[Plura-list] Situation Normal; China's best investigative stories of 2020; Where money comes from

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Situation Normal: The long-overdue second Leonard Richardson novel

* China's best investigative stories of 2020: A glimpse into some very
brave and dedicated reporters' work.

* Where money comes from: And what tax is for.

* Raising money for Chelsea Manning: The whistleblower and torture
survivor needs our help.

* Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town part 26: My last podcast of
2020.

* This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

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

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🧄 Situation Normal

Situation Normal is Leonard Richardson's long-awaited second novel, a
droll, weird, fast-moving space-opera with a gigantic cast, myriad
subplots, and fascinating premises - a novel so brilliantly conceived
that it runs like precision clockwork.

https://bookshop.org/books/situation-normal/9781936460991

Richardson's debut novel, 2013's Constellation Games, was an utterly
madcap space-opera about an alien invasion that makes first contact with
a snarky games reviewer whose day job is making pony-themed shovelware
games for young Brazilian girls.

https://memex.craphound.com/2013/02/20/constellation-games-debut-sf-novel-floored-me-with-its-brilliance/

Situation Normal shares a recognizable lineage with Constellation Games,
but it is so much more ambitious, concerning itself with a clash of
galactic empires spanning interstellar distances and implicating dozens
of species.

The human-dominated Outreach - a kind of corporatized version of Iain
Banks's Culture, except that the AIs are all personified,
hyperintelligent brands - and the multispecies, chaotic Fist empires
have lived in peace for a generation.

But now war has broken out, and the Fist has a devastating weapon: a
gaseous drug that makes humans live vivid hallucinations of fictional
(and real) peoples' lives, from meeting Jesus to learning woodworking.

The Fist has solved the problem of beaming this gas directly INTO THE
GASMASKS of the human crews of warships, using it to turn them all into
committed lifelong pacifists, swiftly turning the war for the Fist.

Against this backdrop, we experience all manner of skullduggery: heists
and smugglers' runs, breathtaking draft-dodger escapes, political
intrigues, interspecies erotic adventures, and the painful experience of
alien puberty.

From rent-a-cops to child soldiers to mad scientists to religious
LARPers who treat old pulp magazines as sacred texts to colony organisms
that hijack the bodies of alien dinosaurs, SITUATION NORMAL has
something for everyone.

This is a Leonard Richardson novel so it is full of sly references to
Richardson's day-job: a rogue librarian free-software hacker who, among
other things, discovered that thousands of seemingly copyrighted books
were actually in the public domain:

https://www.crummy.com/2019/07/22/0

And completely revolutionized how electronic book-lending can be done
while working for the NYPL:

https://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2015-RESTFest/

Richardson is a prodigiously talented writer with a programmer's talent
for structuring big, complex works. SITUATION NORMAL was worth the
seven-year wait since his stunning debut.

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🧄 China's best investigative stories of 2020

2020 was, obviously, a hell of a year, even by the standards of the
decade, whose every New Year's Eve was heralded by some variation on
"Thank goodness that's behind us, now we can *finally* get back to normal."

The ongoing, accelerating crises of capitalism and climate are attended
by a long string of shock doctrine tactics and pathological political
outcomes. The covid crisis provided cover for more looting *and*
provoked more toxic politics.

In addition to this "normal" drumbeat of scandals, the pandemic also
meant a lot of misgovernance: leaders who got out of their depth and,
through hubris, panic or disregard, acted in ways that hurt and killed
people.

Following this in the USA alone is hard; even harder to track the
Anglosphere, let alone the west. Most Americans probably didn't track
First Nations uprisings in Canada; nor the bizarre twists of Brexit, nor
Australia's climate denial in the face of undeniable emergencies.

To say nothing of the Gilets Jaunes, the anti-masker Nazis who literally
stormed the Reichstag, the farcical corruption scandals in Israel's
parliament, the twists and turns of Denmark's mink cull, Nigeria's
#ENDSARS uprisings, and so on and so on.

Even if you followed all that, you probably weren't tuned into the
scandals that roiled China in 2020; scandals that were unearthed by
investigative journalists, including many at state media outlets, who
took severe risks to bring out the truth.

The Global Investigative Journalism Network has just published its
annual roundup of 2020's most important investigative stories from China
and Taiwan, and it's a vital window on otherwise largely invisible (and
yet very, very important) political stories.

https://gijn.org/2020/12/14/editors-pick-2020s-best-investigative-stories-from-china-and-taiwan/

The picks include Freezing Point Weekly's scoop that Wuhan's health
authorities maintained both official and unofficial diagnostic criteria
for covid, which allowed them to make their handling of the outbreak
seem far better than it was.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/vysNta8IU2wbRBv-c3aS4Q

Renwu Magazine's deep dive into app-based delivery drivers is eerily
familiar to anyone following the worker-misclassification scandals in
the west, but the difference is that Renwu's investigation sparked a
national dialog and led to real reforms.

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/225120404

China News Weekly's comprehensive postmortem on the failures of health
authorities to get a lid on Wuhan's covid outbreak was swiftly delete,
but copies of it remain online:

https://k.sina.cn/article_1409194012_53fe981c00100pg2i.html

The Reporter gives us a Taiwanese take on Macedonian troll-farms,
producing a masterful and nuanced look at influence operations with an
emphasis on the Pacific Rim.

https://www.twreporter.org/topics/cyberwarfare-units-disinformation-fake-news

The list closes out with two horrific stories on domestic violence in
China which is terribly under-covered by the Chinese press (which is, in
this regard, no different to its western counterparts).

First is Guyu Story Lab's terrifying tale of a woman who was immolated
by her violent ex-husband. It sparked nationwide outrage over police
indifference to domestic violence...and a campaign that was deleted from
the internet within 24 hours.

https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_9414526

And finally Sanlian Life's Serialeque true crime story of a woman whose
husband was arrested for murdering and dismembering her. The story is a
rich biography of both their lives, seeking some understanding from
their origins.

https://finance.sina.com.cn/wm/2020-08-26/doc-iivhvpwy3213669.shtml

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🧄 Where money comes from

Accounting prof and GND cofounder Richard Murphy wrote an astounding
thread over the weekend explaining where money comes from and what
purpose taxation serves.

https://twitter.com/RichardJMurphy/status/1337737606688333826

He's since published an edited version under the title "Macroeconomics,
money and post-Brexit recovery, all in one Twitter thread," saying it
"took four hours and 40 years of thinking to write."

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/12/12/macroeconomics-money-and-post-brexit-recovery-all-in-one-twitter-thread/

It's a masterclass in the real world of money creation and taxation,
beyond simplistic - and ahistorical - stories about money emerging from
barter, followed by confiscation of our money by governments.

The reality is obviously that money comes from government spending.
That's how money gets into the economy, because only governments are
allowed to create money, so all money starts with government spending.

But what is money? Modern money - money over the past 50 years - is
"just a promise to pay." When you borrow £1000 from the bank, you
promise to pay it back. The bank opens a loan account and credits your
savings account £1000 - a promise to give you that money on demand.

"Two promises. Two accounts. And as a result we get new money. That is
how all money is created. It is as simple as that. There is no one
else’s money involved in this process. The bank does not lend out the
money saved with them."

"There are no notes and coin moved from one pile to another pile to back
this all up either. There are just two promises. And then there is new
money."

Money is a promise. It's easier for some people than others to get money
is that their promises are more credible.

If the government wants to borrow money, it can do so very cheaply
because its promise to repay that money is very credible. They have
their own bank, and they issue their own money. The government can
always repay its debts.*

(*Note we're talking about "monetarily sovereign" governments:
governments that borrow in a free-floating currency that they themselves
issue - not Venezuela, Zimbabwe, pre-crisis Argentina, or eurozone
countries)

When the bank loans you money, you make a promise to repay it. When you
put money in the bank, it makes a promise to repay you. Governments -
whose promises to repay are credible - back banks' promises through
deposit insurance (a promise to create more money if needed).

Murphy asks, why do we even need a government in this picture? Why can't
we all just make promises to each other and issue IOUs? Because we need
a backstop: an entity that creates currency and can always repay any debt.

It's not just the government's ability to issue currency makes its
promises better than everyone else's - it's also the ability to tax.
Spending creates money, and taxing destroys it.

Tax is not collected *before* the government spends. The government
spends money into existence. It doesn't need to tax us before it can
spend money. But taxing limits how much money circulates.

If the government creates money without destroying it, eventually there
will be too much money in circulation and prices will go up - inflation.
Governments aren't households and they don't need balanced books.

A balanced budget (in which the government taxes as much as it spends)
leaves no money to circulate. If there's too much money in circulation -
if there's an inflation problem - we might want that, but if governments
net-remove money every year, the economy collapses.

But how do you know how much money should be taken out or put into the
economy? Right now, we control inflation by targeting a certain
unemployment rate, AKA the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of
unemployment).

The theory of the NAIRU is that if a certain percentage of your
neighbors are unemployed, there's just enough money in circulation. If
there was more, someone would offer them a job (and inflation would kick
in). If there was less, there's be more people looking for work.

The NAIRU is supposed to be the sweet spot, but for people whose
unemployment is deliberately cultivated in order to prevent inflation,
it's not sweet at all. These people must be miserable, scared and
precarious or we all suffer from inflation.

It's not just unemployed people: all precarious, low-paid work, all
withholding of benefits like childcare and healthcare and retirement and
eldercare are there in the name of fighting inflation.

Murphy: "There has to be a better way to manage the value of money than
this."

There is. A job guarantee: a job at a socially inclusive wage with good
benefits - not paid for with taxes, but with new money creation (as with
all government spending).

The new money would then be taken out of circulation by taxing the
people earning these good wages at the same rate as their
non-jobs-guarantee peers. If this created inflation, we could raise
taxes to reduce the money supply (not to pay for the program!).

Finally, Murphy asks why governments bother to borrow at all? Why not
just use spending and taxation to manage the economy. The answer is that
government debt - bonds - aren't borrowing at all.

They're a way for the government to offer a safe interest-bearing
savings account for sums that exceed deposit insurance at your local
bank. In the USA, the FDIC guarantees up to $250,000 per depositor. If
you've got more than that in the bank when it fails, you're screwed.

So if you're a pension fund or a corporation, you can buy treasury bonds
and be guaranteed a small rate of return on them - but, more
importantly, you can get the government's promise to pay you back, a
promise backed by the ability to create money at will.

It's an important point: not only would "eliminating government debt"
take all the money out of circulation, it would also eliminate T-bills,
the bedrock of all institutional savings.

Murphy closes by explaining what this all means:

* Money comes from governments

* Banks wouldn't exist without the government's promises to pay

* Taxes don't fund government spending

* Taxation happens *after* spending, not before

* Governments spend their own money, not taxpayers' money

* Taxes control inflation, they don't fund programs

* Governments borrow because they choose to (in order to create a safe
savings account), but they don't need to

* Governments need not ever have debt crises; monetarily sovereign
governments can always pay debts in the currencies they issue

* Governments set interest rates

* Interest rates don't control inflation - taxes do

* Full employment at fair wages pays for itself

* There is no need for austerity

And finally: "By really understanding something as simple as how money
is created - and by being aware that it is never in short supply as a
result - we can rebuild from the mess that we are in. We can have the
sustainable world we want."


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🧄 Raising money for Chelsea Manning

As power concentrates into ever-fewer hands, we are increasingly
dependent on whistleblowers - insiders who come forward to tell the
truth about what is being done in our name.

The powerful know this, and go to great lengths to destroy
whistleblowers as a warning to others.

When Chelsea Manning was a US Army Private, she leaked a trove of US
government cables to journalists, revealing widespread corruption, from
the coverup of the US military's murder of Reuters journalists to cozy
deals with the world's worst dictators.

Manning was betrayed by a journalist she'd trusted and was imprisoned
and tortured by the US government. After her sentence was commuted by
Obama on his way out of office, she was re-imprisoned for refusing to
testify before a grand jury.

Apologists for corruption and imperialism have pulled out all the stops
since to keep her from finding even a sliver of peace and recognition.
In 2017, Harvard rescinded her fellowship offer because Sean Spicer
(seriously) objected to it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/21/spicer-manning-lewandowski-harvard-succumbs-clickbait/686119001/

Manning told the truth to the American people about what their
government was doing in their name. Spicer lied to the American people
while drawing a public salary. Harvard sided with Spicer.

Despite the powerful enemies who pursue their petty vendetta against
her, Manning has continued to do good work, teaching AI and machine
learning on her Twitch channel, and lecturing on prison support and
mutual aid.

The activist Lisa Rein has set up a Gofundme fundraiser to help Manning
pay her bills: rent, groceries and other monthly bills. They're seeking
$33k, and as of this writing have raised less than $2k. I will be
contributing (in Sean Spicer's name) after I publish this.

If you can afford to contribute, I hope you will too.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/happy-birthday-chelsea-manning

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🧄 Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town part 26

This week on my podcast: part 26 of my serialized reading of "Someone
Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town," my 2006 novel that Gene Wolfe
called "a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read." It's my last
podcast of 2020!

https://craphound.com/news/2020/12/14/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-26/

You can catch up on the other installments here:

https://craphound.com/podcast/?s=%22someone%20comes%22

and subscribe to my podcast feed here:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

Here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet
Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever, too!):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_372/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_372_-_Someone_Comes_to_Town_Someone_Leaves_Town_026.mp3

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🧄 This day in history

#10yrsago Naomi Wolf on rape, justice and Julian Assange
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jaccuse-sweden-britain-an_b_795899

#5yrsago The Red Cross brought in an AT&T; exec as CEO and now it’s a
national disaster
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-corporate-takeover-of-the-red-cross

#5yrsago Philips pushes lightbulb firmware update that locks out
third-party bulbs
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151214/07452133070/lightbulb-drm-philips-locks-purchasers-out-third-party-bulbs-with-firmware-update.shtml

#5yrsago Cybercrime 3.0: stealing whole houses
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/12/14/cybercrime-3-0-stealing-whole-houses/

#1yrago McKinsey’s internal mythology compares management consultants to
“the Marine Corps, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Jesuits”
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-mckinsey-makes-its-own-rules

#1yrago Radicalized is one of the Wall Street Journal’s top sf books of
2019!
https://memex.craphound.com/2019/12/14/radicalized-is-one-of-the-wall-street-journals-top-sf-books-of-2019/

#1yrago AI Now’s annual report: stop doing “emotion detection”; stop
“socially sensitive” facial recognition; make AI research diverse and
representative — and more https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2019_Report.pdf

#1yrago Private equity looters startled to be called out by name in
Taylor Swift award-acceptance speech
https://nypost.com/2019/12/13/private-equity-stunned-to-be-dragged-into-battle-between-taylor-swift-and-scooter-braun/

#1yrago Lawmaker admits not independently researching lobbyist’s claim
that ectopic fetuses could be reimplanted in the uterus, blames medical
journals
https://radio.wosu.org/post/lawmaker-says-he-didnt-research-ectopic-pregnancy-procedure-adding-bill

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🧄 Colophon

Today's top sources: Lisa Rein (https://twitter.com/lisarein), 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: 517 words (92561 total)

Currently reading: The City We Became, NK Jemisin

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 26)
https://craphound.com/news/2020/12/14/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-26/

Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25,
https://niso.plus/cory-doctorow-to-keynote-at-niso-plus-2021/

Recent appearances:

* Worldshapers
https://theworldshapers.com/2020/12/06/episode-72-cory-doctorow/

* A More Competitive Web (Techdirt Podcast):
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201201/10183045801/techdirt-podcast-episode-264-more-competitive-web-with-cory-doctorow-daphne-keller.shtml

* Big Tech Podcast:
https://www.cigionline.org/big-tech/cory-doctorow-true-dangers-surveillance-capitalism

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "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.

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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla

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