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James Goodman

Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians | ... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...e-and-whats-wrong-libertarians

psychology society people chomsky anarchism politics economy wall street

shared by James Goodman on 29 May 13 - No Cached
  • James Goodman on 29 May 13
     
    "And [the oil industry is] trying to impede measures to deal with it for their own short-term profit interests. And that includes not only the petroleum industry, but the American Chamber of Commerce - the leading business lobby - and others, who've stated quite openly that they're conducting … they don't call it propaganda … but what would amount to propaganda campaigns to convince people that there's no real danger and we shouldn't really do much about it, and that we should concentrate on really important things like the deficit and economic growth - what they call 'growth' - and not worry about the fact that the human species is marching over a cliff which could be something like [human] species destruction; or at least the destruction of the possibility of a decent life for huge numbers of people. And there are many other correlations. In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you've taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it's purpose? No it's not. It's to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It's pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices. And so this is only one aspect of the PR industry."
James Goodman

Steve Jobs, Enemy of Nostalgia - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...jobs-looked-to-the-future.html

nostalgia apple society economy

shared by James Goodman on 07 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The Steve Jobs who founded Apple as an anarchic company promoting the message of freedom, whose first projects with Stephen Wozniak were pirate boxes and computers with open schematics, would be taken aback by the future that Apple is forging. Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself, a testament to how quickly power can corrupt.
  • Apple’s rise to power in our time directly paralleled the transformation of global manufacturing. As recently as 10 years ago Apple’s computers were assembled in the United States, but today they are built in southern China under appalling labor conditions. Apple, like the vast majority of the electronics industry, skirts labor laws by subcontracting all its manufacturing to companies like Foxconn, a firm made infamous for suicides at its plants, a worker dying after working a 34-hour shift, widespread beatings, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to meet high quotas set by tech companies like Apple.
  • Mr. Jobs’s magic has its costs. We can admire the design perfection and business acumen while acknowledging the truth: with Apple’s immense resources at his command he could have revolutionized the industry to make devices more humanely and more openly, and chose not to. If we view him unsparingly, without nostalgia, we would see a great man whose genius in design, showmanship and stewardship of the tech world will not be seen again in our lifetime. We would also see a man who in the end failed to “think different,” in the deepest way, about the human needs of both his users and his workers.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • It’s a high bar, but Jobs always believed passionately in brutal honesty, and the truth is rarely kind. With his death, the serious work to do the things he has failed to do will fall to all of us: the rebels, the misfits, the crazy ones who think they can change the world.
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