The protectionist narrative is more myth than fact.
Economists on the Run
Paul Krugman and other mainstream trade experts are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization: It hurt American workers far more than they thought…
A fact-based worldview for all | Gapminder
We live in a globalized world, not only in terms of trade and migration. More people than ever care about global development. But most people have severe misconceptions about contemporary global development. We know, because we have tested people’s knowledge. One of the main reasons for this is that students don’t learn to understand the world based on statistics and facts. Instead, we have a dramatic worldview formed by outdated school books and sensationalist news-stories. People intuitively believe that most things are getting worse. The dramatic worldview leads to irrational decisions by individuals, nonprofits, governments and business. For the first time in human history reliable statistics exist. There’s data for almost every aspect of global development. The data shows a very different picture: a world where most things improve; a world that is not divided; and a world where the fast population growth will soon be over. The world has never been less bad. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
China may have accessed Mythos
It wouldn’t be the first breach of Anthropic’s powerful AI.
Is China doing "colonialism" in Africa?
Western claims are contradicted by empirical evidence.
Book: The Face of Imperialism — The Michael Parenti Political Archive
In the last half-century we have witnessed a dramatic expansion of American corporate power into every corner of the world, accompanied by an equally awesome growth in U.S. military power. These phenomena are often treated as independent developments. Here, Michael Parenti brings them together in a sharp critique aimed as much at errant liberals and certain Marxists as at the dominant political actors who have perpetrated the imperial lie.
WSJ Article Claiming China Has Matched Anthropic Is Obvious Nonsense
The Wall Street Journal printed an outright false headline and heavily misleading story claiming this, which of course was uncritically amplified by the usual suspects.
The Myth of Capitalism Exposed
We need a revolution to cast off monopolies and restore entrepreneurial freedom. First of two excerpts from “The Myth of Capitalism.”
Capitalism, Inequality, and the Myth of Catch-Up Development
Prevailing narratives in international development hold that poorer countries can and will "catch-up" with richer countries through the process of
AI skeptic Ed Zitron says Industry is scamming us into poverty
Ed Zitron joins The 1600 to bust the myths and fairy tales coming from our AI overlords.
Edward Said’s Orientalism and Its Afterlives
Edward Said’s Orientalism instilled an anti-imperial sensibility into an entire generation of Western scholars. But even while it castigated the imperial project, its actual analysis didn’t give us the intellectual resources to overturn it.
Welcome to the new age of geoeconomics
Tech, trade, finance and military policies are mingling in a manner not seen during the neoliberal era
New Capitalism II: Compositional vs income inequality
Are all class-based societies unequal?
The great myth of empire collapse | Aeon Essays
Societal downfalls loom large in history and popular culture but, for the 99 per cent, collapse often had its upsides
How The US Took Over The World
Does modernisation erase cultural difference – or amplify it? | Psyche Ideas
We understandably fear the flattening effect of modernity. But global data from China to Peru tells a hopeful story
if there's one conclusion that the study of both labor history and imperialism converge on, it is that the richest people in the world are happy to burn money on control, power, impunity. and the "everything is about profit" version of anti-capitalism does not survive serious contact with either
Leonard Pierce
Adding to this thread: it’s a common mistake (I’ve made it myself, many times) to think of the motivations of the capitalist elites as essentially mercantilist: that is, that they are largely still motivated *entirely* by profit and loss, selling product, etc. This has not been true for a while.
