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recent bookmarks from robertogrecoThe Anti-Revolutionary Science - Public Books2024-03-24T21:04:28+00:00
https://www.publicbooks.org/the-anti-revolutionary-science/
robertogrecoEven when findings are empirical rather than theoretical, economists can give them more credence than they warrant. People tend to see figures as “hard” outputs: objective, reliable, repeatable, verifiable. But a good deal of economic data, such as unemployment, inflation, and GDP growth, are statistical approximations, rather than “hard” data points.2
Even if Nasar were able to acknowledge that “the facts” she prizes are actually more like statistical approximations, she would still be facing a deeper problem, which is that, in the period immediately after her story ends, economics goes down a rabbit hole in which statistics begin to be significant simply because they are statistics. This problem is characterized with typically merciless wit by the gadfly economist Deirdre McCloskey in her 2002 manifesto, The Secret Sins of Economics:
It is also completely obvious that a “statistically significant” result can be insignificant for any human purpose. When you are trying to explain the rise and fall of the stock market it may be that the fit (so-called: it means how closely the data line up) is very “tight” for some crazy variable, say skirt lengths (for a long while the correlation was actually quite good). But it doesn’t matter: the variable is obviously crazy. Who cares how closely it fits? For a long time in Britain the number of ham radio operator licenses granted annually was very highly correlated with the number of people certified insane.3
Even McCloskey, though, will not take the next step and acknowledge that it’s not only the more fanciful ideas in economics, but also the central ones, that face this problem. Take, for instance, the idea of “wealth,” which Nasar’s economists universally equate with the ability to purchase commodities, especially luxury goods. For support in making this reductive equation, Nasar approvingly cites the conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter, who wrote in his 1942 masterwork Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy that “Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls.” It takes a more than a little habituation to “economic” thinking to realize that this statement conveys the essence of the profession’s idea of “wealth.”
But drawing stockings over the weary legs of a factory girl will no more make her “wealthy” than a thin scrim of romantic subplots and coming-of-age tropes will make the story of modern economics into a romance of the scientific intellect, and Nasar cannot see this. She is unable to acknowledge that economics, far from being an adventure in pure thought or a disinterested “science,” is in fact “scientific” only in the highly specific sense that it is the science of capitalism—or, more accurately, the science of defending capitalism. Through the back door, Nasar admits this thought into her story: the preface describes economics as the search for “a way to improve the lot of the poor without overturning existing society”; and in a description that applies to the vast majority of economists, she notes that Keynes “regarded instability, not inequality, as the great threat to capitalism.” Others are more direct about the managerial function of the field. Robert Heilbroner, whose 1953 book, The Worldly Philosophers, remains one of the most influential histories of economics ever published, wrote in 1995 that “[the] inextricable entanglement of economics with capitalism appears to be the best guarded secret of the profession. Indeed, one suspects that the secret is not even known to all economists.”4 He adds that “the very meaning of ‘economic’ would be unintelligible outside capitalism.”5
This entanglement is lost on Nasar, who writes as though it were economic ideas rather than capitalism transforming the world. Observers cannier than I have noticed this trouble with the book: in his review for The Wall Street Journal, James Grant writes that “economists no more set the world to producing and consuming than baseball statisticians hit home runs.”6 The real geniuses, he suggests, are successful capitalists.
And this is the crux of the problem with Grand Pursuit: the big idea lurking behind “economic genius” is the defense of capitalism, but, brought out in the open, the defense of capitalism tends to sounds heartless. Its sunny side lies in the Marshallian gospel of good times: as long as the wheels are spinning, we can all get wealthier, even if some of us get wealthier than others. Its dark side, which readers can depend on Schumpeter to provide, is that the bad times, when the poor suffer the most, are just the way of the world. Nasar quotes him with sympathy: “Like it or not, [Schumpeter] liked to say, ‘the pattern of boom and bust is the form economic development takes in the era of capitalism.’ ”
That’s an interesting phrase, “the era of capitalism”; it implies it might end. For Schumpeter, nervously gauging the possibility of a socialist East in the 1930s, this was a real concern. For us in 2012, it sounds disingenuous, as though capitalism were just something we’re all trying out while we weigh its pros and cons. But the window for such debates has long since closed, and even if it hadn’t, economics would not be the field to pursue the question of alternatives to capital. It cannot imagine society organized differently than today. No wonder it proved so difficult to write the history of the profession as a romance of the intellect: the paradise of economic theory is simply 2012 with more silk stockings.
In 2006, the economic journalist David Warsh published an enthusiastic history of the field called Knowledge and The Wealth of Nations in which he had the misfortune to focus his zeal precisely on the rise of the mathematics that would come to signify the profession’s complicity in the crash of 2008, a problem Nasar knew well to avoid. But the two books’ admiring portraits share a strong resemblance. For Warsh, until the 1980s and the beginning of the PC revolution, economics really had been the science of scarcity. But, in his story, the rise of the era of the personal computer made economists realize that the source of wealth isn’t stored up in our diminishing natural resources—but in our boundless creativity. In terms very much like the Marshallian ones on which Nasar depends, Warsh’s book tells the story of the rise of what economists have taught us to call “human capital”: the idea that the origin of value (which is seen to have an origin) lies not in material goods per se but in our capacity to recognize the infinite wealth-creating potential in technology. Warsh assigns a much later date to this discovery of abundance—it’s the PC, rather than the railroad or the automobile, that finally rescues us from scarcity—but the storyline is the same.
There is an illuminating difference between Warsh’s book and Nasar’s, though, and it lies in Warsh’s frank account of how the profession policed itself along the road to its math-driven adulthood. Throughout his book, he notes that the worst dismissal that a postwar economist’s work could suffer was that it was “literary.” He describes economists using the word as a cudgel with each other; he uses it himself. For Warsh and his protagonists, the problem with literariness lies in its un-mathematical, and therefore un-scientific nature. But since there is no shortage of commentary among recent economic writers who are willing to say in public that math does not a science make (see, for instance, sympathetic books by Robert Nelson and Jonathan Schlefer), one wonders whether the real force of the epithet is that “literary” work fails to acknowledge the hard truth behind the prosperity-messaging: the truth, à la Schumpeter, that capitalism is not an optional experiment in living, but a compulsory experience of turmoil.
The word “literary” is particularly revealing in this context because, futile though her attempt may be to make a romantic narrative out of the history of economics, Nasar may have been on to something when she tried. She may have sensed, more thoughtfully than Warsh, that there’s something in economic anti-literariness, and in its pretensions to “science,” that calls out for remedy. But she misunderstands the problem, which is not that economics may once have had a literary soul. The problem is that there’s no resolving the conflict between capitalism and what I hope you won’t mind my calling poetry—if by “poetry” I may be permitted to mean the ability to imagine the world otherwise.
For Nasar, touchingly, economics is “scientific” not because it’s rigorous, but because it’s a product of the Enlightenment: she wants very badly to be able to tell the story of economic thinking as a tale of technical progress, in which economists drive poverty from the earth like medical scientists drove away polio. Certainly, liberal economists would like to think of their profession this way, as a prophecy of plenty; they have chafed at the epithet “the dismal science” since Thomas Carlyle first deployed it against the field’s pro-slavery arguments in 1849.
Carlyle’s coinage was, of course, a clever inversion of the idea of a “gay science”—first known to us in Provençal as gai saber, the art of writing poetry, and later, via Nietzsche, as the wisdom of a “science” that revels in not needing to defend itself by claiming to be one. But nobody who’s paying attention to economic theory could mistake it for a science. Unfortunately for economics, it isn’t poetry either. And as the art of apology for the world as it is, it never will be."]]>2012 christophernealon occupywallstreet ows jeffreysachs economics capitalism liberalism neoliberalism socktherapy greatdepression greatrecession globalfinancialcrisis irvingfisher stability science academia academics highereducation highered nassimtaleb burtonmalkiel 1973 2007 finance business 2008 genius sylvianassar johnmaynardkeynes class history humanity abundance theory davidricardo thomasmalthus karlmarx marshallplan economists alfredmarshall gdp 1929 deirdremccloskey socialsciences socialscience inequality robertheilbroner josephschrumpeter socialism democracy jamesgrant managerialism davidwarsh scarcity robertnelson jonathanschlefer nietzschehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d0b042f3cec6/Desire, Dopamine, and the Internet - by L. M. Sacasas2024-03-24T02:39:43+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/desire-dopamine-and-the-internet
robertogrecolmsacasas 2024 desire dopamine addiction socialmedia tedgioia technology internet web online distraction history responsibility culture society resistance solitude attention discipline self-discipline engagement restraint vulnerability risk risktaking silence smartphones digital media environment digitalmedia personhood humans compulsion annalembke hannarharendt loneliness blaisepascal alanjacobs dualism dualities duality relationships abundance modernity hartmutrosa superabundance well-being conviviality philiprieff anti-culture deepculture reality scarcity informationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cacb781c0ef0/The hunter-gatherers of the 21st century who live on the move | Aeon Essays2024-03-22T03:11:21+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/the-hunter-gatherers-of-the-21st-century-who-live-on-the-move
robertogreconomads anthropology society paleolithic jungles jungle culture agriculture farming ceciliapadilla-iglesias republicofcongo mbendjelebayaka possessions ownership territory land accumulation surplus scarcity socialdarwinism behavior communities richardborshaylee irvendevore georgepetermurdock juliansteward marshallsahlins 1966 1960s kungsan congobasin australia gidjingali kalahari !kungsang jareddiamond 1987 yuvalnoahharari yuvalharari hunter-gatherers humanity howwelive movement centralafrica fertilecrescent wendat hadza aché knowledge knowledgetransmission genetics agta philippines demography migration evolution humans humanevolution jeromelewishttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c2601a4e91b3/How to Keep Time - The Atlantic [bookmarking for Season 5, "How to Keep Time" - this podcast covered other topics before that.]2024-01-23T05:11:04+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/how-to-build-a-happy-life/
robertogrecotime clocks ianbogost beccarashid 2023 2024 podcasts psychology productivity us age aging social rest work busyness control future anxiety idleness oliverburkeman hobbies kieransetiya listening zen mindfulness happiness presence leisure laziness neerupaharia melissamazmanian ignaciosánchezprado waiting slow slowness culture society alexsoojung-kimpang downtime boredom jannalevin patience charanranganath sarahmanguso behavior addiction actions neuroscience mentalhealth luxury scarcity status italy humblebragging thorsteinveblen veblengoods socialmobility diamonds money self-worth self-importance compulsion overscheduling plans planning spontaneity avoidance multitasking taskswitching unschooling schooliness balance presentationofself guilt parenting timemanagement capitalism overwork stress success failure deadlines life living anticipation optimism pleasure satisfaction erinreid west burnout gender eviatarzerubavel mothers benedictinemonks monks spirituality industrialrevolution freetime scheduling calendahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:536b77c372f2/You Need To Be Cringemaxxing - by Mary Harrington2024-01-14T03:14:43+00:00
https://reactionaryfeminist.substack.com/p/you-need-to-be-cringemaxxing
robertogrecoslow small cool 2024 priorities community maryharrington socialbonds atomization society loneliness culture counterculture resistance canon glamour agesegregation religion happiness consumerism consumption loyalty interdependence sociality social children parents socialnetworks mistrust cringemaxxing care caring trying purpose fulfillment church religiosity worship consistency stability reliability families coolness friendship perspective ruthlessness exclusivity scarcity evanescence behavior aspiration desirability fracture cringe earnestnesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:139485f72a03/Luxury Fashion Is For Broke People - YouTube2023-12-12T22:43:25+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGDB22dpmwk
robertogrecobranding luxury fashion 2023 lvmh bernardarnault gucci louisvuitton quality stealthwealth advertising marketing brands rolex lamborghini value status statussymbols signaling clothes clothing incomeinequality poverty class insecurity stress counterfeits moet hennessy economics consumerism consumption balenciaga scarcity burberry supreme waste birkin hermès oldmoney newmoney wealth succession thegreatgatsby ralphlauren polo aesthetics zara h&m socialmedia identity futility manufacturedscarcity capitalismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:56e582bfdfb3/Race, Liberation & Palestine: A Conversation with Noura Erakat, Nick Estes & Marc Lamont Hill - YouTube2023-12-08T15:22:06+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqOA_nwYys4
robertogrecopalestine race liberation nouraerakat nickestes marclamonthill history resistance zionism antisemitism us police policing ferguson capitalism utopia octaviabutler academia universities colleges genocide ethniccleansing solidarity internationalism education standingrock westbank gaza jerusalem unions organizing highered highereducation media study undercommons activism landback angeladavis guilt scarcity rest refaatalareer decolonization borders nationstates israelhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:521f95cc3712/Miko Revereza: 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking - YouTube2023-09-18T04:00:17+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKD2soB6vkY
robertogrecomikorevereza film filmmaking 2021 howwewrite creativity scarcity diy unschooling migration borders immigration howwelearn experimentalfilm iphone lcdhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:affe398f6978/Burning Man is a capitalist lie - UnHerd2023-09-07T18:05:55+00:00
https://unherd.com/2023/09/burning-man-is-a-capitalist-lie/
robertogreco2023 maryharrington burningman capitalism economics gifteconomy liberalism individualism techelite siliconvalley generosity survivalism blackrockcity hardship scarcity us civilization society inequality incomeinequality marieantoinettehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7c864336dc2c/Metafoundry 75: Resilience, Abundance, Decentralization2023-09-07T16:53:56+00:00
https://tinyletter.com/metafoundry/letters/metafoundry-75-resilience-abundance-decentralization
robertogrecodebchachra 2022 resilience solar solarpunk energy environment climatechange sustainability future collapse renewables decentralization abundance scarcity fossilfuelshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5e19281cf74e/Resistance in the Arts — The New Atlantis2023-08-23T20:58:43+00:00
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/resistance-in-the-arts
robertogrecoalanjacobs 2023 resistance art arts music creativity publishing friction frictionlessness substack bandcamp patreon thebeatles frankgehry guggenheimbilbao shakespeare willkempe collaboration collaborative joywilliams maxwellperkins thomaswolfe gordonlish raymondcarver film cinema photography small slow nietzsche chinuaachebe milesdavis bladerunner stanleykubrick douglastrumbull terrencemalick nfts technology wu-tangclan tonimorrison kafka iamcdonald georgemartin silence michaelacoel violence attention disappearance disintermediation mediation exile cunning freedom stephendedalus farmtotable books writing howwewrite creation scarcityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f06a763adf06/Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies - YouTube2023-07-20T21:54:33+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6MLtFeZcak
robertogreco2023 keenga-yamahttataylor robindgkelley race racism us history scotus criticalracetheory academia universities colleges admission blackstudies politics policy law legal socialmovements georgefloyd clarencethomas affirmativeaction conservatism republicans donaldtrump antiracism structuralracism ethnicstudies 1619project reverseracism wardconnerly richardsander education ucla universityofcalifornia california proposition209 prop209 meritocracy liberalism michigan northcarolina scarcity unc universityofmichigan openadmissions elitism inclusion inclusivity exclusivity selectiveadmissions cuny audreylorde scarcitymodel radicalism workinclass tuition margaretprescod inequality freetuition harvard yale princeton publicuniversities calstatelongbeach capitalism harvardonthehudson tokenization representation workingclass qualityoflife economics lifeexpectancy studentdebt wages labor housing wealthconcentration neoliberalism helplessness organizing socialmobility precarity adjuncts tenure librarians libraries right trahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bb6589fb1c52/The Ezra Klein Show: How ‘Being Animal’ Could Help Us Be Better Humans on Apple Podcasts2023-06-27T21:01:36+00:00
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-being-animal-could-help-us-be-better-humans/id1548604447?i=1000618460588
robertogrecomelaniechallenger multispecies morethanhuman animals 2023 ezraklein relationships behavior attraction love pregancy childbirth climatechange sustainability intelligence human humans gillianrose daniellecelermajer terrancehayes human-animalrelations human-animalrelationships nature technology ecology environment ai artificialintelligence farming philosophy society waysofbeing psychology howwwelive humansupremacy politics morality predators food diet pathogens predation scarcity evolution competition cooperation friendship change armsraces survival community communities kinship persistence beauty goodness communism communal groups alliances intimacy goodsamaritans help mutualaid exchange assistance trust bodies cavepaintings altamira caveart cognition culture agriculture civilization foodsources hunter-gatherers domination humanism secularhumanism posthumanism worth dualism religion belief exceptionalism theology wildlife spirituality exploitation soul superiority rationality freewill science scientism rationalhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8e21c90f21d8/The Real Cause of Poverty with Matthew Desmond - Factually! - 215 - YouTube2023-06-21T20:36:46+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXUbkhl_uuQ
robertogrecomatthewdesmond poverty us 2023 adamconover waronpoverty history economics inequality sociology society affluence wealth policy housing taxes labor work evictions debt landlords stockmarket corporations dividends ownership land homes segregation investment investments wealthinequality indexfunds capitalism rent renting mortgages exploitation vulnerability security precarity unions shopping solidarity politicalwill children homeless homlessness finance banking losangeles government responsibility individualresponsibility structuralreform anxiety prosperity selfishness neighborliness communities community politics values fear abundance scarcityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f0bc81b7c84b/Opinion | What Communes and Other Radical Experiments in Living Together Reveal - The New York Times2023-06-14T23:21:17+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/opinion/ezra-klein-kristen-ghodsee.html
robertogrecocommunes housing loneliness society 2023 community care kristenghodsee utopia universalbasicincome communism families economics love collectivism aaronbastani chosenfamilies kinship affection rutgerbregman waste work stevenkotler peterdiamandis futurism future abundance support parenting children agesegregation architecture networks multifamilyhousing zoning cities urban urbanism class islolation atomization capitalism socialconstructs beliefs politics childraising childrearing kibbutz socialism individualism egalitarianism sharing childcare eldercare kibbutzim oneidacommunity socialsafetynet inequality privilege hoarding intentionalcommunities agriculture self-labor farming france israel alternative rural cooperatives mothers mothering denmark sweden privacy production colleges universities elderly retirementhomes retirementcommunities retirement relationships neighbors twinoaks portugal ecovillages sustainability permaculture shakers religion belief secularization isolation sharedbeliefs bowlingalone compethttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:342fab0b1129/Podcast Conversations E4 - Gary Shteyngart on Watches as Literary Devices - BEYOND THE DIAL2022-08-16T23:27:35+00:00
https://www.beyondthedial.com/post/e14-gary-shteyngart-on-watches-as-literary-devices/
robertogrecowatches garyshteyngart 2019 writing literature collecting collections nomos ochsandjunior junghans maxbill philosophy lakesucess autism meaning time minutia howwethink mechanics engineering art design bauhaus objects phenomenology relationships companionship watchworld distraction calm rolex jackforster things stuff podcasts thegreynato inheritance generations identity lakesuccess germany us buses greyhound roadtrips noticing details music politics losangeles southcarolina nyc lasvegas switzerland patekphillipe nautilus finance hedgefunds economics money culture society scarcity fredsavage jakegyllenhaal vintage bubbles watchbubble speculation universalgenève flipping watchflipping watchflippers watchdealers learning howwelearn fashion watchmaking timex casio tudor status grandseiko seiko audemarspiguet royaloak hodinkee jasonheaton jamesstacey watchcollectinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f0046e56d3fe/Cartier owner destroys more than £400m of watches in two years | Luxury goods sector | The Guardian2022-08-01T16:55:05+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/18/richemont-destroys-nearly-500m-of-watches-in-two-years-amid-buyback-policy
robertogrecowatches markets cartier richemont 2018 economics destruction marketing luxury inventory scarcity desirability veblengoods piagethttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a8eb470fc84b/Watches Cost More Than Ever: Are You Getting What You Pay For?2022-01-14T18:15:18+00:00
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/have-price-and-quality-filed-for-divorce-in-luxury-watchmaking
robertogrecojackforster 2022 watches capitalism exclusivity luxury craft business hype marketing scarcity materials money flexing canon watchcanonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f5907c156c78/Cryptocurrency w/ Edward Ongweso Jr & Jacob Silverman - The Dig2021-12-17T22:19:36+00:00
https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/cryptocurrency-w-edward-ongweso-jr-jacob-silverman/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGfuY9ivnW8
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https://overland.org.au/2021/08/the-story-of-a-take-down/
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https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353984617914370
robertogrecocryptocurrencies bitcoin dogecoin 2021 jacksonpalmer finance money economics regulation corruption fraud inequality markets individualism power marketmanipulation taxes taxavoidance scarcity cryptocurrency crypto blockchainhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c13c9dd63862/platonic solid snake on Twitter: "every time I think about NFT art I just get angry again at how stupid the whole thing is, not like stupid as in "new faddish stuff may not hold water", stupid as in literally the entire premise is fucking idiotic, you're2021-03-14T04:35:33+00:00
https://twitter.com/joshmillard/status/1370088760663179266
robertogrecoart blockchain 2021 joshmillard cryptoart speculation artworld capitalism economics scams scarcity gatekeeping money fiatcurrencies ethereum attention artmaking ubi universalbasicincome latecapitalism cryptocurrencies nfts cryptocurrency cryptohttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5abb9ed280ba/An excerpt from As We Have Always Done on Indigenous practices that opt out of capitalism - Bookforum Magazine2020-12-07T23:04:14+00:00
https://www.bookforum.com/politics/betasamosake-simpson-excerpt-24284
robertogrecoleannebetasamosakesimpson 2020 indigeneity indigenous capitalism marxism socialism multispecies ecology environment sustainability anticapitalism society empathy caring sharing self-determination wellbeing hunting harvest land capital relationships canon collectivism trust hardship individualism interconnected michisaagiig oraltradition mutualaid redistribution community communities vulnerability greed accumulation scarcity animals morethanhuman nature wildlife kinship nishnaabeg glennaneaucage cosmos colonialism decolonization ecosystems prairies wildrice food salmon eels caribou weather climate excess abundance landback wealthj inequality territory belongings ownership possessions ethics imbalance balance settlercolonialism property privateproperty commons boundaries borders diplomacy normativity exploitation manipulation markets extractivism additivism fishing profit profits selfdeterminationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b3c89f9d0b9e/The Analog City and the Digital City — The New Atlantis2020-11-08T23:13:43+00:00
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-analog-city-and-the-digital-city
robertogrecoThe machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.
We have focused on how digital media transforms the subjective experience of individuals. The political corollary is that it enables and empowers regimes of algorithmic governance, predictive analytics, and social credit. The profound erosion of trust in the Digital City leaves a vacuum, and we look to our tools to fill it. We seem set upon interlocking trajectories: of ever greater swaths of the human experience being computationally managed, and of intractable human subjects increasingly breaking down or revolting against these conditions.
From another vantage point, however, we might see this as a hopeful moment, full of promise and opportunity. Another path also seems possible. Freed from certain unsustainable illusions about the nature of the self and the world, we may now be called back to reckon with reality in a new, more chastened and more responsible manner. It is possible that the Promethean aspirations that characterized the modern self and modern society may now yield to a more sober assessment of the limits within which genuine human flourishing might occur. It is possible, too, that we may learn once again the necessity of virtues, public and private — that we will no longer, as T. S. Eliot put it, be “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”"]]>lmsacasas digital newmedia writing howwewrite reading 2020 howweread secondaryorality walterong politics discourse audience abundance scarcity news print text communication neilpostman digitalcity analogcity truth speech digitalmedia socialmedia saintaugustine change liminality factchecking publishing jaydavidbolter reformation scientificrevolution history internet web online smartphones publiclife cities urban urbanism community howwethink thinking nicholascarr 2008 web2.0 facebook twitter algorithms moderation commenting tv television video dialogue criticalthinking affordances technology citizenship censorship values char charlestaylor bufferedself disenchantment meaning meaningmaking magic power objects heresy security purity bots data bigdata automation knowledge systems systemsthinking vulnerability time place now identity sharedtime sharedspace simultaneity realtime telegraph radio presence social belonging ivanillich memory memories language literacy orality oraltradition fables institutions bureaucrahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9c6b35065c0c/Are your Zoom meetings on Middle Class Standard Time?2020-04-19T20:07:01+00:00
https://medium.com/swlh/are-your-zoom-meetings-on-middle-class-standard-time-d899938dd05f
robertogrecoandrewwillisgarcés 2020 time management administration leadership education hierarchy howwework unschooling deschooling abundance scarcity meetings learning howwelearn howweteach teaching zoom relationships well-being tasks productivity conflictavoidancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:05bbae5b95da/Can Bernie Sanders Alter the Course of the Democratic Party?2020-01-03T16:39:51+00:00
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/03/bernie-sanders-democratic-party-2020-presidential-election/
robertogrecoryangrim berniesanders 2020 2019 2016 2015 organizing elections petebuttigieg elizabethsanders hillaryclinton billclinton democracy democrats politics socialism nationalism thomaspiketty clairesandberg beccarast scarcity relationships campaigninghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:628120b8108f/William Gibson on Watches | WatchPaper2019-08-10T00:29:06+00:00
http://www.watchpaper.com/2015/07/16/william-gibson-on-watches/
robertogrecoPeople who’ve read this piece often assume that I subsequently became a collector of watches. I didn’t, at least not in my own view. Collections of things, and their collectors, have generally tended to give me the willies. I sometimes, usually only temporarily, accumulate things in some one category, but the real pursuit is in the learning curve. The dive into esoterica. The quest for expertise. This one lasted, in its purest form, for five or six years. None of the eBay purchases documented [in the essay] proved to be “keepers.” Not even close.
Undaunted by his placing this interest squarely in the past, something he got over, I wanted to find out what had survived, physically or intellectually, of his obsession. It turns out, quite a lot. We corresponded via email and William Gibson shared his thoughts on collecting, how he got started, what “keepers” remain in his collection and why. We also talked about the Apple watch and what it means for traditional horology.”
...
"If “old” people, as you mentioned in our recent discussion, are concerned that what they’ve collected will be unwanted, how is that anxiety being manifested? Some watch brands like Patek Philippe use durability, inheritance and legacy as their explicit identity.
I was thinking of someone with dozens of rare military watches. Even if they have children, will the children want their watches? It could be difficult finding the right museum to donate them to, in order to keep the collection intact. I think Patek’s appeal to inheritance and legacy still has some basis, though the wristwatch itself has become a piece of archaic (though still functional) jewelry. You don’t absolutely need one. You do, probably, absolutely need your smartphone, and it also tells the time. Eventually, I assume, virtually everything will also tell the time.
Is there something authentic in collecting we as humans are striving for? What does the impulse represent for you?
I actively enjoy having fewer, preferably better things. So I never deliberately accumulated watches, except as the temporary by-product of a learning curve, as I searched for my own understanding of watches, and for the ones I’d turn out to particularly like. I wanted an education, rather than a collection. But there’s always a residuum: the keepers. (And editing is as satisfying as acquiring, for me.)
Do you think there’s anything intrinsic to watches (their aesthetics, engineering etc.) that make them especially susceptible to our interest?
Mechanical timekeeping devices were among our first complex machines, and became our first ubiquitous complex machines, and the first to be miniaturized. Mechanical wristwatches were utterly commonplace for less than a century. Today, there’s no specific need for a mechanical watch, unless you’re worried about timekeeping in the wake of an Electromagnetic Pulse attack. So we have heritage devices, increasingly archaic in the singularity of their function, their lack of connectivity. But it was exactly that lack that once made them heroic: they kept telling accurate time, regardless of what was going on around them. They were accurate because they were unconnected, unitary.
How do you think the notion of collecting has changed since your preoccupation with watches played itself out? Scarcity (but not true rarity) barely exists any more.
The Internet makes it increasingly easy to assemble a big pile of any category of objects, but has also rationalized the market in every sort of rarity. There’s more stuff, and fewer random treasures. When I discovered military watches, I could see that that was already happening to them, but that there was still a window for informed acquisition. That’s mostly closed now. The world’s attic is now that much more thoroughly sorted and priced!"]]>watches williamgibson ebay horology fashion collecting collections learning howwelearn 2015 esoterica research researching deepdives expertise obsessions cv immersion posterity legacy analog mechanical durability longevity inheritance jewelery smartphones understanding education self-directed self-directedlearning timekeeping connectivity scarcity objects possessions ownership quality internet web online wristwatches things applewatch pebble pebblewatch smartwatches watchcollecting canon watchcanon rolex rolexexplorer 1016explorer oris jaeger-lecoultre tamagotchi tamagotchigesture grandseiko georgebamford mods modding watchmods benrus quartz springdrive jamesdowling hyunsukseung beams rolexsubmariner ministryofdefense omega obsession watchcollections obessions watchmodding gadawatches haq highaccuracyquartzhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f47fdaec8d3c/Why the World’s Best Mathematicians Are Hoarding Chalk - YouTube2019-05-04T23:01:40+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhNUjg9X4g8
robertogrecotools chalk mathematics math 2019 japan hagoromo craft craftsmanship hoarding scarcityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b28ed589361b/Opinion | The Rich Kid Revolutionaries - The New York Times2019-05-01T17:34:34+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/opinion/sunday/rich-social-inequality.html
robertogrecoabigaildisney wealth inequality activism legacy 2019 rachelsherman affluence security disney merit meritocracy inheritance privilege socialjustice justice redistribution morality ethics upwardmobility immigrants capitalism socialism fulfillment joy charity shame guilt charitableindustrialcomplex philanthropicindustrialcomplex philanthropy power hierarchy secrecy hoarding scarcity abundance money relationships isolation class nonprofit nonprofits charitieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b374f87bdc03/Climavore2019-04-30T21:54:23+00:00
https://climavore.org/
robertogrecoclimavore climate food cooking seasons seasonal climatechange local scarcity multispecies morethanhumanhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c3876e8a7c45/Luxury Interiors – Popula2019-04-09T18:52:59+00:00
https://popula.com/2019/04/08/u-s-c-and-a-s-u-and-harvard-and-oberlin/?mc_cid=99855db2d9&mc_eid=7e355757ff
robertogrecoI’m from a Sun Devil family. My mom worked at Arizona State… I don’t think any of the jokes about ASU are based on a real understanding of the kind of education you could receive there; it’s based on the number of people who can access that education […]
The same people who surely believe that every child should have access to a college education also make sure to rank some of those educations as enviable and others as embarrassing. The idea of an elite, high-class education must be hoarded by a select few, because if everybody had it, it would lose its value to the elite.
Which just begins to explain why someone like Mossimo Giannulli might want to be able to say, “my daughter is at U.S.C.”
***
When people are willing to drown themselves in debt and even commit literal crimes in order to obtain an elite college education for themselves or their kids, what, really, what exactly, do they they think they are buying?
Or selling. What are people thinking, who are selling an “education” that is actively harming a whole society; that wrecks the fabric of a city, that causes people to lose their grip on their conscience, their sanity; that makes them set so catastrophic an example, somehow both before, and on behalf of, their children. All this makes a mockery of the Enlightenment values—by which I mean the egalitarianism and erudition of Alexander Pope, and not Edmund Burke getting himself in a lather over Marie Antoinette—that a Western education was once imagined to represent.
Reaction to the admissions scandal has so far centered on these rich parents and their unworthy spawn, whose lawyers now prepare to spin a tale of misguided, but forgivable, parental devotion. No less a cultural authority than the playwright David Mamet wrote an “open letter” defending accused admissions cheat Felicity Huffman; according to him, “a parent’s zeal for her children’s future may have overcome her better judgment for a moment.” Except that the “moment” went on for months, according to court filings, and involved Huffman’s paying $15,000 to ensure that her daughter would have twice the time to complete her SAT exam that an ordinary, non-bribery-enabled kid would have. Also to hire a crooked proctor afterwards, who could change some of her daughter’s wrong answers to correct ones.
In any case, Hess is right: You can get an ultrafine education at A.S.U. That place is an R1 university, positively bristling with Nobel laureates and MacArthur fellows. Walter V. Robinson, who led the famous “Spotlight” newsroom at the Boston Globe, teaches there. It’s wild to think anyone would be willing to blow half a million dollars to ensure an admission to U.S.C. over A.S.U.
Anyone who has been to (any) college can tell you that the proportion of enlightenment to hangovers varies greatly from customer to customer. It’s something else altogether that calls for the half-million bucks.
***
Coming from a quite different angle—and on March 27th, the very same day as Hess’s piece—Herb Childress, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, asked: “How did we decide that professors don’t deserve job security or a decent salary?” (“This is How You Kill a Profession.”) Childress is one of tens of thousands of Ph.D.s in the United States who failed to find a place on the tenure track, and who were slowly forced out of a professional academic career as their prospects faded year by year in the academic Hunger Games, as this brutal process is not uncommonly described.
You might assume that people like Childress just “didn’t make it” through some fault of their own, but you’d be wrong. Over the last fifty years academic work has come to look more and more like indentured servitude: Grad students and postdocs are a species of flexible workers in a gig economy, toiling in low-paying jobs waiting for their once-a-year chance to play the tenure track lottery.
Please note that these are the very people who work in the “good schools,” who are compelled to “teach,” for insanely low pay—like, a few thousand dollars per class—people like Mossimo Giannulli’s daughter Olivia Jade, a famous YouTube “Influencer.” This lady’s dad paid hundreds of thousands to put her in the orbit of hugely educated, committed, job-insecure people like Childress. She, meanwhile, impishly bragged to her legion of YouTube followers that she doesn’t really “care about school.”
And yet scholars like Childress can’t let go of their romantic notions of the academy, and their sense of vocation, which can easily be exploited; unfortunately they’ll agree to live the dream even at cut rates, as Childress himself openly admitted in the Chron.
The grief of not finding a home in higher ed—of having done everything as well as I was capable of doing, and having it not pan out; of being told over and over how well I was doing and how much my contributions mattered, even as the prize was withheld—consumed more than a decade. It affected my physical health. It affected my mental health. It ended my first marriage. […]
Like any addict, I have to be vigilant whenever higher ed calls again. I know what it means to be a member of that cult, to believe in the face of all evidence, to persevere, to serve. I know what it means to take a 50-percent pay cut and move across the country to be allowed back inside the academy as a postdoc after six years in the secular professions. To be grateful to give up a career, to give up economic comfort, in order to once again be a member.
Consider the benefits-free, pension-free pittance paid to the vast majority of people providing the elite education, who never saw a dime of all those millions in bribes, and a more complicated and larger picture than we’ve yet seen emerges."
…
"I wasn’t nearly as much of a paragon, but as a brown-trash “gifted” kid who came up poor and went to fancy schools I can easily understand how listening to this brilliant lecturer dazzled my friend, and changed the course of his life. This feeling comes to students anywhere, everywhere, in every school with a good teacher with time and attention to give us. There was and still is something vital, something good and real, to want out of an “education,” something quite beyond the ken of the kind of people who would pay an SAT proctor to cheat.
Then there’s this other angle. I first went off to college already inured to the idea that I was involved in an economy; that we were trading. Everything had been made easier for the rich kids, of course, and it wasn’t their fault, all had been bought and paid for by their parents and grandparents, but also—a crucial thing—they had also lacked our luck; they lacked certain desirable qualities, qualities as randomly distributed as wealth, things with which some of us had won a different lottery, had skipped grades with and been celebrated for: the sort of “intelligence” that made school easy. There seemed to be a natural symbiosis in this structure, crazy and shameful as the whole business of “meritocracy” appears to me now.
But also like all college kids we mainly didn’t give a fuck about any of that and just got to be friends for true reasons, just loved one another. The rich kids happened to be able to teach the poor ones what fork to use and how to ski, and the poor and/or brown kids of halfway reasonable intelligence gave them books, new kinds of food and family, music and art, a view of the other side of the tracks, new ways to have fun. We poor ones brought, say, a taste for Lester Bangs, arroz con pollo, Brian Eno and Virginia Woolf; they treated us to foie gras and Tahoe and big old California cabs on our 18th birthday. Gross, right? Really gross. But the (grotesquely mistaken) idea was that we were bringing each other into a better world, a different world, and a little at a time the true, good world would finally come.
This may sound a bit tinfoil but now I suspect that the problem may have been, all along, that all the college kids started to realize together (as I think they are still) that there was something sick at the roots of this tree of knowledge as it was then constituted. Strangely, dangerously healing, egalitarian ideas began to take hold; demographics changed, and the country began to move to the left. The 90s was the era of the tenured radical on campus, and the culture wars grew white-hot. Al Gore was elected president, and was prevented by the merest whisker from taking office. Even a barely left of center President Gore would have made things a little too parlous for the powers that be, who are on the same side as the Giannullis of the world.
Hess told me that some people think there’s one kind of education within the purview of everyone willing to work to get it, the “embarrassing” kind, and then there’s another kind that is luxury goods, strictly for “elites” from “elite” institutions—however corrupt the latter may be—served tableside by an underpaid servant class.
But the egalitarian view of education and the luxury view are mutually exclusive. Pulling up the drawbridge around your ivory tower only cuts it off from the global commons, which alone can provide the intellectual atmosphere in which a free society, and its academy, can breathe and thrive. Power wants its “meritocracy”: thus the eternal cake-having rhetoric around higher education, the queasy mingling of “exclusivity” and “diversity.”
Note too that the ruling class protects its interests as starkly on the fake left of the centrist Democrats as it does on the right, where the Koch brothers have long bought professors like they were so many cups of coffee. In Jacobin, Liza Featherstone’s bracing denunciation of noisily multilingual, Harvard- and Oxford-educated Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg addressed this centrist hypocrisy plainly (“Have You Heard? Pete Buttigieg is Really Smart”).
The professional-management class (PMC)… tries hard to make their children “gifted” and to nourish their talents, an effort that is supposed to culminate in the kind of august institutional validation that [Buttigieg] has enjoyed… Smartness makes some people more deserving of the good life than others. Smartness culture is social Darwinism for liberals.
***
So the problem we’re looking at turns out to be a political one. It’s obvious enough that the intelligentsia of the United States finds itself reduced to literal servitude. Writers, professors, even the votaries of STEM, doctors, scientists and engineers, increasingly play the role of servants to the ruling class, who are systematically diminishing their roles, their numbers and their economic and decisionmaking power, concurrently and on all fronts.
In government, in the current administration, experts are made explicitly subservient to cretins with almost miraculously inadequate credentials. In the press, hedge fund managers who’ve never read a book outside of Atlas Shrugged are stripping the fourth estate and selling it off for parts. In the academy, administrators who’ve never taught a class starve the adjuncts, even as they themselves enjoy walloping six-figure salaries and exit bonuses.
The American intelligentsia is also in the process of being strangled in its own citadels with the aid of rampant both-sides-ism. In the New York Times alone, unqualified writers like Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman are permitted to style themselves “public intellectuals” despite their permanent and boggling inability to form or defend an informed, cogent argument. This has the double effect of discrediting newspapers and the newspaper business, and devaluing the profession of journalism. And the independent voices that would once have challenged such poor work amid a mighty chorus must increasingly fight to make themselves heard.
In journalism, as in the academy and in government, educated people who were once sought after and engaged to help shape public opinion are struggling just to put bread on the table. They are writing ad copy, hustling for freelance and “teaching” trust fund kids who’d much rather be plastering themselves with makeup in exchange for Instagram ad money.
To watch Donald Trump, who is an imbecile, boast day after day of his own intelligence and how well he did in school, to hear his followers yabber on about “protecting Western Civilization” when what they mean by that is plain white supremacy, is to arrive at the bottom of the fiery slide to damnation that began with George Wallace’s inane insults about “pointy-heads,” Reagan’s aw-shucks Morning in America Arms Sales Spectacular, and Dan Quayle explaining how to spell “potatoe.”
What there is to protect isn’t what they call Western Civilization, nor even what used to be called Western Civilization. But there is something still to protect, and even to fight for; a teenager in a crowded old auditorium, listening for the first time to a fine college lecture, and entering almost unconsciously into the light of a changed world."]]>education elitism highered highereducation 2019 mariabustillos culture society smartness petebuttigieg operationvaristyblues meritocracy us capitalism competition scarcity lizafeatherstone donaldtrump centrism herbchildress academia colleges universities rankings admissions learning collegerankingshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d56470697e43/Impakt Festival 2017 - Performance: ANAB JAIN. HQ - YouTube2017-11-14T06:32:57+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o341S4xh1r0
robertogrecoanabjain 2017 superflux death aging transience time temporary abundance scarcity future futurism prototyping speculativedesign predictions life living uncertainty film filmmaking design speculativefiction experimentation counternarratives designfiction futuremaking climatechange food homegrowing smarthomes iot internetofthings capitalism hope futures hopefulness data dataviz datavisualization visualization williamplayfair society economics wonder williamstanleyjevons explanation statistics wiiliambernstein prosperity growth latecapitalism propertyrights jamescscott objectivity technocrats democracy probability scale measurement observation policy ai artificialintelligence deeplearning algorithms technology control agency bias biases neoliberalism communism present past worldview change ideas reality lucagatti alextaylor unknown possibility stability annalowenhaupttsing imagination ursulaleguin truth storytelling paradigmshifts optimism annegalloway miyamotomusashi annatsinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0eae1abc104e/Can economies thrive without growth? de RSA Radio2017-07-18T19:35:32+00:00
https://soundcloud.com/rsaradio/thrive
robertogrecoeconomics growth policy prosperity 2017 matthewtaylor timjackson capitalism environment emissions globalwarming climatechange sustainability happiness wellbeing scarcity resources technology technosolutionism efficiency consumerism consumption fashion socialgood privatization money politics service monetarypolicy government governance society ethics values technocracyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:99a7d0520ecc/The Education Debates Part Seven — davidcayley.com2017-05-21T21:13:51+00:00
http://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/2016/11/12/the-education-debates-part-seven
robertogreconeilpostman johnholt ivanillich unschooling deschooling education highered highereducation schools schooling schooliness teaching learning howwelearn stimulation motivation intrinsicmotivation curiosity freedom choice scholarship highschool colleges universities prerequisites relevance training apprenticeships donaldhoyt grades grading success libraries ritual rituals quantification process consumerism scarcity inequality puertorico literacy functionalliteracy labor work ivarberg teens youth generosity kindness compassion concern socialjustice dignity competence self-worth children childhood compulsory privilegehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4b67f790d4f4/POLITICAL THEORY - Karl Marx - YouTube2017-01-08T22:31:20+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSQgCy_iIcc
robertogrecokarlmarx marxism capitalism 2014 work labor specialization purpose alienation disconnection hierarchy efficiency communism belonging insecurity economics primitiveaccumulation accumulation profit theft exploitation instability precarity crises abundance scarcity shortage productivity leisure unemployment freedom employment inequality wealth wealthdistribution marriage relationships commodityfetishism feminism oppression ideology values valuejudgements worth consumerism materialism anxiety competition complacency conformity communistmanifesto inheritance privateproperty banking communication transportation eduction publiceducation frederickengels generalists specialists daskapitalhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6e3870470fef/Why Affluent Parents Put So Much Pressure on Their Kids - The Atlantic2015-11-25T01:30:55+00:00
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/pressure-affluent-parents/417045/
robertogrecoOn the surface, the rich kids seem to be thriving. They have cars, nice clothes, good grades, easy access to health care, and, on paper, excellent prospects. But many of them are not navigating adolescence successfully.
The rich middle- and high-school kids [Arizona State professor Suniya] Luthar and her collaborators have studied show higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse on average than poor kids, and much higher rates than the national norm.* They report clinically significant depression or anxiety or delinquent behaviors at a rate two to three times the national average. Starting in seventh grade, the rich cohort includes just as many kids who display troubling levels of delinquency as the poor cohort, although the rule-breaking takes different forms. The poor kids, for example, fight and carry weapons more frequently, which Luthar explains as possibly self-protective. The rich kids, meanwhile, report higher levels of lying, cheating, and theft.
Why is this? As Rosin reports, a major factor is “pressure”—from parents, teachers, themselves, whoever—to excel not just in school but in a host of other activities as well. All of that pressure and the resulting hyper-activity seem to leave kids feeling very tired, very inadequate, and very alone. No wonder they are miserable.
But that does little to answer the question of why there is so much pressure in the first place. It turns out that there is a pretty straightforward—and ultimately very troubling—answer: It’s because the competition for a place among the country’s well-off is so vicious. To secure one of those spots, kids must gain admission to a relatively small number of elite colleges and universities, which “essentially did not grow but rather became increasingly selective” since the 1970s. (By contrast, in Canada, where higher education “lacks a steep prestige hierarchy,” the admissions competition is less dire.)
In part, this is because of what sort of people make up America's elite today: not the owners of family businesses but professionals with impressive educations. Family businesses are heritable; education, by contrast, is not. No matter how successful parents are, their kids have to earn their own way in (albeit, of course, with the incredible advantages that come from having highly educated, well-off parents). As sociologist Hilary Levey Friedman put it in an interview with Jessica Grose at Slate, “If you’re a doctor, lawyer, or MBA—you can’t pass those on to your kids.”
All of this results in what the economists Garey and Valerie Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, brilliantly termed “the rug rat race.” As they wrote in a 2010 paper, “The increased scarcity of college slots appears to have heightened rivalry among parents, which takes the form of more hours spent on college preparatory activities.” In their findings, the rug rat race takes place primarily among the most educated parents, because there simply aren’t enough spots at elite schools for less-educated parents to even really have a shot, especially as the competition accelerates. It’s for this reason that the most educated parents spend the most hours parenting, even though they are giving up the most in wages by doing so.
This intense competition does more than serve as a giant sieve for college admissions; it is also a intensive training process for the actual skills that it takes to succeed at the upper echelons of the American economy. As one soccer parent told Friedman during her research on parenting in such a competitive culture, “I think it’s important for [my son] to understand that [being competitive] is not going to just apply here, it’s going to apply for the rest of his life. It’s going to apply when he keeps growing up and he’s playing sports, when he’s competing for school admissions, for a job, for the next whatever.” Friedman concludes, “Such an attitude prepares children for winner-take-all settings like the school system and lucrative labor markets.”
This leaves affluent parents with little choice. Even for those who fear the consequences of the pressure on their kids, they may figure it’s worth getting through a few tough years for a lifetime of economic security. One thing that bolsters this rationale: the steep dropoff in incomes and wealth from the very, very rich to America’s struggling middle class. There is a lot to be gained by being among the very elite. If that's something you have a reasonable shot at, there’s a good argument for taking it.
The conversation about the intense pressure on kids is normally focused on parenting culture, on what parents are doing wrong. But this all needs to be considered in the broader context of the American economy. The pressure on kids may come from parents, but it’s the result of systemic forces so much bigger and so much more powerful than anything any household has control over.
In a sense, what wealthy parents are doing is working. There is very little social mobility in America, up or down, and most of those born into the richest and best-educated households will someday run their own high-earning, highly educated households.
Then again, it’s not working at all. There is very little social mobility in America, up or down, and most of those born into the poorest and least-educated households will someday run their own low-earning, poorly educated households. How is it that a country so prosperous shines its munificence on so few? And, for those who do find success, why does getting there leave them feeling so hopeless?"]]>education affluence precarity economics inequality society socialmobility us incomeinequality fear parenting schools learning competition fragility hannahrosin pressure anxiety stress selectivity colleges universities rebeccarosen gareyramey valerieramey admissions scarcity jessicagross suniyaluthar paloalto siliconvalleyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8210c1676020/Jennifer Armbrust | Proposals for the Feminine Economy | CreativeMornings/PDX2015-07-02T07:10:44+00:00
http://creativemornings.com/talks/jennifer-armbrust
robertogrecojennarmbrust via:nicolefenton 2015 capitalism feminism masculinity consciouscapitalism power egalitarianism growth art design criticaltheory entrepreneurship business economics competition inequality ownership consumerism consumption labor work efficiency speed meritocracy profit individualism scarcity abundance poverty materialism care caring interdependence vulnerability embodiment ease generosity collaboration sustainability resourcefulness mindfulness self-care gratitude integrity honesty nature joanretallack well-beinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e6e42ba991b5/Poverty is a tax on cognition - Boing Boing2015-06-05T23:49:50+00:00
http://boingboing.net/2015/05/26/poverty-is-a-tax-on-cognition.html
robertogrecocorydoctorow equality poverty sendhilmullainathan cognition attention davidgraeber economics decisionmaking time money debttraps scarcity allnighters timescarcity moneyscarcity tunnelinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:82b4f4fd4cf2/danah boyd | apophenia » What is Fairness?2014-11-12T06:41:01+00:00
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/11/09/fairness.html
robertogrecoOur social safety net is woven on uncertainty. We have welfare, insurance, and other institutions precisely because we can’t tell what’s going to happen — so we amortize that risk across shared resources. The better we are at predicting the future, the less we’ll be willing to share our fates with others. And the more those predictions look like facts, the more justice looks like thoughtcrime.
The market-driven logic of fairness is fundamentally about individuals at the expense of the social fabric. Not surprisingly, the tech industry — very neoliberal in cultural ideology — embraces market-driven fairness as the most desirable form of fairness because it is the model that is most about individual empowerment. But, of course, this form of empowerment is at the expense of others. And, significantly, at the expense of those who have been historically marginalized and ostracized.
We are collectively architecting the technological infrastructure of this world. Are we OK with what we’re doing and how it will affect the society around us?"]]>algorithms culture economics us finance police policing lawenforcement technology equality equity 2014 danahboyd alistaircroll justice socialjustice crime civilrights socialsafetynet welfare markets banks banking capitalism socialism communism scarcity abundance uncertainty risk predictions profiling race business redlining privilegehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d581610ce78a/Economic Calculation in a Natural Law / RBE, Peter Joseph, The Zeitgeist Movement, Berlin - YouTube2014-06-18T04:44:03+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9FDIne7M9o
robertogrecoeconomics capitalism naturallaw inequality peterjoseph scarcity 2013 class publichealth destabilization instability socialinstability structuralviolence marketcapitalism health heathcare stress suffering mentalhealth addiction drugaddiction selfmedication violence poverty psychology psychosialstress abundancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1aea3904f5f8/You Need to Hear This Extremely Rare Recording — The Message — Medium2014-06-11T18:53:31+00:00
https://medium.com/message/you-need-to-hear-this-extremely-rare-recording-27619411e077
robertogreco2014 aesthetics culture commonplace abundance scarcity rarity rare digital reproduction copies popularity obscurity internet web comicbookguy thesimpsons music media caseykasem negativeland rexsorgatzhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2a9daea1048a/Learning From Legos - NYTimes.com2014-03-18T03:55:25+00:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/learning-from-legos.html
robertogreco2014 thomsdemonchaux making makerculture resourcefulness lego invention franklloydwright froebelblocks froebeltoys building construction unmaking dissolution prototyping adaptivereuse reuse scarcity materials toys play appearance disappearance reconstruction ecologyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d48fc31fa84d/SpeEdChange: Grit Part 4: Abundance, Authenticity, and the Multi-Year Mentor2014-02-03T01:09:07+00:00
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2014/02/grit-part-4-abundance-authenticity-and.html
robertogreco2014 irasocol grit looping tcsnmy education teaching mentoring systemsthinking care caring abundance authenticity support lcproject scarcity slack relevance relationships trust purpose lauradeisley ericjulihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c47f25afbfdf/Bat, Bean, Beam: Old games2013-06-10T21:54:03+00:00
http://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.com/2013/06/old-games.html
robertogrecoThe winner can either be the one with the most money at the end of the race, or the one with the winning horse. This should be decided at the beginning of the race.
You’d hate to play for three solid hours and be left unsure as to who won.
Totòpoli was a lot of fun. But I rescued form the home some things that I don’t recall playing with, and probably belonged to my sister. A rather exquisite medical set, all in plastic but very detailed and missing remarkably few pieces, given how the small parts in today’s equivalents seem to explode out of the packaging and immediately get lost whenever my children are involved. I wonder if this is a function of the relative scarcity of those years."]]>games boardgames play giovannitiso 2013 lego gamedesign horses horseracing childhood scarcityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e2dd68948445/Ten Responses to the Technological Unemployment Problem | THE DECLINE OF SCARCITY2013-06-09T23:52:54+00:00
http://declineofscarcity.com/?p=2790
robertogrecofuturism politics economics snarkmarketseminar 2013 scarcity abundance universalbasicincome technology unemployment employement labor artleisure decentralization capitalism automation socialism incentives motivation wealthdistribution wealth wealthredistribution policy education innovation libertarianism machines leisurearts ubihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1afb875b11e1/Sowing Scarcity – The New Inquiry2012-12-26T02:01:32+00:00
http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/sowing-scarcity/
robertogrecoecosocialism capital legal law patents intellectualproperty ip agriculture monsanto production scarcity peterfrase 2012 environment capitalism latecapitalismhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f7d96dfaa128/David Galbraith’s Blog » 5 principles of invisible web design2012-10-04T12:38:07+00:00
http://davidgalbraith.org/uncategorized/5-principles-of-invisible-web-design/3045/
robertogrecovisuals attention scarcity incrementalvalue value feedbackloops webdesign web design 2012 davidgalbraith webdevhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1d1c22897a73/Admiral Shovel and the Toilet Roll — dConstruct Audio Archive2012-09-11T05:07:30+00:00
http://archive.dconstruct.org/2012/admiralshovel
robertogrecohistory future jamesburke 2012 dconstruct2012 dconstruct interdisciplinarity interdisciplinary multidisciplinary crossdisciplinary crosspollination abundance scarcity education wikipediagame descartes aristotle socrates generalists creativegeneralists specialists experts academia expertise specialization reductionism reductivethinking networks socialnetworking internet brain science neuroscience sixdegreesofseparation sixdegrees connections connectivism anarchism anarchy self-reliance control power politics utopia dystopia economics systemsthinking relationships data cv howwethink howwelearn walledgardens innovation gamechanging gamechangers change predictability understanding uncertainty unpredictability certainty sensemaking meaningmaking patternrecognition combinatorialthinking creativity imagination ecosystems canon bureaucracy government changemaking institutions organizations adaptability evolution self-preservation predicition combinatorialcreativty predictions selfreliancehttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:39a258987ad7/Three More Growth Fallacies « Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy2012-09-10T18:19:45+00:00
http://steadystate.org/three-more-growth-fallacies/
robertogrecosmall slow sustainability resources economics scarcity ecology environment 2012 hermandaly fallacies growthhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:eecf6162926d/Ruderal Academy | 20122012-08-22T05:10:34+00:00
http://www.ruderal.com/
robertogrecocities bayarea border elpaso juarez missouri ozarks nomadicschool scarcity iterative via:javierarbona ruderalacademy ruderal space place design sanfrancisco urbanism architecture landscape juárez ciudadjuárezhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:eeb5f6c70488/Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance » Nieman Journalism Lab2011-08-24T10:32:15+00:00
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/08/accessibility-vs-access-how-the-rhetoric-of-rare-is-changing-in-the-age-of-information-abundance/
robertogrecohistory photography information archives accessibility mariapopova curation curating curatorialteaching curiosity context storytelling relevance flickrcommons 2011 digitalhumanities classideas cv digitalcurators infocus openculture dancolman andybaio metafilter brainpickings aaronswartz filterbubble elipariser jamesgleick abundance scarcity obscurity infooverloadhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f34b59075284/Boston Review — David Bollier and Jonathan Rowe: The 'Illth' of Nations2011-04-04T07:00:08+00:00
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.2/jonathan_rowe_david_bollier_economy_commons.php
robertogrecoeconomics anarchism marxism via:javierarbona davidbollier freedom jonathanrowe illth growth property perspective commons privateproperty we autoritarianism left politics policy commonproperty excess scarcity abundance future wealth culture society progress community intefrity social distribution markets marketfundamentalism local gdp work prosperity well-being affluence income incomegap redistribution taxes taxation wealthdistributionhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:39c2f02aaba8/The Technium: The Satisfaction Paradox2011-04-04T00:02:51+00:00
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/03/the_satsisfacti.php
robertogrecokevinkelly serendipity choice paradox paradoxofchoice satisfaction satisfactionparadox netflix amazon scarcity abundance google spotify music film curation filters filtering discovery recommendations psychology economicshttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b9f253c34599/YouTube - Dougald Hine: Third Places, Web 2.0 and First Life2011-02-11T13:39:31+00:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWwJkepy-mM
robertogrecothirdplaces dougaldhine reallyfreeschool agitpropproject education unschooling deschooling place sociology books reading community life secondlife web2.0 sociability social online internet web mobile phones firstlife immersive facebook information twitter learning connectivism connectedness homes socialemotional families nuclearfamily antisocial relationships intimacy vinaygupta scarcity consumerism postconsumerism abundance redundancy sustainability meaning yearoff poverty the2837university socialemotionallearninghttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:51cc44d33c38/YouTube - An Open Letter to Educators2010-12-20T01:00:14+00:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4
robertogrecoeducation future teaching universities colleges information history scarcity abundance learning schools danbrown change gamechanging access tcsnmy lcproject unschooling deschooling openeducation dropoutshttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a2d4ea04b932/The Opposition to DIY Education - By Reihan Salam - The Agenda - National Review Online2010-11-14T21:02:18+00:00
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/253243/opposition-diy-education-reihan-salam
robertogrecoanyakamenetz highered highereducation publicgood education policy economics hierarchy sharing knowledge expertise scarcity reihansalamhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bd073829b919/Does the web make experts dumb? – confused of calcutta2010-08-24T05:03:11+00:00
http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2010/08/22/does-the-web-make-experts-dumb/
robertogrecojprangaswami web experts education unschooling hierarchy deschooling asymmetry scarcity expertise analog digital internet onlinehttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fd82786cf14d/Going, Going, Gone § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM2010-03-20T22:07:26+00:00
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/going_going_gone/
robertogrecoeconomics environment sustainability helium scarcity materials nature physics geology geography resourceshttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:22ce5ca5a921/Our Report Card2010-02-28T06:19:34+00:00
http://ourreportcard.blogspot.com/2009/12/i-married-academic-librarian.html
robertogrecocapitalism information learning unschooling deschooling education homeschool tcsnmy mit informationage freedom sharing scarcity society narcissism sklls tools lcproject parenting glvohttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ec089608b35c/Op-Ed Columnist - The Protocol Society - NYTimes.com2009-12-23T18:57:47+00:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/opinion/22brooks.html
robertogrecodavidbrooks economics psychology innovation culture society change gamechanging scarcity philosophy consilience networks protocol physics ideashttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8002bfb0b170/Alejandro Aravena | ICON MAGAZINE ONLINE2009-11-16T08:35:04+00:00
http://www.iconeye.com/index.php?view=article&catid=423%3Aicon-067--january-2009&layout=default&id=3895%3Aalejandro-aravena&option=com_content
robertogrecoalejandroaravena elementalchile chile architecture activism doing latinamerica housing design teddycruz urbanthinktank smiljanradic mathiasklotz scarcityhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b20f023aca8e/Seth's Blog: Education at the crossroads2009-08-17T15:56:14+00:00
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/education-at-the-crossroads.html
robertogrecoschooliness sethgodin unschooling deschooling scarcity learning training politics free future schools abundance education openeducation highered change reform tcsnmy lcproject gamechanging innovation internet online elearninghttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9aca4f378660/Op-Ed Columnist - A Date With Scarcity - NYTimes.com [via: http://liftlab.com/think/laurent/2008/11/07/politics-is-cool-again/]2008-11-08T18:18:57+00:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04brooks.html
robertogrecobabyboomers boomers change generations excess scarcity us nytimes society culture politics 2008 elections barackobama davidbrookshttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b53e0ffb28a6/Edge: EDGE MASTER CLASS 2008—CLASS 5 - THE IRONY OF POVERTY A Talk By Sendhil Mullainathan2008-11-05T06:17:54+00:00
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/thaler_sendhil08/class5.html
robertogrecopoverty economics culture decisionmaking scarcity stress money psychology society class debt poorhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bbc7ae9766fb/Archinect : Features : Archinect Op-Ed: Let's Get Small2008-10-27T06:21:11+00:00
http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=81604_0_23_0_M
robertogrecoscarcity systems scale small architecture design aesthetics 2008 crisis economicshttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:229adcd8b72a/The Water Shortage Myth - Forbes.com - Magazine Article2008-07-16T06:11:56+00:00
http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/14/california-supply-demand-oped-cx_dz_0715water_print.html
robertogrecoeconomics water scarcity pricehttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3af738dec6e7/Seriosity: The Enterprise Solution for Information Overload2008-06-08T03:07:35+00:00
http://www.seriosity.com/
robertogrecogames business arg attention collaboration learning management leadership mmo mmog seriousgames virtualworlds janemcgonigal happiness education play productivity psychology mmorpg workplace work gaming currency money economics metaverse email enterprise2.0 complexity entertainment scarcity socialsoftware infooverload im wikishttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:78d14db9ebef/Peak Water: Aquifers and Rivers Are Running Dry. How Three Regions Are Coping2008-04-27T04:33:45+00:00
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-05/ff_peakwater?currentPage=all
robertogrecocrisis scarcity sustainability technology water resources global worldhttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4f8730e94464/Eating Off the Table :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education2008-01-30T20:48:15+00:00
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/30/trays
robertogrecocolleges universities food waste education economics markets behavior society excess scarcity sustainability green environmenthttps://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d02a2c62aef0/