Rowley @Rowley@social.cleverlibre.org

Here’s what a firm does when it collects revenue: it invests that revenue in capturing more revenue.

Sometimes this might mean “more production,” by which most people mean “NEW production,” and that’s what orthodox economics imagines capitalists do. We have all this stuff today, you see, because people have endless hedonic wants, so we constantly invest our surplus into creating the tools to make ever more stuff.

But capitalists only *sometimes* invest in new production—building new machines, extracting new resources, etc. This is just one subset of capitalist investment. Here are some other things that capitalists do every single day to maximize their differential accumulation:

- buy patents to stop competitors from making and selling things

- lobbying the state for subsidies for themselves and regulatory obstacles for their competitors

- undercutting prices to drive their competitors out of business

- buying their competitors

Etc. Note that none of these expand production or create new production. All of these are either about *reducing their competitors’ income* and hopefully consolidating control over their capital instead.

5/

The problem with this story is that capitalists don’t seek revenue. They don’t even seek *profits,* which are revenues in excess of costs. There is a myth that human beings are utility-maximizing machines, and our sole goal is to perpetually increase the amount of goods and services we consume, creating ever more pleasure for ourselves. But this myth is false.

Capitalists aren’t seeking to get as much profit for themselves as they can by selling goods and services. Capitalists seek to maximize their *differential accumulation.* They want to *beat the average.* This is the underlying, inescapable drive of capital ownership in a competitive market.

4/

There is a common trope among capitalist apologists, and especially among right-libertarians who imagine that capitalism could somehow survive and indeed thrive in the absence of the state:

Capitalists want to earn profits. Humble and honest, these simple folks want to sell their wares and provide services in mutually beneficial exchanges. Surely, in a truly free market, none of them would ever intentionally harm their customers, because this would reduce their number of customers, scare away new customers, and harm their reputation. In True Capitalism©️™️ , this couldn’t happen.

This is, of course, silly nonsense.

3/

ProPublica just came out with another amazing piece of journalism, this one on the efforts by the capitalist firm Philips Respironics to hide the harms caused by its products.

Philips makes CPAP ventilator machines designed to be worn while asleep, creating positive air pressure to help people with sleep apnea. Back in 2010, Philips added a foam to its CPAP machines to reduce rattling that kept users awake at night. The foam Philips chose degrades, releasing toxic carcinogens directly into the mouths, throats, and lungs of users.

Philips knew about this *right away.* It spent years hiding reports that it was legally obligated to share with US governmental regulators. It waited over a *decade* to issue a recall. Thousands of people are sick; hundreds have died.

Go ahead and read the whole thing, if you have the stomach for it. It’s a typically excellent piece of investigative reporting by ProPublica:

https://www.propublica.org/article/philips-kept-warnings-about-dangerous-cpaps-secret-profits-soared

1/ #thread

I'm starting to think that anyone who falls for this grift deserves to be fleeced.

We curse the one benighted chap /
Who felled the sycamore at the gap /
but tolerate those richer guys /
who burn whole forests, seas and skies.

Simon Heywood, 2023

A substantial number of insect biologists study social parasites. These are organisms that infiltrate the colonies of social insects, like ants or wasps, and divert resources to themselves without contributing to the functioning of the colony.

I gotta say, the super-wealthy who offshore money and purchase judges and politicians fit nearly every techincal definition of social parasitism.

Awkward that Elon Musk now has to pay to sue Elon Musk. #xitter #elonmusk

I guess it's good that they put these Republicans on TV occasionally to remind everyone why they're losing to a loser traitor fraud who stole a bathroom full of national secrets by 50%.

I have history turned off (youtube reminds me constantly).

This is one of the suggestions when I watch a video of actor interviews on a talk show. Oh, you must want to see a whole pile of fascist d-bags.

There is no "left" equivalent of these people in the US, and I never get left(ish) suggestions under non-political videos at all.

Anyone who says youtube isn't boosting fascism is stupid.

Listening to Massive Attack on my headphones as I walk through DFW somehow makes things a lot more dramatic. 😂

More evidence of my naïveté: I honestly thought political media would care far more about women and girls dying due to lack of access to abortion care than they would over a U.S. Senator wearing a hoodie to work. Serves me right.

just got told off by a repeater owner for saying "CQ" instead of "monitoring"

boomers really want to kill #HamRadio don't they

#Climate #ClimateCrisis #JoinTheResistance

Basically, I disable (or don't enable) pretty much every generative AI "feature" that anybody throws at me, because I care about human creativity, accuracy of information, and have no desire to participate in what at this point is an utterly exploitative, garbage ecosystem. #Google #Microsoft #AI

Due to global warming, Vivaldi's Four Seasons have been reworked so that the Summer movement is 30% longer and played fortissimo, winter is 10% shorter and played pianissimo, with some random bars played sforzando, to account for the slowing of the North Atlantic Current, and both Spring and Autumn are now played very quickly and with abrupt changes in key, indicating their chaotic nature.

The nice thing about this Presidential administration is that as a voter, when the President's son fucks up, I don't actually have to care deeply because the President didn't hand him political power by appointing him a special advisor to anything.

⚠️”Earth’s life support systems so damaged that planet is “well outside of safe operating space for humanity”, scientists warned.

Their assessment found that 6 out of 9 “planetary boundaries” broken bc of human-caused pollution & destruction of natural world. The planetary boundaries are limits at which key global systems, such as climate, water, wildlife diversity, beyond which these systems’ ability to maintain a healthy planet is in serious peril” #ClimateCrisis
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/earth-well-outside-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-scientists-find?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

New at The Watch:

A sappy, self-indulgent, cliched, and absolutely necessary tribute to my recently deceased pup

https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/daisy-had-other-plans