blair_fix

blair_fix, 7 months ago to random

Here's more fun with Forbes data. I use the Forbes 400 to chart how the American rich have gotten (obscenely) richer over the last four decades.

The rise of inequality in a rainbow chart!

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/09/24/how-the-rich-get-richer/

blair_fix, 8 months ago to random

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic on why economics is fundamentally political:

"every aspect of economics – taxation, antitrust, contract and labor law, etc – is fundamentally political. There is no objective perch on which an economist can stand and decide which tradeoffs are empirically best."

https://capitalaspower.com/2023/09/money-is-power/

blair_fix, 8 months ago to random

I continue to be enthralled by power laws.

It's utterly weird that you can model something as complicated as the distribution of wealth with ... a straight line. And then you can use this line to predict the presence of billionaires. Kinda freaky.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/09/03/billionaires-are-so-predictable/

blair_fix, 8 months ago to random

I'm a little late to the party, but this new audiobook from @pluralistic looks fantastic.

"The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation"

Support the Kickstarter here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

blair_fix, 8 months ago to random

I just installed a pi-hole on my home network. Man is it fun watching all the blocked domains in the logs!

Fascinating to see the apps that are calling home in the background.

blair_fix, 8 months ago to random

What's the single most important factor for becoming a billionaire?

Forget about individual characteristics. The most important thing is to live in a rich country.

Here's how the billionaire concentration scales with GDP per capita.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/09/03/billionaires-are-so-predictable/

blair_fix, 8 months ago to random

Billionaires love to claim that they've bootstrapped themselves into existence. But the truth is that billionaires are socially made.

How do we know that? Because we can use the social distribution of income to predict their numbers.

#billionaires

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/09/03/billionaires-are-so-predictable/

blair_fix, 9 months ago to random

Who owns Canada's largest oil refinery, built in partnership with Standard Oil?

That would be the Irving family — east coast elites who also control the English media in New Brunswick.

Here's the Irving network of power. My work with @DTCochrane.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/23/mapping-the-ownership-network-of-canadas-billionaire-families/

blair_fix, 10 months ago to random

I drove across the prairies this summer and counted dozens of Pioneer grain terminals.

All of them are owned by the Richardson family — billionaire agribusiness oligarchs. Here's their corporate ownership network.

@DTCochrane

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/23/mapping-the-ownership-network-of-canadas-billionaire-families/

blair_fix, 10 months ago to random

In Canada, 10 billionaire families own more wealth than the bottom third of Canadians.

That's obscene.

My work with @DTCochrane
#billionaires #inequality

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/23/mapping-the-ownership-network-of-canadas-billionaire-families/

blair_fix, 10 months ago to random

Billionaire Michael McCain had 'personal knowledge' of a Canadian bread price-fixing scheme.

Not surprising. The point of accumulating corporate power is to limit competition. Here's McCain's power network circa 2021.

@DTCochrane

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/23/mapping-the-ownership-network-of-canadas-billionaire-families/

blair_fix, 10 months ago to random

An interesting new paper by Yuri Di Liberto examines the idea of 'differential harm' as it relates to the multiple crises of the 21st century.

"Differential Harm: Patterns of Uneven Destruction"

https://capitalaspower.com/2023/07/di-liberto-differential-harm-patterns-of-uneven-destruction/

blair_fix, 10 months ago to random

Over the last 40 years, the US threw an inequality party ... and Canada followed suit.

Both countries now endure levels of inequality not seen since the Great Depression. It's time we changed that.

#inequality

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/23/mapping-the-ownership-network-of-canadas-billionaire-families/

danyork, 10 months ago to scifi

“Hope begins with the ability to imagine alternatives. And there is always an alternative.” - part of a brilliant graduation address by Cory Doctorow ( @pluralistic ) to York University.

A great piece about science fiction, optimism, pessimism, fatalism, humane agency, Luddites, tech bros, inevitability, and the need to always seek alternatives… and to find hope.

Read the whole thing: https://doctorow.medium.com/there-is-always-an-alternative-e55fd414d1fd

#hope #scifi #sciencefiction

pluralistic, 10 months ago to random

My bank's site loads slowly, so I switch to other tabs in Firefox while it's loading; however, the site has some script to determine if its tab has focus, and it suspends loading if it's not the tab I'm looking at. How do I trick the website into thinking I'm looking at its tab?

ETA: Opening a new window doesn't work.

blair_fix, 10 months ago to random

The world has a billionaire problem, and we're doing our part to fix it.

In this post, @DTCochrane and I shed light on the corporate power networks owned by Canada's billionaire families.

It's shocking how much these barons own.

#billionaires

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/23/mapping-the-ownership-network-of-canadas-billionaire-families/

pluralistic, 11 months ago to random

Herr Doktor Docktor Professor Doctorow

#trawna

Me in robe, hat and gown at honourary PhD ceremony at York University
Me in robe, hat and gown at honourary PhD ceremony at York University
Me in robe, hat and gown at honourary PhD ceremony at York University

blair_fix, 11 months ago to random

Hi folks,

So my postdoc is over and I'm doing a bit of fundraising.

If you follow my research and like what I do, I'd be honored if you became a supporter.

Cheers!

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/18/a-blind-leap/

blair_fix, 11 months ago to random

Cory Doctorow on how elites use 'hobbies' to evade taxes:

"The parts of the tax-code that deal with hobbies, and the enforcement mechanisms for them, are tailor-made for billionaire tax-evasion – not for a fair deal for everyday people with a side-gig."

@pluralistic
https://capitalaspower.com/2023/05/how-elite-hobbies-let-billionaires-pay-no-tax/

blair_fix, 11 months ago to random

I meant to post this chart a while ago, but got waylaid by the hysteria over my murder chart.

The frequency of the word #cyberpunk closely tracks the rise of mass US incarceration.

I wonder why ...
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/

blair_fix, 11 months ago to random

Maybe I'm beating a dead horse, but still. Do you know what is consistently correlated? The Gini index of income inequality and the murder rate.

Left, the most recent trend across countries. Right, the correlation (across countries) over time.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/20/masochistic-fun-with-plutocratic-murder/

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