Dick Bryan & Mike Rafferty – How Finance Exploits Us

Link to an interview with Dick Bryan & Mike Rafferty, conducted by Llewellyn Williams-Brooks:

“How Finance Exploits Us”

 

(Note: the first part of the interview is non-substantive background information about publishing this theory in book form, and the substantive discussion of the theory is toward the end).

See also: Michael Hudson, especially “From Marx to Goldman Sachs: The Fictions of Fictitious Capital”, and “We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Debts”, and The Debt Collective

Nicholas Freudenberg – The Capitalist Diet

Link to a review by Nicholas Freudenberg of Gerardo Otero’s book The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People (2018):

“The Capitalist Diet: Energy-dense and Profitable”

 

Bonus link: “Nick Freudenberg on the Corporation the Individual and Public Health” – though his invocation of liberal pluralism along the lines of the FCC’s old “fairness doctrine” is subject to criticism and probably still isn’t sufficient.

Blair Fix, Jonathan Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler – Real GDP

Link to an article by Blair Fix, Jonathan Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler:

“Real GDP: The Flawed Metric at the Heart of Macroeconomics”

Real-World Economics Review, Issue 88, P. 51 (July 10, 2019)

 

Like everything in the Real-World Economics Review, this article really is an attack on the hegemony of neoclassical (i.e., anti-classical) economics.  The main points this article makes therefore tacitly draw from classical economics, such as the distinction between use value and exchange value that was explained by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.  Of course, these authors make no mention of Marx.  They also suggest energy units as one alternative to GDP, similar to a concept promoted by R. Buckminster Fuller three or four decades ago but no such precedents are acknowledged in the article.  They also normatively accept a “growth” model.  There is a degree of self-promotion in this article, and it only briefly explains the ideological battle driving their critique.  But the narrow technical points it makes are mostly sound.

See also “The GDP Illusion: Value Added versus Value Capture”

Maggie Levantovskaya – Identity Shaping on Social Media

Link to a review by Maggie Levantovskaya of Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (2019):

“Identity Shaping on Social Media: On Jia Tolentino’s ‘Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion'”

 

Bonus links: Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age and “The Programs of Neoliberal Feminism” and “‘If Only There Were More Female Billionaires!’— New York Times” and Organs Without Bodies and “Capitalism and Female Labor”

Articles About USA-Iran Provocations

Selected links to articles about military provocations between the USA (and its allies) and Iran:

“Eve of Destruction: Iran Strikes Back”

“If Iran Is Responsible for the Fuel Tanker Attacks in the Gulf of Oman (and It May Not Be), It Is Only a Reaction to Washington’s Outrageous Conduct in the Middle East”

“What Right Has Britain to Seize an Iranian Tanker Off Spain?”

“Why the World is Watching the Fate of an Iranian Tanker in the Mediterranean”