Post B1kn8Par4SHQTeOQd6 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
(DIR) More posts by pluralistic@mamot.fr
(DIR) Post #B1kn7cBelM0bFJE73A by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:33:57Z
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Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually fail, torn apart by its own contradictions. He called the bourgeoisie, who epitomized these contradictions, capitalism's "grave diggers":https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html--If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/04/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/#eventually-stops1/
(DIR) Post #B1kn7jqKIXhSzTJBui by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:34:24Z
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In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels marvel at capitalism's adaptability, its ability to reinvent itself in the face of seemingly terminal crises and emerge in a new form. For nearly two centuries, Marxists have treated capitalism as an intermediate stage between feudalism and socialism - a lengthy, but still impermanent, regime whose purpose was to produce the systems of plenty that socialism would deliver to democratic control.2/
(DIR) Post #B1kn7rIaZrT079aMRE by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:34:33Z
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But as capitalism lurched from crisis to crisis, some Marxists speculated that capitalism would give way to something even worse. In 2023, Yanis Varoufakis proposed that capitalism might end up being a transitional phase between feudalism and another kind of feudalism - technofeudalism:https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital3/
(DIR) Post #B1kn7ygb6zpZ1ds8Ke by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:34:49Z
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But Trump's disastrous policies - tariffs, suspension of the rule of law, pointless military expansionism - doesn't serve Varoufakis's technofeudalism or any other kind of feudalism. As Hamilton Nolan writes, Trump represents a rupture of the customarily unshakable class solidarity of the wealthy. Trump's policies are *not* good for business. 4/
(DIR) Post #B1kn87Jt0o0lnoJcgK by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:34:59Z
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Trump is going to make America much, much poorer - and since the vast majority of American wealth is held by a tiny minority of very rich people, any program that vaporizes an appreciable fraction of American wealth will make a lot of rich people a lot poorer.Hamilton Nolan wrote about this a couple days ago, enumerating all the ways that Trump - who LARPed a TV businessman - is extremely bad for business:https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/divergence-from-the-interests-of5/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8FOmySgcrKfeQy by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:35:12Z
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* Gutting state capacityAs Nolan writes, there are plenty on the right who don't care about the idea that public education produces the skilled workers needed to run and expand the economy, and who believe that paving half the national parks and putting a $500/day admission price on the remainder will suit them just fine. 6/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8JXRaDzDhKkcTo by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:35:29Z
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But even the most hardcore plutocrat needs a functional immigration system so they can source workers who can do the jobs Americans won't - or can't - do.7/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8KfHOZqfBvQOKe by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:35:36Z
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You can't be a finance guy in a country with a collapsed, corrupt Treasury Department that periodically reaches into institutional bank accounts and drains them of millions in pursuit of "obscure witch-hunts":> “stupidly breaking the parts of the government that allow our financial markets to function smoothly with no apparent plan" is not “populism” any more than a bite from an alligator is a kiss8/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8LXAAEwxt2dQJs by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:35:44Z
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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114279477228838188* Ending the rule of lawAnyone who claims to love "free markets" loves the rule of law. The predictability of a laws-based society is a necessary precondition for capital formation, long-term investing, and the use of contracts to coordinate business within a transparent, known set of rules.9/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8MLr7lV2QGLuKm by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:35:53Z
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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114279477228838188Trump's lavish corruption - his crypto companies (which someone called "a tipjar for the Oval Office"), his sale of commutations and pardons to flagrant criminals, and his purging of Democrats within the DoJ to create space for "buffoons" who run his witch hunts - all offer good reason for investors to stay the hell out of America, and for businesses to get the hell out of the country:https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5182515-senate-democrats-complaint-ed-martin/10/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8NWWlZd83eLwbg by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:36:02Z
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The spectacle of the top executives of world's most powerful multinationals openly paying bribes to Trump, while seated at Trump's own members' club, makes an eloquent case for seeking your business opportunities in another country - practically *any* other country:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/05/trump-dinner-mar-a-lagoThen there's Trump's interference in the Fed, "endangering financial markets for short term political gain":https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-bid-to-control-fed-puts-us-economy-at-risk-by-kenneth-rogoff-2025-0111/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8OXyxeO7ES2cVs by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:36:15Z
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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114279477228838188And finally, there's his defiance of federal court orders, and his attacks on law firms that employ lawyers who had the temerity to sue him. As Nolan writes, "This is not good for business." 12/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8Par4SHQTeOQd6 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:36:22Z
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Sure, it's grimly satisfying to think about all those rich fools who howled because Biden had the temerity to suggest modest tax hikes and improvements to labor law now having to watch as "the world’s most sophisticated corporate legal regime [is replaced] with a system in which you must grovel at his toes in a ridiculous red hat in order to get anything done."13/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8QXhXfLrQ9vQLw by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:36:37Z
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* Military adventuresTrump is apparently going to go to war with Iran, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and several other countries to be determined at a later date. Sure, America's military spending is higher than all the rest of the world's combined, but getting involved in several wars at once is - once again - not good for business. 14/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8RMkTsBVyToBv6 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:36:49Z
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For one thing, he's going to kill Boeing, Lockheed, and all the other US-based arms dealers that rely on a friendly relationship with America's erstwhile allies for billions of dollars per year in business. Things are no better for the companies that do other kinds of business with the countries America is apparently on the brink of war with. 15/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8SDvIAiedOgeno by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:36:56Z
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This kind of "Hitlerian" program of economic growth was a failure in the previous century, and it will fail again:> Did Hitler’s wild invasions ultimate make Germany richer? No. They started a world war. And, no matter what anyone tells you, world war is not good for business. 16/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8T2GH0z99WErGS by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:37:06Z
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* TariffsFinally, there's Trump's deranged tariff plan. As David Dayen writes for *The American Propsect*, these aren't really tariffs at all - they're *sanctions*, punishments visited upon every country in the world (even uninhabited islands!) for a bunch of imaginary crimes:https://prospect.org/economy/2025-04-03-theyre-not-tariffs-theyre-sanctions/Trump's tariffs make no sense as an economic policy, but they are familiar to anyone who's spent time around organized crime (like, say, Trump):https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910/17/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8TbMAX3euMesy0 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:37:20Z
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Dayen likens Trump's approach to "a mob boss moving into town and sending his thugs to every business on Main Street, roughing up the proprietors and asking for protection money so they don’t get pushed out of business." Trump's demands - such as they are - include forcing America's trading partners to do away with their privacy, food safety and antitrust laws: https://tacd.org/wp-content/uploads/TACD-Statement-Tariffs-3-April.pdf18/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8UvxDR812XIqi8 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:37:27Z
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Even if it was worth it for other countries to dismantle their laws to enjoy continued access to US markets (it isn't), no one trusts that giving in to Trump means that he'll carry out his end of the bargain. As Brad DeLong reminds us, Trump personally negotiated the USMCA terms that Canada and Mexico have been living under since he last left office, and those are the two countries he's *most* pissed off at:https://braddelong.substack.com/p/draft-mar-a-lago-discord19/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8VeyW38nIAMnsu by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:37:37Z
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This isn't capitalism - it's *gangsterism*. It's a system that will annihilate trillions of dollars in value to put billions of dollars in the pockets of Trump and a few of his cronies - at the expense of all the other rich people. Nolan concludes that Trump is "insane" - that his actions are irrational, disconnected from reality, impossible to understand. For Nolan, the question isn't "What is Trump trying to accomplish?" 20/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8dXTDptJjCuvIW by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:37:52Z
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It's "how has this insane man managed to gain control of the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation?"He's got a hell of an answer:> That, my friends, is the unfortunate outcome of an economic system that has so profoundly failed to enforce economic equality, and a political system that so profoundly failed to protect its democracy from the influence of capital that it allowed itself to be totally captured by extreme lunatics backed by extreme wealth. 21/
(DIR) Post #B1kn8krE0mquQVDIYq by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-04-04T11:38:03Z
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I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*. Catch me in #BLOOMINGTON TODAY (Apr 4) at the OSTROM CENTER:https://events.iu.edu/ostromworkshop/event/1843316-hls-beyond-the-web-cory-doctorowAnd then at MORGENSTERN BOOKS:https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorowMore tour dates here:http://martinhench.comeof/
(DIR) Post #B1knM5uh2O11UkCFHc by sakhavi@aoir.social
2025-04-04T13:22:04Z
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@pluralistic This is “government” for anyone who can’t imagine civilization could be anything other than the scaled-up version of their own petty grievances and prejudices. Which, when you systematically impoverish and under-educate a population for decades and then give them Facebook, turns out to be many, many people.