This billionaire opens the door of the club

(No. 7) Capitalism's dirty little secret is to promote individuality over community, by Ty Montague and Stephen P. Williams

Capitalism is a lonely game. Illustration by Stephen P. Williams

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From the Department of Capitalism:

I found a surprising and enlightening TED talk by Nick Hanauer – self described capitalist, plutocrat and member of the .01 percent – who argues that we have been mislead by neoliberal economists for decades. He believes that neoliberal economists work only for big corporations and billionaires and that the vast disparities we see in income and the ominous political instability in the U.S. are the direct result of following misguided and disproven neoliberal economic theory. He goes on to rebut several of the big lies that neoliberalist economics has promoted over the years. First, he says, it is not capital that creates growth, it is people.  Second, it isn’t self-interest that promotes public good, it is reciprocity. And third, it isn’t competition that creates prosperity, it is cooperation. He spends the rest of the video taking on these mistaken assumptions about how the economy works and correcting them using clear examples and data.  The surprising part about all of this to me is the source, someone who clearly benefited from the neoliberal trance we have been in since the mid-seventies. I decided to root around and see what else Nick had been talking about and I found this video from way back in 2014 in which he lays out a similar argument and warns that the pitchforks are coming. (I.e. angry mobs with pitchforks are coming for him and his fellow plutocrats).  I also discovered a podcast Nick hosts called Pitchfork Economics where he describes the central theme this way:  “Bad theory leads to bad policy and bad policy leads to bad outcomes.” What is hopeful for me in discovering Nick and the apparently large audience following him is that things are now so clearly out of whack that even the primary beneficiaries of the current system are beginning to question it. I’m reminded of the quote by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." If someone like Nick gets it, and spreads it, well… that’s progress.

by Ty Montague

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A good word

Illustration by Stephen P. Williams

Anannatannassamitindriya is a Sanskrit word describing a person’s manifestation of the phrase, “I will come to know what is unknown.” We are working on it.

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A new name for the newsletter 

We have decided that our original title “Our Dark Secrets” is already out of date. As we dug in to some of the topics that we had considered to be taboo – our own mounting feelings of doom, our questions about the viability of capitalism itself, our questions about the assumption that our economy must grow forever – it became clear that these topics are being publicly discussed by others, even if there’s not much mention in the mainstream media. Here’s but the latest fascinating example. So we’re renaming the newsletter “The Questions” and adding our voices to the growing chorus. For this, our seventh issue, our goal has not changed:  we hope to gain a deeper understanding of the tangle of existential issues that humanity faces over the coming decades and provide resources and maybe some answers for folks asking themselves these same sorts of questions. This is a public “journal” of our private thoughts, what we’re learning, what we find interesting or alarming or comforting in these strange times. 

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Aketch Joy Winnie has crossed cultures as a teacher in Uganda, and a model in Paris. This quiet walk in rural Uganda with her father hits on some truths about how people live — and how they could live — that most of us might otherwise miss.

@aketchjoywinnie#africaisgold #fyp #villagelife #foryoupage #africa #uganda

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Thank you for reading and watching. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. — Ty and Stephen