[Plura-list] This USPS Machine Kills Fascists; Zombie postcapitalism

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* This USPS Machine Kills Fascists: If Woody was a postie.

* Zombie postcapitalism: What it means for the finance economy to
decouple from the productive economy.

* This day in history: 2005, 2015

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

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🆓 This USPS Machine Kills Fascists

Early in the current USPS skirmish, some clever wag got the brilliant
idea of slapping one of Crimethinc's THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
stickers on a USPS blue mailbox.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/ia9gvh/steely_guthrie/

It's a tribute to the slogan Woody Guthrie scrawled on his guitar,
itself a tribute to the slogan on stickers once distributed to WWII
defense plant workers to put on guns and tanks and the like.

http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/the-powerful-messages-inscribed-on-woody-guthrie-pete-seegers-guitar-banjo.html

The image was so striking that it inspired illustrators to create
stylized versions of it, like Mike Shine's gorgeous woodcut-style image.

https://twitter.com/cgerrish/status/1289420531066781697

Now, Tim Doyle has entered the fray with another striking image,
available as an art-print or stickers (both ship with books of stamps).

https://store.nakatomiinc.com/thismachinekillsfascists2stickersetstamps.aspx

https://store.nakatomiinc.com/thismachinekillsfascistsartprintstamps.aspx

He's also giving away his hi-rez files:

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/e9f20ad0a83e20d2877df4d679b5ce1620200821220231/3f4bb992d3c31a67f725fb0907f976c820200821220231/bc878b

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🆓 Zombie postcapitalism

"It was in the summer of 2020 when financial capitalism finally broke
with the world of real people, including capitalists antiquated enough
to try to profit from producing goods and services."

This is from a speech by Yanis Varoufakis entitled "Something remarkable
just happened this August: How the pandemic has sped up the passage to
postcapitalism," which analyzes Aug 12's market conditions: UK GDP down
22%, FTSE100 up 2%.

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/08/21/something-remarkable-just-happened-this-august-how-the-pandemic-has-sped-up-the-passage-to-postcapitalism-lannan-institute-virtual-talk/

That same day, the SP500 hit an all-time high.

As Varoufakis writes, this isn't the usual bull market in cruelty, when
share prices rise on new of layoffs as investors calculate that lower
wage-bills might lead to higher dividends.

Rather, these bull markets are rising on news of crashing productivity
and ever-lower profitability, news that buyers of the products and
services these firms sell have less money to spend than ever.

How is the financial economy so thoroughly decoupled from the real
economy? Varoufakis offers an explanation based on performance of the
post-2008 bailout market, when the finance and real economies diverged
so widely that their decoupling was undeniable.

Here's how that works:

* The European Central Bank gives a bunch of free money to Deutschebank
in the hopes that they will lend it out to businesses who'll hire and
invest in capital infrastructure

* But Deutschebank can't force businesses to take out loans, and they
hew to the banker's adage that one should never loan money to people who
need it. So the businesses that are struggling and so might spend in
ways that preserve jobs and firms are disqualified from loans.

* DB's loans are on offer for very cheap, so firms that DON'T need them
take them out, because when someone offers you money that cheaply, why
wouldn't you take it?

* These borrowers have no productive use for the loans, though. Due to
the lack of capital in the rest of the economy, there are no consumers
who can afford to buy their products and services.

* So they use those loans for financial engineering: the autophagic
stock buy-back, in which companies splurge on their own shares, driving
the price of the remaining market shares up.

This is the process: Central banks make cheap loans to commercial banks,
commercial banks make cheap loans to firms that don't need them, the
firms spend that money on buybacks.

That's why share prices rise on news of economic collapse, because
economic collapse triggers new central banks loans to giant commercial
banks, which triggers share rises through buybacks. It's socialism for
the very, very rich, and brutal austerity for the rest.

As Varouvakis writes, this is the end point of the post-2008
zombification of the world's largest companies (whose execs are mostly
paid in stock, and get richer every time the zombie devours a little
more of itself through buybacks).

And the zombification has a name: postcapitalism, a system where the
value of firms is totally decoupled from whether anyone buys their
products - where profitability and share price are decoupled.

The left has theorized a postcapitalist world based on a more fair and
humane system of allocations, but that's not this postcapitalist system.
The zombie-company postcapitalism repeats all the sins of capitalism,
but faster and at higher magnitudes.

To realize a better postcapitalist future - a global GND future that
rescues our planet and species and civilization - Varoufakis says we
have to eliminate both the market for shares and the market for labor.

This is a thesis he elaborates on in a forthcoming book called Another
Now, which comes out in October.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1117271/another-now/9781847925633.html

It's an attempt to sketch out just such a future, to outrun the famous
Jameson quote that "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an
end to capitalism."

I've been engaged in a similar exercise since shortly before the plague
started, working on my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND utopian
novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias and
their plutocratic/neofeudal paymasters.

Writing the book has been an incredibly important form of self-care
during the crisis, my daily hour in the first days of a better nation.
You can read the prologue on Jo Walton's charitable fundraiser The
Decameron Project.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-decameron-36398964

And you can follow the progress here:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adoctorow%20%23dailywords&f;=live

And here's a video of Varoufakis delivering his speech, with a
fascinating Q&A;:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ71815alQk

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🆓 This day in history

#15yrsago Hunter S Thompson's ashes in fireworks display
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/08/22/076/47806/media/Hunter-Thompson-s-Final-Blast-Off

#15yrsago Locked-out CBC production staff podcasting and blogging
https://web.archive.org/web/20060404052956/http://cbcunplugged.blogware.com/blog

#15yrsago Warner Music CEO calls for iPod taxes, levies — twirls
moustache and cackles, clatters away on tiny, ebony hooves
https://www.zdnet.com/article/warner-music-readies-cd-free-e-label/

#5yrsago Boston's WGBH initiates careless, groundless legal action
against Fedflix project
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150821/16573132031/boston-public-broadcaster-wgbh-files-bogus-dmca-notice-public-domain-video-uploaded-carl-malamud.shtml

#5yrsago Greece's creditors demand casino rights, archaeological sites,
selloff of EUR50B of national assets
https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2015/aug/19/greece-sale-and-everything-must-go

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🆓 Colophon

Today's top sources: Super Punch (https://www.superpunch.net/), Naked
Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Friday's progress: 523 words (52643 total).

Currently reading: Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum.

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 13)
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/08/16/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-13/

Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote for Law Via the Internet conference, Sept 22,
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/LVI2020/register

* Writing into an Uncertain Future, Afterwords Festival, Oct 1,
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/writing-into-an-uncertain-future-tickets-115378329690

Latest book:

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

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provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla

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