Ian Welsh writes left-leaning political and economic commentary on capitalism, technology, climate, and media.
HN commenters link him for takes on capitalism, the third world, and book reviews; other commenters in the sample argue against positions in his pieces.
> the purpose of the New York Times is to inform readers about the things that matter to them and to the world.
Why isn't the purpose of the New York Times to mis-inform and trick its readers into blindly accepting horrific policies such as the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003? [1]
A corporation's means and purpose are one in the same: profit.
I love reading vague, romanticized mischaracterisations of corporations that enables the writer to not need to reconcile their politics with their current living scenarios. But this is a totally inadequate explanation for the existence and purpose of corporations today.
Companies exist to derive profit for their investors, primarily by increasing the value of their common stock and by dividends. Whatever other impact is made by a company's operations in the marketplace is an externality.
Sometimes an externality is positive, sometimes it is negative. The New York Times exists to derive profit for its investors, and it does this by, yes, making a product that informs its readers. But they also do it by nuzzling up next to evil, moneyed interests - making deals with the devil and serving significant positions in helping to roll out horrible public and international policies.
Perhaps journalism is necessary for a healthy society, but could you honestly accuse NYT of being the purveyors of such an ideal? NYT is extraordinarily guilty of nefarious, trixy, and immoral activity compared with its competition, in fact. The goal of pure profit…
You're being an apologist for slavery?
Alright then, where do we draw the line? Can I go buy a person? If not, can I invade Sudan?[1]
> Ethical consumption is a dead end.
Should we give up even thinking about it and just do whatever is most convenient?
Will that solve all our problems?
You know Amazon treats its employees like disposable shit. If you buy from them anyway you are putting your self-love above the love you should have for the folks working there. You know Uber is extracting value from their drivers[2] and will discard them without compunction when the robots come online. And they killed Elaine Herzberg. If you ride Uber you're rewarding them for all this and putting your self-love above the love you should have for those folks driving.
I'm gonna keep fighting for what I think is right. That means telling people that they are moral cretins when they are blithe about it. (I don't think violence solves anything, but a good rant can shake up a body's thoughts. I have friends that shop through Amazon and ride Uber and I don't chide them too harshly or often.)
Working at FB or one of the other emerging technocracies isn't an instance of "Never let ideological purity prevent you from effective action." It's a case of putting money above core values, or not having those values in the first place, or simply not paying attention.
If you're going to be a Morlock at least be a self-aware Morlock, eh?
> You can't even buy slavery-free clothing or food…
It's more of a watch what they do vs what they say thing:
> since 1979, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates whenever it looked like wages were going to rise faster than inflation. The Federal Reserve, in other words, has crushed wages.
https://www.ianwelsh.net/trumps-continued-collision-with-the-federal-reserve/
While you don't see similar raising of interest rates when we have record multi year growth in stock prices
The rates started going up as far as I can see in reaction to wage growth:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-17/fed-shouldn-t-raises-rates-just-to-keep-wages-in-check
The inverse of the current situation happened, ie: If we have record multi year wage growth and the fed only starts ramping up interest rates in response to a recent increase in stock prices, then I would believe what is nominally said about the fed a bit more :p
Just like surveillance (http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-logic-of-surveillance/), censorship has its own logic. First, we censor all the information about censorship, the same way that we first put every anti-surveillance person under surveillance, and the spammers and telemarketers threaten to put people who complain about spam and robocalls and scam calls on the spam and telephone number lists.
As per HN guidelines: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."[1]
The original source is:
http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the-problems-of-uber-and-lyft
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
please read this comment on a previous HN story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391500
or this short post: http://www.ianwelsh.net/assange-and-wikileaks-the-basics/
or this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu4WCskniEc
inform yourself