[Plura-list] We CAN have nice things; Howard Dean's racist, genocidal pharma sellout; 60 seconds of giddy, terrifying, delightful surrealism

[Cory Doctorow]

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Next Tuesday, I'm giving a workshop in collaboration with Phoenix's
Changing Hands bookstore: "All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing":

https://www.changinghands.com/event/april2021/virtual-writing-workshop-cory-doctorow-all-teachable-things-i-know-about-writing


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Today's links

* We CAN have nice things: Why - and how - America's New New Deal should
go VERY VERY big.

* Howard Dean's racist, genocidal pharma sellout: Once a progressive
lion, now a shill for the worst companies on Earth. Fuck that guy
sideways with a brick.

* 60 seconds of giddy, terrifying, delightful surrealism: The magic
realism of Fernando Livschitz.

* This day in history: 2016, 2020

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

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🎱 We CAN have nice things

Biden rightfully calls the $2.2t stimulus package a
"once-in-a-generation investment in America," but as AOC points out,
it's not nearly enough - the $40b for housing nationwide would barely
cover the bill for NYC alone.

The country and the Democrats can't afford to smallball this one. The
*real* debts we've racked up - infrastructure, health, education and
climate - matter far, far more than the "national debt" that goldbug
bedwetters never stfu about.

As Stephanie Kelton writes in the New York Times, the US can't run out
of US dollars; debts do not constrain federal spending. Instead, the US
government is constrained by resources: available workers, idle
factories, raw materials.

The USG can make as many dollars as it needs by typing zeroes into a
spreadsheet, but it conjuring more laborers and productive apparatus is
far more difficult. Inflation isn't the result of too many dollars, it's
the result of too few things you can buy with those dollars.

That's why an anti-inflationary spending program isn't about
constraining spending, it's about increasing the pool of things
governments can buy. Right now, we have lots of un- and under-employed
people who need good jobs doing necessary care, climate and
infrastructure work.

But the $10t worth of spending America needs to attain resiliency for
the coming century of climate emergencies will put every American who
wants a job to work for as many years as they are willing to work and
still not fill the gap.

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

Of course, there's a simple solution to this: reform immigration policy
to welcome the millions of people who are literally dying to come here,
trained and untrained alike (worker training is another job that needs
doing). Type zeroes into a Treasury spreadsheet so we can pay them a
socially inclusive wage with decent benefits. Put them to work alongside
the people who are already here, building the country's productive
capacity so that we can make more things that are for sale in dollars.

As Kelton explains: procurement rules that give preference to onshore
goods and taxes that discourage offshoring are both anti-inflationary
measures, because they increase the pool of goods for sale in US
dollars, meaning more dollars can be safely spent.

But creating domestic capacity is a long-game and we need to spend a lot
of money *right now*, which is why Kelton argues *against* Biden's "Buy
American" rules: "There will be no lack of eager foreign producers if we
need to relieve some demand pressure on the domestic front."

The right way to address America's massive real-world debts isn't to
choose an arbitrary dollar figure and decide which debts we'll service -
it's to decide what we want America to be and then figure out how we'll
resource that vision.

Or as Bernie Sanders puts it: "You don’t start off by coming up with a
sum and working down. You start out by looking at the needs that need to
be addressed and adding them up."

This Modern Monetary Theory framework is gaining currency today, but
it's hardly new.

It's been a current in economic thought for a long time. Back in 1945,
New York Federal Reserve Chairman Beardsley Ruml gave a speech to the
American Bar Association called "Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete,"
explaining how America financed the war.

https://modernmoneynetwork.org/sites/default/files/biblio/BeardsleyRuml.pdf

He explained America didn't depend on taxes or war bonds to pay for the
war effort - rather, these were a way to sequester the new money being
spent into existence to pay for the war effort, so that those wages
didn't compete with government spending for rubber, metal, etc.

The US government could make all the dollars it wanted, but it couldn't
conjure up rubber or steel. That was constrained, and to dampen private
sector demand, the USG clawed back some of the war-wages (taxes) and
encouraged voluntary deferred spending (bonds).

Biden touts his $2.2t proposal as "fiscally responsible" because of its
"payfors" - tax increases to match new spending with new taxing. Taxing
is anti-inflationary (because it reduces private-sector spending power,
leaving more goods on the market for the public sector).

We should tax the super-rich...but not to fight inflation. As multiple
tax giveaways to the wealthy had demonstrated, giving rich people more
money doesn't translate into the hoped-for stimulus that would come from
new private-sector spending.

By definition, the rich have their material needs met. Even if they rush
out and buy show-horses, ostrich-leather jackets, or super-yachts, these
only absorb a minute fraction of their windfalls - the rest get pumped
into assets, creating asset bubbles.

Trump's 2017 tax cuts and 2020 covid stimulus pumped trillions into the
economy, but almost all of it went to the rich, who used it to play the
financial casino, not to buy the labor of un- and underemployed people,
nor the things they could make with that labor.

These trillions didn't create *general* inflation, but in certain asset
classes (some socially useless ones like NFTs, stonks and exotic
derivatives) we saw runaway inflation. Unfortunately, some of these
asset bubbles intersected with basic human needs, like housing.

All that to say that stimulus "payfors" that only hit those making more
than $400k will only be weakly anti-inflationary. Those people don't buy
real goods with their money, so taking it away won't do much to reduce
demand for real goods.

Which is not to say that we shouldn't tax the rich. We totally should.
Wealth concentration is hugely corrosive, an endless perverter of public
policy, a cancer within democracy that subordinates the public good to
the endless pampering of a minuscule elite. Tax 'em!

That's why we should all be *very* excited about Janet Yellen's
announcement that America is getting out of the corporate tax-break
game. If she pulls this off, it's the beginning of the end for
financialization itself.

https://twitter.com/SecYellen/status/1379842654398218243

But if we're going to spend $2.2t - or better yet, $10t on stimulus - we
can't prevent inflation by taxing the rich. We need to do it with a
combination of increasing the pool of goods and labor for sale in US
Dollars, and by decreasing private sector demand.

That might mean more tax, but it could also take other forms - such as
the Library Socialism vision of circulating abundance, whereby you are
freed from the idiocy of owning a terrible drill that you use once a
year, and instead get an absolutely *amazing* drill, on demand, that
your neighbors also get to use.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/11/25/library-socialism-a-utopian-vision-of-a-sustaniable-luxuriant-future-of-circulating-abundance/

This is a uniquely 21st century way of thinking about material luxury:
solving the coordination costs of public ownership of certain goods
using networked technology; it's the inverse of the "Great Reset" where
you rent everything and own nothing.

Rather, it's a world where you get much, much more for less - and where
they things you have are under your democratic control, rather than that
of a remote corporate landlord.

There are many ways to reduce private sector demand while making things
*better* for everyday people. A future where we pay off our (real,
non-financial) debts is a future where we are safer, healthier, happier,
and wealthier in real, material terms.

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🎱 Howard Dean's racist, genocidal pharma sellout

Remember Howard Dean, the progressive champion who campaigned on
equitable health care and other desperately needed policies?

He's dead.

He's been replaced by Howard Dean, the not-a-lobbyist who won't tell
anyone what he does for the giant lobbying firm Dentons.

The old Howard Dean supported single-payer healthcare. The new Dean
opposes it.

But then, that new Dean works for Dentons, the largest law firm in the
world, alongside Newt Gingrich, as a "senior advisor" to the firm's
lobbying arm.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/14/howard-dean-lobbyist/

Dentons lobbies for pretty unsavory characters, including Big Health.
Dentons owes its world-beating scale to a 2015 merger with the massive
Chinese law-firm Dacheng.

Last month, the new Howard Dean published a remarkable op-ed in
Barron's, opposing any measure to permit the world's poorest countries
to manufacture generic versions of the covid vaccines they desperately need.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/india-wants-to-copy-american-vaccines-biden-shouldnt-fall-for-it-51615511350

The arguments Dean fields for this are tired, racist, and manifestly
untrue arguments, straight out of Big Pharma's playbook:

I. Poor countries can't make vaccines (reality: poor countries are
already among the world's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers) and;

II.  No one will invest in pharma if poor people don't have to pay
extortionate royalties in exchange for their lives (reality: pharma
doesn't invest in pharma! The pharmaceutical industry is entirely and
totally dependent on public R&D spending).

As Lee Fang writes in The Intercept, there's an explanation for this
surprising change of heart: "[Dean] reversed his positions on virtually
every major progressive health policy issue since moving to work in the
world of corporate influence peddling."

https://theintercept.com/2021/04/08/howard-dean-biden-covid-vaccines/

Dean insists he's not a lobbyist, but he sure acts like one, trading on
his reputation as a "liberal lion" to sell policies to benefit pharma at
the expense of the public - like his work with BIO to secure exclusivity
for breast-cancer treatments.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/21/howard-dean-despite-denials-has-long-sad-history-of-selling-himself-on-k-street/

This would all be appalling on its own terms - a medical doctor who
convinced progressives (including me) to volunteer for his presidential
bid, selling out to corporate health-care profiteers, but when it comes
to vaccines, this goes beyond selling out. It's genocidal.

As things stand, 85 of the poorest countries will not have widespread
vaccine access until 2023. That's not just a death sentence for the
Global South - it's also a chance for the new mutant strains to develop
and endanger the whole human race.

https://www.eiu.com/n/85-poor-countries-will-not-have-access-to-coronavirus-vaccines/

The racist lie that brown people can't manufacture their own vaccines is
being peddled to maximize profits for some of the cruellest, most
profitable, most publicly subsidized companies on Earth - and it's not
merely unfair, it's an existential threat to human civilization.

As Steven W Thrasher writes in Scientific American, the entire vaccine
passport debate is a bullshit distraction from the real issue: getting
vaccines to every person who can safely take them, in every country on
Earth.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-vaccine-equity-is-much-more-important-than-vaccine-passports/

As Thrasher writes, today, borders are being used to decide who can get
a vaccine. Tomorrow, vaccine passports would punish those unvaccinated
people by denying them the right to cross borders. Vaccine equity is the
only just vaccine passport.

"It is morally reprehensible (not to mention epidemiologically
self-defeating) that countries can prevent vaccines from crossing their
borders and want their own citizens to be able to cross those borders
and travel to countries that are denied vaccines -- and then use the
threat of infection to keep the people of those unvaccinated countries
inside them...A vaccine passport conflates the notions of biology,
nationalism and surveillance; it builds on and passively accepts the
ethics of passport privilege in general."

Thrasher cites "Covid-19 vaccine passports will harm sustainable
development," in The British Medical Journal, adding, "The idea that one
'needs' to go on vacation or attend an academic conference abroad at
this point in the pandemic is morally unjustifiable. This is especially
true if you are traveling to or from a place where you know others do
not have access to vaccines—and you want a special piece of paper
proving that you do, which would allow you to cross the border."

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/03/30/covid-19-vaccine-passports-will-harm-sustainable-development/

This is the kind of thing you'd expect Dr Howard Dean, the progressive
lion who championed single-payer and curbs on drug prices, to write. But
he's not. Instead, he's peddling racism and profiteering to serve his
corporate paymasters.

RIP, Dr Dean. You sold your legacy - and our future - for a mess of potage.


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🎱 60 seconds of giddy, terrifying, delightful surrealism

Self-described "magic realist" filmmaker Fernando Livschitz and his
small Argentinian production house Black Sheep films are a font of
superb, thrilling short movies.

https://www.bsfilms.me/

The latest is ANYWHERE CAN HAPPEN, a description-defying 60-second short
that seamlessly combines computer graphics, stock footage, and VFX in a
montage of surreal, dizzying scenes.

https://vimeo.com/533086714

As Jason Kottke writes, it's part of the democratization dividend that
we get when the power to turn your vision into a shareable reality is
put into more hands.

https://kottke.org/21/04/anywhere-can-happen

All of Livschitz's work is purely amazing - there were moments that made
me laugh and others that sent bolts of pure, atavistic anxiety through
me, packed into an unimaginably compact form.

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🎱 This day in history

#5yrsago Pope invites Bernie Sanders to Vatican to speak about “social,
economic, and environmental” issues
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-35999269

#5yrsago The international art market is a money laundry whose details
are in the Panama Papers
https://fusion.tv/story/288515/panama-papers-leak-art-market/

#5yrsago Tax investigators and bill collectors use Rich Kids of
Instagram to uncover oligarchs’ hidden millions
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/03/super-rich-discover-hidden-risks-instagram-yachts-jets

#1yrago Nurse suspended for distributing crowdfunded PPE
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/08/non-fiscal-payfors/#olga-matievskaya

#1yrago Cleveland Plain Dealer executed by union-busting owners
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/08/non-fiscal-payfors/#advance

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🎱 Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/,
Kottke https://kottke.org/).

Currently writing:

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." Yesterday's
progress: 1010 words (54017 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results
https://craphound.com/news/2021/03/28/past-performance-is-not-indicative-of-future-results/

Upcoming appearances:

* All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing, Apr 13,
https://www.changinghands.com/event/april2021/virtual-writing-workshop-cory-doctorow-all-teachable-things-i-know-about-writing

* Interop: Self-Determination vs Dystopia (FITC), Apr 19-21,
https://fitc.ca/presentation/interop/

* Book launch for Bruce Sterling's Robot Artists & Black Swans (Book
People), Apr 27,
https://www.bookpeople.com/event/virtual-event-bruce-sterling-robot-artists-black-swans

Recent appearances:

* The Right to Repair Movement, Monopolies, and Solarpunk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmosdDCrL-4

* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be
worried (Podsongs)
https://anchor.fm/podsongs/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-the-Surveillance-State--digital-monopolies--and-why-we-should-be-worried-eso43k

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

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
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "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:

* The Shakedown, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics,
Beacon Press 2022

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially,
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
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