Karlo Basta
@karlobasta
Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics, University of Edinburgh. Nationalism, the state, capitalism, socialism, in a blender. Wrote The Symbolic State: Writing Capitalists against Nationalism.
It's all fine & good for journalists, pundits (and academics) to be pointing to how the media has been giving Farage an easy pass, but why is it that it goes unnoticed that the man behind Starmer's rise to power has only been interviewed *for the first and only time* once he got the boot?
Natural monopolies should not be private companies. Rightmove seems a natural monopoly.
Apple flexing its muscle against Trump admin in the end after all. They may kiss his ass but profit is profit
Best I can tell, the biggest knock against Miliband as treasury secretary is that he's too competent. Hilarious. If Burnham picks him, the political reason for bringing in Purnell will be clear.
Just the latest iteration of century long property-owning democracy scam
Ansell and Padgett's piece on the Medici is still one of my favourite articles on politics I've read in any discipline. Agree with the general sentiment
...nor Apple's shockingly high profit margins, to use just two very closely related examples. Which is why one can disagree with just about everything Marx wrote, but it is difficult to disagree with this little barb in his brutal takedown of Friedrich List
Clinton wasn't completely wrong, though. He was right that 'United States' will 'share' in the benefits of China's WTO accession. But it was only some Americans who really benefited from that accession. He was wrong about why and how they'd benefit, though.
As well as this assumption that sits odd with his recognition that Chinese leadership are smart people who know what they're doing. Surely they knew this, too, and would have taken steps to create alternative poles of political power.
Then there's this little bit of wishful thinking that has clear origins in a lot of academic wishful thinking about the link between markets and democracy.
Then, this little dinosaur that has aged so, so badly, not only in China, but in the US and elsewhere. It's positively quaint. And depressing.
...when viewed from our vantage point, but also a testament of the power of some of those ideas back then. Here are just some of the most glaring bits of it. First, this bit of optimistic thinking.
...nationalization, obviously you'll find that social sciences 'lean left'. All social science has an ideological angle, but let's at least be honest about it.
The shoe thing is more menacing than verbal humiliation they are so willing to swallow.
In some parallel universe Yugoslavia did not break apart, she's the president, Trump married her anyway, and now he's the first lady of Yugoslavia.
This was more predictable than the Canadian electorate doing a 180 to back Liberals after Trump's annexation talk
The fabulations of start-up founders or AI snake oil peddlers to mobilize capital is hardly new. Tons of examples in the corporate history of English/British empire from this fabulous book. Here's one from 16th century, with Gilbert Humphrey in the role of founder