the manipulations of predators presenting themselves as the only option for “safety,” and vulnerable to the self-serving ringleaders offering “stability” that come to fill the void left behind by the collapse of orderly systems. I started off this story as angry as Vida was about her sister in NF/ITA and ended up feeling sympathetic to Nadia, who, at sixteen, has had waaaaay more thrown at her by life than anyone ever should and hit a breaking point. Vida thinks she’s wise to the world, and in some ways she is… but her age and relative innocence at times prevents her from seeing what the rest of us can about why Nadia feels she has to make certain hard, awful choices in an attempt stabilize their impossible situation. I’m a lot less certain than Vida is about what actually happened, and I’m curious to hear where you guys land on that front.

ITA/Clancy: As for Clancy’s story… the first thing I want to stress is that this is in no way a redemption story, because, let’s face it, Clancy doesn’t want to be redeemed—Clancy wants revenge. He wants to fill that bottomless hole that exists in his soul, without ever stopping to examine the reasons that hole is there and how he might do the work of mending it. It’s not even a justification for why he does what he does throughout the series; there’s no justification for most of it. I don’t want to tell you more about the plot itself because it spoils the story’s framework, which I hope will surprise you. To be a little vague, if Liam’s story is centered on love, and Vida’s on fear, Clancy’s is really a story about anger. How poisonous it is, how it festers and builds over time, and how there’s no easy end to it. Throughout the series, Clancy’s primary goal is revenge against his father, and this story goes deeper into the why behind that and gives you a little more about President Gray himself. While I do believe our pasts play a part in shaping us—especially how we relate to others—the choices that we make every day are ultimately what define us. One of my favorite things about the original trilogy is how Ruby and Clancy foil each other. They both have tragedy and suffering in their past, they both have every reason to be angry, but Ruby chooses to use her powers one way, and Clancy chooses to use his in a very different way, and that ultimately sets them on two very different paths. Interestingly (to me at least!), this was the one short story I was thinking about the most while working on The Darkest Legacy. There ended up being an unexpected parallel in Zu and Clancy’s stories…

[wineanddinosaur]

Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry

The spring and summer of 2020 brought a reckoning for many Americans, with a global pandemic causing mass unemployment and the murder of George Floyd spurring protesters across the country to decry police violence against Black lives. For the restaurant industry, these events brought every failure and uncomfortable truth to the forefront — and exploited and jobless workers suddenly had plenty of time for such conversations.

Social media was flooded with infographics about the racist origins of tipping and the inequities that have kept the hospitality machine running in America since its birth at the blurry end of legalized slavery in this country. Capitalism itself was under a lens, the unfair concentration of power and profit magnified with every report of another billionaire doubling or tripling wealth. Replacing this economic and political system is a long shot, but anti-capitalist practices have existed in bars and restaurants for years now. So what does this look like, and why should everyone care?

Fair Wages

Capitalism is an economic system wherein the means of production of goods and services is privately owned rather than state-owned, with those private owners reaping the sole benefit of profits. That leaves the “means of production” — bartenders straining your Margarita and line cooks preparing your al dente pasta — in the hospitality industry exposed to exploitation thanks to notoriously slim margins for success. And since the hospitality industry, like most in this country, was built on the backs of Black people, it should be surprising to no one that the mistreatment of BIPOC, immigrant, and undocumented workers remains prevalent, despite their significant majority as employees in restaurants today.

One of the most basic ways an establishment can ensure the safety of its staff is by providing stable pay. Sadly, tipped workers who serve guests in bars and restaurants often make a subminimum wage, which is legal in all but seven states. Organizations like One Fair Wage seek to end this subminimum wage, but so have business owners.

In 2015, the practice of paying restaurant staff a higher but un-tipped wage cropped up noticeably. Prominent chefs like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., began including service fees in guests’ checks in order to facilitate the change, while now-closed Bar Agricole in San Francisco raised its prices 20 percent to do the same. Chef Amanda Cohen was an early advocate for abolishing tipping in New York City when she adopted the practice at her Lower East Side location of Dirt Candy.

A Level Field

One of the most prominent supporters of the movement was Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer, who announced back in 2015 that USHG would gradually end tipping and raise menu prices at all of its restaurants. Citing pay disparities between back- and front-of-house employees, which often fuels an unspoken feud between the two, the move to eliminate tipping at such a large and influential restaurant group convinced others to follow suit. This past summer, Meyer reversed the company’s “Hospitality Included” policy, meaning that servers at Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe (to name just a couple) are once again working for tips.

Where Meyer posited that staff should benefit from guests wanting to tip generously in the wake of an economic crisis, Stephanie Watanabe, co-founder of Brooklyn wine bar Coast and Valley, found the opposite to be true. “We instituted a universal living wage, which was super important for us,” she says. “I think we did that in the summer after realizing that folks were not tipping.”

With tips plummeting, Watanabe and her partner Eric Hsu began to have the conversation about livable wages with their staff. “It really solidified for us when Covid hit: People before profits, period. It’s non-negotiable,” she says.

Thanks to her background in filmmaking in Hollywood, Watanabe brought outside perspectives to the argument against tipping, too. The “Most Favored Nations” clause utilized in movie contracts for smaller independent projects — paying the A-list celebrities the same amount as the supporting players — inspired her to try something similar. “We saw the dynamic between dining room and kitchen [employees], and it really bothered us,” says Watanabe of the tipped FOH/untipped BOH schism. “So for me, this was a way to level that and say, ‘No. We’re not going to pay this person less because somehow their job is deemed less valuable than the person who is able to go to get their WSET [Wine & Spirit Education Trust certification].’”

The friction between staff, coupled with the usual caveats of tipping — tipped workers experience higher rates of sexual harassment and people of color are tipped less than their white coworkers — led to a discussion with staff about experimenting with a fixed wage. “We understand the deep roots that tipping has and how ultimately, it’s incredibly, incredibly harmful and racist, and that doesn’t sit well,” Watanabe says. “Every single person, including the owner, gets paid $25 an hour.” This anti-capitalist strategy, which values humans over money, brings her staff equality and stability. It is not, however, an easy way to run a business in America.

“Every month, we’re losing money. But we’re like, ‘and?’” says Watanabe. “Then so be it, then our business can’t survive. Period. And that’s a shame, but it’s also a function of capitalism and society and these systems and structures that exist.”

With profit margins hovering around 1 percent at places like Coast and Valley right now, most investors would be hesitant to risk it all, but many of Watanabe and Hsu’s backers are friends and family who truly believe in their vision. The team recognizes the real struggle that most bars face. “There are good folks out there, and the problem isn’t [that] owners don’t want to pay their people. Some of the time, it’s that they can’t,” Watanabe says.

Even for the big players, a seemingly minimal loss in income might come with strings attached. “Who knows if they’ve got investors and people that they’re beholden to that don’t share their commitment to those things?” Watanabe says. “Then oftentimes, you don’t have a lot of control over it. And that’s where capitalism kind of just comes in and wreaks havoc.”

Nobody is saying that flouting our capitalist tendencies is painless. “To do the right thing is really, really, really hard in this world that we live in,” Watanabe says. “I think it’s like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. But for Eric and I, … we can’t violate our own integrity, and so maybe that means we’re bad business people. And at the end of the day, I’d rather be a bad business person than a bad person.”

A High Road

Andrea Borgen Abdallah, owner of Barcito & Bodega in Los Angeles, was once a general manager at Union Square Hospitality Group’s Blue Smoke in Battery Park City, Calif. “I became really interested in that model and what it hopes to achieve — especially when it came to dealing with the inequity between kitchen staff and waitstaff,” she says. Borgen Abdallah followed USHG’s lead and did away with tipping less than a year after Barcito’s September 2015 opening.

Thanks to the restaurant’s proximity to the L.A. Convention Center, Borgen Abdallah noticed business was very cyclical. “[On a] Monday, I would out-sell a Friday night, and there was no method to the madness,” she says. But eliminating tipping created stability for her employees, ensuring that shifts would be predictably fruitful on any given day. “I was also able to introduce healthcare as a result of that,” Borgen Abdallah says — no small feat, given that the Affordable Care Act only requires insurance to be offered if an establishment has a larger staff of 50 or more full-time employees.

In March of 2020, with the shutdowns brought upon by the rise of Covid in the U.S., Borgen Abdallah closed her restaurant and made two important decisions. First, Barcito would continue to pay for the health insurance of its furloughed employees. Second, it would keep jobs available for anyone lacking a solid safety net. In this way, even though the restaurant was unable to provide the same hours, it was able to keep its doors open and its vulnerable staff cared for.

Last year, Barcito was also one of the first restaurants to participate in High Road Kitchens — a group of restaurants working to provide food on a sliding scale to low-wage workers, healthcare workers, and others in need. One Fair Wage, which fights to end subminimum wages nationwide, oversees the program through RAISE (Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment). Participating High Road Restaurants like Barcito commit to advocating for fair wages and increased racial and gender equity through hiring, training, and promotional practices.

Borgen Abdallah’s dedication to the fight for better wages began while working directly for One Fair Wage in the past, even making trips to Washington, D.C., and her commitment doesn’t seem to be waning. “I think this pandemic certainly exacerbated a lot of the issues that we’ve had for a really long time,” she says. “And I think a lot of people wanted to sweep [them] under the rug and finally were forced to reconcile.” Now, with all that is known about the instability of a life reliant on tips without guaranteed access to healthcare, paid leave, and other benefits, real change could be on the horizon.

The Hope

It has been one year since the start of the pandemic, and the cry of the overworked and underinsured is once again becoming just a murmur. An increase in vaccine availability quiets much of the fear of going back to a job where contracting Covid remains a danger, but bar and restaurant workers are still far from safe. Returning to work during a national emergency can be confusing, adding new ways for management to exploit staff such as through unsafe Covid practices, unexplained pay changes, and denial of federally required paid sick leave. After so much loss and disruption, mental health is suffering, and affordable insurance is often still tied to employment. One look at the long list of resources put together by the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, a nonprofit created by and for restaurant workers, gives some insight into just how vastly workers’ lives have been and continue to be affected.

With the passing of President Biden’s latest Covid relief package, small restaurants received access to $28.6 billion in grants, but a $15 federal minimum wage amendment failed. “I think people kind of started to talk about [issues for restaurants],” observes Watanabe, “but it was just like ‘bailout bailout bailout!’ But … that’s not going to cut it anymore.”

Last month, Barcito was able to get all of its employees vaccinated against Covid. As eligibility opens up to the rest of the public, a new normalcy feels within reach. But the sense of urgency to repair broken systems within hospitality threatens to dwindle. “I feel like it has kind of started to fall to the wayside,” Borgen Abdallah says. “The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter, and I think it’s just important that we [have] those conversations and that that continues to feel really urgent.”

Anti-capitalist methods can actually work well within our capitalist society, even beyond championing workers’ rights through ensuring stable wages, paid time off, health care, or shared ownership opportunities. American bars and restaurants will need to look at sustainability and minimizing harm not just to people, but to the environment. Ambitious bar programs that are eliminating plastics — eco-friendly paper, metal, bamboo, and even hay straws have become standard — tackling water usage, and targeting waste by focusing on the creative use of what most might toss out have a real chance to lead the way as well.

“I’m hopeful, but I also am disappointed in the industry,” says Watanabe. “I feel like we’ve had a year where we could have addressed some really deep problematic systemic problems in this industry.” Businesses must look frankly once again at where they are lacking in response to the racism, sexism, and ableism that has pervaded hospitality since its early beginnings in this country. If capitalism benefits from white supremacy, then now is the time to challenge them both. “Ultimately, it’s not just about hospitality,” Watanabe says. “This is happening all over the place, and there’s a lot of reckonings happening. It’s really about changing the way we do business to be more conscious, to be more people-centered, to be more thoughtful.”

2020 may have broken us down with its harsh realities, shuttering more than 110,000 bars and restaurants nationwide, but as long as we can keep the momentum of learning and reimagining a better future for this industry — one where it values lives over profits — there is hope. “It’s been a tough year,” says Borgen Abdallah. “I think a lot of it could have been avoided had we done things differently, and I don’t think reverting back to the old way of doing things is the answer.”

The article Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/anti-capitalism-hospitality/

[johnboothus]

Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry

The spring and summer of 2020 brought a reckoning for many Americans, with a global pandemic causing mass unemployment and the murder of George Floyd spurring protesters across the country to decry police violence against Black lives. For the restaurant industry, these events brought every failure and uncomfortable truth to the forefront — and exploited and jobless workers suddenly had plenty of time for such conversations.

Social media was flooded with infographics about the racist origins of tipping and the inequities that have kept the hospitality machine running in America since its birth at the blurry end of legalized slavery in this country. Capitalism itself was under a lens, the unfair concentration of power and profit magnified with every report of another billionaire doubling or tripling wealth. Replacing this economic and political system is a long shot, but anti-capitalist practices have existed in bars and restaurants for years now. So what does this look like, and why should everyone care?

Fair Wages

Capitalism is an economic system wherein the means of production of goods and services is privately owned rather than state-owned, with those private owners reaping the sole benefit of profits. That leaves the “means of production” — bartenders straining your Margarita and line cooks preparing your al dente pasta — in the hospitality industry exposed to exploitation thanks to notoriously slim margins for success. And since the hospitality industry, like most in this country, was built on the backs of Black people, it should be surprising to no one that the mistreatment of BIPOC, immigrant, and undocumented workers remains prevalent, despite their significant majority as employees in restaurants today.

One of the most basic ways an establishment can ensure the safety of its staff is by providing stable pay. Sadly, tipped workers who serve guests in bars and restaurants often make a subminimum wage, which is legal in all but seven states. Organizations like One Fair Wage seek to end this subminimum wage, but so have business owners.

In 2015, the practice of paying restaurant staff a higher but un-tipped wage cropped up noticeably. Prominent chefs like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., began including service fees in guests’ checks in order to facilitate the change, while now-closed Bar Agricole in San Francisco raised its prices 20 percent to do the same. Chef Amanda Cohen was an early advocate for abolishing tipping in New York City when she adopted the practice at her Lower East Side location of Dirt Candy.

A Level Field

One of the most prominent supporters of the movement was Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer, who announced back in 2015 that USHG would gradually end tipping and raise menu prices at all of its restaurants. Citing pay disparities between back- and front-of-house employees, which often fuels an unspoken feud between the two, the move to eliminate tipping at such a large and influential restaurant group convinced others to follow suit. This past summer, Meyer reversed the company’s “Hospitality Included” policy, meaning that servers at Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe (to name just a couple) are once again working for tips.

Where Meyer posited that staff should benefit from guests wanting to tip generously in the wake of an economic crisis, Stephanie Watanabe, co-founder of Brooklyn wine bar Coast and Valley, found the opposite to be true. “We instituted a universal living wage, which was super important for us,” she says. “I think we did that in the summer after realizing that folks were not tipping.”

With tips plummeting, Watanabe and her partner Eric Hsu began to have the conversation about livable wages with their staff. “It really solidified for us when Covid hit: People before profits, period. It’s non-negotiable,” she says.

Thanks to her background in filmmaking in Hollywood, Watanabe brought outside perspectives to the argument against tipping, too. The “Most Favored Nations” clause utilized in movie contracts for smaller independent projects — paying the A-list celebrities the same amount as the supporting players — inspired her to try something similar. “We saw the dynamic between dining room and kitchen [employees], and it really bothered us,” says Watanabe of the tipped FOH/untipped BOH schism. “So for me, this was a way to level that and say, ‘No. We’re not going to pay this person less because somehow their job is deemed less valuable than the person who is able to go to get their WSET [Wine & Spirit Education Trust certification].’”

The friction between staff, coupled with the usual caveats of tipping — tipped workers experience higher rates of sexual harassment and people of color are tipped less than their white coworkers — led to a discussion with staff about experimenting with a fixed wage. “We understand the deep roots that tipping has and how ultimately, it’s incredibly, incredibly harmful and racist, and that doesn’t sit well,” Watanabe says. “Every single person, including the owner, gets paid $25 an hour.” This anti-capitalist strategy, which values humans over money, brings her staff equality and stability. It is not, however, an easy way to run a business in America.

“Every month, we’re losing money. But we’re like, ‘and?’” says Watanabe. “Then so be it, then our business can’t survive. Period. And that’s a shame, but it’s also a function of capitalism and society and these systems and structures that exist.”

With profit margins hovering around 1 percent at places like Coast and Valley right now, most investors would be hesitant to risk it all, but many of Watanabe and Hsu’s backers are friends and family who truly believe in their vision. The team recognizes the real struggle that most bars face. “There are good folks out there, and the problem isn’t [that] owners don’t want to pay their people. Some of the time, it’s that they can’t,” Watanabe says.

Even for the big players, a seemingly minimal loss in income might come with strings attached. “Who knows if they’ve got investors and people that they’re beholden to that don’t share their commitment to those things?” Watanabe says. “Then oftentimes, you don’t have a lot of control over it. And that’s where capitalism kind of just comes in and wreaks havoc.”

Nobody is saying that flouting our capitalist tendencies is painless. “To do the right thing is really, really, really hard in this world that we live in,” Watanabe says. “I think it’s like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. But for Eric and I, … we can’t violate our own integrity, and so maybe that means we’re bad business people. And at the end of the day, I’d rather be a bad business person than a bad person.”

A High Road

Andrea Borgen Abdallah, owner of Barcito & Bodega in Los Angeles, was once a general manager at Union Square Hospitality Group’s Blue Smoke in Battery Park City, Calif. “I became really interested in that model and what it hopes to achieve — especially when it came to dealing with the inequity between kitchen staff and waitstaff,” she says. Borgen Abdallah followed USHG’s lead and did away with tipping less than a year after Barcito’s September 2015 opening.

Thanks to the restaurant’s proximity to the L.A. Convention Center, Borgen Abdallah noticed business was very cyclical. “[On a] Monday, I would out-sell a Friday night, and there was no method to the madness,” she says. But eliminating tipping created stability for her employees, ensuring that shifts would be predictably fruitful on any given day. “I was also able to introduce healthcare as a result of that,” Borgen Abdallah says — no small feat, given that the Affordable Care Act only requires insurance to be offered if an establishment has a larger staff of 50 or more full-time employees.

In March of 2020, with the shutdowns brought upon by the rise of Covid in the U.S., Borgen Abdallah closed her restaurant and made two important decisions. First, Barcito would continue to pay for the health insurance of its furloughed employees. Second, it would keep jobs available for anyone lacking a solid safety net. In this way, even though the restaurant was unable to provide the same hours, it was able to keep its doors open and its vulnerable staff cared for.

Last year, Barcito was also one of the first restaurants to participate in High Road Kitchens — a group of restaurants working to provide food on a sliding scale to low-wage workers, healthcare workers, and others in need. One Fair Wage, which fights to end subminimum wages nationwide, oversees the program through RAISE (Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment). Participating High Road Restaurants like Barcito commit to advocating for fair wages and increased racial and gender equity through hiring, training, and promotional practices.

Borgen Abdallah’s dedication to the fight for better wages began while working directly for One Fair Wage in the past, even making trips to Washington, D.C., and her commitment doesn’t seem to be waning. “I think this pandemic certainly exacerbated a lot of the issues that we’ve had for a really long time,” she says. “And I think a lot of people wanted to sweep [them] under the rug and finally were forced to reconcile.” Now, with all that is known about the instability of a life reliant on tips without guaranteed access to healthcare, paid leave, and other benefits, real change could be on the horizon.

The Hope

It has been one year since the start of the pandemic, and the cry of the overworked and underinsured is once again becoming just a murmur. An increase in vaccine availability quiets much of the fear of going back to a job where contracting Covid remains a danger, but bar and restaurant workers are still far from safe. Returning to work during a national emergency can be confusing, adding new ways for management to exploit staff such as through unsafe Covid practices, unexplained pay changes, and denial of federally required paid sick leave. After so much loss and disruption, mental health is suffering, and affordable insurance is often still tied to employment. One look at the long list of resources put together by the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, a nonprofit created by and for restaurant workers, gives some insight into just how vastly workers’ lives have been and continue to be affected.

With the passing of President Biden’s latest Covid relief package, small restaurants received access to $28.6 billion in grants, but a $15 federal minimum wage amendment failed. “I think people kind of started to talk about [issues for restaurants],” observes Watanabe, “but it was just like ‘bailout bailout bailout!’ But … that’s not going to cut it anymore.”

Last month, Barcito was able to get all of its employees vaccinated against Covid. As eligibility opens up to the rest of the public, a new normalcy feels within reach. But the sense of urgency to repair broken systems within hospitality threatens to dwindle. “I feel like it has kind of started to fall to the wayside,” Borgen Abdallah says. “The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter, and I think it’s just important that we [have] those conversations and that that continues to feel really urgent.”

Anti-capitalist methods can actually work well within our capitalist society, even beyond championing workers’ rights through ensuring stable wages, paid time off, health care, or shared ownership opportunities. American bars and restaurants will need to look at sustainability and minimizing harm not just to people, but to the environment. Ambitious bar programs that are eliminating plastics — eco-friendly paper, metal, bamboo, and even hay straws have become standard — tackling water usage, and targeting waste by focusing on the creative use of what most might toss out have a real chance to lead the way as well.

“I’m hopeful, but I also am disappointed in the industry,” says Watanabe. “I feel like we’ve had a year where we could have addressed some really deep problematic systemic problems in this industry.” Businesses must look frankly once again at where they are lacking in response to the racism, sexism, and ableism that has pervaded hospitality since its early beginnings in this country. If capitalism benefits from white supremacy, then now is the time to challenge them both. “Ultimately, it’s not just about hospitality,” Watanabe says. “This is happening all over the place, and there’s a lot of reckonings happening. It’s really about changing the way we do business to be more conscious, to be more people-centered, to be more thoughtful.”

2020 may have broken us down with its harsh realities, shuttering more than 110,000 bars and restaurants nationwide, but as long as we can keep the momentum of learning and reimagining a better future for this industry — one where it values lives over profits — there is hope. “It’s been a tough year,” says Borgen Abdallah. “I think a lot of it could have been avoided had we done things differently, and I don’t think reverting back to the old way of doing things is the answer.”

The article Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry appeared first on VinePair.

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[luxurymykonosuk]

Mykonos.luxury | That Wishes To Acquire Mykonos Villas?

So that wants to get luxury vacation homes in Mykonos? While it is true that Greece is still in the middle of a serious economic crisis, it does seem that the Mykonos property market has actually been essentially prospering. No crisis here, whatsoever!

Mykonos villas

Mykonos has been for long one of the best holiday locations worldwide, enjoyed and frequented by some of the greatest celebrities available. Yet it's not just about stars; a great deal of regular individuals have actually made their means to Mykonos and have actually purchased luxury accommodation in Mykonos.

Numerous would like to rent out a vacation home in Mykonos, as opposed to remain here, as they are right here for the short-term. But what is clear is that there is a massive amount of rate of interest in Mykonos vacation homes. Everyone wants an item of them.

Certainly, despite the seriousness of the economic crisis in Greece, in spite of the demonstrations, demos, referendums as well as political elections, Greece still saw a visitor inflow of 22 million in 2015, which is exceptional really.

No surprises for presuming that many visitors to Greece invested most of their time on the Greek Islands, consisting of Mykonos, which have actually been practically shielded from the whole economic crisis. Today, hundreds of tourists are flying daily to the Greek islands. Many want to get vacation homes here.

Undoubtedly, foreign investors as well as purchasers are aligning to acquire residential properties on preferred Greek islands such as Mykonos. The need has actually never ever been higher. There is excellent demand for holiday residences on the Greek islands. Mykonos, in addition to Santorini, is possibly the much-loved choice of foreigners that want to purchase a summer home on a Greek island.

Usually, the same nationalities that see the holiday destinations in Greece are the ones who purchase high-end villas right here. Britons are among the largest customers of Mykonos villas, not a surprises there, as British vacationers right here in Mykonos are fairly common. One sees them here, there and also almost everywhere.

Mykonos attracts purchasers from across Europe, not just from Britain - from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, France, Russia and also Germany. There is a great deal of demand for Mykonos real estate from China, Israel, India and also Turkey also.

In fact, affluent people from emerging economies generally show a lot of interest in Greek Islands, and the current recession hasn't stemmed the demand also one bit. Deluxe holiday accommodation in Mykonos that price over $1 million are acquired practically every other day.

Undoubtedly, affluent Chinese customers have actually just recently ended up being really prominent below, with a lot of getting high-end vacation homes in Mykonos in all-cash bargains. There is a great deal of demand for homes that have a straight view of the sea. Freshly constructed or newish beachfront Mykonos towns are unbelievably prominent.

Many foreign financiers in Mykonos have actually benefited from the currency exchange rate, which remains in their favour. Some are drawn in by the Golden Visa offered by Greek federal government to non-European Union nationals.

This assures foreigners the right to an eco-friendly residency authorization for a financial investment of 250,000 EUR in properties in Greece. They are additionally provided the right to take a trip to all European countries subject to the Schengen arrangement.

Mykonos villas for rent

Several wealthy Chinese and also Hong Kong lenders, hedge fund managers and service executives have actually been purchasing Mykonos realty therefore.

Things are certainly looking good for the Mykonos property market. The interest is high as well as buying task couldn't have been much better. It is expected to get far better when the Greek economy phases a healing, which should take place soon.

As a matter of fact, professionals predict Greece to stabilize in the near-term and for things to return to exactly how they were when the goings were good. Yet this is still a work in progress.