notes.husk.org. tagged capitalism.

“ I worked at Facebook from 2005 to 2010 in a series of roles culminating in a position as Zuckerberg’s speechwriter, and had an opportunity to observe the development of Facebook both as a social media platform and as what it increasingly aims to become: a global leader on par with nations. “Companies over countries,” Zuckerberg often said in meetings ”

Kate Losse for Dissent Magazine: Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in? (via iamdanw)

(via iamdanw)

2012-12-13

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quote 21:32:32

“ We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways. I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate. ”

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, quoted in an article by Brian Womack at Bloomberg News. (via, via)

2012-11-17

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quote 18:44:33

“ The aims of those who held the reins of power in communist states may have been little more than to keep hold of them by any means possible. But the aims of most of the millions of ordinary people who believed in socialism were modest: full employment, social security, free education, and healthcare. For almost a lifetime after the Second World War, it seemed as if these were obtainable within social democratic capitalism. But they seemed, paradoxically, to depend for their credibility on the far-off but, to some, alluring prospect of abolishing capitalism altogether. I well remember Britain’s late-1970s Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, declare that we would eventually establish in Britain a society based on the principle of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. Strangely, he was not denounced as a communist; it was understood that such grand aims were right for sentimental songs and May Day speeches. But as soon as the grand aims were abandoned, the modest gains were snatched away. Now we are told from every respectable outlet that the gains were unaffordable and the aims were deluded all along. ”

Ken MacLeod, from Socialism and transhumanism.

2012-05-04

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photo 05:44:49

“The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue”, from an article in New Scientist reporting on a paper by Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston, The network of global corporate control:

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

2011-11-14

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quote 22:23:15

“ Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms. ”

William Deresiewicz in the NY Times: The Entrepreneurial Generation, via buzz, whose commentary (linking the sentiment above with SF food carts) is well worth reading.

(via buzz)

2011-09-06

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quote 03:00:00

“ the West Coast hi-tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork barrel in history for decades. The US government has poured billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics and nuclear bombs from Californian companies. For those not blinded by ‘free market’ dogmas, it was obvious that the Americans have always had state planning: only they call it the defence budget. ”

Richard Barnbrook and Andy Cameron at the Hypermedia Research Centre: The Californian Ideology (from 1995, but still relevant).

2011-07-18

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quote 21:17:07

“ [Murdoch’s] philosophy is simple – let the market decide. He is so wedded to this spuriously democratic formula that he believes it is elitist for journalists to set standards of taste and ethics. If the people want it, give it to them. The inevitable result was appealing to the lowest common denominator. ”

Roy Greenslade: How Murdoch’s philosophy created a climate of misbehaviour, from his Guardian column.

2011-05-03

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photo 18:30:00

stickersonthecentralline:

As the Westfield Mall complex in the small area of Shepherd’s Bush grows in popularity, changes are required to deal with the ever increasing influx of shoppers. Many find it hard to navigate themselves through leafy Shepherd’s Bush, the many quaint stalls in the market and the independent, family run restaurants that profligate the area. As a result, Shepherd’s Bush station has been renamed Westfield Mall station with the exit relocated inside the Debenhams flagship store.

There’s more at the original Tumblr. Some obvious targets (for example, this), but still, nice culture jamming, even if they didn’t quite get the right weight of Johnston. (via Andy Mcfarland and James Bridle).

2011-02-14

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photo 21:32:37

brokenbottleboy:

Hey Protestors, Philip Green is selling your revolution cheap

Alternative title: The Revolution Will Be Commoditised. (Context: Guardian, BBC News.)

notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

2013-03-26

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