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Tag: Capitalism
“Work More, Consume Less”: How Austerity Coerces
The true purpose of austerity is to permanently and structurally extract resources from the many to the few.
Can Solarpunk Save the World?
Today, solar power merely fuels capitalism and imperialism. But drawing power from the sun is so radical it might transform that status quo.
How to Profit from Climate Change
How did capitalism waste the crucial decades when climate change could have been halted? By fixating on—and downplaying—“risk.”
Are Spotify’s Vibes the End of Segregated Listening? (That’s Not What the Data Says.)
What kind of world does Spotify—through its algorithmic sorting of millions of users’ desires, through our aggregated listening—produce for us to hear?
Marshall Sahlins’s “Original Affluent Society” 50 Years Later
Capitalism seeks wealth to meet desires. But foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but wanting less.
Xenophobia Powers the United States
Since 1892, the United States has deported more immigrants (over 57 million) than any other nation.
Private Pain, Public Disinvestment: Talking Student Debt with Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
“Individual Americans thought they were the only ones who could not afford to send their kids to college.”
Why Renters Fought NYC’s Push for Ownership
“Doesn’t every New Yorker really want to own a co-op?,” a realtor asked a crowd of tenants in 1972. But this provoked only “a chorus of noes.”
Public Thinker: Sophie Gonick on Housing Justice and Mass Movements
“As often the most vulnerable in our cities, immigrants face struggles that reflect the wider landscape of housing precarity.”
Is “Regulation from Below” Possible?
A powerful grassroots movement campaigned in the ’70s and ’80s for banks to reinvest equitably in red-lined urban communities. It failed—but why?
What Is a Book?
The “papers” of Toni Morrison can be accessed through a Princeton computer terminal. But where do these digital drafts end, and Beloved begin?
Public Thinker: Destin Jenkins on Breaking Bonds
“What if we identified the politics of municipal debt as circumscribing political horizons and futures?”
Mae Ngai: “We’ve Always Had Activists in Our Communities”
“Americans—whether they believe they are not racist or whether they are stone-cold racists—still struggle to see the structures of racism.”
“Redlining Does Not End”: Talking with Rebecca Marchiel on Housing and Racism
“They all wanted to imagine a different possibility of an integrated neighborhood, where folks worked together.”
“There’s No There There”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Future of the Left
“We don't have a party. That doesn't mean we need one big organization. We may need a few big organizations. But we need organizations!”
Prison Tech Comes Home
Landlords’, bosses’ and schools’ intrusion of surveillance technologies into the home extends the carceral state into domestic space.
The Long Road to a New Ideology: Piketty on Trump, Democrats, and Inequality
“We need to have both the reparation and the universal perspective on economic justice.”
The Crisis for Asylum-Seekers Is Gender-Based Violence
Why do women and feminized people flee Central America? What do they find when they reach the United States?
The Manifest Destiny of Computing
Today is overwhelmingly defined by white-supremacist violence and the whiteness of AI technology. Can seeing them together help defeat them both?