Category

Society

You see, if somebody robs a store, it's a crime and the state is all set and ready to nab the criminal. But if somebody steals from the commons and from the future, it's seen as an entrepreneurial activity and the state cheers and gives them tax concessions rather than arresting them. We badly need an expanded concept of justice and fairness that takes mortgaging the future into account. [The Real World of Technology, CBC Enterprises, 1990. https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Franklin_Ursula_The_Real_World_of_Technology_1990.pdf]

Ursula M. Franklin
August 10, 2023

I used to be part of this dilettante conservative intellectual class until I realized that while my colleagues and I fashioned ourselves as thought leaders for the right, we were really just puppets for decrepit, out-of-touch oligarchs. Republican billionaires created the hellish state of our current politics. Some of them, like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, are outright fascists who want to create dictatorship. Some are Christian supremacist theocrats. But many are just delusional rich kids.

Matthew Sheffield
August 6, 2023

When a cell doubles and redoubles, sequestering nutrients and resources, unchecked and uncontrolled, to the detriment of the surrounding tissue and eventually the entire body, we call it 'cancer'. When a person sequesters wealth and resources, land and corporations, drunk on power, unchecked and uncontrolled, to the detriment of others and eventually to society, we call them 'billionaires'. Greed is a disease.

Jack Brown
July 31, 2023