paul mason
[london]
intro’d to Paul here:
Paul writes:
What’s driving it is the failure of the current model of capitalism to answer some basic questions: like where will the jobs come from if automation takes over our lives? Where will high wages come from if workers’ bargaining power is just repeatedly stamped down by the process of globalisation? How will this generation be secure in old age, if the pension system is shattered and we face half a century of boom-bust?
what if those aren’t really the driving questions.. but rather perhaps .. what would we do if money didn’t matter.. what does earning a living even mean. like Brand noted – perhaps our soul’s choice – doesn’t even appear on the ballot.
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find/follow Paul:
Paul Mason (born 23 January 1960) is a British journalist and broadcaster. He is the current Culture and Digital Editor ofChannel 4 News, having previously been economics editor of BBC2’s Newsnight, the author of several books, and a visiting professor at the University of Wolverhampton.
In May 2007, Mason’s book Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global was published by Harvill Secker. The book was longlisted for theGuardian First Book Award on 24 August 2007.
In January 2012, Mason’s book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions was published in paperback by Verso.
He is a supporter of Leigh Centurions rugby league club …
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via Paul – heavy insight into greece ness – summer 2015
– – –
Paul produced – and dreams shall take revenge (out 2015?)
http://www.dreamstakerevenge.com/trailers.html
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tweeted by Jason july 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun
Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian
revolution of everyday life – revolution as – instigating utopia everyday – Michael Hardt
if such a society is structured around human liberation, not economics, unpredictable things will begin to shape it.
indeed.. let’s do this first – free art\ists
The power of imagination will become critical. In an information society, no thought, debate or dream is wasted – whether conceived in a tent camp, prison cell or the table football space of a startup company.
perhaps we try in refugee camps…
why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages?
a nother way – radical econ ness
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Millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver. Their response is anger – and retreat towards national forms of capitalism that can only tear the world apart. Watching these emerge, from the pro-Grexit left factions in Syriza to the Front National and the isolationism of the American right has been like watching the nightmares we had during the Lehman Brothers crisis come true.
We need more than just a bunch of utopian dreams and small-scale horizontal projects. We need a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet. And we need to get on with it.
indeed.
deep/simple/open enough..
in the city. as the day.
today.
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from 2013 –on the future of capitalism:
capitalism is like an organism.. has beginning, middle, and an end… and it mutates to survive
i think we got the end wrong…
solutions have been over and over – to print more money
6 min – wave 5:
1\ network (it is the innovation – not the computer – kkelly) replacing hierarchy;
www ness
2\ rise of info goods
3\ rise of non-hierarchy
4\ eco-determined market
who are the new people to bring this thing?
i don’t think this is a form of capitalism… ie: paul romer 1990 – info goods destroy price formation mechanism based on scarcity
less ownership, more sharing
not far off – physical goods same as info goods
14 min – the free wipes out the paid for…. everything is pervaded by fight between network and hierarchy
15 min – who are the people (to bring this about)..?
17 min – expelling labour form the capital labour movement
it’s created the networked individual… not very collective.. but very powerful… whoever brings this new thing .. is them…
networked individualism – not so selfish.. but awake
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july 24 2015 – interview – guide to a post capitalist future
What we’re seeing [today] is rapidity of innovation not being matched by roll-out or business model evolution. Which begs the question: at what point does the potential automotive power of this technology actually get deployed in a third industrial revolution? I can’t see it happening in the neoliberal paradigm.
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The Keynesian era produced the last generation of hierarchised, collectivised selves. I was produced by it and I know that that world has gone. One of the virtues of being 55 is to have seen the new world born. [Today], as Foucault put it, we are entrepreneurs of the self. The internet [has] allowed the masses to be part of the social laboratory of the self. It allows us to do it in a way we haven’t begun to understand. It’s created a new human subject.
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All visions of social justice have from now on to begin with [what I call] the “networked individual”.
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The positive externality for Google is that it can see what we are searching for but we can’t see what each other are searching for. So it can now construct a monopolised business model on the basis of the secrets [revealed by] its data-mining.
so new – 3rd rev perhaps – self-talk as data ..
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the less utopian way of doing it is that you pursue the interests of those networked individuals, which is for their information not to be stolen from them, their information not to be arbitrarily accessed by the state, their lifestyles to be allowed to flourish, for them to have choices.
something else to do ness
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I spend as much time as I can listening to people.
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my aim is to get people into an out-of-body experience, huddled on the floor in a pool of their own tears. Then, when they come back to the safety of the group, maybe they can do something more honest.
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The reason it has lasted so long is that it is dynamic. By contrast, the Soviet system died because it was incapable of adapting.
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Where I part company with Mason is his prescriptions. They are remarkably thin, take no account of political realities and it takes an awful long time to get there. First, one has to plough through more than 200 pages of analysis in the course of which the author examines one by one the various economic theories advanced by 19th- and 20th-century political philosophers and various IT gurus.
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We have to wait until page 263, a chapter headed “Project Zero”, to discover what the author has in store for us.
First, the big picture. We must reduce carbon emissions, stabilise the financial system and “deliver high levels of material prosperity and wellbeing to the majority of people, primarily by prioritising information-rich technologies towards solving major social challenges such as ill-health, welfare dependency, sexual education and poor education”. Nothing much there that George Osborne couldn’t sign up to. Item four is a little trickier: “Gear technology towards the reduction of necessary work to promote the rapid transition towards an automated economy.”
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Item one (“one of the most radical – and necessary – measures”): create a global institute or network for simulating the long-term transition beyond capitalism. Yet another thinktank in which academics and other assorted blue-sky thinkers can talk to one another in impenetrable jargon. Oh, spare us, please.
Item two: public ownership of monopolies including the provision of water, energy, housing, transport, healthcare, telecoms, infrastructure and education “providing services at cost price”. Oh yes, and Apple and Google thrown in for good measure. Presumably this would have to be done without compensating shareholders, many of them pension funds. However desirable, I imagine there would be one or two political difficulties.
Item three: “socialise the financial system”. …..And lastly, the piece de resistance, “pay everyone a basic wage”, …. Or perhaps we could just get the banks to print some more money now that they’ve been “socialised”?
Scarcely a word about how we get from here to there.
how about… 6-12 months prototyping this.. then.. the next day… 7 billion can leap frog to it..
from video
on banks switching off knightism…. to sharing ness replacing banks..
1 min – another book is required – ie: this is what you do..
how about: a nother way
6:20 – zoe – what i’m preoccupied with is the mechanism between diagnosing and mobilizing..
7 min – douglas – ts elliott 1934 – the rock – socialists: people who try to escape from the darkness… that no one will need to be good… you can’t come up with a system/machine that does everything.. morality has to play a role
so – that means we need a system that wakes us up.. and keeps us awake. every day. then we just have to trust us/people.
7:30 – pat – rational panic –
8 min – julia – where is the knowledge – we’ve lost the info – her memory of the rock
8:40 – paul – if c hasn’t had it’s day.. then there’s got to be a better version of it
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Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews)
8/7/15 6:53 AM
Here’s @gilliantett review of #Postcapitalism on.ft.com/1OULIbt
“The biggest information product in the world — Wikipedia — is made by 27,000 volunteers, for free,” he observes. “If it were run as a commercial site, Wikipedia’s revenue could be $2.8bn a year. Yet Wikipedia makes no profit. And in doing so it makes it almost impossible for anybody else to make a profit in the same space.”
Hitherto, revolutions have usually occurred when workers have united against elites. But Mason thinks this is outdated. “The old left’s aim was the forced destruction of market mechanisms . . . by the working class [and] the lever would be the state,” he observes. “[But] over the past twenty-five years, it is the left’s project that has collapsed
Instead, Mason thinks that it is time to recognise that technology has turned us all into individualists — but connected us by networks in unusually powerful ways. And he wants to use the power of millions of individuals to build a more equal and just world that is no longer dominated by a “neoliberalism [that] is the doctrine of uncontrolled markets”.
Mason’s vision for the future, in other words, is a world where the government provides the framework to enable individuals to flourish but state functions are handed over to citizens. It is a place where people are secure — and equal — enough to use the efficiencies unleashed by automation to pursue worthy goals, such as volunteering to write Wikipedia pages.
It sounds utopian. And Mason does not attempt to describe in any detail exactly how western society might achieve this new postcapitalist world. Nor does he address the issue that tends to preoccupy many unions and leftwing groups today, namely the fact that technology is currently turning many workers into the equivalent of insecure digital sharecroppers, rather than collaborative creative spirits. Just look at the current fights around Uber, and the lack of security for workers there.
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aug 2015 – capitalism is failing and it’s time to panic
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Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews)
8/20/15 4:37 AM
Davos Man discovers #Postcapitalism agenda.weforum.org/2015/08/how-th…
1 of 4 change consumptionsimply using products more efficiently will not, on its own, lead to a sustainable economy. By engaging in more efficient forms of consumption within the sharing economy, people save money, which they then spend on other carbon intensive other products and services. For example, someone using a car sharing platform could spend the money they save on holiday flights, thereby increasing their overall carbon emissions.2 of 4. change workIf this form of innovation grows significantly, the sharing economy may come to transform the world of work. But whether you view this a path to creating new opportunities for entrepreneurship, or promoting the exploitation of low-skilled or low-income workers, rather depends on your political beliefs and values.
3of4. fair sharePaul Mason is not alone in predicting that the sharing economy will bring an end to capitalism. Radical grassroots actors such as Ouishare and Shareable, who are critical of the capitalist economic system, are creating a sharing economy built upon the principles of collaboration, sustainability and equality.
They talk about a sharing economy of grassroots activities, ranging from cooperatives, to open source software and hardware, to crowdfunding, to the maker movement – a social movement which enables individuals to create products, challenging the dominant systems of large-scale industrial manufacturing.
This vision includes grassroots innovations as diverse as bread co-ops, open-source communities developing tools for reducing energy demand, Kickstarter andFab Labs, which provide people with access to the tools needed to manufacture products.
These activities share a focus on empowering communities and creating a decentralised, sustainable economic system. If these diverse forms of innovation grow significantly then the sharing economy may, indeed, bring about the end of capitalism.
4of4 share fades awayGiven the diverse visions of the sharing economy, it’s questionable whether the idea will stand the test of time. It’s possible that the sharing economy will lose meaning as a concept and gradually disappear from public, media and policy discussions.
Perhaps it will be replaced by concepts such as the gig economy – referring to platforms enabling new forms of work – or the collaborative economy – referring to grassroots action to create a more sustainable economy.
It’s hard to tell which path we’re currently on. I for one hope Mason is right, and that the sharing economy will bring an end to an unsustainable system. But I fear that it’s more likely to transform the world of work in a negative way, reducing quality of life for many within society. The people championing this path are those with great power within the capitalist economy.
Meanwhile, those advocating for a path towards a more equal economy – such as grassroots organisations – are currently marginalised and disempowered. It’s clear who the odds will favour.
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oct 2015 – via Anne on fb:
http://nowthenmagazine.com/sheffield/issue-91/paul-mason/
You talk about an appetite for radical change amongst the populous. What world events in recent years do you think have contributed to this and how did they feed into your theory of postcapitalism?
The protests that began in 2011 – Occupy, The Arab Spring, [Spanish anti-austerity movement] the Indignados – had common features: they were inspired and fought for by people with individualist agendas. They came together via networks and they lived a networked lifestyle. They had an expanded sense of the possible, and refused to let hierarchical norms stand in their way. Sometimes, like in Gezi Park, Istanbul, in 2013, they spontaneously tried to create in reality the kind of sharing economy they were able to build online. A tent camp is just an online ideal community projected into real space.
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How can readers encourage the transition to a postcapitalist society? What technologies can they use to disrupt existing hierarchies?
The most basic technology is the one car workers use when they do ‘total quality management’ – the whiteboard. If we sat around every morning, as they do at Nissan, and asked, “What are we doing wrong and how can we work as a team to improve things?” – only this time not about a production line, but a society – that’s what we need. That’s why I quote a Soviet era economist, calling it “social technology”
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It will take a long time for all work to become voluntary. Right now voluntary collaborations such as those that produce Wikipedia are done in people’s free time. But we could expand free time and see what happens. My guess is more things like Wikipedia spring up – more communal crèches, more self-managed enterprises.
indeed.. let’s do this first: free art ists. 1 yr to try commons. as the day.
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because the neoliberal view of humanity was always bullshit. We were never the kind of ‘hate everybody and please yourself’ characters Ayn Rand says we are. However, what postcapitalism does as a concept is give us permission to view our charitable, sharing, sustainable selves as elements of a new human archetype, a new kind of person.
science of people.. we haven’t yet experimented under the assumption: all people are good. won’t work unless it’s all of us. www.
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Music – I mean the classical music I studied – taught me above all: no act of imagination is futile. Music is the imagination running wild, through a landscape that is only colour and emotion. Its mere existence refutes the demand of the neoliberals for us to be acquisitive, selfish individuals.
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rsa replay – oct 2015 – The Future of Capitalism
we’re in a once in 500 yrs transition.. (not 20)
capitalism is complex… not reducible to profit/loss, capital/labor, but is also adaptive
cycles (alternations of energy) not same as waves
6 min – my thesis – it’s run out of its capability to adapt… they system… the resulting wholistic system, ie: silicon valley to china et al… is broken
8 min – every crisis is met thru fiat money.. the extension of the money supply .. in a way that would have been impossible in any other phases.. allows every crisis to override..
9 min – fiat money produces this problem: smash organized labor, reduced bargaining power of work force.. this post crisis phase.. all countries experience wage stagnation… so credit.. a promise to repay and repay with interest… if you then add in financialization.. so that you depend on credit as much as wages.. create a structural problem.. wages can’t go on supplying repayment…
10 min – does a combo of endlessly cheap money and endlessly financialized life is going to carry on.. or can we dismantle the machine.. i argue we can..
11 min – the machine ness – carlotta perez et al – resistance to change can be a powerful thing.. forces innovation.. solutions not based on just cheapening the labor.. so if remove resistance …
13 min – luddites.. not obliged to innovate
14 min – a way out… strategic.. proper exploitation of info tech. standing in the way – social arrangements we have
info destroy the price mechanism.. command c – copy and paste to zero; command v –
if you subject world of digital goods that can endlessly be reproduced.. then all that stands in way of price being zero.. is a legal arrangement call intellectual property… so you can go arrest everyone.. take money on bitcoin… but nonrivalrous… so have to have a bug in them or a law to pass with them..
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so we created these vast tech’s.. blurring edges of work/non-work/life… and de linking hours and wages…. on creating tons of bullshit jobs (graeber)… and challenging structure of ownership – a new kind of economics
25 min – only thing that makes this possible is internet – network tech – knowledge more spontaneously social than any other time… knowledge sits in a kind of place – sits socially rather than in private silos
26 min – defense is – you create monopolies
27 min – the one ness (fb, twitter, google) – monopoly is only there to make sure things that should be zero are more than zero in price.. whole generation of entrepreneurs have realized another … platforms.. (airbnb, uber) – these guys aren’t writing anything .. they’re writing a plan to capture the market bottleneck/revenue.. (unlike zuckerberg, jobs, et al writing code) – rent seeking platforms
29 min – that’s not the 3rd industrial revolution.. they all don’t realize underutilization of info rev
30 min – my thesis in a nut shell: a society which systematically utilizes info to its full potential cannot have intellectual property, a free market, or private ownership..
to achieve it.. make machines free… info and physical.. reduce work to minimum.. automation, ai, robots, … automate world.. that will be 3rd revolution… but i see severe difficulty seeing how capitalism would address it.. if you can de link work and wages…promote the aspect of the world that looks like it’s new.. ie: collaborative, modular, voluntary, free, shared.. ask yourself, what do we really need to do to make this take off..
34 min – modern info businesses are asking – how do we turn it all off.. ie: the sharing.. so ie:, no child/slave labor.. no printing money – except central bank..
36 min – you have to clear away the old elites.. if it weren’t for the urgency of carbon… you could do this gradually… i’d say.. it’s already there.. and we can just nurture it.. but .. we’ve got to address this earlier than we thought we would..
ie: a nother way.. to model a means for 7 bill to leap frog to betterness
38 min – the planning for that project is modeling and simulation
graeber model ness
we’re planning blind because we never model
for the things that need to take place fast.. model them..
39 min – if i could bring one institution into being.. it would model the real world… then ask that machine interesting questions…
whoa.. with him.. then nike?
i’m not prejudging… i could see a transition that maintains brands.. but also see something else… you just have to model it…
ok. nothing is off limits. get that.
44 min – my goal – socialize the banking sector – h minsky
50 min – on uber not like inventing a new machine… it’s not a network.. it’s a hierarchy on top of a network base… so this is not 3rd industrial revolution…
51 min – tim oreilly conf on – disagregated capitalism… can’t solve problem
52 min – far more important to me in the dissolution.. is the dissolution of price mechanism – capitalism based on ip – policeman/lawyer – is not 3rd ind rev nor particularly resilient..
54 min – tech rev – invalidates utopia’s based on work… future society will be based on non work
56 min – de link well-being from work – the way forward is literally beyond work
57 min – economic dynamic of info industry is much less understood than climate challenge.. – so why i’m not talking climate.. (though is a chapter in my book)
besides.. w/ free art ists.. climate taken care of much faster.. not earth that needs to be awakened.. it’s us.
58 min – i want to show conclusions of info theory on economics…
1:00 – the model needs to understand transition..what would martians see… a yellow line… a new kind of economic activity.. we need to understand that… economic models as complex as they need to be… need an aggressive view
radical econ ness
1:01 – climate and poverty et al.. is making the speed urgent.. for me.. to spread debate/discussion/understanding.. if you look at things.. they become not hobbies… but part of new system.. doing things for a different reason… a lot of unofficial interaction ness .. not measured as market
1:03 – i don’t ever use the word – commons – the missing bit is state action and design at a systemic level..
1:04 – new spirit… taking perfectly familiar resources, like money, and using with new spirit.. so i do see it perhaps as a decade long transition
unless.. we craft/model a way for all of us to leapfrog
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oct 2015 – paul and yanis
https://keithpp.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/yanis-varoufakis-in-conversation-with-paul-mason/
Varoufakis: Greece is a cruel laboratory in which policies are being tested before they are passed on to Portugal, Spain, etc #GuardianLive
so let’s go for a humane lab… to model a nother way..
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nov 3 2015 – just from watching tweet stream.. last line says video is coming… (below)
“There is a new kind if human being emerging” @paulmasonnews I wish more people would recognise this fact and thrive from it #Postcapitalism
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/tessacooper5/status/661626775429128192
Sent via TweetDeck
There is a lot to talk about here – the art of thinking at least has clearly not yet been automated #Postcapitalism pic.twitter.com/qwZBP7TEME
.@paulmasonnews tells bitcoin developer in the audience that most economists treat bitcoin devs as an anomaly #Postcapitalism
Thoughtful stuff from @AnnPettifor reviewing @paulmasonnews #Postcapitalism. primeeconomics.org/book-reviews/i… … pic.twitter.com/fV3mgQEW8n
Best quote so far ‘we have no idea how to #crowd in the world we want, to crowd out the world we don’t want’ #Postcapitalism
Is the problem reoccurring here not we struggle to imagine a world without a market. Particularly after the collapse of USSR #Postcapitalism
Good Q. from audience:How to account for fact that large parts of society (non-middleclass) r excluded from #sharingeconomy? #Postcapitalism
“We can have a profound economic impact mobilising around a moral agenda” says @AnnPettifor citing Jubilee Debt Campaign #Postcapitalism
‘The capture of the earth’s assets for rent ‘ is the terrifying current face of capitalism says @AnnPettifor #postcapitalism
Working in a mixed collaborative age – feels like a place I’d like to be #Postcapitalism @paulmasonnews
#PaulMason mentions the late, great #VirginiaWoolf. Love the man! #postcapitalism
We need a litmus test for #postcapitalism solutions. How about any choice should nudge us to be more humane rather than more selfish?
@paulmasonnews closes saying collaboration is a better principle than collectivism #Postcapitalism
Closing moments of our #Postcapitalism event -great audience&speakers! Full video coming soon, our book review here: stpaulsinstitute.org.uk/dialogue/rober…
Here are my notes and review of Paul Mason’s book #Postcapitalism at St. Paul’s extraordinary debate.https://t.co/Eh7Rv8aqWm
pdf download
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/AnnPettifor/status/661688477998804992
video here:
http://www.stpaulsinstitute.org.uk/videos/2015/nov/03/postcapitalism-envisaging-a-shared-future
PostCapitalism: Envisaging a Shared Future – Paul Mason, Ann Pettifor, Phillip Blond
1 min – on how when we come together.. we can be loyal to the future..
makes me think of saying nature takes care of offspring by taking care of place that will take care of offspring.. Janine Benyus
4 min – far fewer concrete alternatives… 1\problem w/econ.. baffled/alienated by complexity.. jargon claxon .. understanding having opinions on econ should not be preserve of the few
7 min – Ann Pettifor – leadership of 2000 jubilee campaign.. and book – just money
8 min – paul starts
9 min – talking about networked economy.. networked society is a bit ironic in this space..
modes of production – big.. 500 yrs or more.. economic systems; slaves, feudalsim, mercantile capitalism.. so what comes after.. to the church it’s a 2nd order question… 1st order.. what comes after life
11 min – common retort – capitalism never ends.. it just adapts to problems created by self et al…
to be clear…. in proposing possibility of move beyond capitalism… my starting point..
this is a complex and adaptive system that has lost its capacity to adapt – because of rise of info tech
12 min – evidence for that: 1\ what’s happened to neoliberalism – by neolib i mean the whole world system that’s existed since mid 1980s (other people mean main theology of ayn, friedman) but i mean to focus on .. the whole system – free market globalized econ that we created 1980s after…
the short version: neolib successes were all based on fiat money – money created by states and central banks from nothing.. fiat money 1973 onwards.. really useful in creating dynamic society.. greatest advance in general human well-being ever
13 min – but.. fiat money is great as long as you have an economy that doesn’t exist of workers… destroys working classes capability to defend its share of income of society… wage share declines markedly… why a problem: if you want to endlessly expand credit against falling wage share… something will go wrong.. ie: 90s asian crash, dot com crash, 2008, ….
15 min – bigger problem… by destroying bargaining power.. reduce incentive on whole system to innovate.. easier to create coffee bar than do something innovative….
on reduced incentives.. only when we feel we’re bound to wages/earnings..would we pick easy route.. ie: if we had more time.. we’d do what needed to be done.. we couldn’t not. we (natural humans) crave hard work. that matters. (this is example of scarred brain from 28 min.. that we currently don’t seem to crave hard work.. because our choice is spinach or rock.. not what matters. we have to do what matters at the end of the day. not as the day.)
problem 1 – inability to deploy innovations it has come up with so far
16 min – the way out – what info tech can do for econ
1\ price – info tech corrodes price system – real price from copy paste will go to zero …doesn’t just apply to info.. falling price curves of real things.. bandwidth, chips, .. info layer is a layer of reality…
2\ work – dissolve link between work and wages… working 24/7 19 min – time is blurring .. no longer obsessed with hours but outputs and targets
3\ ownership/hierarchy – doing something to ownership and hierarchy, as soon as we could do something and give it away.. we did, ie: wikipedia, linux, apache, …
20 min – but capitalism has a defense – monopolies on a scale we’ve not seen, ie: giant tech companies.. they exist to protect the price… supply and demand doesn’t come into it.. 1\ defend price 2\ create commercial value from info we give away for free
21 min – in my dad’s day – going to bar – convo gave a feel good, today it’s commercialized
22 min – 1\ that doesn’t last .. 2\ we know what happens to systems that has to be imposed by lawyers – not granually renewing – make law as go along.. ie: spotify, uber.. 3\ not 3rd industrial revolution
creates possibility toward long transition toward society of abundance.. the info layer of the world is making more things more abundant.. we can utilize capacity.. the thing to do is to promote of transition that does the following..
1\ work reduced to an absolute minimum – strategically de linking from income.. a long transition… to incentivize creation of free time.. to do the wikipedias et al
or a leapfrog to something else (ps in the open – io dance)… maybe we have to leapfrog to get to the sweet spot… to get to that sync…
when we go the long transition route.. we take turns dancing the dance. we keep missing each other. the system isn’t deep/simple/open enough to set/keep all of us free. at once. and you have to wonder with the hit and miss ness of long ness.. if we’ll ever get in step/sync.. with ourselves.. ie: we get good people selling books while talking about free.
2\ zero carbon/saving the planet… we know about carbon economics.. we need to address.. how we transition ourselves beyond the market..
3\ outcome determined by a human revolution… we don’t know outcome.. it depends on humans themselves take the network tech and evolve themselves… networked individuals – manuel castells – you can’t de network a society
27 min – of course.. this has been attempted before… society of abundance/community/collab.. where the human bit is valued and hierarchy is shrunken… but such experiments were repressed.. heresies.. then we had utopian socialism… attempted with human brains scarred by earlier industrialization and scarcity
28 min – today – our brains are not scarred..
? – i don’t know – science of people ness – and most people are other people ness.. pluralistic ignorance ness.. seem to be our scars today. that we’re not enough.. unless we can get ourselves approved/sell-able via supposed to’s. our essence is scarce. we sold out in order to fit in. and now we can’t seem to let go… enough to trust us. so we keep doing partial ness.. perpetuating not-us ness.
another reason modeling matters.. can’t reason it in.. like we’ve forgotten basics.. ie: how to walk.. how to be.
we have the beginning of abundance and out of this we can do something
28 min – end of paul start of ann
despite my own pessimism about his thesis.. we need more utopians.. so i suggest his book.
30 min – on mason’s mutation – capitalism like a virus that may mutate…
[she’s reading her pdf – linked above]
33 min – implication… age as beyond human agency… we are not impotent.. not subjects of periodic abstract cycles.. golden age designed by people.. roosevelt banned bankers from attending except one he regarded as a tame banker
34 min – we aren’t passive… if only we could manage finance sector
? – or make it irrelevant.. no?
35 min – on gains – making money from money
36 min – mason sees internet as structure… sounds utopian . . i see usury with very high paywalls… where he sees positives of networked society – i see uber and airbnb – chesky uses words.. revolution/movement… making airbnb the best capitalized revolution movement in history
all of us thinking of how we can make money from something.. the church existed in early days to challenge usury… essential that we challenge that today..
rontia capitalism – earning money from an asset effortlessly.. if own property and rent it out… almost.. if banker.. and lend money… effortlessly earn interest on loan.. that’s usury.. capitalism that doesn’t dirty its hands…
39 min – phillip starts – capitalism is not just creation of profit… 1\ will never be a property less state 2\ real defn of capitalism.. triumph of non human value over human value… then property is 2nd or 3rd
42 min – only end to capitalism isn’t property or profit but morality… paul needs to be less of an economist and more of a moralist
44 min – on some things going to price zero but some never will ie: price on the unique/scarce.. ie: art… surplus would then pursue other goods.. because human beings in current form are status seeking/conscious
45 min – on this finite earth some things are scarce… status is scarce… and we will pay to gain them.. ie: house, art, land..
46 min – not about fighting surplus… one of the greatest thing about being human .. we constantly create surplus.. what do we do with it… we look after our own to seek status..
47 min – so this project.. really innovative and quite thrilling.. isn’t really radical at all.. what it would be to change the nature of human beings.. aristotle – diff between animal and human is human can change their nature
or perhaps get back to us.. ie: a nother way
47 min – capitalism upholds money worth over human worth .. i want to have human value over source of valuation.. the only thing that has created that is morality: the vision of how we could live…
49 min – today when we create social solidarity.. it’s around race, class, gender, .. et al… these dangerous nationalisms… so if going to really succeed.. we have to recover.. equality as equal opportunity for people to flourish and flourish differently.. only moral agenda.. the only radical political agenda…
50 min – disaster of current age.. no secular alternative.. no secular offer that can bind us into a new solidarity.. until we can create that moral offer.. we’re not going to create anything radical …
ok. fine. let’s do that. one ness via a nother way. let’s leapfrog to that.
52 min – on defensible ips – uber – paul… idiotic money chasing after things that look like holy grail
53 min – yes on agency… but only works with deep economy.. cutting with grain of how people want to live and how tech works.. – paul
q: can capitalism and democracy co exist
57 min – i think we’re in a post democratic age.. rather in a popular authoritarians who promise to deliver age – phillip
58 min – i disagree.. i think democracy has been captured/attacked.. – ann
1:00 – on automation – paul – would collapse amount of labor… we can’t see beyond utopias/societies based on work… radical is de linking income from work… toward the ability to do what we’ve never had the time to do before..
radical econ – frees us up
1:02 – for me – leisure not good – we use it to flea… phillip
well yeah.. because we’re not us..
1:07 – we’ve seen a lot of non capitalist societies and they haven’t been just – paraphrase – phillip
1:08 – answer to bitcoin guy working for free.. asked if walking of cliff or part of something bigger.. paul: you are misbehaving.. you are throwing your product.. gift economy – i think 10000 writing wikipedia et al.. is the future.. rather than pay everyone.. it already exists..
1:10 – i agree.. wikipedia inspires me… but not monetized deliberately.. other sources are.. big banks use your open source software… ann – capitalism is capturing gift ness
1:11 – we need to crowd in world we want and crowd out world we don’t… we lack techniques.. unless we can create new forms of political consensus bridge all forms of division….. we’re not going to get there.. unless whatever you argue is equal to that you’re not even on the starting grid – phillip
indeed – deep/simple/open enough
1:13 – q to paul: i of t as a subversive force to an historic level.. the level of class conflict and social revolution
1:14 – morality – social solidarity is only thing that’s kept communities together.. phillip – i use morality as a sense of imagining an alternative.. top and bottom? create new means of trade.. mass ownership at bottom.. ability to trade..
?
1:16 – mission of moral agenda has been subordinated by church… church most effective… when challenging immoral forms.. – ann – as i found with jubilee 2000… we’re moving toward work less society and we can’t celebrate it… tech advance assumes we will always have resources… we must realize limits…
1:20 – history doesn’t move in 15 yr chunks.. there will come a time where we can capture it back… that’s my thesis – paul… we have to have a project to stop it..
1:22 – we don’t reverse things.. how green was my valley – paul – we’re seeing the beginnings of the end of it.. what’s replaced the factory is society.. everybody who is networked… the essence of my change project…
1:26 – i think radical is equalizing production.. not just wage.. but everyone producing – phillip.. friendship as unique personal good
1:27 – intellectual property earns you rent.. work of art earns you rent.. so who would want to work.. – ann
?
1:29 – why book not free – in mixed economy – some free some not.. if you want your book marketed.. across countries… capitalist co tends to do that.. v woolf – mrs brown – talks about how networked people.. i’ve written stuff for free… i have tried throwing stuff free.. collaborative over collectivism.. – paul
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nov 2015
What would the world look like if we defeated Isis?
the question now is not how many bombs we want to drop on the HQ of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It is: what do we want at the peace conference, and what will our own society look like after the struggle is over?
only way to truly defeat any bad.. is to make good for everyone. rb – love more
ie: none of us are free if one of us is chained… and/or if one of us wins..
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again – for optimal energy\ness
let’s do this first: free art-ists.
a nother way
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dec 2015 – shared by Molly ..
#thisisacoup (doc) – produced/narrated by Paul
Yanis comments and interview
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Fwd: Debating the strategic insights of Paul Mason on a phase transition towards the commons society | P2P Foundation
This is why his book is so key. Both Rifkin and Naomi Klein in their latest books leave you concerned about how precisely we can make the transition practically. Both stresses that a commons model of production is emerging potentially to provide us hope that is practical. Mason agrees and he uses Kondratiev and Marx and Benkler and Bauwens to argue and show the transition needs to be over a long cycle of a 50 year or so K-wave but the key thing about Kondratiev’s analysis as he shows so well is that the crucial part of the K-wave is the breakthrough required with new systems in the first 25 years.
whoa. hope not.. may lose sync that way.. maybe not. may lose people that way. earth that way.
But Mason shows this is no ordinary K-wave historically because we are talking about a new mode of production, not another late phase of capitalism.….. However for such a new mode to emerge that Mason sees is a co-operative commons mode, we must open up the possibilities. Here he shows that capitalism will have to be re-regulated for the common good. He draws upon Keynes and post Keynesians like Steve Keen to show how we will need to use the state to bring finance and capital under control. He uses the wonderful term ‘financial repression’ to describe this so well in the last few chapters of the book.
So the Mason analysis here is similar to Gar Alperovitz’s work on America after capitalism that shows ways and means to tackle usury and rentier capitalism. Not sure if Mason is familiar with Alperovitz and his arguments for a pluralist commonwealth as he does not cite him. Mason though similarly argues for a pluralist approach with a new set of enlightened politicians (hopeful here for a new left) supporting proactively the new mode of production while at the same time using regulation and planning to radically reform capitalism. But as he stresses, we are not starting from a blank page given the existing large share of the state in the GDP – 40% plus (60% in Denmark) in developed and many developing countries.
perhaps we should be… ie: radical econ ish
Moreover to underpin the urgency Mason powerfully sets out sobering facts to highlight that unless we do so, the global pension industry will implode, bullshit jobs and precarious work will escalate and the climate change will fry us. Another global banking crisis will lead not to a bailout but a bail in of depositor funds as governments cannot borrow like they have already now done.
[..]
But a Keynesian social democracy approach is not sufficient as he shows. Hence the need for the new commons and co-operative mode aligning with a radical state to collaboratively co-develop postcapitalism with the commons being the focal point for where we need to evolve to over the next 50 years. Mason is sound, very strategic and clear this is a long march but one that needs to begin now like with the efforts to address climate change and to tackle austerity with new practical policies needed for implementation as soon as entry places can be found.
[..]
3. Are co-operative commons enterprises on an upward trajectory?
Here is where Mason is weak as he is not so aware of the detail you set out so well from your former position Henry as a senior civll servant in the Department of Communities and Local Government under Blair and then Brown. But Mason shows very clearly that unless the small and good commons and co-operative projects become more aware of the repressive neoliberal forces and how to overcome these positively and practically with an alliance with the state, they will be contained, held back and remain what Paul Hawken points to as the Blessed Unrest. But I think as a former civil servant you will see that the macro-level policies Mason sets out and his new approach to planning could indeed enable the co-operative commons to emerge. …..In my view all these perspectives can benefit from an analysis that has been missing and that Mason supplies and Klein, Rifkin and Piketty leave us a deep hunger for. He goes way beyond the lack of radical politics and in depth analysis of capitalism that Rifkin is silent about and that though I love her book, Klein does not know the detail to talk about in the way Mason does.
[..]
One interesting story that you will love Henry is the references here and there by Mason to sci-fi book written by the Russian socialist Alexander Bogandov a century ago about Mars and a peaceful transition to co-operative commonwealth. Bogandov was the founder of systems theory and complexity science and a bitter opponent of Lenin. This tale is captivating as Boganov wanted to connect democracy, co-operative control of work and science and social technology with the ability of states to plan. .. The juggling act here is not easy but Mason provides confidence and facts to show it can and must be done to secure as the late Raymond Williams argued, a compelling case For Hope to be made more concrete and Despair less convincing.”
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@p2p _foundation
Paul Mason: the P2P Movement has paid insufficient attention to the state bit.ly/1IQ4Fyj
With the exception of thinkers such as Michel Bauwens and McKenzie Wark, few have bothered to ask what a whole new system of governance and regulation might look like in this new mode of production.
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Paul Mason on the Need for Modelling Complexity in a Post-Capitalist Economy bit.ly/22OMBeGExcerpted from Paul Mason‘s latest book on Post-Capitalism (selection by Nathan Cravens):….It would most likely have to use a method called ‘agent-based modelling’ – that is, using computers to create millions of virtual workers, households and firms, and letting them interact spontaneously, within realistic boundaries. Even today such a model would be able to draw on realtime data. ….. But the prize – once every object on earth is addressable, smart and feeding back information – is an economic model that does not just simulate reality but actually represents it. The agents modelled virtually are eventually substituted by granular data from reality, just as happens with weather computers.
Once we are able to capture economic reality in this manner, then planning major changes in an accountable way becomes possible. Just as aircraft engineers model millions of different stress loads on the tail-fin of a jet, it would be possible to model millions of variations of what happens if you reduce the price of Nike trainers to a point between their present $190 and their production price, which is likely to be lower than $20.
? – what?
…
One specific problem is how to record the experience of failure into persistent data that allows us to retrace our steps, amend them and roll out the lessons across the whole economy. Networks are bad at memory; they are designed so that memory and activity sit in two different parts of the machine. Hierarchies were good at remembering – so working out how to retain and process lessons will be critical. The solution may be as simple as adding a recording and storing function to all activities, from the coffee shop to the state. Neoliberalism, with its love of creative destruction, was happy to dispense with the memory function – from Tony Blair’s ‘sofa’ decision-making to the tearing up of old corporate structures, nobody wanted to leave a paper trail.”
self-talk as data – via a nother way .. a nother data set..
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Caputalism: Will Capitalism Die? – jan 2016
Reduced growth is, for various reasons, a systemic problem. To understand this we must examine a decisive factor in capitalism. What made it so successful and prosperous was investment credit. In other words, it needs debt. Firms take out credit, run up debt in order to invest but these investments only pay back if there’s adequate growth; if not, there’s a wave of bankruptcy.[..]..image I have of the end of capitalism — an end that I believe is already under way — is one of a social system in *chronic disrepair” is how the German social scientist Wolfgang Streeck put it two years ago. A permanent quasi-stagnation with at best mini-growth rates, explosive inequality, privatization of all and sundry, endemic corruption and plunder, where normal profit expectations get ever lower, a consequent moral collapse (capitalism is more and more linked to fraud, theft and dirty tricks), the West getting weaker and weaker, staggering along as it foments disintegration and crisis in trouble spots on its periphery.
..economist Robert J Gordon has also investigated in a much-discussed paper whether – at least in the USA – “economic growth is over.” Growth rates took on dynamic pace in 1750, reached breakneck speed in the mid-20th century and have since gone down in successive periods. The great innovations that bring both productivity progress and growth – they may be history: “The growth of productivity … slowed markedly after 1970.” The third industrial revolution, with computerization and concomitant labour saving, also demonstrated its essential effects between 1960 and the late 1990s but has practically come to a standstill since the noughties. Despite superficial impressions, the past 15 years may have produced practically no more genuinely productive innovations. “Invention since 2000 has centered on entertainment and communication devices that are smaller, smarter, and more capable, but do not fundamentally change labour productivity or the standard of living in the way that electric light, motor cars, or indoor plumbing changed it
a nother way.. for (blank)’s sake…
In his latest book The End of Normal, economist James K. Galbraith plays a similar tune and even goes one step further. The era of prosperity between 1850 and 1970 has anchored in the economist fraternity the unspoken certainty that constant growth is “normality” but stagnation and crisis “the exception.” Galbraith now suspects: “Whatever worked in times gone may well no longer work today.”
indeed. if we’re dealing with alive ness.. no?
[..]
Even if Robert Gordon’s thesis about a declining dynamics in innovation is not entirely right it might well be the case that today’s innovations no longer serve the prosperous nature of capitalism as a whole but have rather *ambivalent effects. Above all, one of their effects is that jobs are destroyed without new ones replacing them. The new digital technologies mainly serve the purpose of reducing costs and winning new markets at the cost of older firms. Here the current period is distinct from earlier phases of innovation: whereas, in earlier times, ‘creative destruction’ in the process of innovation got rid of old and often poor jobs (as in agriculture) **but huge amounts of new and often better ones arose (as in the car industry), so now innovations bring higher joblessness for one part and, worse, more ***precarious jobs for the other part of the labour force. The cumulative income of the man on the street thereby comes under increasing pressure and heads irredeemably downwards.
[..]You’ve only go to look around the world with open eyes and, straight away, you can see *at every turn that there are all kinds of initiatives, NGOs, companies and coops that are altogether building a kind of network, the nucleus of a new type of socialism. A socialism or a form of sharing economy, of communal economy, founded on the initiative of small groups and wholly decentralized – a socialism that has nothing in common with the bureaucratic beast of earlier state-run economies nor with those we know from communism and not with state capitalist societies as they existed close to home 30 years ago. And, of course, these are so far just small islands, around a new hundred initiatives, but their weight and value cannot be estimated highly enough – we could barely survive this crisis without them. “I believe,” writes the British economic author **Paul Mason in his book Postcapitalism about projects like these, that they offer “an escape route – but only if these micro-level projects are nurtured, promoted and protected by a fundamental change in what governments do.”
*at every turn – siemens glue law.. but no glue.. nothing yet .. deep enough..
**Paul – offer an escape route.. true.. two loop ness as hospice – a way out – et al .. but.. perhaps.. for (blank)’s sake….. we need to leap to a nother way.. rather than escape. be\cause we can. and be\cause it won’t work unless it’s all of us..
Perhaps, all we need to do is learn to look at things properly. Do you know these famous picture puzzles which, when you look at them one way, seem totally chaotic and blurred and only when you look at them the right way does an image appear?
fractal ness…get pivot (z dance)..
It could be that’s the same with our economy: We think we’re living in an economy which turns solely around trade, profit, money, material wealth and the resultant social status. And all other economic actors, be they self-help groups, file-sharing circles, coops, creative ideas for firms, altruistic aid projects, therefore seem to us to be somehow extra-economic, like the activity of a few mad people who have comical idées fixes, like work therapy for good men and women. But perhaps that’s utterly the wrong way to see the world. Perhaps we’re already right in the middle of the post-capitalist transformation – and simply don’t notice it.
notice the unlikely.. quiet enough..
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feb 2016 – automation may mean post work.. but we shouldn’t be afraid
The real dystopia is that, fearing the mass unemployment and psychological aimlessness it might bring, we stall the third industrial revolution. Instead we end up creating millions of low skilled jobs that do not need to exist.
[..]
The solution is to begin to de-link work from wages.
[..]
to properly unleash the automation revolution we will probably need a combination of a universal basic income,
[..]
If that happens, it’s worth considering in detail how the technologies might interact. …the real potential of automation may lie in artificial intelligence, machine learning and self-healing systems.
and/or .. focus on self-talk as data
A low-work society is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing rewards via work.
or anything.. as reward.. no?
In the early 19th century, the Utopian Socialists tried not only to imagine an alternative but to implement it, in slightly crazy closed communities inspired by the writings of philosopher Charles Fourier.
what we need to do again.. only smarter this time.. and .. with better tech to facilitate it..
Fourier famously predicted work could become play – its qualities could absorb the qualities of aimlessness, humour, even eroticism. We would flit from one kind of work to another, oblivious of its productive function.
Marxism was founded on the rejection of this idea: anti-utopian socialism became focused on reducing work to a minimum while maximising free time.
Today, with all utopias based on work challenged by the possibility of its disappearance, the best you can say about the play versus work debate is: it’s complicated.
it doesn’t have to be..
We can already see the self fragmenting, becoming “multichannel”, as networked communications eat into spaces like the dinner table, the shared bed, the otherwise hierarchical office
exactly why we design.. for people.. ie: tech that gets people to see each other more – mech simple enough
The biggest *enigma of the post-work society is what happens to the self when it cannot define itself against corporate identity, skill set or seniority. We’ll see.
*enigma – a person or thing that is mysterious, puzzling, or difficult to understand.
that’s the adventure.. the freedom.. the joy… following our whimsy to eudaimoniative surplus..
what each soul is craving..
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@TheCommonSpace
Our reporter @GrayInGlasgow‘s live interview today with journalist @paulmasonnews. Thanks to @KILTR & @liveIndyScot! livestream.com/IndependenceLi…
video notes:
new route has to involve taking hold of potential of info tech.. and instead of resisting.. ie: to eradicate work .. and promote that…
info tech is preventing capitalism doing what it’s done four times before…. capitalism survives because it’s a resilient complex system..
info tech removes.. because all it does is.. ie: make cheap things..
4 min – we need to imagine it’s long term transformation into a non- market econ…
i’ve been intrigued by..networked individual.. horizontal unmanaged spaces…
5 min – obvious question for new movements .. what do you want… one no and many yeses… i’ve been thinking.. that can’t be the answer… you’ve got to have one yes.. a global concept of the transition..
yes.. to 2 needs..
7 min – the book sums up what others have done and says.. look.. here’s a route out of capitalism…
9 min – this is not a utopian 50 yr thing.. but a now thing… what are you going to do..
the only structural thing built into ie: davos.. is cut taxes, cut the state
10 min – this is my neg capitalist scenario – exit globalization… ie: britain came off gold standard… ie: china.. protest of china is to scale… japan will retaliate.. then breakdown of system…
once states understand that by doing nasty things to each other.. some in short term get better.. i don’t want that to happen.. i don’t want to ditch globalization.. but rather ditch capitalism…
13 min – for 200 yrs.. capitalism intensifies production.. replacing people with machines.. leads to carbon age… to global warming..
14 min – ridiculous that billions yr old planet.. 200 yr old econ system.. and you decide econ doctrine has to be answer to global warming…
so state has to take control of de carbonization… i do see a free market solution.. so up to state…
15 min – we’ve decided to use high taxes on poor people to dis incentivize high carbon use.. doesn’t work.. a lot is about high energy build…
16 min – one bit of statism i’m enthusiastic about – global warming.. for rest .. happy with gradualist/experimental… but when comes to climate.. only one way .. multi lateral treaty signed by nation states..
? – or not.. the only way.. or even a way..
19 min – my belief is that the working class really just wanted a space inside capitalism… a radically controlled space..
?
shefield called it – contagious control… goodrich observed the desire for workers to create organized control..
20 min – my big problem w/ modern left.. there’s too much top down… not enough understand of potential of ordinary people.. but.. not a network…
21 min – hierarchy world is dead…. downside of network.. very good at transmitting info but don’t have a memory… political parties have memories… the party is the memory of the working class… networks don’t work that way… spend first days relearning how to work as network..
?
22 min – ability to drag and drop solutions already been done…
23 min – a new conception/practice of citizenship (interviewer)…. i think that might be an illusion.. ie: every business in glasglow transacts w/wikipedia.. but .. pure open source movement… ie: wikipedia, linux, apache, … what does that mean..? a bunch of philanthropists… doing things for free.. no .. because people come to understand if you gift each other a tool that works.. the money made can be concentrated on that and not redoing what has been done for free… 19th cent fellow owned his own tools… 20th cent.. factory owned… 21st cent.. tools are free..
25 min – i just want to run this up.. why doesn’t entire public sector run on free software…
27 min – to me.. question is… there’s a large group of young people who don’t like way world is.. long list around security/privacy… they seem to get that. redefining the self..
29 min – they look at that as problem but don’t see obvious problem…why the guy on the corner is holding a up.. it’s all about failed econ.. what i argue in the book – is ways to distribute econ.. by distributing leisure… ie: paying people not to work..
let’s do this first: free art-ists.
30 min – don’t worry about robots//automation… we worked for 200 yrs.. they will replicate perfectly what people were trying to do.. now we can give the orchard to the machine… won’t be based on what humans can do..
31 min – we all have one (mobile)
we don’t all have one
32 min – what the world will look like when 1/2 jobs automat – info tech doesn’t create new jobs… so imagine what humanity could be like.. not machines we need to take control of .. it’s the society…
33 min – we’re getting it now – dissent – neo feudalism… rich can always get richer… that’s the way we go unless we take control… getting rich from being rich can’t last forever…
34 min – sometimes i go to business conferences… barstool convo is always.. do you buy gold or defensible land.. this is the dystopia of the rich.. we have to stop it… 1\take control of finance system and diffuse it.. last 15 yrs 3 financial collapses.. and every time something goes away.. debt et al
36 min – platforms are very early iterations.. to create networked markets.. ie: uber and airbnb.. just like factories.. we’ve got to regulate them…ie: child labor.. don’t know what regulations are going to have to be..
40 min – tory – welfare .. unpredictable.. get around that by capping welfare.. but you can’t cap welfare… ie: can’t attack working poor et al..
41 min – we need to get deficit down by 1\ growing econ 2\ borrowing smarter (ie: to invest)
whoa.. ?
49 min – for many labor people… labor was their nation.. and still is…
my challenge (for scotland) … stop arguing for what should happen and start doing things…
50 min – what everyone is engaged in now.. ie: let’s redo constitution… i’m saying.. just do one thing.. just resist conservative rule… and then .. if there’s one thing we all agree on.. ie: living wage, welfare, trade union laws… let’s do it
?
51 min – i’m not arguing for mass civil disobedience… take something to supreme court… i’m just saying don’t ask for permission.. just do it.
53 min – politics is not just about asking westminster to do things for us.. smart cities..
?
56 min – beyond the media.. ie: why oscars all school boys..
58 min – the majority voice in this country has no voice on tv… take control of your own media..
1:00 – left ch 4 – journalist job is to push all rules.. i want to be able to speak openly about politics.. and to do that.. you can’t do the news… not a frustration of those rules.. but .. i’ve got to be free to argue these ideas.. happening all over..
1:06 – people have to have their own corner…
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@paulmasonnews
Steel crisis: the Conservatives do not give a shit. medium.com/mosquito-ridge…
At stake are two things.
First 40,000 manufacturing jobs in Tata and its supply chain.
[..]
So question number one is does the British government want to intervene to save these jobs, and the communities that depend on them.
The second issue is steel as a strategic resource. If you want an independent defence industry you have to have a steel industry. Given the nature of war, many of the things you need to fight it — like tanks, submarines and missiles — have to be made of metal. At some point that metal has to be produced in a furnace. Furnaces use large amounts of energy. Energy is expensive because we need to wean ourselves off carbon.
whoa. two things at stake: job industry and defense industry..?
what if those are two things the human soul is begging to disengage from..
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keynote to glasgow econ forum 2016
https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/from-adam-smith-to-duncan-smith-5b55c36b6db9#.17o91kdz2
For me the answer has to be framed around a wider problem.
[..]
If I am right, the strategic issue for governments — alongside the post-carbon transition — is managing the transition to a situation where the price mechanism is no longer the main allocator of goods; and that a large part of production — not just of ideas but of things — follows the dynamics of abundance rather than scarcity; and the state is positioned in the middle — managing the process but dwindling in economic size.
The key to that transition is the creation of a low-work economy through the rapid, pro-active deployment of automation technologies and the delinking of wages from work, and the provision of basic necessities and services.
This is not science fiction.
[..]
Instead of machine minders we become question askers.
[..]
we have to pursue a different kind of structural reform:
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@paulmasonnews
Rather than the “new Marx” I am the new Henryk Grossmann, says this academic paper: triple-c.at/index.php/trip… – for uninitiated, that’s bad
bits from Fuch’s pdf:/critique:.
p 5 – google and facebook are not communications corps they are the world’s largest ad companies… based on attention
p 6 – digital and info capitalism is not impossible, as mason clans. …aim and tendency of destroying the law of value is not an automatism that flows from info and info tech. it can rather only be achieve in conscious political struggles for the decommodification of info, the econ and the world.
p 8 – if one bases books on journalistic observations and not on systematic, critical empirical studies, the such short circuited one dimensional analyses are the outcome….. sometimes it would be better that journalists go (back) to uni and do phds in order to learn some social sci and conduct systematic empirical research before they write books..
whoa..
to Paul’s tweet..
perhaps what’s bad… is micro managing a revolution of everyday life ie: phd ing it rather than living it…
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Paul starts at 1 hour in livestream – #dcentmadrid 2016
he is the interviewer.. and it’s all in spanish – except his questions..
2:53 – panel on alt ways – monitoring – Francesca.. on panel – Paul
2:54 – francesca – beyond policies of representation… so what are these platforms.. how do we build these together..
2:55 – paul – post capitalism – after 50 yrs of observing/reporting on horizontal movement… i observed a clear problem.. one no and many yeses allowed us to create movements no longer under control.. also led to .. a concept – refusal to win – if all you can achieve by winning is 20 cent socialism.. many people believe better not to win.. i also believe that.. so i wrote book to say.. ok.. i don’t have answer.. but if want to create a framework in which we win.. what is it..
2:56 – info tech .. diff than all other techs.. theory that info tech creates cog capitalism.. i don’t believe info tech is heading to cog capitalism… i think it has prevented capitalism’s ability to adapt.. what’s happened before (capitalism never doomed) because of capitalisms ability to mutate.. during mutations.. new tech.. new business models w higher wages .. higher consumption needs.. and call new tech paradigm.. i say info prevents creation of new tech synthesis… creates jobs but not fast enough to replace jobs destroyed..
2:58 – because we fear automation we don’t automate.. instead we create millions of jobs that are low paid and do not need to exist.. so new tech paradigm has not emerged..in fact.. living through biggest tech capability alongside biggest stagnation..
2nd – info tech makes utopian socialism possible.. that is.. it makes small scale experiments at life changing radical changes in practice possible in a way hierarchical 20th cent does not..
2:59 – for me.. therefore.. project becomes.. 1\ to understand state, market, and non-market sectors.. problem.. econ doesn’t even see this third econ.. see it as people w a hobby… so first.. insist to the elite that the 3rd sector exists… second thing.. however we get power..
3:00 – we can proactively grow that sector.. the formula.. grow 3rd sector by regulating in a way that favors it.. switch on creation of high well being.. can be done w/o legislation simply by deciding to do it.. next .. regulate market sector.. to produce social justice and green outcomes.. and rethink what state does… de link work from wages.. if state could begin to provide inputs to labor.. housing/ed/healthcare.. that’s even more effective than basic income…
3:02 – cities are natural base to begin these experiments… a new agent of history: the networked individual.. and city is where they want to live.. networks in cities.. multi layered and resilient… so easier to survive the backlash.. cities are symbolic.. and places where you can high amounts of political power.. and state operators don’t function in same way.. ie: no secret police/state…
3:04 – next phase – 1\aim for big clear demonstrative outcomes.. free wifi for everyone to use cell for free.. cheap/free housing.. big achievable things.. 2\ set narrative.. insist that why we are doing this is because system is broken.. some things we can do are keynsian.. remixing in a radical way 3\ create clear horizontal network between radical cities.. if one city discovers innovation works.. it arrives ready made in other cities next morning..
3:06 – 4\ create drag/drop template for city action..
ie: hosting life bits ness .. as trail.. facilitator.. of us
3:37 – paul – most important thing to conquer is this fear that we can’t do anything.. we have to educate ourselves that not everything happens at once… most important thing.. gain footholds of radical control…one thing i want to take.. knowledge that we have to build hegemony/consent for what we are trying to do..
begs we make it deep/simple/open enough for all of us
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postcapitalism
Luxemburg Lecture by now online: youtube.com/watch?v=NlsfkX… #Transformation #Capitalism
4 min – on luxemburg not taking into account how capitalism can adapt
5 min – the unconquered network of everyday life.. for capitalism to work.. all these things must be commercialized..
6 min – info tech has now robbed capitalism of its ability to adapt..
7 min – system broke in 2008.. has not been mended.. cannot be mended
9 min – hard question.. what replaces neoliberalism
10 min – facing change as large as rise of capitalism in 16th/17th cent… might take a cent
11 min – at its heart.. info tech robs capitalism of ability to adapt in normal way and simultaneously opens a route beyond market system… where we’ll have state, market, and non market (collab) econ
info tech has 4 impacts: 1\ dissolves price mech 2\ blurs edges between work/leisure and erodes link between work/wages… 3\ creates.. for first time in 250 yrs.. an innovation cycle where machines destroy jobs but new higher paid jobs are not created by new techs.. 4\ enables spontaneous rise of a non market sector of econ .. where collab/non-ownership/non-managed business models are rising
13 min – roma – on control c control v.. non rivalrous..
15 min – info is physical.. it requires mass and energy for representation.. so if zero price dynamic exists.. makes price of storage/bandwidth/processing power.. ie: dna sequencing fall exponentially
16 min – deloit has predicted will go on developing exponentially.. not stabilize like electricity or the movies
price of mill transistors print $220 30 yrs ago – now 6 cents… now 1-3 bill on new iphone
17 min – zero price.. not a unique idea.. so why don’t we have low prices.. because capitalism has spontaneous defense mechs…
18 min – monopolization process: competition… can only always be one.. so as to suppress price mechanism..
19 min – 1500 sales of track on itunes – earns min wage.. on spotify.. 1.2 mill
problem w these monopoly defense mech.. monopolies erode.. new monopolies arise.. but in each phase have to monopolize more than they did before..
20 min – imagine when fb.. et al go same way as blackberry.. we may get ultra monopoly.. … or…. and then prices will have to fall..
21 min – think about uber – its the ulta vista of sharing econ…
22 min – they imagined what monopoly in mini cab would look like.. then created tech to do it.. tech could be written by you… all that stands in way is the smash and grab tactics of these so called platform monopolies.. which is to go into space that has rules.. dare them.. then take to court…
23 min – so uber too.. could easily be replaced… don’t be lulled into thinking any of these market killing monopolies are permanent or invulnerable..
24 min – 2nd problem for info monopolies.. is conceptual.. once capitalism relies on a set of artificial legal protections.. ie: copyright/patents… it’s no longer really capitalism... what copyright/patent owners want.. even after world has exploded.. ie: universal still own copyright… all time and forever throughout universe..
we know what happens to systems that have to be enforced from computer screen of a bureaucrat every morning.. and non spontaneous ie: soviet union
capitalisms beauty was in granular and small scale of price formation.. system is spontaneous.. once it has to be imposed by lawyers every morning.. like a command econ..
25 min – now to what info tech does to work – reduces value of inputs to labor.. pooling of wage levels around min.. it means market is being abolished everywhere below that..next blurs edges between work/labor.. ie: working in plane.. we work to targets.. no longer to time… info allows modularity… no longer case that have to be working together…
27 min – creates possibility of rapid automation… but not actuality… instead u.s. goes on creating/making low income jobs.. need to maintain people inside the finance system.. and maintain consumerism.. graeber – bullshit jobs.. you pretend to work.. they pretend to pay you..
28 min – today 5 men replace 1 machine to wash cars.. but run when police come. because undocumented so working for way cheap..
30 min – hippie stuff done by working class people because no other way – ie: squats et al
32 min – problem – economists can’t measure it (non market sector).. well.. it’s not necessary… in situation of abundance.. micro measurements not necessary… info tech.. creating beginning of abundance.. socialization of knowledge alters relationships.. from buying things.. to buying experiences.. and new knowledges..
33 min – what about energy and raw materials.. 100% recycle..
34 min – info makes utopian socialism possible… or.. keynes predicted by 2030 would be abundance.. what humanity problem would be if econ ceased to be a problem… what we’d be concerned with then.. is beauty and creativity…
35 min – neoliberalism’s problem and stagnation its causing and capitalisms inability to adapt and reach where it hasn’t yet reached.. i want us to move our eyes off brilliant experimentations in collab.. and move toward asking the state… to look at new econ and protect/encourage it.. using micr econ ecology.. the state can do that tomorrow..
38 min – unless you revive dynamism from below in a granular way – keynes
i’m part of emergent radical left in europe.. that wants to combine..ie: negri/bauwens.. podemos/syziria
39 min – why can you imagine the doom laden zombie infested end of world.. but can’t imagine graph going vertical.. because can only go vertical if in fact.. the well being .. econ activity.. rising knowledge is not captured in market.. but beyond the market… quality of human life/experience.. we have to have the courage to imagine/design it..
a nother way
40 min – engage.. with the idea of a modular pb design.. for econ that moves beyond market.. we can all have a goal.. role of state – cut as rapidly as possible.. cost of labor… ie: free housing, ed, transport..
41 min – purpose is not to provide profit.. but to provide free things for most people… how hard is it to explain to other people that we could be providing things free from state if we just repurpose what we do w taxation...
until we realize we don’t need even that.. no..?
42 min – transition must coord w climate transition..
43 min – european union and germany.. time for leaving is not now.. ultra right has hijacked whole thing.. seeking return to thatcherism..
48 min – q&a
51 min – made virtually before made.. tried mill times… to most defects eradicated.. means no lack of imagination is wasted anymore… reduce cost of physical work..
52 min – on data being listened to
like caleb w plants..
53 min – it’s about conceptualizing the transition
ie: hosting life bits.. for rev of everyday life
56 min – entirely w/in our lexicon to understand these things..
and beyond.. no?
58 min – quite inspired by hilferding.. finance capitalism theory.. became a shared lexicon.. in book i’ve purposely stayed away from political strategy..
59 min – but personally.. if we could erect a kind of intellectual playing field.. where we could talk to our colleagues..
ie: 2 convos ness
1:00 – horizontal structures don’t abolish power imbalances .. every tent camp gets ie: sexual harassment.. et al..
or have we just not yet gone 100% (all of us and horizontal) – so we haven’t seen the dance we’re capable of .. science of people ness.. and partial trials ness..
1:01 – transitions have objective laws.. you can’t solve everything by will power.. have to study what you’ve created.. how it’s interacted.. so ie: role of state in transition
1:04 – subject of agency/change.. small scale.. but also w global/org force.. what i say about agency.. i believe that proletariat in history was most powerful/advance subject.. but what it generally wanted to live in a space w/in capitalism.. what it wanted/accepted was more control…
1:05 – what’s happened proletariat has doubled in size.. this quality of being more individual/networked.. less spontaneously collective.. saying working class doesn’t work like working class anymore.. ok.. so we educate them or.. capitalism has created a lot of people.. thinking self is selfish.. ie: we saw people written off as passive/useless rise and do things..
1:07 – if work taken off table.. negri.. in modern capitalism… because we’re exploited 3 fold (ie: certain my credit card holder makes more off me than even my employer)… society is like the social factory.. we have to find each other across factory floor/society.. i do believe networked individual… transformed and made better…
1:09 – how would ubi impact your theory
1:11 – i support ubi – we need to trial/model it.. it’s a worn off subsidy for automation.. we won’t raise productivity unless de linking work from wage.. our utopias were based on work.. so have to be supplemented now by other utopias.. lots of trials happening.. but need more.. and with big computers.. macro economically…
so lots of trials.. 7 billion.. with perhaps ginorm small computers.. chip collecting self talk as the day..
we need to do this.. because a lot of people experimenting with it believe it could be a dream.. but i want people to accept it’s doable..
think about ubi for 2025.. in britain
1:13 – state – issue of urban space – cities.. networked individuals gravitate toward cities.. an analog of network.. cities as unit of experiment..
in the city.. yes.. perhaps what we keep missing.. as the day ness
let’s do this first: free art-ists.
1:15 – mainstream is predicting stagnation.. worst if like 80s.. embrace nationalism.. only thing is to avoid 1930s
1:17 – neoliberal state.. problem you have w/o proletariat.. state and proletariat both hierarchical.. but w/o it.. problem: have to build hegemony of ideas.. try to find a way of making them inhabit minds of people so activity everyday embody them..
what..? we have to do facilitate chaos of dissensus.. no..? rather than consensus on idea.. bring people together (tribe ness) that already have same ideas/curiosities..
1:22 – q: will it be poor of world doing first a: like in all tech driven transition.. it’s the advance countries that have to go first.. advanced first.. then combined and uneven development.. then… ie: m pesa.. 5 yrs.. works.. proves you can map high tech on low tech societies then they can work out own combined solutions
?
1:25 – q: finding across factory floor – what about hashtag activism a: not really activism… i do believe sm has removed state monopoly over propaganda.. but doesn’t solve ideology.. what i do think is important.. what movements have done is used sm to find each other.. don’t have to go through hierarchy if have a distributed network..
1:28 – on copper wire on house.. we put switches.. more intelligent use of raw material.. should be able to use raw materials much less by adopting the equiv of switches.. ie: using things more intelligently..
and/or focus on more humane data – ie: self talk as data.. via hosting life bits
1:29 – i’m not in favor of the planned econ.. rather..a growing collab sector.. that grows it’s own rules.. a market that’s shrinking.. and a state that supports it.. flying blind.. i’d rather start in city than world.. but are global things we could do.. ie: transcontinental energy system..
1:33 – network effect.. all of us interact together.. a third thing is created.. either we control or others control.. now big co’s are farming/owning it all.. part of struggle is to take control away from them..
or exponentially practice another way.. that makes them/control irrelevant
1:34 – larry page interview – he wanted to have a machine that knows everything.. can’t do that until everyone can ask it.. problem now.. is that only they can see it and not us.. so never see right questions…
1:35 ai is going to be really big.. one worry – ai moves computing back to center.. natural form of ai business on monopoly w/ centralized control.. ai needs one person to ask question.. humanity needs everyone to ask questions.. struggle involves.. how do we remove from large corps.. their assumed right to own/see collectively produced data
self talk as data.. via hosting life bits
1:37 – my optimism comes from this.. one of virtues of being 56.. is to see how much more intelligent/connected/better human beings a young generation are.. that has high access to info and high understanding of personal worth as human being.. i do think those on young end of things.. have shown.. w/better access to info and better understanding of self.. can do things.. that .. rather than techno utopian theory.. it’s humanistic utopian theory.. what stopped socialism wasn’t scarcity.. but people trying to do it.. worked 12 hours a day.. w domestic violence.. minds trapped in slave condition.. hard to jump into commune where free love is practiced..
need for.. (and what we keep missing) .. as the day (all the day) ness and all of us ness
1:39 – why do i use term – postcapitalism – all forms of abundance must deliver forms of justice.. we have to allow selves to imagine democracy rising as we create abundance.. i want to inject dynamic that you can achieve stuff through collab back into .. dominated by statism/hierarchy
1:40 – other problem.. practical problem.. 2 sets people to convince.. solariat and the old working class.. abandoned by social democracy.. i think we have to deploy a mixture.. the networked/small-scale/horizontal can be very helpful.. because it answers.. who’s going to look after me.. it’s going to be you..
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on years of dealing with security and terrorism
@paulmasonnews
broken feedback loop ness
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@petervan
“Postcapitalism and the city” by @paulmasonnews medium.com/mosquito-ridge…
falling prices and the automation of work have a very disruptive impact on the normal process of adaptation.
[..]
If the aim is for humanity to do as little work as possible, you can do it through three mechanisms. One is to automate. The other is to reduce the input costs to labour, so that we can survive on less wages and less work. The third is to push forward rapidly the de-linking of work and wages.
I have a strong hunch that the city is going to be the primary venue of change in this process. Cities have stopped eviscerating their centres; young, networked people want to live right in the centre — sometimes two or three to a room — because they understand the city is the closest the analog world comes to a network. The city is where the networked individual wants to live — at least for some of their life, and for some of their working year or week.
[..]
The next proposal is more radical: model reality as a complex system……right now we have no way of conceptualising transition
well.. we have a way.. just not yet a will.. leap via hosting-life-bits.. for (blank)’s sake…
model reality: a nother way
[..]
it’s (bi) a transitional measure. It can only be paid for by the state taxing the market sector. As the market sector shrinks, that means you run out of taxes. So I never use the words “unconditional” or universal. I would make the basic income conditional on engagement with the demos of the city. For example, if you obliged peopel to take part in collective groups to manage the chronic diseases of poverty: mental illness, hypertension, stress, obesity; you could point to a payback from the basic income in terms of current spending.
?
[..]
You have to promote new ways of measuring activity and progress.
perhaps new way: not measuring..
rather host-life-bits of ‘the human city’
[..]
this is the first elite in capitalist history that reacted to a crisis by doubling down on the model that does not work.
[..]
I could be completely wrong. But if I am right, it makes sense for all cities to ask themselves: could we become the first city to begin a demonstrable and tangible transition away from neoliberal capitalism, towards a society of high equality, high wellbeing, high collaboration?
what’s next – model a nother way.. that 7 bill could then leap to.. anywhere/anyplace – suggested cities et al
[..]
If you really don’t like the word post-captialist use something else — like the collaborative city, the city of participatory democracy, the networked city. Or the human city. But do it.
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via Michel share on fb – from Postcapitalism and the city Keynote at Barcelona Initiative for Technological Sovereignty (same medium post as above)
“We must stop fantasising about a third industrial revolution, or a third capitalism based on immaterial wealth.
We must promote the transition to a non-capitalist form of economy which unleashes all the suppressed potential of information technology, for productivity, wellbeing and culture.
I don’t have a programme for this transition but a basic methodology: involving three sectors of the economy: the market, the state and the non-market — or collaborative sector — in which things are produced and consumed outside of monetary exchange; where the externalities are collectively owned.”
https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/postcapitalism-and-the-city-6dda80bc201d#.o5ef02nad
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@paulmasonnews
A slide from my Postcapitalism talk at @MeaningConf – the transition path beyond capitalism (zero carbon and circularity on different slide)https://t.co/smdn4OcCgV
the transition path.. automation; basic income; cheap basic goods; open source; attack rent seeking
perhaps – a nother way (short bp).. set people free; basic income as temporary placebo; short (deep/simple/open enough) to try it out.. model it.. for 7 bn people to leap to today..
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fb share by Michel – must read
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/european-elite-have-developed-a-death-wish
The European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, told an Austrian newspaper on Sunday that there would be no letup on federalising Europe; no national opt-outs from the stagnation economics administered from Brussels.
[..]
If the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, steps down and the markets crash, and Europe imposes a bank rescue plan that raids ordinary people’s savings, then you could get both a domestic banking and a eurozone crisis by Christmas.
[..]
can only see rules and balance sheets.
[..]
In the novel, city authorities deny the existence of the plague – and, in so doing, create the conditions for its spread. Often read simply as a parable about love and loss, the novel in fact deals explicitly with the self-destructiveness of what Mann called the “European soul”. Mann’s settings in this and other novels – the Lido hotel, the Swiss sanatorium – emphasise the fragility of a transnational culture once crisis breaks out.
[..]
even this grassroots culture of globalisation is breakable, if you try hard enough – because it can only exist in a space sealed off from official politics. At the typical European bar, beach or coffee shop, tolerance exists because educated people leave their nationality and religion at the door. The assumption among the young – implicit but strong – is that all politics is bullshit and does not matter.
Now politics and nationality have begun hammering on the door. And initially they have produced mainly paralysis and fear.
When I asked the young people I met in Ferrara, in northern Italy, in September how they would respond to the new xenophobic wave, many spoke about “genuino clandestino” – a back-to-the-land movement that advocates disconnection with the official economy as a survival strategy against austerity.
“It’s over, it’s impossible, the right has won,” are responses you will hear everywhere among the young, once you stop speaking to activists and listen to small-town kids wasting away their 20s in their grandmother’s spare room.
[..]
We can stop this. But only if we reject the incessant demand for austerity, privatisation, longer hours, lower wages and the theft of a young generation’s future.
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jan 20 2017
@paulmasonnews
The other Trump inauguration: 24 hours in DC. vimeo.com/200419941
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Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) tweeted at 9:18 AM – 7 Apr 2017 :
Director Sasha McMurray and me in conversation about upcoming #DivineChaos play https://t.co/Js19joWP2l#ParisCommune (http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/850367230361587712?s=17)
she went in and learned their language and collected their folk songs
what that new self can really achieve
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on neoliberalism (same day i added page):
@paulmasonnews
My essay from @tgrdebate in Der Speigel: spiegel.de/spiegel/neolib…
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/samchaltain/status/856491747676913664
If I am right, the logical focus for supporters of postcapitalism is to build alternatives within the system; to use governmental power in a radical and disruptive way; and to direct all actions towards the transition – not the defence of random elements of the old system. We have to learn what’s urgent, and what’s important, and that sometimes they do not coincide.
The power of imagination will become critical.
In an information society, no thought, debate or dream is wasted – whether conceived in a tent camp, prison cell or the table football space of a startup company.
[..]
Millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver. Their response is anger – and retreat towards national forms of capitalism that can only tear the world apart.
[..]
We need more than just a bunch of utopian dreams and small-scale horizontal projects. *We need a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet. And we need to get on with it.
in contradiction to .. imagination.. no? can’t be based on evidence.. if we want change..
need alt sans evidence..
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review of adults in the room by Yanis:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir
Varoufakis is ” in Washington for a meeting with Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary and Obama confidant. Summers asks him point blank: do you want to be on the inside or the outside? “Outsiders prioritise their freedom to speak their version of the truth. The price is that they are ignored by the insiders, who make the important decisions,” Summers warns.”
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Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) tweeted at 6:09 AM – 26 Apr 2018 :
Social democracy has to represent the agents of social change. My latest for @openDemocracy https://t.co/FaGdehp8nA (http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/989476524909883392?s=17)As a result, the most fundamental question facing the modern social democratic left is: who do we represent?..t
maybe we need to be asking if we need to do the rep ing thing at all anymore
We can only move forward if we can answer the deeper question: who wants to change the world, and who has the agency to do it?
has to be all of us.. in sync.. not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake
ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day.. a nother way
However, all this is only a tragedy if you have never read the early Marx. In the so-called Paris Manuscripts of 1844, Marx argues that the ultimate goal is not communism; that humanity needs to overcome scarcity and to reconnect with its fundamentally social nature. Communism, says Marx, is only the initial form society will take once you abolish private property, but this itself is not the goal. Individual human freedom is the goal.
total freedom (krishnamurti free will law).. escape from freedom
What would it mean for the networked individuals to define themselves “vis-à-vis” capital today? ..
Today capitalism exploits us at not just at work, but through financial transactions and via consumption.
They don’t like its (capital’s) effects. They fight its effects sporadically and in a framework centred on the individual. But they have no overarching concept of collective liberation, and their political project is poorly articulated. However, that too is changing.
All over the world what appear to be the defence of “liberal” values against authoritarian, racist conservatism are in fact much more than this. They are the defence of a new concept of freedom, in the face of coercion from markets, states and kleptocratic elites
..hoping not escape from freedom
But the ultimate, and most revolutionary form of political action that can be taken amid a neoliberal system in crisis is to put a party into government committed to the positive goals and values of this demographic group.
oh dang.. sounds like escape from freedom
By the same token if my blasphemous proposal is correct, and the proletariat has been replaced as the historical subject by a more diffuse behaviourally-identified layer of people, not defined by their role in production but also by consumption, culture, attitude and ideas – then we can’t hope to describe them adequately in a framework based purely on people’s relationship to work.
perhaps it’s time to disengage from defining/describing.. and rep\ing
Mann himself, in the aftermath of the Dock Strike, contributes a different principle: that through self-organisation, self-improvement and the struggle for control, workers can create the beginnings of the new world through their everyday practice.
yeah.. but nothing to do w work.. more to do w undisturbing our currently disturbed ecosystem..
Once you conceive Labour’s strategic task as representing and empowering networked individuals who want to change the world, the tactical problems don’t go away, but they can be placed in the right framework.
not a right framework if based on rep\ing
Labour has to represent the networked individual: their values, culture, aspirations and political priorities. . t
i don’t think so.. ie: if truly networked individuals.. can’t rep them.. can just listen to them (ie: as it could be)
Instead we need a new, expansive radicalism that enables everybody who wants to resist capitalism’s invasion of the self – via markets, coercion, authoritarianism, xenophobia and illiberalism – to identify Labour as the tool they will use to change the world..t
perhaps.. instead we need a new, expansive radicalism that enables everybody to be heard.. to identify a mech to listen to all the voices (ie: 2 convos that io dance.. as the day) as the tool they will use to change the world
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on marx
Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) tweeted at 6:47 AM – 8 May 2018 :
What kind of Marxism survives in the era of algorithmic control? My essay for @NewStatesman https://t.co/ZaCHMZN2Ca (http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/993834794122391553?s=17)
Marx had foreseen how humanity would use its leisure time: for the “free development of the individual”, not some collectivist utopia..t
huge
leisure to eudaimoniative surplus via gershenfeld sel
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Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) tweeted at 4:53 AM – 2 Jul 2018 :
As Tories play (internal) politics with defence spending – and Trump meddles – we need a clear defence concept for 21st century. Only Labour can provide it…
https://t.co/UPOu1UoFYD (http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1013737426970468352?s=17)
defense..? or offense..?
ie; cure ios city
To counter hybrid warfare you need, first: a strong nuclear deterrent. The nuclear deterrent – I am under no illusions that it is independent – sets limits to what Russia can do to Britain and keeps the UK on the P5. That’s why Labour is right to support the replacement of the submarines that carry Trident, whatever the political costs in Scotland.
?
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Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) tweeted at 5:43 AM – 6 Jul 2018 :
Why we need a Red-Red-Green alliance to fight the right in Europe. My speech in the Hague last night. https://t.co/gJtBt554Fx (Corbyn is on around 30 mins in) (http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1015199477169311744?s=17)1:08 – you can’t keep an ideology on life support.. the human brain demands coherence (on 2008 collapse and salvaging)
1:11 – 1\ diff division of econ..
1:15 – we need a vision .. quick
exponentially quick and sustaining/thriving.. a nother way that allows us to leap
[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…].. a nother way
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clear bright future – a radical defence of the human being
Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) tweeted at 7:07 AM – 5 Apr 2019 :
I’ve just seen the first copies of #ClearBrightFuture … now I only have to sign them all…. https://t.co/NggxlxgWoI(http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1114152544547241984?s=17)
suggested to library to buy – thanks library
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Spent the first 5 hours of the day researching climate models… this is my tea break…. #AmWriting https://t.co/0LJcKnv0MJ
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1316317973158731777
climate model: cure ios city
a means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature
what the world needs most is the energy of 8b alive people who grok what enough is
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in link to paul’s jun 2023 post via paul’s last tweet of thread [https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1664933373649866752?s=20]:
The alternative logical response – to work for the reform of capitalism through social-democratic or Green parties; to advance social justice through self-organisation; and to promote the international rule of law – is unthinkable to many people stuck in a Leninist time-warp.. t
rather .. the illogical (unjustifiable strategy ness) alt.. is unthinkable to many people stuck in sea world
deeper than a 1930s moment.. and we’re missing it
ie: ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling
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be you. 