onoira [they/them]

you mean the migration ‘crisis’ and collapse in ‘“living” standards’ which were brought on by US-EU neoliberalism driving down the standard of living in other parts of the world before coming home to roost?

there are certainly ways of reversing direction, but people in the core would sooner choose literal fascism before giving up their imperial lifestyle. they use the IMF to politically terraform ‘underdeveloped nations’ and export their own harms so they can say they’re ‘meeting climate goals’, and then complain about all the emissions and migrants coming from those countries which are ravaged to supply their hyperconsumption. the same migrants which predominantly staff their service, medical and technology sectors to prop up their precious treats and their oh-so superior ‘knowledge economies’.

voting for fascism is the individualistic choice which lets them keep their treats and means they don’t need to interact with their neighbours or advocate for real change. it’s easier to blame the victims of their actions than to cut the DARVO shit and accept responsibility.

what a harmful, elitist, high technocratic, economistic, no-true-scotsman take: someone who doesn’t view the world in pure quantitative terms and understand precisely a dialect of jargon has no valuable insight?

why ‘productivity’ specifically? why not GDP? or GPI? or SPI? or HDI? or HPI? or GBMI (Goodhart’s Bad Metric Index)?

you’re right that this character wouldn’t be part of a ‘solution’, under current conditions, because it would be formulated by a well-funded political thinktank, specialising in number-go-big policy, tacked to the end of a dredged report with absolutely no involvement from measly imperial subjects.

this assumes that:

1. all workers are ‘producing’ anything.
2. all workers are serving real needs.
3. the difference between supply and demand is really so low that any dip in ‘productivity’ would harm anything more than an executive’s RoI.
4. that the threat of this financial ‘harm’ necessitates more work.

with the increase in ‘productivity’ over the last century, if we reduced our expectations, and stopped letting monopoly money run our entire society, and stopped burning surplus resources because it’s ‘unsold’ or would drive down prices: we wouldn’t need to work even 20% what is expected of us now.

Elaine Dezenski, senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in the U.S.

hmmm, i wonder if this ‘researcher’ for a warhawk and Israeli lobbying organisation is trustworthy!

FDD was founded shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001. In the initial documents filed for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, FDD’s stated mission was to “provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations”. Later documents described its mission as “to conduct research and provide education on international terrorism and related issues”.

‘the Center on Economic and Financial Power’ sounds like a ministry from Nineteen Eighty-Four.

i also find this quote amusing:

“Despite the problems for host countries and the large portfolio of failing loans for China, Beijing has still been successful at building influence across authoritarian-leaning regimes, who are eager to follow the Chinese model of single-party state control and high-tech domestic repression,” Dezenski says

the pot calling the kettle black. let me reword this:

“Despite the problems for host countries and the large portfolio of failing loans for the [United States|IMF], [Washington|Davos] has still been successful at building influence across authoritarian-leaning regimes, who are eager to follow the [American|Western|liberal] model of corporate state control and high-tech domestic repression,” someone says