The tendency of profits to decline is is what drives the supposed innovation of the capitalist system: the need to always move to a different horizon of extraction, to find untapped sources of value that can stave off this heat-death for just a little longer. Sometimes the state intervenes and slaps them away from one horizon of extraction (see: child labor laws,) but this only rarely happens.
Read MoreOne thing that I feel explains not only a great deal of why so many well-meaning young people fail to grasp the nature of the world around them, but also why so much American political discourse is utterly useless: Americans simply cannot do anything like a materialist analysis of current events.
Read MoreWhat I’m trying to make clear is that game design, on the level of mechanics assembled to make the game produce a narrative through player interaction, already cribs a lot of its procedures from politics, including political economy. A means that a powerful tool could be built from these pieces.
Read MoreSocial murder is, essentially, the creation of widespread death by making the conditions of continued survival inaccessible through social means. It is the use of laws, rules, and bureaucracy to “put your death in the passive voice.”
Read MoreWhenever considering a system of categorization, some categories are marked: they’re stated and described. Others can’t be. Some categories are unmarked because they are unknown: this disease hasn’t been witnessed before, we’re still trying to figure out what it is. Still others are unmarked because they’re what the others are a deviation from: consider, there are ten thousand thousand different maladies and diseases in the world; how many kinds of health are there? Consider, also, the Anna Kareinina principle, articulated by Tolstoy: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
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