@mijosev.bsky.social

@mijosev.bsky.social

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Preliterate with books

When I was in college they taught me that capitalism means that there are capitalists, who own productive resources, like say factories, and they hire people to make stuff and then sell it. They can't pay their workers so much that they don't make a profit, but they have to pay them at least enough that they can afford to buy the stuff the factory produces. Feudalism, in contrast, is when you just take your profits directly by charging rent, fees and dues, turning people into debt peons, or otherwise shaking them down. Nowadays the vast majority of corporate profits don't come from making or selling things but from "finance," which is a euphemism for other peoples' debts-charging rents, fees, interest and whatnot. It's feudalism in the classic definition: "direct juro-political extraction" as they sometimes put it. - David Graeber
The success of Protestantism in establishing itself as a legitimate Christian religion outside the Roman Catholic Church was a reflection of the disinte- gration of the centuries-old authority structure of European Christendom, known as respublica Christiana. It was this disintegration which provided the opportunity for national identities and nations to emerge. Nationalism and the Reformation, though springing from different sources, thus were made possible by the same development. They emerged within a short pe- riod of each other and, as the example of England clearly shows, developed…
This sacred part of the human is not the part that lays claim to rights, which belong to a lower domain. To illustrate this lower region, Weil gives the example of a child who watches with eager entitlement to make sure he will get an equal slice of cake. The word 'justice' is used to refer to both parts of the human soul: the part that cries out in the face of evil, and the part that wants equal cake.
It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic. - Madison, Fed 39
Nikkei down 8%
They began paying, and paying handsomely, for lessons with the Soph- ists. Two of Athens's wealthiest citizens, Callias and Alcibiades, probably paid the most. After learning how to speak as convincingly as the Soph- ists, they were easily manipulated into convincing Athens to provoke a battle with Sparta in Sicily to free the Sicilians from Spartan control. The Sicilian expedition was unequivocally a bad idea for Athens: a heedless act of irreversible self-destruction that would devour their navy and a generation of fighters. Nevertheless, tantalized by promises of replenished grain and timber supplies, the Athenians were convinced that the expe- dition was in their best interest. The power of words alone got them to ignore the obvious: that freeing Sicily from Spartan control would have directly benefited Callias's and Alcibiades's teacher Gorgias, who was from Sicily, more than it would have benefitted Callias, Alcibiades, or Athens. Athens lost about fifty thousand soldiers and oarsmen and most of its ships in the expedition, leading directly to Athens's defeat. Callias lost his family's entire fortune and died a penniless beggar, and Alcib- iades first defected and then was banished from Athens and ultimately hunted down and killed in retaliation for his betrayal.
THE ANCIENT ART OF THINKING FOR YOURSELF THE POWER OF RHETORIC IN POLARIZED TIMES By ROBIN REAMES
The greater destruction was a political one: Athenian democracy was dismantled, and Sparta installed the Thirty Tyrants, handpicked members of Athens's wealthy nobility, to rule. And rule they did, through sheer terror and force. They went on a rampage, executing without trial anyone perceived as an opponent. Their first move was to arrest and execute lesser members of society who the tyrants believed had opposed them under democracy and to confiscate their assets. By one estimate the tyrants executed 5 percent of the entire population of Athens in under eight months.
Book cover: Cory Doctorow, the Bezzle
Witkoff looking confused after forgetting the regions of Ukraine