A small group of high-tech-savvy entrepreneurs who understand the velocity of technological innovation have harnessed this new power to establish predatory high-tech monopolies such as Uber or Amazon. They subvert labor laws, strip the state of its powers, gut regulation, ignore legal norms and amass personal fortunes in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Their apps, services and private equity firms dominate our lives. They are technological predators seeing in every aspect of social existence commodification. The living wages of working people decline, the gig economy abolishes job protection, sustainable incomes and benefits, AI replaces humans. The most vulnerable are pillaged for profit. The sick feed the profits for Big Pharma. The bodies of poor men and women on the streets of our bleak, deindustrialized cities, are worth nothing until they are locked in a cage in the world’s largest prison system, generating 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year to the prison-industrial complex, including privatized phone services, money transfer services, commissary and medical services. Utilities, sold to private companies, gouge us with overpriced water, electrical, parking and sewage bills. At the same time, we are the most watched, photographed, spied upon and monitored population in human history. This technology, far from improving our lives, is creating a new serfdom, if not a new slavery, all the while propelling us at a dizzying rate towards ecocide. Joining me to discuss our dystopian present and our dystopian future is Loretta Napoleoni author of Techno-Capitalism: The Rise of the New Robber Barons and the Fight for the Common Good.
Not everybody has a smart phone. And I would never use an uber even if I had one and had to walk 10 miles to get wherever I was going. I consider uber a criminal company.
I had great difficulty understanding Ms. Napoleoni. I will get her book, however, because I am interested in what she is saying. Many thanks for the interview.
"In nearly four hours of grueling congressional testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, said she had taken serious action against accusations of antisemitism on campus in recent months amid Israel’s assault on Gaza, including dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace."
This is a part of it:
"NERMEEN SHAIKH: Later in the hearing, Republican Georgia Congressmember Rick Allen brought up the Bible in his questioning of Shafik. He cited the Old and New Testament and asked Shafik if [she] wanted Columbia University to be cursed by God.
REP. RICK ALLEN: Are you familiar with Genesis 12:3?
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Probably not as well as you are, Congressman.
REP. RICK ALLEN: Well, it’s pretty clear. It was the covenant that God made with Abraham. And that covenant was real clear: “If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you.” And then, in the New Testament, it was confirmed that all nations would be blessed through you. So, you do not know about that?
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: I have heard that, now that you’ve explained it.
REP. RICK ALLEN: OK.
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Yes, I have heard that before.
REP. RICK ALLEN: So, it’s now familiar. Do you consider that a serious issue? I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God, of the Bible?
Yes, if we continue to give power to those religious nuts soon, they might decide to enforce the following passages of the scriptures:
Deuteronomy
6 “If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or your cherished wife or your closest companion should try to entice you in secrecy, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ gods that neither you nor your forefathers have known, 7 from the gods of the peoples all around you, whether near you or those far away from you, from one end of the land to the other end of the land, 8 you must not give in to him or listen to him, nor should you show pity or feel compassion or protect him; 9 instead, you should kill him without fail. Your hand should be the first to come upon him to put him to death, and the hand of all the people afterward. 10 And you must stone him to death, because he has sought to turn you away from Jehovah your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Or this from the so-called Saint Paul:
First letter of Paul to Timothy
11 Let a woman learn in silence with full submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but she is to remain silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 Also, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was thoroughly deceived and became a transgressor. 15 However, she will be kept safe through childbearing, provided she continues in faith and love and holiness along with soundness of mind.
The Christian Right and Christian Nationalism are all distractions from who REALLY runs this country. Do you really think with all the wokeism and cultural chaos that Christians run the show? Christians have been purged from the public spaces. They are insignificant in the cultural realm. They have zero control in government except maybe at a local level. And yet you are spouting this drivel?
Yes Matt, I know you don't believe it and never will do if this desecration of our freedom of speech by our own congress does not make you to pause and think what is coming. The following day the scared president followed suit:
Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik on Thursday called on New York police to forcibly clear a student occupation on the lawn of the school, which had been dubbed the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, resulting in over 100 arrests. The protesters were demanding the Ivy League school divest from firms and institutions that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but Shafik ordered the raid a day after being questioned on Capitol Hill about ongoing pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
It is not a secret and if you have time, you can download an interview by Terry Gross from Fresh Air to biblical scholar Bart Ehrman about Armageddon on 4/3/23. Professor Ehrman said:
"But American evangelicals are disproportionately in support of Israel. And the reason has to do with the Bible. It's because evangelicals have long read biblical prophecies as - indicating that Israel has to be established and strong before Jesus can return..... Later, after 1948, evangelical Christians continue to see 1948, the establishment of Israel, as a fulfillment of prophecy.
But there's one more thing that has to happen. According - in a kind of obscure reference in the New Testament - it's in Second Thessalonians, Chapter 2 - the author, claims to be Paul, says that Jesus cannot return right away. But there's some things that have to happen first before He returns. The main thing that has to happen is that there's a figure named the lawless one. He's not called the Antichrist, but people identify him as the Antichrist. The lawless one must go into the temple. And he will declare himself God. And after that happens, then Jesus can return. The problem is that, of course, there is no temple. There hasn't been a temple since the year 70 of the common era. And on the Temple Mount today in Jerusalem, the site of the temple, that's where the Dome of the Rock is.
Aha. I see where you are coming from. Ehrman is correct. Due to the Zionists funding and supporting Dispensationalism via Darby and Scofield, many American Christians are deluded about Israel and the end times. If there is anything that would make me write off Christians as stupid, it is this topic alone. The silly thing is modern Jews are NOT related to Hebrews of Jesus' time. They are not Semitic and they are mostly white Eastern Europeans. They would not be able to tell you what tribe they are from as most of the remaining tribes were either killed, sold into slavery or intermarried after 70AD collapse of Jerusalem. Moreover, there is no more land claim as the Hebrews lost that claim when God condemned them due to apostasy. The whole Zionist cause is a charade to fool the world into thinking Jews have a claim when they really do not. Stupid Christians have no brain and go along with that. Just ask a stupid Christian one question...if Jesus died for their sins and is now interceding for them in heaven, why in the world would you want to build another temple? Idiots.
Matt, it is not stupidity but a matter of misunderstood faith. Besides, there is an increasing number of Jews that are not Zionists and are from European stock and another sizable number of Jews fully semitic leaving in the other countries of the middle east and Africa.
Much of this is beyond my understanding - I don't think in AI or in scamming and am not a techy. But I can understand enough to be deeply disturbed at the thoughtless insanity, the selfish greed and self and Earth-destructiveness. Thank you so much, Loretta Napoleoni, for the great service to us all in writing this book!
Anyone who seriously believes we're going to colonize Mars--ever--knows zero about what Mars is like, its capacity to sustain life as we know it, or much anything else about the whole idea of space travel as we can manage it at all in the near future. In the somewhat farther future, we're all dead from climate catastrophe or nuclear war, because we're ignorant as hell and can't even figure out how to avoid destroying ourselves. Elon Musk is a total idiot if he really believes he'll ever even take the first step in "colonizing Mars."
Yes, I think you are right about our self-inflicted coming doom by nuclear or climate catastrophes. I try to be optimistic, though, because we are so close to be able to colonize Mars and also to benefit from our accelerated advances in neuroscience, bioengineering and Artificial Intelligence. It's a pity. Anyway, I have received several eviction notices to evacuate this planet and, so far, I've been able to cheat the Angel of Death. But this will not be for too long. Our younger generations are being deprived of beautiful futures by the greed of our industries.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: The moment you enter Amazon.com, you’ve exited capitalism. It looks like capitalism, but it isn’t. There are thousands of buyers and sellers, but we are all — whether we are buying or selling on Amazon.com, we are all the serfs of Jeff Bezos. He doesn’t produce anything. He simply has encased us in that digital fiefdom — I call it a cloud fiefdom — using very powerful algorithmic capital, which I also call cloud capital. And every time you buy anything, from a book to an electric bicycle, on Amazon.com, which he has not been produced, he charges up to 40% to the vassal capitalist that has produced it. So, markets have been replaced by these digital fiefs, and profit has increasingly been siphoned off into what is essentially a kind of rent, like the feudal lords of yesteryear used to charge rent or extract rent from the serfs. My view is that this is what already has — in other words, capitalism was killed by capital, not by us on the left, not by trade unions. Capital became so triumphant that, like a stupid virus, it mutated into a very toxic version, which killed its host, capitalism — that’s the basic premise of my book.
The interview is about 8 minutes long. (And Yanis's using the word "rent" reminded me of Michael Hudson who has discussed and written about the economic notion of "rent" for many years.
Oh wow. Thanks for sharing this. I never thought of it in this way. Varoufakis has a good point. In some ways Amazon is like the Federal Reserve...produces money from nothing and profits from interest on money that is created from nothing.
It's like a toll road with one tollster, collecting the toll to be allowed use of the Internet to find select products and have them delivered. Given the volume 40% is an obscene amount to take off the top.
Where was Chris Hedges during that techo-fascist vaccine mandate pushed by Big Pharma? Silent...not a word. His credibility on matters of human rights and Big Pharma is questionable.
You have so much to say about this every time you enter the Chris Hedges' space that it is clear he needs to say nothing - it is your obsession or barrow to wheel. So go ahead and give us the argument - but stop this hounding of CH, for Pete's sake!
The video wouldn't play properly for me in Google Chrome or Microsoft Bing, but it played for me using Firefox browser. There was still some jerkiness at the beginning but it didn't stop.
my video won't load.
Same here
I hope they fix it. Looks like an interesting podcast.
fixed.
They are vampires and cannibals and we are the only item on the menu.
Yes, but they will not eat us because they need our slave work
Where's the emoji to register disgust with paying to get more content and finding there's not more to be has. I feel clipped.
Video won’t play
It gets off to a rough start, then soon straightens out....
Video doesn’t work. 😪
My video won’t load either.
Not everybody has a smart phone. And I would never use an uber even if I had one and had to walk 10 miles to get wherever I was going. I consider uber a criminal company.
I had great difficulty understanding Ms. Napoleoni. I will get her book, however, because I am interested in what she is saying. Many thanks for the interview.
So much common sense here. It would be great if some of the people that control our government had some.
Watch for whom you vote. Did you notice the Christian right in action this week?
Democracynow.org 04/18/24
"In nearly four hours of grueling congressional testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, said she had taken serious action against accusations of antisemitism on campus in recent months amid Israel’s assault on Gaza, including dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace."
This is a part of it:
"NERMEEN SHAIKH: Later in the hearing, Republican Georgia Congressmember Rick Allen brought up the Bible in his questioning of Shafik. He cited the Old and New Testament and asked Shafik if [she] wanted Columbia University to be cursed by God.
REP. RICK ALLEN: Are you familiar with Genesis 12:3?
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Probably not as well as you are, Congressman.
REP. RICK ALLEN: Well, it’s pretty clear. It was the covenant that God made with Abraham. And that covenant was real clear: “If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you.” And then, in the New Testament, it was confirmed that all nations would be blessed through you. So, you do not know about that?
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: I have heard that, now that you’ve explained it.
REP. RICK ALLEN: OK.
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Yes, I have heard that before.
REP. RICK ALLEN: So, it’s now familiar. Do you consider that a serious issue? I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God, of the Bible?
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Definitely not.
REP. RICK ALLEN: OK. Well, that’s good."
Wow. We're only a few steps away from the inquisition if this Rick Allen guy is representative of the kind of people we have in our legislature.
Yes, if we continue to give power to those religious nuts soon, they might decide to enforce the following passages of the scriptures:
Deuteronomy
6 “If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or your cherished wife or your closest companion should try to entice you in secrecy, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ gods that neither you nor your forefathers have known, 7 from the gods of the peoples all around you, whether near you or those far away from you, from one end of the land to the other end of the land, 8 you must not give in to him or listen to him, nor should you show pity or feel compassion or protect him; 9 instead, you should kill him without fail. Your hand should be the first to come upon him to put him to death, and the hand of all the people afterward. 10 And you must stone him to death, because he has sought to turn you away from Jehovah your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Or this from the so-called Saint Paul:
First letter of Paul to Timothy
11 Let a woman learn in silence with full submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but she is to remain silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 Also, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was thoroughly deceived and became a transgressor. 15 However, she will be kept safe through childbearing, provided she continues in faith and love and holiness along with soundness of mind.
The Christian Right and Christian Nationalism are all distractions from who REALLY runs this country. Do you really think with all the wokeism and cultural chaos that Christians run the show? Christians have been purged from the public spaces. They are insignificant in the cultural realm. They have zero control in government except maybe at a local level. And yet you are spouting this drivel?
Yes Matt, I know you don't believe it and never will do if this desecration of our freedom of speech by our own congress does not make you to pause and think what is coming. The following day the scared president followed suit:
Democracynow.org 04/19/24
Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik on Thursday called on New York police to forcibly clear a student occupation on the lawn of the school, which had been dubbed the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, resulting in over 100 arrests. The protesters were demanding the Ivy League school divest from firms and institutions that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but Shafik ordered the raid a day after being questioned on Capitol Hill about ongoing pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
@Julio Santos - How does the pro-Palestinian protests have anything to do with Christian Right or Christian Nationalism?
It is not a secret and if you have time, you can download an interview by Terry Gross from Fresh Air to biblical scholar Bart Ehrman about Armageddon on 4/3/23. Professor Ehrman said:
"But American evangelicals are disproportionately in support of Israel. And the reason has to do with the Bible. It's because evangelicals have long read biblical prophecies as - indicating that Israel has to be established and strong before Jesus can return..... Later, after 1948, evangelical Christians continue to see 1948, the establishment of Israel, as a fulfillment of prophecy.
But there's one more thing that has to happen. According - in a kind of obscure reference in the New Testament - it's in Second Thessalonians, Chapter 2 - the author, claims to be Paul, says that Jesus cannot return right away. But there's some things that have to happen first before He returns. The main thing that has to happen is that there's a figure named the lawless one. He's not called the Antichrist, but people identify him as the Antichrist. The lawless one must go into the temple. And he will declare himself God. And after that happens, then Jesus can return. The problem is that, of course, there is no temple. There hasn't been a temple since the year 70 of the common era. And on the Temple Mount today in Jerusalem, the site of the temple, that's where the Dome of the Rock is.
Aha. I see where you are coming from. Ehrman is correct. Due to the Zionists funding and supporting Dispensationalism via Darby and Scofield, many American Christians are deluded about Israel and the end times. If there is anything that would make me write off Christians as stupid, it is this topic alone. The silly thing is modern Jews are NOT related to Hebrews of Jesus' time. They are not Semitic and they are mostly white Eastern Europeans. They would not be able to tell you what tribe they are from as most of the remaining tribes were either killed, sold into slavery or intermarried after 70AD collapse of Jerusalem. Moreover, there is no more land claim as the Hebrews lost that claim when God condemned them due to apostasy. The whole Zionist cause is a charade to fool the world into thinking Jews have a claim when they really do not. Stupid Christians have no brain and go along with that. Just ask a stupid Christian one question...if Jesus died for their sins and is now interceding for them in heaven, why in the world would you want to build another temple? Idiots.
Matt, it is not stupidity but a matter of misunderstood faith. Besides, there is an increasing number of Jews that are not Zionists and are from European stock and another sizable number of Jews fully semitic leaving in the other countries of the middle east and Africa.
God help us. We must fight for our very lives and souls.
Much of this is beyond my understanding - I don't think in AI or in scamming and am not a techy. But I can understand enough to be deeply disturbed at the thoughtless insanity, the selfish greed and self and Earth-destructiveness. Thank you so much, Loretta Napoleoni, for the great service to us all in writing this book!
Anyone who seriously believes we're going to colonize Mars--ever--knows zero about what Mars is like, its capacity to sustain life as we know it, or much anything else about the whole idea of space travel as we can manage it at all in the near future. In the somewhat farther future, we're all dead from climate catastrophe or nuclear war, because we're ignorant as hell and can't even figure out how to avoid destroying ourselves. Elon Musk is a total idiot if he really believes he'll ever even take the first step in "colonizing Mars."
Yes, I think you are right about our self-inflicted coming doom by nuclear or climate catastrophes. I try to be optimistic, though, because we are so close to be able to colonize Mars and also to benefit from our accelerated advances in neuroscience, bioengineering and Artificial Intelligence. It's a pity. Anyway, I have received several eviction notices to evacuate this planet and, so far, I've been able to cheat the Angel of Death. But this will not be for too long. Our younger generations are being deprived of beautiful futures by the greed of our industries.
On April 16, 2024 Amy and Juan interviewed former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/technofeudalism Part of the interview involved Yanis's new book - Technofeudalism.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: The moment you enter Amazon.com, you’ve exited capitalism. It looks like capitalism, but it isn’t. There are thousands of buyers and sellers, but we are all — whether we are buying or selling on Amazon.com, we are all the serfs of Jeff Bezos. He doesn’t produce anything. He simply has encased us in that digital fiefdom — I call it a cloud fiefdom — using very powerful algorithmic capital, which I also call cloud capital. And every time you buy anything, from a book to an electric bicycle, on Amazon.com, which he has not been produced, he charges up to 40% to the vassal capitalist that has produced it. So, markets have been replaced by these digital fiefs, and profit has increasingly been siphoned off into what is essentially a kind of rent, like the feudal lords of yesteryear used to charge rent or extract rent from the serfs. My view is that this is what already has — in other words, capitalism was killed by capital, not by us on the left, not by trade unions. Capital became so triumphant that, like a stupid virus, it mutated into a very toxic version, which killed its host, capitalism — that’s the basic premise of my book.
The interview is about 8 minutes long. (And Yanis's using the word "rent" reminded me of Michael Hudson who has discussed and written about the economic notion of "rent" for many years.
Oh wow. Thanks for sharing this. I never thought of it in this way. Varoufakis has a good point. In some ways Amazon is like the Federal Reserve...produces money from nothing and profits from interest on money that is created from nothing.
It's like a toll road with one tollster, collecting the toll to be allowed use of the Internet to find select products and have them delivered. Given the volume 40% is an obscene amount to take off the top.
No video
Where was Chris Hedges during that techo-fascist vaccine mandate pushed by Big Pharma? Silent...not a word. His credibility on matters of human rights and Big Pharma is questionable.
You have so much to say about this every time you enter the Chris Hedges' space that it is clear he needs to say nothing - it is your obsession or barrow to wheel. So go ahead and give us the argument - but stop this hounding of CH, for Pete's sake!
The video wouldn't play properly for me in Google Chrome or Microsoft Bing, but it played for me using Firefox browser. There was still some jerkiness at the beginning but it didn't stop.
Gee- how about that- my video won't load either- no way Techno Fascism has anything to do with that, huh?