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Free Airport Parking for Congress: A Reminder that the Rich Write the Rules » Sociological Images
This little perk, saving congress members time and $22-a-day parking fees, is a great example of the way that privilege translates into being “above society.” The more power, connections, and money you have, the more likely you are to be able to break both the legal and social contract with impunity. Sometimes this just means getting away with breaking the law (e.g., the fact that, compared to the crimes of the poor and working classes, we do relatively little to identify and prosecute so-called “white collar” criminals and tend to give them lighter or suspended sentences when we do). But these perks are also often above board; they’re built into the system. And who builds the system again?
In other words, some of the richest people in the world get free parking at the airport because they’re the ones making the rules. I like this as a concrete example, but be assured that there is a whole universe of such rules and, like this sudden revelation about free parking, most of them go entirely unnoticed by most of us most of the time.
automation isn’t an inevitable result of capitalism. If the workforce is pliant enough and surplus value extraction high enough, a very low level of machinery will be deployed. This is the case with so-called artisanal mining in Africa, where individuals (often children) with meager tools hop into pits to scrape out minerals by hand. Automation has proven unprofitable enough that grocery stores are replacing self-checkouts with old-fashioned human beings again.
Automation’s prime function is to destroy the ability of workers to control the pace of work. The results are bloody. As Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin document in Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, while management attributed productivity gains in the auto industry to automation, black workers credited “niggermation”: the practice of forcing them to work at high speeds on dangerous machinery. Such shocking terminology underscores a crucial truth. Robots weren’t responsible for those cars; rather, it was brutalized black bodies. A 1973 study estimated that sixty-five auto workers died per day from work-related injuries, a higher casualty rate than that of American soldiers in Vietnam. Those who survived often suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. This bloodbath is directly attributable to the disempowering effects of automation. Had workers retained control, they wouldn’t have worked at such a deadly pace.
Why Are People with Health Insurance Going Bankrupt? « naked capitalism
[T]here’s several levels of insurance coverage [available under ObamaCare:] 90/10, where the insurance company pays 90 percent, consumer pays 10 percent; 80/20; 70/30; 60/40. The subsidy provided by Obamacare to people who can’t afford insurance will only cover 70/30 plans. So when you get a serious illness, you’re paying 30 percent of the cost of that health care.
Now, what’s really bad about this is that prior to Obamacare, some of the state insurance regulators were pushing insurance coverers to a higher level, where they would provide more coverage rather than less. Obamacare has now put it into law that 60/40 is okay and 70/30 is what the government will pay for. And so the 80/20 and 90/10′s become less common. So you’re going to see more and more people with under-insurance and not going to see lack of insurance completely go away.
You don’t have that much time to work with. You are going to get a very few number of things done. You are going to get way fewer things done than you think you’re going to get done. And those things will take you much longer than you plan for.
- How the Productivity Myth is Killing Your Startup — about work — Medium
Conservatives have realized that having a choke-hold on the narrative and maintaining constant pressure is the best way to ensure that, even if the facts eventually betray them, they’ll have framed the event to their advantage. The Newton massacre, which unequivocally concerned the ready availability of unnecessarily high-powered weapons, is now a marginal debate about maybe closing gun-show loopholes and never doing anything about mental healthcare deficiencies because that would be communism. But ask a conservative and he’ll insist that his views aren’t being represented in the mainstream media — because he’s incapable of understanding that a system in which liberals on television ineffectually call for change while “liberals” in Congress noisily twiddle their thumbs is the perfect mechanism for maintaining conservative policy. I’m using the term “conservative” in the broader sense of “conserving structures as they currently exist,” but given that the country’s been stumbling into Sharia for the better part of five years now, how does erecting such a system constitute anything other than a conservative victory?
- Lawyers, Guns & Money (via abbyjean)
CHART OF THE DAY: The Difference Between What You Share And What People Want To Read
The stories people share aren’t necessarily the stories their friends want to read, according to data from 33Across, which tracks links for online publications.
It found that people are sharing science related content more often than other content category. However, science content is clicked on significantly less than the content that is less popular for sharing, like politics, news, or celebrity gossip.
There’s some rationale behind the split in what’s read and what’s shared. People will want to share science content because it makes them seem smart. People will click on celebrity content because no one will know.
Full Story: Business Insider
Lost this one in my drafts/queue shuffle awhile back, however it is still worth sharing.
Hip-hop is now the lingua franca and the background music for an entire generation of kids. And one of its dynamics — the idea of a marginalized group rapping about that marginalization — has remained essentially intact as hip-hop has conquered the world, in part because marginalization is the narrative that teenagers everywhere fit themselves into.
If something is everywhere and everyone trafficks in it, who gets to decide when it’s real or not? What happens when hip-hop stops being black culture and becomes simply youth culture?
- Gene Demby on the demographic shift in America via When Our Kids Own America (via nprmusic)
White privilege is knowing that if the bomber turns out to be white, he or she will be viewed as an exception to an otherwise non-white rule, an aberration, an anomaly, and that he or she will be able to join the ranks of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph and Joe Stack and George Metesky and Byron De La Beckwith and Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton and Herman Frank Cash and Robert Chambliss and James von Brunn and Robert Mathews and David_Lane and Michael F. Griffin and Paul Hill and John Salvi and James Kopp and Luke Helder and James David Adkisson and Scott Roeder and Shelley Shannon and Wade Michael Page and Byron Williams and Kevin Harpham and William Krar and Judith Bruey and Edward Feltus and Raymond Kirk Dillard and Adam Lynn Cunningham and Bonnell Hughes and Randall Garrett Cole and James Ray McElroy and Michael Gorbey and Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman and Frederick Thomas and Paul Ross Evans and Matt Goldsby and Jimmy Simmons and Kathy Simmons and Kaye Wiggins and Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe and David McMenemy and Bobby Joe Rogers and Francis Grady and Demetrius Van Crocker and Floyd Raymond Looker, among the pantheon of white people who engage in politically motivated violence meant to terrorize and kill, but whose actions result in the assumption of absolutely nothing about white people generally, or white Christians in particular.
- Terrorism and Privilege: Understanding the Power of Whiteness » Sociological Images
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