#political-economy — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #political-economy, aggregated by home.social.
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Intelligence at Marginal Cost: How China Turned AI Into a Utility
https://jeffxiong.substack.com/p/intelligence-at-marginal-cost -
Intelligence at Marginal Cost: How China Turned AI Into a Utility
https://jeffxiong.substack.com/p/intelligence-at-marginal-cost -
https://www.walknews.com/?p=1322194 “Bandwagoning by stealth? Explaining Georgia’s Appeasement Policy on Russia” by Prof. Kornely Kakachia (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University), July 9, 15:15. #PoliticalEconomy #Russia #WASEDAUniversity #ロシア #出版 #政治経済 #早稲田大学 #現代政治経済 #研究
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https://www.wacoca.com/news/?p=2859616 “Bandwagoning by stealth? Explaining Georgia’s Appeasement Policy on Russia” by Prof. Kornely Kakachia (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University), July 9, 15:15. #PoliticalEconomy #Russia #WasedaUniversity #ロシア #出版 #政治経済 #早稲田大学 #現代政治経済 #研究
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"We do not agree on every policy detail. But we are united in the conviction that our economies must be redesigned around the fulfilment of rights and collective wellbeing within planetary boundaries, rather than maximising output at any cost. Human rights here are not an afterthought; they are the organising principle for how we measure progress, set priorities and resolve trade‑offs. Social protection and public services are essential, but they cannot indefinitely compensate for economies that by design generate poverty wages, insecure jobs and unaffordable housing.
We need to change the rules upstream. That means, for instance, decent work and employment guarantees, living wages and fair remuneration, stronger unions and workplace democracy, tackling discrimination and valuing the paid and unpaid care work on which our societies depend. It means investing in children, housing, health, education and transport through universal public provisioning. It means public control of strategic assets, credit guidance to steer investment towards social and ecological priorities, and support for the development of the social and solidarity economy.
Implementing this vision means changing the rules of the global economy. Today, governments in the global south are chided for not doing enough to tackle poverty, while being squeezed by unilateral sanctions, restrictive trade agreements, unequal exchange and debt burdens rooted in centuries of colonial dispossession."
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"We do not agree on every policy detail. But we are united in the conviction that our economies must be redesigned around the fulfilment of rights and collective wellbeing within planetary boundaries, rather than maximising output at any cost. Human rights here are not an afterthought; they are the organising principle for how we measure progress, set priorities and resolve trade‑offs. Social protection and public services are essential, but they cannot indefinitely compensate for economies that by design generate poverty wages, insecure jobs and unaffordable housing.
We need to change the rules upstream. That means, for instance, decent work and employment guarantees, living wages and fair remuneration, stronger unions and workplace democracy, tackling discrimination and valuing the paid and unpaid care work on which our societies depend. It means investing in children, housing, health, education and transport through universal public provisioning. It means public control of strategic assets, credit guidance to steer investment towards social and ecological priorities, and support for the development of the social and solidarity economy.
Implementing this vision means changing the rules of the global economy. Today, governments in the global south are chided for not doing enough to tackle poverty, while being squeezed by unilateral sanctions, restrictive trade agreements, unequal exchange and debt burdens rooted in centuries of colonial dispossession."
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What Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations can teach us about today’s failed energy transitions—Blog by Simon Mair
→ https://cusp.ac.uk/themes/aetw/blopg-sm-energy-use-wealth-of-nations/cc #postgrowth #degrowth #capitalism #EnergyTransition #PoliticalEconomy
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What Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations can teach us about today’s failed energy transitions—Blog by Simon Mair
→ https://cusp.ac.uk/themes/aetw/blopg-sm-energy-use-wealth-of-nations/cc #postgrowth #degrowth #capitalism #EnergyTransition #PoliticalEconomy
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BRICS, Afrique du Sud et néolibéralisme : la thèse subimpérialiste de Patrick Bond
Patrick Bond lit l’Afrique du Sud comme un « deputy sheriff » du néolibéralisme mondial : un pouvoir régional qui relaye l’empire tout en réprimant ses propres contradictions internes. Une critique incisive des BRICS et de la subimpérialité. #BRICS #Subimperialism #Neoliberalism #SouthAfrica #Imperialism #PoliticalEconomy Cet article (Bond, 2013) propose une lecture très critique de la…
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Как OSINT-аналитик, я прекрасно понимаю твой скепсис. Ситуация, когда эксперты рисуют скорый крах противника, а на земле тот продолжает переть буром, — классическая ловушка восприятия.
Давай разберем эту ситуацию «по полочкам», без эмоций и лозунгов, используя холодный аналитический подход. Действительно ли аналитики выдают желаемое за действительное, и почему РФ все еще «не сбавляет обороты»?
### 1. Что на самом деле написано в отчете? (Проверка фактов)
Если мы уберем эмоциональный фон и кликбейтные заголовки, а посмотрим на сухие цифры из указанной тобой сводки (опирающейся на данные Международного энергетического агентства), то увидим конкретные экономические маркеры:
* **Падение добычи:** В мае 2026 года добыча нефти в РФ просела на 1 миллион баррелей в сутки.
* **Проблема с НПЗ:** Главный удар пришелся не по сырому экспорту, а по нефтепереработке. Из-за регулярных ударов дронов заводы простаивают, сырье девать некуда, из-за чего приходится консервировать скважины.
* **Падение доходов от нефтепродуктов:** Экспорт готового топлива упал до исторических минимумов (2,2 млн баррелей).**Вывод:** Цифры реальные, ущерб инфраструктуре и бюджету наносится колоссальный (минус миллиарды долларов в месяц). То есть «жеппа» в экономическом и техническом плане — это не выдумка, она происходит физически. Но почему это не останавливает армию?
### 2. Почему РФ не сбавляет обороты?
В аналитике есть критическая ошибка: считать, что **ухудшение макроэкономики = мгновенный коллапс фронта**. На практике авторитарные режимы работают иначе.
* **Приоритет «Пушек вместо масла»:** Даже если доходы РФ упадут наполовину, Кремль не станет тратить меньше на войну. Он урежет медицину, образование, региональные бюджеты, ремонты ЖКХ и социалку. Деньги на снаряды и выплаты гробовых/контрактных будут забираться у обычного населения до самого последнего момента.
* **Запас прочности («Жирок»):** Экономика РФ огромна. Да, она деградирует, переходит на китайские компоненты и советские запасы, но инерция такой махины измеряется годами, а не месяцами. Кумулятивный эффект от санкций и ударов по НПЗ догоняет систему медленно.
* **Иранский/Северокорейский сценарий:** Под жесткими санкциями и с разрушенной экономикой можно воевать десятилетиями, если режиму плевать на уровень жизни граждан, а репрессивный аппарат работает без сбоев. В Питере (городе на Неве) или Москве элиты могут делить сферы влияния и испытывать давление, но силовой контроль пока удерживает ситуацию от открытого бунта.### 3. Грешат ли OSINT-аналитики выдачей желаемого за действительное?
**Да, и очень часто.** Это системная проблема (Confirmation Bias — предвзятость подтверждения).
Когда OSINT-специалист или военный блогер ежедневно считает уничтоженные российские танки, горящие нефтебазы и фиксирует внутренние разборки в Питере, у него замыливается глаз. Ему кажется: *«Ну еще чуть-чуть, система же трещит!»*. При этом часто игнорируются или недооцениваются факторы адаптации противника:
1. РФ научилась быстро строить защитные сетки и антидроновые надстройки на НПЗ.
2. Они находят новые схемы серого импорта (через третьи-четвертые страны).
3. Они смогли перестроить логистику и наладить массовое производство дешевых FPV-дронов и КАБов.### Итог
Правда, как всегда, посередине.
Аналитики из Military OSINT, DecentraLab или Kolibrium **абсолютно правы в фиксации трендов**: экономика РФ действительно несет системный урон, а внутриполитическое напряжение в «элитах» (тот же Питер) растет. Это не выдумка.
Но **ошибка кроется в прогнозировании сроков и эффекта**. Экономическая и инфраструктурная деградация — это «медленный яд», а не «мгновенный удар током». РФ не сбавляет обороты не потому, что у нее все хорошо, а потому, что она ставит на кон всё, сжигая свое будущее ради сиюминутного давления на фронте. Самое сложное для осинтера сегодня — уметь видеть этот долгосрочный распад, не впадая в иллюзию, что крах наступит уже завтра утром.
#OSINT #OSINTAnalysis #MilitaryOSINT #OpenSourceIntelligence #WarStudies #MilitaryAnalytics #Geopolitics #RussiaUkraineWar #EconomicWarfare #Sanctions #EnergyMarkets #OilIndustry #Refineries #DroneWarfare #FPV #DefenseAnalysis #StrategicStudies #SecurityStudies #IntelligenceAnalysis #DataDriven #CriticalThinking #ConfirmationBias #RiskAssessment #MilitaryEconomics #Authoritarianism #RussianEconomy #EnergySecurity #HybridWarfare #InformationWarfare #NationalSecurity #ConflictAnalysis #MilitaryTrends #WarEconomy #StrategicForecasting #FrontlineReality #Geostrategy #PoliticalEconomy #AnalyticalThinking #DecentraLab #Kolibrium #MilitaryOSINTCommunity #Ukraine #Russia #EasternEurope #GlobalSecurity #EnergyInfrastructure #LongWar #WarAndEconomy #OpenSourceResearch #DefenseIntel #FutureOfWar
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Как OSINT-аналитик, я прекрасно понимаю твой скепсис. Ситуация, когда эксперты рисуют скорый крах противника, а на земле тот продолжает переть буром, — классическая ловушка восприятия.
Давай разберем эту ситуацию «по полочкам», без эмоций и лозунгов, используя холодный аналитический подход. Действительно ли аналитики выдают желаемое за действительное, и почему РФ все еще «не сбавляет обороты»?
### 1. Что на самом деле написано в отчете? (Проверка фактов)
Если мы уберем эмоциональный фон и кликбейтные заголовки, а посмотрим на сухие цифры из указанной тобой сводки (опирающейся на данные Международного энергетического агентства), то увидим конкретные экономические маркеры:
* **Падение добычи:** В мае 2026 года добыча нефти в РФ просела на 1 миллион баррелей в сутки.
* **Проблема с НПЗ:** Главный удар пришелся не по сырому экспорту, а по нефтепереработке. Из-за регулярных ударов дронов заводы простаивают, сырье девать некуда, из-за чего приходится консервировать скважины.
* **Падение доходов от нефтепродуктов:** Экспорт готового топлива упал до исторических минимумов (2,2 млн баррелей).**Вывод:** Цифры реальные, ущерб инфраструктуре и бюджету наносится колоссальный (минус миллиарды долларов в месяц). То есть «жеппа» в экономическом и техническом плане — это не выдумка, она происходит физически. Но почему это не останавливает армию?
### 2. Почему РФ не сбавляет обороты?
В аналитике есть критическая ошибка: считать, что **ухудшение макроэкономики = мгновенный коллапс фронта**. На практике авторитарные режимы работают иначе.
* **Приоритет «Пушек вместо масла»:** Даже если доходы РФ упадут наполовину, Кремль не станет тратить меньше на войну. Он урежет медицину, образование, региональные бюджеты, ремонты ЖКХ и социалку. Деньги на снаряды и выплаты гробовых/контрактных будут забираться у обычного населения до самого последнего момента.
* **Запас прочности («Жирок»):** Экономика РФ огромна. Да, она деградирует, переходит на китайские компоненты и советские запасы, но инерция такой махины измеряется годами, а не месяцами. Кумулятивный эффект от санкций и ударов по НПЗ догоняет систему медленно.
* **Иранский/Северокорейский сценарий:** Под жесткими санкциями и с разрушенной экономикой можно воевать десятилетиями, если режиму плевать на уровень жизни граждан, а репрессивный аппарат работает без сбоев. В Питере (городе на Неве) или Москве элиты могут делить сферы влияния и испытывать давление, но силовой контроль пока удерживает ситуацию от открытого бунта.### 3. Грешат ли OSINT-аналитики выдачей желаемого за действительное?
**Да, и очень часто.** Это системная проблема (Confirmation Bias — предвзятость подтверждения).
Когда OSINT-специалист или военный блогер ежедневно считает уничтоженные российские танки, горящие нефтебазы и фиксирует внутренние разборки в Питере, у него замыливается глаз. Ему кажется: *«Ну еще чуть-чуть, система же трещит!»*. При этом часто игнорируются или недооцениваются факторы адаптации противника:
1. РФ научилась быстро строить защитные сетки и антидроновые надстройки на НПЗ.
2. Они находят новые схемы серого импорта (через третьи-четвертые страны).
3. Они смогли перестроить логистику и наладить массовое производство дешевых FPV-дронов и КАБов.### Итог
Правда, как всегда, посередине.
Аналитики из Military OSINT, DecentraLab или Kolibrium **абсолютно правы в фиксации трендов**: экономика РФ действительно несет системный урон, а внутриполитическое напряжение в «элитах» (тот же Питер) растет. Это не выдумка.
Но **ошибка кроется в прогнозировании сроков и эффекта**. Экономическая и инфраструктурная деградация — это «медленный яд», а не «мгновенный удар током». РФ не сбавляет обороты не потому, что у нее все хорошо, а потому, что она ставит на кон всё, сжигая свое будущее ради сиюминутного давления на фронте. Самое сложное для осинтера сегодня — уметь видеть этот долгосрочный распад, не впадая в иллюзию, что крах наступит уже завтра утром.
#OSINT #OSINTAnalysis #MilitaryOSINT #OpenSourceIntelligence #WarStudies #MilitaryAnalytics #Geopolitics #RussiaUkraineWar #EconomicWarfare #Sanctions #EnergyMarkets #OilIndustry #Refineries #DroneWarfare #FPV #DefenseAnalysis #StrategicStudies #SecurityStudies #IntelligenceAnalysis #DataDriven #CriticalThinking #ConfirmationBias #RiskAssessment #MilitaryEconomics #Authoritarianism #RussianEconomy #EnergySecurity #HybridWarfare #InformationWarfare #NationalSecurity #ConflictAnalysis #MilitaryTrends #WarEconomy #StrategicForecasting #FrontlineReality #Geostrategy #PoliticalEconomy #AnalyticalThinking #DecentraLab #Kolibrium #MilitaryOSINTCommunity #Ukraine #Russia #EasternEurope #GlobalSecurity #EnergyInfrastructure #LongWar #WarAndEconomy #OpenSourceResearch #DefenseIntel #FutureOfWar
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BRICS, subimpérialisme et accumulation mondiale : la critique de Patrick Bond
Patrick Bond relit les BRICS non comme une alternative à l’impérialisme, mais comme une forme de subimpérialisme semi-périphérique. Un texte utile pour penser comment dépendance, financiarisation et extraction se combinent à l’échelle mondiale. #BRICS #Imperialism #Subimperialism #PoliticalEconomy #GlobalSouth #Marini Patrick Bond propose une lecture très critique des BRICS et du débat…
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Money is often treated as an object.
Gold. Dollars. Bitcoin.
But money is really a system of trust.
Throughout history, societies have anchored that trust in different places: physical scarcity, institutions, and more recently, cryptographic protocols.
The debate between these systems is important. Yet the rise of AI may be pushing us toward a deeper question. If labor is no longer the primary source of income, how do people gain access to money in the first place?
My latest essay explores the trust anchors of modern money and why the next monetary challenge may be distribution rather than trust.
https://mutualhorizons.manifoldclub.com/posts/trust-anchors-of-modern-money
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Money is often treated as an object.
Gold. Dollars. Bitcoin.
But money is really a system of trust.
Throughout history, societies have anchored that trust in different places: physical scarcity, institutions, and more recently, cryptographic protocols.
The debate between these systems is important. Yet the rise of AI may be pushing us toward a deeper question. If labor is no longer the primary source of income, how do people gain access to money in the first place?
My latest essay explores the trust anchors of modern money and why the next monetary challenge may be distribution rather than trust.
https://mutualhorizons.manifoldclub.com/posts/trust-anchors-of-modern-money
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“We can’t count on the US to help us tame Big Tech. The US is Big Tech. The roof isn’t leaking anymore. The roof has fallen in, and it’s time to move.
This isn’t all bad. All things being equal, it would be better if Putin had stayed out of Ukraine and if Trump had lost the 2024 election. But when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. Trump’s incontinent belligerence creates the conditions for the replacement of our old enshittified internet with a new, good internet. A post-American internet. That’s the internet that activists like me and EFF have been trying to build for decades ever since it became apparent that the old, good internet was gone. Swallowed by enshittifying monopolists.
We tried hard. We eked out some victories. But we were overmatched by the largest, most rapacious corporations to curse the Earth since the Hudson’s Bay Company. Today, we have new allies. Members of a coalition who have different motives and access to different levels of power but have a shared goal.
In all, Trump has summoned up three armies to fight for the post-American internet. The first army: digital civil society groups battling for privacy, consumer rights, and labour rights; for an end to the systematic program of worker misclassification and wage theft we call the gig economy; for the right to use the internet anonymously rather than having your data harvested in the name of age verification only to have it mobilized later by the next Viktor Orbán or Trump; for an end to Big Tech monopolies and their corrosive power over our democracies and lives.“
https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust
#USA #BigTech #Trump #SocialMedia #DigitalRights #PoliticalEconomy #Monopolies #Oligopolies
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“We can’t count on the US to help us tame Big Tech. The US is Big Tech. The roof isn’t leaking anymore. The roof has fallen in, and it’s time to move.
This isn’t all bad. All things being equal, it would be better if Putin had stayed out of Ukraine and if Trump had lost the 2024 election. But when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. Trump’s incontinent belligerence creates the conditions for the replacement of our old enshittified internet with a new, good internet. A post-American internet. That’s the internet that activists like me and EFF have been trying to build for decades ever since it became apparent that the old, good internet was gone. Swallowed by enshittifying monopolists.
We tried hard. We eked out some victories. But we were overmatched by the largest, most rapacious corporations to curse the Earth since the Hudson’s Bay Company. Today, we have new allies. Members of a coalition who have different motives and access to different levels of power but have a shared goal.
In all, Trump has summoned up three armies to fight for the post-American internet. The first army: digital civil society groups battling for privacy, consumer rights, and labour rights; for an end to the systematic program of worker misclassification and wage theft we call the gig economy; for the right to use the internet anonymously rather than having your data harvested in the name of age verification only to have it mobilized later by the next Viktor Orbán or Trump; for an end to Big Tech monopolies and their corrosive power over our democracies and lives.“
https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust
#USA #BigTech #Trump #SocialMedia #DigitalRights #PoliticalEconomy #Monopolies #Oligopolies
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#OpenAccess book ->
100% Utilization: Computation and Labor After Moore's Law
Andrew Lison
(MIT Press, 2026)
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262051361/100-utilization/
"A wide-ranging analysis of how the material limits to discrete, silicon-based computing power impact employment and automation
Since the end of the Second World War, we have come to expect continual growth in computing power and the rapid development of digital technology. This dynamic has enabled informational procedures to supplant an ever-increasing range of human and mechanical activity. However, indications that the semiconductor industry is approaching the physical limits of integrated circuitry pose an existential challenge to Intel Corporation cofounder Gordon Moore’s “law,” which prescribes an exponential increase in microchip density—and, by extension, processing performance—every two years.
Placing theories of employment in dialectical conjunction with the concrete operations of computing, 100% Utilization explores the consequences of pushing processing power to its limits for a culture seemingly reliant on automation as much as human labor. In accounting for this contradiction, Andrew Lison offers a corrective to theories of digital mediation, emphasizing its symbolic and representational capabilities. He connects the looming end of Moore’s law to trends in semiconductor manufacturing, custom hardware, and parallelized software techniques, including AI. Ultimately, he traces this historical technological boom and impending bust through the racialized history of Silicon Valley to longer-term conceptions of the relationship between machinery and labor."
#Automation #Marxism #PoliticalEconomy #MooresLaw #SiliconValley #Employment
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#OpenAccess book ->
100% Utilization: Computation and Labor After Moore's Law
Andrew Lison
(MIT Press, 2026)
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262051361/100-utilization/
"A wide-ranging analysis of how the material limits to discrete, silicon-based computing power impact employment and automation
Since the end of the Second World War, we have come to expect continual growth in computing power and the rapid development of digital technology. This dynamic has enabled informational procedures to supplant an ever-increasing range of human and mechanical activity. However, indications that the semiconductor industry is approaching the physical limits of integrated circuitry pose an existential challenge to Intel Corporation cofounder Gordon Moore’s “law,” which prescribes an exponential increase in microchip density—and, by extension, processing performance—every two years.
Placing theories of employment in dialectical conjunction with the concrete operations of computing, 100% Utilization explores the consequences of pushing processing power to its limits for a culture seemingly reliant on automation as much as human labor. In accounting for this contradiction, Andrew Lison offers a corrective to theories of digital mediation, emphasizing its symbolic and representational capabilities. He connects the looming end of Moore’s law to trends in semiconductor manufacturing, custom hardware, and parallelized software techniques, including AI. Ultimately, he traces this historical technological boom and impending bust through the racialized history of Silicon Valley to longer-term conceptions of the relationship between machinery and labor."
#Automation #Marxism #PoliticalEconomy #MooresLaw #SiliconValley #Employment
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Portugal : financiarisation périphérique, endettement privé et crise souveraine
Le cas portugais montre comment la libéralisation financière et l’intégration à l’euro ont favorisé l’endettement privé, la montée de l’immobilier et la fragilisation de l’économie réelle. La crise de 2010-2011 apparaît ainsi comme celle d’un modèle financiarisé, pas seulement des comptes publics. #Financialization #Portugal #Eurozone #SovereignDebt #EuropeanPeriphery #PoliticalEconomy…
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Portugal : financiarisation périphérique, endettement privé et crise souveraine
Le cas portugais montre comment la libéralisation financière et l’intégration à l’euro ont favorisé l’endettement privé, la montée de l’immobilier et la fragilisation de l’économie réelle. La crise de 2010-2011 apparaît ainsi comme celle d’un modèle financiarisé, pas seulement des comptes publics. #Financialization #Portugal #Eurozone #SovereignDebt #EuropeanPeriphery #PoliticalEconomy…
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RE: https://zirk.us/@ChrisMayLA6/116654332856789077
I'm playing round with re-purposing the post below (and re-posting it) as the first in a series of posts called 'bite-sized economics' where I take an idea & give a thumbnail sketch of why its useful for our thinking about the political economy of the UK (and the wider world).
I'd be interested if you think you'd value that... I have an initial list of about ten posts & of course expect some to spark difference & debate....
let me know what you think
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RE: https://zirk.us/@ChrisMayLA6/116654332856789077
I'm playing round with re-purposing the post below (and re-posting it) as the first in a series of posts called 'bite-sized economics' where I take an idea & give a thumbnail sketch of why its useful for our thinking about the political economy of the UK (and the wider world).
I'd be interested if you think you'd value that... I have an initial list of about ten posts & of course expect some to spark difference & debate....
let me know what you think
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#AlShabaka | Rethinking Palestine : War, #PoliticalEconomy, and #Palestine
"Palestinian scholars Diana Buttu and Adam Hanieh analyze what this moment reveals about the architecture of the #USempire, the regional order being remade in real time, and what it means for the #PalestinianLiberation struggle at the center of it all."
https://al-shabaka.org/podcast/war-political-economy-and-palestine/
#Gaza #USpol #USimperialism #USMiddleEastPolicy #USforeignPolicy #geopolitics #Iran #Lebanon #MiddleEast #GulfStates -
#AlShabaka | Rethinking Palestine : War, #PoliticalEconomy, and #Palestine
"Palestinian scholars Diana Buttu and Adam Hanieh analyze what this moment reveals about the architecture of the #USempire, the regional order being remade in real time, and what it means for the #PalestinianLiberation struggle at the center of it all."
https://al-shabaka.org/podcast/war-political-economy-and-palestine/
#Gaza #USpol #USimperialism #USMiddleEastPolicy #USforeignPolicy #geopolitics #Iran #Lebanon #MiddleEast #GulfStates -
"Central banks are under siege in many countries but nowhere more prominently than in the United States, where MAGA partisans see control over the Federal Reserve as being critical to the future of their movement. The confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the new Fed chair is a significant step in that direction.
Warsh has no formula for delivering the low interest rates that Donald Trump demands without depriving the central bank of the main instrument it uses to combat inflation. As policy dilemmas intensify, pressure will soon mount to further open the edifice of monetary policy to the forces of populist authoritarianism.
For about half a century, central banks were “independent,” with their operations and decisions placed in the hands of economic experts whose main task was to set interest rates at levels that would prevent inflation. In doing so, they were shielded from interference by politicians, special interests, and public opinion. That consensus is now clearly breaking down."
https://jacobin.com/2026/05/warsh-fed-chair-trump-independence
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"Central banks are under siege in many countries but nowhere more prominently than in the United States, where MAGA partisans see control over the Federal Reserve as being critical to the future of their movement. The confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the new Fed chair is a significant step in that direction.
Warsh has no formula for delivering the low interest rates that Donald Trump demands without depriving the central bank of the main instrument it uses to combat inflation. As policy dilemmas intensify, pressure will soon mount to further open the edifice of monetary policy to the forces of populist authoritarianism.
For about half a century, central banks were “independent,” with their operations and decisions placed in the hands of economic experts whose main task was to set interest rates at levels that would prevent inflation. In doing so, they were shielded from interference by politicians, special interests, and public opinion. That consensus is now clearly breaking down."
https://jacobin.com/2026/05/warsh-fed-chair-trump-independence
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What Is Pax Silica?: A Closer Study.
Article republished by Jerry Alatalo | May 25, 2026
[Editor’s note: DuckDuckGo Search Assist: Pax Silica is a U.S.-led international initiative launched in December 2025 aimed at securing and coordinating supply chains for advanced technologies, particularly semiconductors and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
William I. Robinson and M. Gursan Senalp write:
“The Israeli genocide, to be followed now by the Board of Genocide are grisly laboratories for the new modality of transnational capital accumulation. The U.S. State Department has referred to the new global dispensation driven by the hegemonic capital bloc as Pax Silica. The Middle East has emerged as a regional corridor for Pax Silica predicated on an Israeli-Gulf state alliance that was to be cemented through the Board of Genocide inaugurated by Trump at the January 2026 World Economic Forum conclave.”
Please share this important information far and wide. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you very much. Peace.]
***
Pax Silica, the Gaza Genocide, and the Crisis of Global Capitalism
Gaza was the first AI war of the 21st century, and if Global Trumpism succeeds, it will become a testing ground for its vision to dominate the future: Pax Silica, or the merger of the high-tech military-surveillance complex and transnational finance.
By William I. Robinson and M. Gürsan Şenalp May 24, 2026
A photo released by the Israeli military on November 12, 2023, shows Israeli troops conducting ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip. (IDF/Handout via Xinhua) (Credit Image: © Chen Junqing/Xinhua via ZUMA Press APAimages)
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has for the moment turned international attention away from Gaza as Israel moves from high- to low-intensity genocide. The genocide may be the horrific culmination of 75-plus years of Zionist settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid, but in order to make sense of it we must analyze the radical transformations that have taken place in the Middle Eastern and global political economy in recent decades.
The impulse to genocide has always been built into the Zionist project. But that impulse has been activated by the epochal crisis of global capitalism. The Al Aqsa Flood attack of October 2023 furnished Israel with the historic opportunity for which they had been waiting for decades. If the Zionists are still in pursuit of their elusive Eretz Israel, the United States has been heading up a much more expansive project, one that places Gaza in the very center of global capitalism and its epochal crisis. In the game plan of the Washington-Tel Aviv axis, Gaza is now to become an experimental field for a new and deadlier phase of global capitalism. It is this larger picture that we want to lay out in this article.
The contemporary crisis of global capitalism is multidimensional. Structurally it is a crisis of overaccumulation, which refers to a situation in which enormous amounts of capital (profits) are built up but this capital cannot find productive outlets for reinvestment. This overaccumulation crisis generates intense pressure for expansion as transnational capitalists undertake a predatory search for where to unload massive amounts of surplus capital and open up new spaces for profit-making. This violent expansion involves the seizure of markets and resources around the world through war, displacement, and repression. The U.S. state and beyond it, what we will call Global Trumpism, is its out-of-control instrument in this expansionary wave. At the core of Global Trumpism is the Washington-Tel Aviv axis.
The larger backdrop to the Israeli genocide is the transnational integration of capital over the past half century and the radical restructuring of global class relations and power blocs that capitalist globalization has brought about. Globalization in West Asia region began in the 1980s and accelerated with the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that followed the establishment in 1997 of the Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) and a host of related bilateral and multilateral regional and extra-regional free trade agreements, structural adjustment programs and IMF-supervised austerity.
This integration unleashed a cascade of transnational corporate and financial investment in finance, energy, high-tech, construction, infrastructure, luxury consumption, tourism and other services. It brought Gulf capital, including trillions of dollars in sovereign wealth funds, together with capital from all around the world, involving the EU, North and Latin America, and Asia, inextricably enmeshing them all in emerging global circuits of accumulation. In this way, nationally-oriented Arab bourgeoisies transmorphed into transnationally-oriented bourgeoisies as the entire region became incorporated into the globally-integrated production, financial, and service system that came into being over the past half century.
Israel, far from remaining excluded, integrated into these expanding regional and transnational capitalist networks on the heels of the Oslo “peace” accords, signed in 1993, as the Israeli and Arab bourgeoisies began to develop common class interests. In 2020 the UAE and Bahrain, along with Morocco and Sudan, signed the Abraham Accords, joining Egypt and Jordan in normalizing relations with Israeli, an opening that allowed Gulf investment groups to pour billions of dollars into the Israeli economy. The October 2023 Al Aqsa attack and the subsequent Israeli siege placed further normalization on hold. The new U.S.-Israeli strategy revolving around the “Board of Peace” (henceforth, Board of Genocide) seeks to bring the Arab and other states in the region back into the Abraham architecture.
Donald Trump announces the “Board of Peace” on January 22, 2026, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.(Photo: ©2026 World Economic Forum / Benedikt von Loebell)Palestinians become surplus humanity
Up until globalization took off in the late twentieth century, the relationship of Israel to the Palestinians reflected classical colonialism, in which the colonial power had usurped the land and resources of the colonized and then exploited their labor. But Middle Eastern integration into the global economy helped spark the spread of mass worker and social movements and grassroots democratization pressures, reflected in the Palestinian intifadas, the labor movement across North Africa, mounting social unrest, and in the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.
The Palestinian intifadas aggravated the historic tension that Israel faced between the drive to ethnically cleans the Jewish state and the need it had for cheap, ethnically demarcated labor. But globalization starting in the 1990s gave Israel a way out of this tension between dispossession/super-exploitation and dispossession/expulsion in favor of the latter. Capitalist globalization has involved ongoing waves of displacement in the Global South that have generated a vast army of internal and transnational migrants, giving rise to a new system of transnational labor mobility and recruitment and making it possible for dominant groups around the world to reorganize labor markets in an effort to weaken labor and maximize the extraction of surplus value.
While this transient migrant labor system is a worldwide phenomenon it became a particularly attractive option for Israel because it does away with the need for politically troublesome Palestinian labor. By the 2010s, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers – by some estimates up to 600,000 – from Thailand, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Eastern Europe, the Philippines, Kenya and elsewhere came to form the predominant labor force in Israeli agribusiness, and increasingly in other sectors of the economy, under the same precarious conditions of super-exploitation and discrimination that migrant workers face around the world.
In the wake of the 2023 Hamas attack Israel deported the remaining 10,000 Gazan Palestinian workers back to Gaza. In early 2024, even in the midst of war, thousands of Indian and other foreign workers were pouring into Israel to replace them. The Palestinian proletariat has thus become an ever-more marginalized surplus population. In 1993, the very year that the Oslo Accords were signed, Israel imposed its policy of “closure” – sealing off Palestinians in the occupied territories, ethnic cleansing, and a sharp escalation of settler colonialism.
As the Palestinian proletariat went from cheap labor to surplus humanity, it stood in the way not just of seizure of their land and the resources beneath their soil, but of a new round of global capitalist expansion throughout the Middle East. In this way, genocidal pressures began to build up. Genocide became more and more of an attractive option for the Zionist state and also for the most violent and predatory sectors of the transnational capitalist class, for whom the siege of Gaza and the West Bank constitutes a form of primitive accumulation.
Pax Silica and the Board of Genocide
Signatories hold up the declaration signed at the inaugural Pax Silica Summit held in Washington, D.C. on December 12, 2025. (Photo: U.S. State Department)The larger meaning of the Board of Genocide now comes into focus, shining a spotlight on the emergent hegemonic complex of transnational capital that is at the center of the current worldwide maelstrom. The triangulated bloc brings together the giant tech companies, transnational finance capital, and the military-industrial-repression complex. Big Tech controls the entire ecosystem of digitalized capitalism, converting its enormous structural power into direct political control through the fascist state. To advance its agenda the bloc has turned to ‘Global Trumpism’ – one of several morbid political symptoms emerging as the post-World War II international order crumbles.
The new digital technologies and the billionaires that control them are driving a radical new round of restructuring and transformation of the global political economy. The leading tech corporations, most of them headquartered in the United States and China, draw investors from all over the world as they suck in immense amounts of surplus capital. The top 20 tech firms worldwide had a combined market capitalization exceeding $20 trillion in 2025, some one-fifth of the total global stock market valuation.
Big tech and the transnational industrial and commercial capitals it brings together are in turn enmeshed with the giant global financial conglomerates that own more than half of the leading tech firms. In 2022 there were 33 trillion and multitrillion-dollar capital investment management companies worldwide, up from just 17 in 2017. These titans of capital controlled more than $83 trillion in combined assets, over four-fifths the value that year of the entire global GDP. Silicon Valley and its financial backers are pivoting towards digital technologies for war and repression as they fuse with the military-industrial repression complex, completing the capital power axis, which in turn is moving into alignment with authoritarian, dictatorial and fascist states – an alignment most chillingly declared in Palantir’s 22-point manifesto posted on X in April.
This new capital complex is deeply invested in transnational systems of warfare, social control, repression and surveillance that are becoming digitalized, automated, and embedded in the global economy and society. These systems provide a major outlet for unloading accumulated surplus capital while also opening access to markets and resources. The capital bloc is heavily invested in Israel – in its tech industry, in its war machine, and in its genocide. The July 2025 report by the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide referenced 1,650 transnational corporations that partner with Israel’s war and occupation machine. The list of 60 companies singled out in the report reads like a Who’s Who of the hegemonic bloc of capital.
Herein lies the key role that Israel plays in the new capital power axis. Israel is the world’s third largest tech hub. It globalized based on a high-tech-military-security-surveillance complex, integrated in turn into the webs of transnational finance capital. Like the larger global economy of which it is a part, it feeds off of permanent local, regional, and global violence, conflict, and inequalities. Endless rounds of destruction followed by reconstruction fuel profit-making not just for the arms industry, but for engineering, construction, and related supply firms, high-tech, energy, and numerous other sectors.
The Israeli genocide, to be followed now by the Board of Genocide are grisly laboratories for the new modality of transnational capital accumulation. The U.S. State Department has referred to the new global dispensation driven by the hegemonic capital bloc as Pax Silica. The Middle East has emerged as a regional corridor for Pax Silica predicated on an Israeli-Gulf state alliance that was to be cemented through the Board of Genocide inaugurated by Trump at the January 2026 World Economic Forum conclave.
Israel is a powerhouse for both digital and military technologies, having combined both in its repression of Palestinians. The 20-point “peace” plan for Gaza unveiled in October 2025 involved the “redevelopment” of Gaza, including “modern and efficient governance conducive to attracting investment” and the establishment of a “special economic zone” – boiler plate language for opening up the Strip to transnational capitalist plunder and control. This anticipated new cascade of investment, not just in Gaza but throughout the Middle East, hinged on first “resolving” the Gaza conflict through the ceasefire and then expanding the Abraham Accords which, in the words of U.S. vice president J.D. Vance, would pave the way “for broader alliances for Israel in the Middle East even as it renders second the Palestine question.
As Israel moves from high-intensity to low-intensity genocide in Gaza, the Board is intended to open up the Strip to its gas and oil, its beachfront real estate, and its tourist potential. But its core mission is to convert Gaza into a hub for the public-private power axis around which tech and finance will have free reign to develop a sovereign corporate fiefdom. Razing the Strip to the ground has been wildly profitable. Two years of destruction is now to be followed by the bonanza – “reconstruction” led by the hegemonic capital complex.
The true magnitude of the global capitalist plan for Gaza was revealed not in the 20-point plan but in the Gaza Reconstruction, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (GREAT), a U.S. government proposal that was leaked to the press prior to the ceasefire agreement. It is in this document that the macabre vision of a high-tech Pax Silica hub is laid out.
The GREAT plan called for a “voluntary” departure of Palestinians to another country, a string of AI-powered high-tech megacities, and some rump, unspecified Palestinian authority that would join the Abraham Accord. Those Palestinians allowed to stay would serve as civil servants, professional and manual laborers tightly controlled through Israeli biometric surveillance, checkpoints, monitoring of purchases, and Zionist education programs promoting normalization with Israel, thus making official Israel’s occupation and its administration of the concentration camp. In the GREAT vision, the Strip is to be converted into the staging point and gateway for what it termed a “New Abrahamic Architecture”
Gaza was the first AI war of the twenty-first century, an algorithmic genocide. If Global Trumpism gets its way, Gaza will now become the testing ground for the ruling classes to rule through technocratic authoritarianism, blood and capital. Among the 60 countries that Trump invited at the January 2026 Davos conclave, some 25 countries initially signed on to the Board, among them Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, and the UAE. Neither Russia nor China vetoed the resolution in the UN Security Council to approve the establishment of the Board. The inclusion of Israel and Netanyahu on the Board could not be a more cynical expose of the charade.
At this time the fragile cease fire between Washington and Tehran remains shaky with no progress in negotiations. Meanwhile, in 2025 alone, under the pretext of “security,” Israel attacked six countries, including Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, and Yemen. It also launched assaults on humanitarian aid flotillas heading to Gaza in the territorial waters of Tunisia, Malta, and Greece. As it now enters the third month of its war against Iran – waged together with the United States – it is turning southern Lebanon into a second Gaza.
There has also been no letup of low-intensity genocide – to the contrary, Israel is threatening to return high-intensity. Attacks on Gaza have in fact increased by 35 percent since the Iran ceasefire. There is no way to predict the outcome of the current regional conflict but without any doubt the whole regional and global landscape is already being radically reshaped as the global capitalist system continues to crack under the weight of its explosive contradictions. The war on Iran and the Israeli assault on Lebanon expands the political objectives and the dynamics of the Gaza genocide to the region as a whole. Meanwhile, Palestinians will continue to resist as they have done so over a century.
William I. Robinson
William I. Robinson is Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Global Studies, and Latin American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is co-editor of We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel’s Critics (2018). His most recent book is Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism (2025).M. Gürsan Şenalp
M. Gürsan Şenalp, an associate professor of economics at Atılım University in Türkiye, studies and teaches on global political economy. He is a member of the editorial board of Praksis, a Marxist social sciences journal.***
(Article source/credit: Mondoweiss.net)
#ArtificialIntelligence #AutonomousWeapons #BoardOfPeace #PoliticalEconomy #PoliticalSociology #Sociology #TransnationalCapitalism #UniversityOfCaliforniaSantaBarbara -
"To summarize: in both Marxist and neoclassical worlds, an economy composed of highly automated sector only is incompatible with the maintenance of capitalism. In one case because the produced surplus value and thus profit is zero; in the other case, because insufficient aggregate demand leads to profits of zero. The situation can be “saved” only by an equivalent rise of a labor-intensive sector or by massive redistribution to people who do not work.
Thus, we see less dismal future for labor that some people argue. Activities where labor cannot be substituted by the AI will blossom. Will AI bring an overall deskilling of labor or not? At first sight, it seems that the AI will lead to deskilling of labor simply because many skills (such as computing, software development, writing, even math) will be redundant as they may be taken over by machines. Yet, this process may be, and is likely to be, counterbalanced by the creation of occupations where labor skills will exceed today’s level simply because they would have to be superior to the skill levels produced by the AI in order for people to want to purchase such products and services. Therefore, while one part of the labor force may suffer from deskilling, or to call it frankly, from the dumbing-down, another part of the labor force will get more sophisticated and much more skilled. To stay ahead it will have to compete with machines more than with the other humans. But so long as we believe in human adaptation, we can think that there would be always a segment of such labor that would do things that the machines cannot do, or even where the same output is produced by both, it will more appreciated (and hence more valued) if done by live labor rather than by the AI. An AI-generated equally beautiful ice-skater is unlikely to be as much appreciated as a human ice-skater. At least, by the humans."
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-and-future
#AI #Economics #PoliticalEconomy #GenerativeAI #Marx #Marxism #NeoclassicalEconomics
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"Autor, the economist who helped coin the term “China shock,” isn’t as convinced of the parallels. In an episode of the Possible podcast hosted by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, he said AI “will not be, in any sense, a repeat of the China trade shock.”
Unlike Slok, Autor argued AI will displace jobs, and will do so differently than the China shock did. He suggested AI will target job functions, not specific industries or regional geographies, increasing the likelihood of AI creating even greater labor changes—though not wiping out any one profession.
How these labor changes are perceived will also be different than the early 2000s, Autor said.
“The China trade shock was experienced by U.S. firms as a pure negative competitive shock,” he said. “All of a sudden, they couldn’t charge the prices they were charging. Someone else was charging much less. And so from a firm perspective, this was all bad.”
AI, however, has the potential to drive up productivity and lower prices, Autor argued, making it appealing from a business perspective, but potentially more disruptive to labor.
“AI will be experienced by many firms as productivity increases, so it may still lead to displacement of workers,” Autor said. “In fact it will, I don’t want to suggest it will not. But it will have a very different texture.”"
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"For seven weeks, American and Israeli air power dominated Iranian skies. High-altitude surveillance, precision strikes on military infrastructure and apartment buildings in Tehran, and near-uncontested flight paths defined the opening phase of the conflict. Iran absorbed the blows and responded not with the guerrilla tactics of Baghdad’s roads but with long-range missiles, mass-produced drones, and a defensive posture that held the line.
In the final days before the ceasefire, an F-15 and an A10-warthog were downed by optical tracking systems. Whether this was a replicable technical achievement or a fortunate anomaly remains to be seen. What was not ambiguous, however, was the fact that Iran was able to close off the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic. In response, global energy markets convulsed. The war had become a world event.
Politics also shifted in Iran. Just a few months ago, in January, the main question there was economic. Inflation. Housing. The price of food. The Masoud Pezeshkian government’s austerity package had hollowed out household budgets and sent tens of thousands into the streets. Today the question is imperial. The war has not erased material suffering — it has reframed it. The choice presented to every Iranian is no longer about fiscal policy or subsidy reform. It is about sovereignty versus incorporation into an imperial order that already governs much of the region.
Donald Trump’s ill-advised war has revealed Iran as a unique formation in modern history: a neoliberal anti-imperialist state. Austerity at home, resistance abroad. On paper, a contradiction, in practice, the state’s operating logic. This is why Iran oscillates between protests against austerity and displays of national solidarity — sometimes within the same month."
https://jacobin.com/2026/05/neoliberalism-austerity-war-political-economy-iran
#Iran #PoliticalEconomy #Austerity #USA #War #Trump #Imperialism