Cody’s Showdy Takes On Planned Obscolescence

I hate planned obsolescence. I hate it with the kind of burning passion that can only come from personal grievance, but I also hate it for its role in the destruction of a habitable planet, and the way it contributes to the ever-rising cost of living. As the video below discusses, it’s a problem that’s more or less built into our system as it exists, despite being universally unpopular outside of corporate boardrooms. It’s draining all of our bank accounts, making life more difficult, and filling the world (especially where poor people live) with toxic waste. It is one of many reasons why we cannot afford to have an economic system that revolves around endless growth. I will probably write more about this on my own at some point, but for today, here’s Some More News with a good overview. Isn’t it fun when I share videos that make me angry?

Fables, Wage Theft, and Asymmetrical Class Warfare

I feel like I should probably talk about media monopolies more. The way corporations have managed to gain control of ever-larger portions of our entertainment media has caused all manner of problems, most of them for the very people who create the products those same corporations sell. In many ways, that’s traditional, right? Every capitalist company is in the business of exploiting its workers – extracting as much work as possible, for as little pay as possible. Part of that process, in publication, is control over intellectual property, and the use and abuse of legal teams to get and maintain that control. I’m writing about this now, because a good example has come up, along with a solution that I absolutely love.

Fables is a comic series published by DC Comics, and written by one Bill Willingham. I have never read any of them, but they’re apparently very good, so maybe I’ll have to change that. Since the original run, which ended in 2015, DC has apparently been doing spinoffs and games, with no regard for Willingham’s ownership of the intellectual property. Willingham himself is not a fan of current intellectual property law, but that doesn’t mean just letting corporations have their way when they abuse said law. The problem is, as I mentioned above, those corporations tend to have legal teams for just this purpose, which makes fighting them a daunting task. How much of your money, and how many years of your life are you willing to sacrifice, to just to stop corporate abuse of your work? For a lot of people, a fight like that isn’t worth it, and corporations count on that, knowing that the personal cost of a legal battle would never affect them. So, what? Does that mean we just have to let the corporations win?

Well, no. The long term solution, I think, is for the people in these industries to continue the organizing work they’ve already been doing, but Willingham has found a much easier and more immediate solution. Fables is no longer his intellectual property, and it doesn’t belong to DC Comics (owned by Warner Bros. Discovery), either. As of today, Fables, in its entirety, belongs to all of us:

As of now, 15 September 2023, the comic book property called Fables, including all related Fables spin-offs and characters, is now in the public domain. What was once wholly owned by Bill Willingham is now owned by everyone, for all time. It’s done, and as most experts will tell you, once done it cannot be undone. Take-backs are neither contemplated nor possible.

Willingham cites the potential cost, in years of his life, of trying to force DC to live up to its legal obligations (he’s 67), and I really appreciate his reasoning for this tactic:

Since I can’t afford to sue DC, to force them to live up to the letter and the spirit of our long-time agreements; since even winning such a suit would take ridiculous amounts of money out of my pocket and years out of my life (I’m 67 years old, and don’t have the years to spare), I’ve decided to take a different approach, and fight them in a different arena, inspired by the principles of asymmetric warfare. The one thing in our contract the DC lawyers can’t contest, or reinterpret to their own benefit, is that I am the sole owner of the intellectual property. I can sell it or give it away to whomever I want.

I chose to give it away to everyone. If I couldn’t prevent Fables from falling into bad hands, at least this is a way I can arrange that it also falls into many good hands. Since I truly believe there are still more good people in the world than bad ones, I count it as a form of victory.

This won’t stop DC from making Fables comics, shows, or anything else, but it does mean that they will never have exclusive ownership of them again, because literally anyone has the exact same right. Did you read these, get inspired, and write fanfiction? It’s now just as canon as anything under the DC label. Congratulations! Willingham’s press release, linked above, goes into greater detail on his own opinions about intellectual property law as it is, and as it should be, but I want to focus on his “what did DC do to deserve this?” section:

Q: What Exactly Has DC Comics Done to Provoke This?

Too many things to list exhaustively, but here are some highlights: Throughout the years of my business relationship with DC, with Fables and with other intellectual properties, DC has always been in violation of their agreements with me. Usually it’s in smaller matters, like forgetting to seek my opinion on artists for new stories, or for covers, or formats of new collections and such. In those times, when called on it, they automatically said, “Sorry, we overlooked you again. It just fell through the cracks.” They use the “fell through the cracks” line so often, and so reflexively, that I eventually had to bar them from using it ever again. They are often late reporting royalties, and often under-report said royalties, forcing me to go after them to pay the rest of what’s owed.

You recognize what this is, right? It’s wage theft. This is part of the tens of billions of dollars stolen from workers, by capitalists. This is how that theft is most often committed. They use deliberate incompetence to hold on to the money for a little bit longer, and to make it hard to keep track of what’s owed. When I lived in Somerville, I saw my landlord do this to his workers constantly. He’d forget to pay them, and then plead poverty and delay the payment (he owned about 75 other people’s homes), and then underpay, and when the worker objected, he’d argue about how much was owed. This is the same damned thing, done by a massive corporation, and you’d better believe they do it at a massive scale. Hell, it’s the same as Trump’s reputation for never paying people – this is a big part of how capitalists get so rich, and prevent those below them from improving their own lot in life.

More than that, DC tried to trick Willingham into giving them ownership over Fables, and when he called them out on it, they claimed they hadn’t read the contract. More weaponized incompetence, to disguise attempted theft. Putting it squarely in the hands of the public was a brilliant move.

At the same time, I can see why it was less than ideal for for Willingham. First, because it doesn’t prevent DC from doing more with Fables, and second because much as I dislike the fact, we live in a capitalist world, and we all need money to survive. That means that while it would be nice to be able to just create art and share it with the world, those who like doing so are forced to consider the hours put into that work, which could have been spent working for a wage. The system sucks, but opting out of it isn’t really an option. Willingham no longer has exclusive ownership either, and that’s not without its costs. In this case, however, it may not have been that difficult of a decision. He himself is still bound by contract not to do anything with that property, except through DC. They own his ability to use the intellectual property he technically owned, they just haven’t been paying him for its use. Remember that Frank Wilhoit quote?

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Capitalism has a very similar principle, where the “in-group” is the ruling class – capitalists – and the “out-group” is everyone else. It’s probably a big part of why conservatives like capitalism so much.

This isn’t a clear win for Willingham, but it is a strategic victory, and not just for him. His mention of asymmetrical warfare is one that I think we’d all do well to consider, because the class war is very far from symmetrical. The amount of power concentrated in the hands of the ruling class is probably greater than it ever has been, and failing to account for that would be, well, like negotiating your pay without the support of a union. Capitalists need workers, but the don’t need you, and one-on-one, they will destroy you.

So we don’t fight them one-on-one, and we don’t meet them on a battle field for “honorable combat”. This has never been a fair fight, and so we are under no obligation to fight fairly. Use the strengths we have, take advantage of opportunities as the arise, and if you can’t win a battle, maybe you can force a draw.

Capitalist Demands That Governments Kill Poor People To Discipline Workers

This past February, I gave an overview of how the government uses poverty to kill people, knowing that that’s what they are doing, in order to benefit the capitalist class. Using inflation caused by capitalist greed as an excuse, the government increases interest rates, with the intention of “cooling inflation” by increasing unemployment. That means more people without housing. It means more people rationing medicine, or doing without it altogether. It means lives destroyed, and futures stolen.

And it is just one way in which the government puts its hand on the scale to keep all of us submissive, obedient, and grateful to our superiors. Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s one of those “superiors” – Tim Gurney of “millennials and their avocado toast” fame – just openly making my case for me, about how he thinks the peasants need to be reminded of their place:

“People have decided they really didn’t want to work so much anymore through COVID and that has had a massive issue on productivity,” Gurner, donning slicked back hair and an unbuttoned white shirt, says in the video. “They have been paid a lot to do not too much.”

“We need to see unemployment rise,” Gurner said. “Unemployment needs to jump 40-50 percent in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer [emphasis mine], not the other way around. There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around.” He then says that “hurting the economy” is what the whole world is trying to do.

Sam’s comments at the very beginning of that clip touch on the presidency of Salvadore Allende, a Chilean socialist politician who was elected to the presidency in 1970, and overthrown with the help of the United States 50 years and two days ago, on September 11th, 1973. Allende’s overthrow, and the wave of terror and murder that followed, were tragic and criminal for many reasons, but one that I wish more people knew about was Project Cybersyn, so I’m taking a moment to link to that here. Those decades of murder, which in many ways still continue, were very much a matter of reminding people of their place. True democracy, economic and political, could not be tolerated. Who do those workers think they are? The nobles still send in the guards to brutalize rebellious subjects.

This is one of those times in which, once you start to see it everywhere. In the US, the way police are allowed to steal from people based on vibes, the way employers are allowed to get away with just refusing to pay billions in wages every year, the way student debt is explicitly used to funnel poor people into the US war machine – so much of  our society is designed, from the bottom up, to maintain the class divides that advocates of capitalism pretend no longer exist. They like to pretend they’re just like us, right up until the second anyone asks for a raise, or for a safe workplace. The power maintained within the US itself allows for the projection of power around the globe, and the methods of “disciplining” the former colonies that we saw in Chile.

This is why the working class needs to organize, and to stay organized. I think Americans in the 20th century allowed themselves to be persuaded that society had just moved beyond the abuses of the robber barons. Part of that, I think, was that during the Cold War, capitalist countries, and the US in particular, were investing a lot more into the wellbeing of their citizens. This wasn’t some natural function of capitalism, but I think they tried hard to make it look that way, because it was really just another branch of the war against communism. In the midst of a Red Scare, nobody had any problem spending taxpayer money to fight the commies, and that included investing in the happiness of the general public, so they could convince the working class that capitalism was better. My favorite example of this is the town in West Virginia that only got their bridge fixed after they wrote to the USSR asking for aid. There’s no USSR for them to worry about anymore, and while China may take on that role, it’s not doing so currently. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there’s been no alternative, and so there’s less pressure to make the common people happy.

Under feudalism, and under early capitalism, if the under-class got too uppity, the nobles would generally use violence to maintain their authority. In modern liberal democracies, the ruling class is better at hiding its hand, but they haven’t actually changed. The law is mostly designed around the protection and management of property, such that it defaults to the benefit of property owners. The whole system is set up so that you need money to survive, and unless you are a capitalist, your only way to get money is by selling your labor. At the bottom end, the police work to ensure that surviving without money is impossible. The land is all enclosed – either privately owned, or owned and protected by the government, such that nobody can actually just live off it. Being too poor to afford your own home in this system is treated as a criminal act all by itself. Unhoused people are subject to every abuse the police can devise, including having their belongings stolen and destroyed on a regular basis. If you try to protect them from that, you get reactions like multimillionaire “everyman” Joe Rogan being shocked that anyone would even consider letting them own stuff.

The violence used to suppress the under-class is now mostly disguised as policing, but that violence is still there. It’s more individualized, too. Beyond the routine abuse of unhoused people, it takes place when someone’s evicted, or when police target left-wing activists, or when police and private “security” forces attack pipeline protesters. It never went anywhere, it just got disguised, and given a whole bunch of spin to make people accept it, and even cheer it on.

Over the last two centuries, real advances have been made in quality of living, in some parts of the world, but those advances came from working people fighting back against the capitalist rush to oligarchy, and against white supremacy designed to destroy class solidarity. I hope it is clear by now that those advances are also not permanent. If anything, they are an aberration – a statistical outlier against centuries of concentration of power in the hands of a tiny ruling class. That said, I think the advances that have been made demonstrate that we can go further. Many people view the socialist and communist revolutions of the 20th century as total failures, and while I think there are arguments to be had about that, we don’t need to have them here. We know, that in every country in the world, the working class has been able to improve its own situation through collective power, despite violent opposition from the ruling class.

What we need, going forward, is to aim higher than things like a living wage. We need to aim for revolutionary change. While the ruling class will doubtless continue to use violence to maintain their power, “revolution” does not mean war, necessarily. My preferred tactic would be a general strike – collectively bringing a country to a halt, and refusing to continue accepting the system as it is. What classifies change as “revolutionary”, in this context, is that it changes not just who is in power, but how power is distributed in the first place. I think that going from monarchy to capitalist republic was an upgrade, in many ways, but I think we can do better. Things like worker cooperatives, for example, demonstrate that it’s possible to have democratically run corporations, even in a world that is set up in every way to privilege the more traditional, authoritarian model. Reshape the law to actively support such organizations, and I think they’d do quite well, especially if it comes with a deliberate phase-out of capitalist corporations.

Nothing like that will happen easily, and while it might appear quick when it happens, it will be the result of years of hard work, and probably bloodshed on the part of those organizing the political power to make it happen. The upside is that that work is starting, and I think that’s part of why ghouls like Gurner and Larry Summers are so freaked out that they’re openly calling for higher unemployment and everything that comes with it. In many ways, the class war is a real war. It’s a power struggle, and one side is not just accustomed to killing to keep their power, it’s routine for them. It’s nice to see the people at the top getting worried, and I think it’s very helpful of Gurner to just come out and say how they see the world. Hopefully it will help more people realize that this is why life is so hard, when we have so much abundance.

A Month Later, Maui Still Needs Help

I meant to write about the Maui fire around a month ago, but I got distracted by other things. That means that I am now, totally intentionally, doing my part to ensure that Maui is not forgotten now that the news cycle has moved on. Hawai’i, for all it’s a state, is also very much a colony in a number of ways, and Native Hawaiians have been living under various forms of occupation since the US took it over. Colonial rule and capitalist extraction also played a role in the severity of last month’s fire, thanks to invasive grasses originally planted to feed livestock, and then allowed to grow wild long after the ranches were abandoned, and that’s not even touching who’s at fault for global warming.

Unfortunately, the fire has brought in the next round of ruthless exploitation, as disaster capitalists swoop in to take advantage of the fact that those in the path of the fire lost what little they had. For those who’re unclear on the concept, I recommend this Teen Vogue article for the short version, and The Shock Doctrine for the long version. For a one-sentence summary, “disaster capitalism” describes the way capitalists descend on disaster areas to take advantage of desperation, chaos, and confusion. In the case of Maui, that means capitalists trying to buy up those few scraps of land still owned by Native Hawaiians.

Days after the blaze began, survivors started reporting cold calls from out-of-state investors hoping to scoop up their property for bargain bin prices. On one Facebook thread, several Maui realtors described receiving similar calls. One of them told Jacobin that he received a call on August 9, just one day after the fires began.

Like most locals in the close-knit Maui community, the realtor was disgusted by the opportunism.“It’s been bottom-feeders calling us, asking about what kinds of lands we have available,” he said. “This is not the time. It’s unfathomable what people are going through with loss of life, that they would be calling. But I guess that’s America.”

Land speculation in the wake of natural disasters is hardly unique to Maui. In the months after Hurricane Michael tore through the Florida Panhandle in 2019, home sales rose by double digits in the county most affected. After the 2017 fire in Santa Rosa, California, sales jumped 17 percent. Every time a town is destroyed, the buy-low mentality that drives investment kicks in.

Doing right by Native Hawaiians would defeat the purpose of colonizing the islands in the first place, but what the government should do is offer a blank check to everyone who lost their home, for whatever it takes to rebuild up to modern standards, along with any investment needed for infrastructure. That would be a good start. I don’t want to give the impression that there’s no help – contrary to misconceptions floating around the internet, there’s more help available than just $700 per person, but I don’t know how well the help that does exist will protect people against the pressure to sell.

Recovering from a disaster like this takes years. Biden has committed $95 million to rebuilding, but people there are worried about being forgotten, and about having promised help never show up:

Across Maui, many residents are worried about being abandoned this week as the island marks one month since the deadliest wildfires in the United States in more than a century. The fires killed at least 115 people, destroyed more than 2,200 structures and caused an estimated tens of billions of dollars in damage. An investigation is underway to determine what initially sparked the wildfires.
Maui County filed a lawsuit against utility Hawaiian Electric Company alleging the company’s failure to shut off power, despite weather service warnings, contributed to the catastrophe. The tragedy’s aftermath is further compounded as authorities in Maui are near completion of the search and recovery phase.

“I think the fear right now is when all of this attention goes away, the big question becomes, ‘What happens next?'” said Hawaii state Sen. Angus McKelvey whose district includes West Maui and Lahaina. “Will all of those commitments and public promises be kept?”

As donations ranging from clothes to food continue to arrive in Maui, Sne Patel, who manages vacation rentals around the town of Lahaina, which suffered the most fire damage, said residents want a more tangible item. Patel leads the LahainaTown Action Committee, an advocacy group of 110 local businesses, many of which saw their properties gutted.

“It’s money that our residents need,” said Patel. “We’re so grateful that there’s a lot of stuff sent early on, but we don’t need that as much. We need more financial, fiscal support.”

Ani said Americans must be generous.

“We need cash in hands. Now,” said Ani, who expressed hope people would give to verified nonprofits including Maui Rapid Response, ‘Aina Momona and the Hawaii Community Foundation.

“Because the truth is, there’s still a lot of uncertainty and a lot of people want to be in a position to lift some of their financial burdens as best as they can,” Ani continued. “For those who want to help, send gift cards. Send money, and let the people decide what they need to empower themselves financially.”

This is honestly what it all comes down to. Cash is what matters, in a capitalist society. They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but it absolutely does buy everything you need to have the ability to pursue happiness, rather than mere survival. Right now, however, survival – and avoiding exploitation – are at the forefront. In addition to the links in the quoted article, I’ve also been pointed to the Hawai’i Peoples’ Fund and Kākoʻo Maui. If you have money set aside to help others, this is something worth giving to.

More than that, this is a way that you can directly combat the capitalist concentration of wealth and power, by helping to deny them the profits they hope to make off of human suffering. Obviously this is true for Maui, but it’s also true for every other disaster, and for life outside of disasters, insofar as that exists anymore. The more we uplift and directly empower those who need it, the more they are able to do the same for others, and the more all of us are able to invest time, energy, and resources in the fight for systemic change.

IMF Correctly Castigates Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Ignores Own Role in Climate Crisis

I’m sure that you are aware, dear readers, that the fossil fuel industry has always been at the receiving end of various forms of government assistance. Wars for oil, cops crushing protests, car-based infrastructure, and then there are the subsidies. Subsidy discourse underwent an interesting change maybe a decade ago, as opposition to renewable subsidies was easy to rebut by pointing to fossil fuel subsidies, many of which take the form of enormous tax breaks. I started seeing more and more people claim that they weren’t really subsidies, because all taxation is theft, and so a tax break was just letting them keep more of their own money. A subsidy, they say, is when the government cuts a check!

The reality is that tax breaks are absolutely subsidies, they’re just the most efficient way to go about handing them out. Rather than the cost of cutting and verifying checks, transferring the money (yes, that stuff actually does take at least some labor and resources), you just knock some money off of what the corporations have to pay. The net effect is identical to cutting a check, though it wouldn’t shock me if doing it this way was always a bit of a shell game to hide just how much support the federal government gives to fossil fuel corporations:

Fossil fuels benefited from record subsidies of $13m (£10.3m) a minute in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund, despite being the primary cause of the climate crisis.

The IMF analysis found the total subsidies for oil, gas and coal in 2022 were $7tn (£5.5tn). That is equivalent to 7% of global GDP and almost double what the world spends on education. Countries have pledged to phase out subsidies for years to ensure the price of fossil fuels reflects their true environmental costs, but have achieved little to date.

Explicit subsidies, which cut the price of fuels for consumers, doubled in 2022 as countries responded to the higher energy prices resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Rich households benefited far more from these than poor ones, the IMF said. Implicit subsidies, which represent the “enormous” costs of the damage caused by fossil fuels through climate change and air pollution, made up 80% of the total.

Ending the subsidies should be the centrepiece of climate action, the IMF said, and would put the world on track to restrict global heating to below 2C, as well as preventing 1.6 million air pollution deaths a year and increasing government revenues by trillions of dollars. The researchers acknowledged that subsidy reform was politically difficult, but said carefully designed policies that supported poorer households could work, especially if coordinated internationally.

Now, those who would make the earlier argument about tax breaks probably also wouldn’t like the inclusion of the costs incurred by pollution and climate change. Let us assume, for a moment, that their objection is in good faith. We’ve known for well over a century that by increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, we were warming our planet. Fossil fuel corporations knew how quickly the problem was moving, and how dangerous it was, and they lied about it. They actively worked to bring about the disasters that governments and the people pay for. They’ve also been perfectly aware of the dangers of the air pollution caused by their products, and lied about that as well. As this nurse said of the US, “We don’t have safety nets for our poor in this country, we have a greased chute. And at the very bottom of that greased chute of poverty, is a trip to your local emergency room.” USians also pay in terms of higher insurance premiums because of fossil fuel use, while tiny-minded assholes on TV rant about the “public health crisis” of obesity. Even in countries that do have real safety nets, they are still absorbing all the costs incurred by fossil fuel products.

If a toy company was poisoning children, they’d get fined for that. If any normal product is seriously dangerous, it gets recalled. With fossil fuels? The world just eats the costs. We all, together, pay for worse cardiovascular health, and extreme weather events, and problems for fetal and childhood development, and the list goes on, and on, and on. No, it’s very clear that by consistently paying for the vast and growing harm done by the use of fossil fuels, we are, without question, subsidizing that industry.

The costs of all of that together, according to the IMF, came to thirteen million dollar per minute in 2022, and as long as the planet keeps warming, and the fossil fuel industry is allowed to continue operating, that number is only going to get higher.

Now – the IMF is not, in my view, a good organization. Its primary role seems to be getting former colonies into debt traps to keep them from advancing – the economic counterpart to the CIA’s assassinations and coup-mongering. They are also a big part of how the world runs right now, and they spend a fair amount of time crunching numbers. I’m inclined to agree with them on this, but as a rule, I think it’s good to view them with skepticism. While it is important to end fossil fuel subsidies (and to end the industry overall), the IMF is far from blameless, and will have to end many of their own practices if we want a real response to climate change:

One of the biggest factors preventing governments in the Global South from taking climate action is barely discussed at conferences and debates meant to find solutions to the planet’s existential crisis.

It is time for us to talk about debt. Especially now, with the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held recently and economic policy options for Global South countries under the spotlight. If we want countries to have the freedom to take action that is in their interests, we must understand that the World Bank, the IMF and private banks based in wealthy countries are preventing climate progress.

How? Because of their unhealthy obsession with debt repayments from the Global South at any cost.

This extortionate debt which hangs over the heads of many countries is forcing them to make difficult choices in order to pay that debt back. Indonesia, for example, is paying back loans equivalent to more than 40 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), a key factor leading it to cut down rainforests to make way for money-making palm oil plantations. The need to repay external debt worth more than 80 percent of GDP has also been a factor in Brazil’s prioritising of soybean exports over the protection of the Amazon. And an external debt equivalent to 101 percent of GDP is why Mozambique has been trying to expand its coal and gas production in recent years.

This type of external debt almost always needs to be repaid in US dollars or other foreign currencies. So even when countries would benefit from supporting smallholder farmers, agroecology and small and medium-sized businesses, many have been forced to shape their economies around destructive fossil fuel and large-scale industrial agribusiness exports, in order to earn the dollars needed for debt repayment.

And the difficult decisions continue, with many countries spending more on servicing their debt than on education and health. Even though many have paid back their original loan amounts, a combination of rising interest rates, successive currency devaluations, fluctuating global commodity prices and the destructive impacts of climate change have kept the debt repayment finish line perpetually out of reach.

Indeed, sometimes the climate crisis has forced countries to take on more loans at even higher interest rates.

Even worse, loans from the World Bank and the IMF almost always come with rules attached – that countries privatise their public services, cut public spending, and go gung-ho into producing export commodities. These “conditionalities” and the power wielded by these institutions are worsening the climate crisis, and undermining countries’ capacity to take climate action through investing in green technologies, resilience or recovery from disasters.

Sniffing the climate winds of change, the IMF and the World Bank are now desperately attempting a makeover, and trying to present themselves as responsible climate leaders. But in reality, the IMF has advised more than 100 countries to expand their fossil fuel infrastructure, while the World Bank has spent $14.8bn supporting fossil fuel projects and policies since the Paris Agreement was signed. Their claims of being responsible climate leaders do not hold up to any scrutiny.

New research by ActionAid finds that 93 percent of countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis are in debt distress, or at significant risk of debt distress. This reflects a vicious cycle in which climate impacts put countries into debt, but that debt accelerates the climate crisis and leaves countries even more exposed to its impacts. And so the cycle continues.

All this points us towards a clear conclusion: that the global debt crisis is a major barrier to climate action and that debt cancellation can be a highly effective climate solution.

In general, when the most powerful organizations in the world start blaming each other for the problems of the world, it’s a good idea to look into why they might want your eyes elsewhere. Fossil fuel subsidies are a serious problem, but they are far from the only problem. The causes of the climate crisis are baked into how our global economic system has come to operate with the “end” of colonialism over the last century.

And this is where you can all join in on the chorus – global warming is a systemic problem, and solving it requires systemic change.

The people and institutions that wield global power are all very aware of the dangers posed by a rapidly warming planet, and are also aware of their own role in creating this crisis. While many of them may genuinely want to see it go away, they are willing to let everything be destroyed if it means that they aren’t the first to give up wealth or power. It’s basically the same as when US pundits and politicians point the finger at Chinese or Indian emissions, when saying that the US shouldn’t lead. Leaving aside the childishness of this response, the reality is that everything needs to change at least a little, and the closer you get to the top of global wealth and power, the more change needs to happen. We can’t expect the powerful to be honest, but I think they’re more likely to tell the truth about other powerful people and entities, when deflecting attention away from their own problems.

If you value the work I do, please consider helping to pay for it over at patreon.com/oceanoxia. Even small contributions add up to make a big difference! If you can’t afford a dollar or so per month, then I definitely don’t want your money, but I’d appreciate it if you shared this post with others, to help me increase my readership. Thanks for reading, and be sure to take care of yourselves in this scary world!

Global Warming, School Buses, and the Attainability of Climate Action

When I talk about not being ready for global warming, it’s often about infrastructure, and city-threatening events like floods and fires. The scale of the problem and the solutions makes both daunting. These “big” things are generally made up of smaller things, which tend to be a lot closer to our own experience of the world. I never commuted to school by bus, but I did travel by school bus to certain events, and I remember how hot those could get on a sunny day, and that was over 20 years ago. These days, it seems to be getting worse, from Baton Rouge, LA:

The Ascension Parish elementary and middle school kids riding on Renee Bihm’s school bus have been leaving red-faced or even had to be awakened from what appeared to be heat-induced sleep during afternoon bus rides home this year.

A bus driver in Ascension public schools for 25 years, Bihm said the heat was bad last year but the record temperatures have made this year “horrible.” Water bottles the school system is providing aren’t enough to compensate for broiling temperatures in un-airconditioned buses that Bihm compared to riding in a “tin can.”

“Yesterday was bad. I thought I was going to die yesterday. I could hardly walk to get off the bus. It was that bad,” she said in an interview Saturday.

She recently recorded a temperature of 125 degrees inside her bus.

That is not safe for children. Honestly, it’s not safe for anyone, but children can’t regulate their temperature as well as adults, and so they are more at risk for heat exhaustion and heat stroke. This is one way in which the under-funding of education in the US manifests – bus drivers are underpaid, too few of them are hired, and money is generally not spent upgrading bus fleets. The result is more difficult and dangerous conditions for children, families, and bus drivers.

Retrofitting buses with air conditioners isn’t all that difficult or expensive, but with school funding based on property values, most districts don’t have much money to spend on that. At the same time, while adding on AC is important for adapting to global warming, it would also be a good idea to swap the buses out for electric models. That’s more expensive, but still very much within the reach of the wealthiest nation on Earth, right?

There are a myriad of small things that make up the intimidating task of confronting climate change. Some of it is just “big stuff” that will require a great deal of investment and political campaigning to make it happen. Nuclear, wind, and solar power all tend to face well-funded opposition from NIMBYs and fossil fuel interests, and a lot of that opposition comes from within the halls of power, meaning that political change is a necessary prerequisite to a lot of the large-scale stuff that we need.

But it seems like the smaller stuff, like replacing schoolbuses, ought to be easier. Thankfully, it is easier, and while I want it to be happening faster, the bus swap is starting to happen:

“School buses make lots of stops, and whenever the driver of a diesel bus puts their foot on the gas, you get that big cloud of black smoke,” Arthur Wheaton, the director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Insider. “Same thing when all these buses are idling in front of schools and pumping out fumes. All of that goes away with electric.”

The Environmental Protection Agency doled out nearly $900 million for 2,424 clean school buses during the first year of a program authorized by the Biden administration’s infrastructure law. Thousands more should be paid for as the program continues through fiscal year 2026.

Some states have their own funding for electric school buses, as well, pushing the total number on the road even higher — though still a fraction of the nationwide fleet of 500,000 school buses.

The EPA funding came from the “bipartisan infrastructure law” that Biden signed in 2021. As with everything the US government does to help the people, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Funding a full replacement for the entire nation’s fleet would, at that price, cost around $185 billion, but I’m willing to bet that at that scale, the government could negotiate a better deal, if Congress decided that they care more about keeping the cost down, than about corporate profits.

This is also one example of how responding to climate change could be done under a more Keynsian framework of capitalism, which lacks the neoliberal hatred of (non-military) government spending. Things like building efficiency, solar panels on rooftops and parking lots, and even big infrastructure projects do happen under capitalism, it’s just that in the US, at least, every such project faces rabid opposition, both from right-wing ideologues, and from some of the most powerful corporations and individuals on the planet.

That’s why I tend to focus on building collective power through workplace and community organizing. It’s pretty well-known, at this point, how disfunctional the US government is, when it comes to dealing with real problems. We get small wins here and there, but it’s always a fraction of what we need, and it always seems to come with a massive loss, like the approval of new fossil fuel extraction. It is going to take sustained political pressure to get the scale of change that we need, at the speed that we need, and to me it seems obvious that it’s going to take more pressure than has been applied thus far.

It’s frustrating to see tiny steps being taken, that demonstrate that we absolutely do know how to solve a lot of these problems. I hear about a school bus hitting 125F, and I see an entirely preventable tragedy in the making. My fear is that for each of these smaller “fixes”, no matter how easy they are, it will take a tragedy to force the change. Honestly, given the way school shootings have been normalized, I fear that for the US, tragedy may not be enough. To whatever degree a capitalist society can respond to climate change, I think it will still take a mass movement both to make that response happen, and to have even a hope of ensuring that it does not leave poor people and minorities behind.

Organizing is hard work, on top of the work that people already do, and I am absolutely not leading by example here. What makes that work possible, is the belief that with the collective power built through that hard work, material improvement can be achieved. Recent victories by unions have demonstrated that potential in the economic arena, and I think examples like the school buses can serve that purpose for climate action.

NLRB Decision Is a Major Win for Workers’ Rights

I make no secret of my distaste for Biden on this blog. He’s done a lot during his career in politics to make the US – and the world in general – a worse place to live, and a lot of what he does seems to be in service of that damnable project. That said, despite things like his approval of the Willow Project, his refusal to do anything to oust Trump’s poison pill of a Postmaster General, and his opposition to any kind of universal healthcare system, his presidency has actually done some things to make life better for ordinary USians. I don’t know whether his boast of being “the most progressive president in history” has merit, but if it does, that’s largely because it’s a very low bar to clear.

I think it’s essential to shine a light on his failures – especially those relating to the climate – but today we’re talking about something for which we can genuinely thank Biden. Reuters teased a new era of worker-friendly governance from the NLRB last December, and it looks like we are seeing that now:

Following the NLRB’s decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, when workers ask an employer to voluntarily recognize a union as their bargaining representative, the company can voluntarily do so and begin good-faith negotiations.

Alternatively, the company may file a petition seeking an election, and as long as it does not commit unfair labor practices, one will be held. However, if a company does engage in such violations—or refuses to voluntarily recognize a union and fails to file a petition—the NLRB will now order the employer to recognize and bargain with the union without an election.

In other words, “union-busting just got a lot harder,” More Perfect Union said on social media. “This brings the board’s position closer to the old Joy Silk doctrine, which held that if a majority of workers signed union cards, there didn’t need to be an election at all and bosses just had to recognize the union and bargain in good faith.”

The Joy Silk doctrine came from a 1949 NLRB decision and was replaced by the Gissel doctrine in a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case.

As VICE reported Friday:

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo earlier this year demanding that the board revive Joy Silk, something that labor activists have been fighting for since it was overturned. The Cemex decision issued on Friday is a partial step in that direction.

“What this new decision does is, it’s a compromise,” said Eric Blanc, an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “It’s not a return to ‘card check,'” the unionization process in the 1930s and ’40s that said if a majority of workers signed cards stating they wanted a union, the company was obligated to recognize and bargain with them—which Joy Silk had upheld.

“If there’s intense illegal union-busting, as is very often the case, the NLRB can force the employers to immediately recognize the union rather than have to go through another union election,” Blanc said. “But it’s far short of what many union organizers were hoping for. By not making ‘card check’ the norm, [it] still opens up the process to all sorts of legal appeals and delays, which is ultimately one of the main tactics of employers—to delay the union first and then hold things up in endless appeals. This unfortunately doesn’t avoid that dynamic, but it does get the NLRB more powers to require employers to recognize unions, and that should be at least a partial deterrent on employers’ willingness to break the law.”

Brishen Rogers, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said on the social media platform X that “Cemex may be the most important NLRB decision in a generation.”

It is “hard to say if it will survive review,” Rogers added. “But labor and the state can use it to change power alignments right now through organizing—which in turn would *help* it survive review.”

This is good news. I’ve come to believe that widespread unionization is the most direct path to the kind of organized labor power we would need to carry out a general strike, to force more drastic action on things like climate change, healthcare, and wealth inequality. This decision will make that a whole lot easier.

Even so, I think we should not forget Biden’s decision to break the rail strike back in December. He ended up getting rail workers some sick leave (less than they need), but I think it’s important to note that he wanted that to happen on his terms, not on the workers’ terms. The Democrats do not want systemic change, and won’t back even a nonviolent revolution. What they will do, is make that far easier to accomplish than it would be under the Christian fascist regime that the GOP wants to impose.

It is important for workers to take advantage of this NLRB and build power, and given the wave of union interest we’ve seen recently, I think they will. This is an opportunity that is unlikely to last forever, given the nature of US politics, and so I think we should expect another turn against unions and workers’ rights within the next decade. The stronger workers get before that happens, the more they will be able to resist the attack when it comes, and oust politicians who’re trying to take away the peoples’ power.

Video: More Perfect Union Takes a Look at Protesting in France and the United States

I follow More Perfect Union on Twitter and Bluesky, but I haven’t gotten around to watching much of their content on Youtube. I’m slowly changing that now, and I wanted to share this one addressing the question of why the US doesn’t protest the way France does. It’s a good look at the subject, and I think you should check it out!

Unrelated, for those who care to know, I’m not going to post on weekends going forward.

 

Arizona Trans Woman Arrested and Jailed for Self-Defense

Arizona is a “stand your ground” state. For those who don’t know, that means that if you feel threatened by someone, but you have the ability to safely retreat, you have no legal obligation to do so. You are allowed to stand your ground, and use violence. I mention that, because when it comes to self-defense law in the United States, if you claim self defense, in many circumstances, you won’t even be arrested for killing someone. Unfortunately, as with most laws in the United States, the degree to which that “protection” actually protects you will often depend on who you are, and what the cops think of you.

Case in point: A trans woman named Epona Rose was accosted by a group of men who sexually harassed her until realizing she was trans, at which point the harassment became threats and assault. Rose defended herself, and for that she was arrested and jailed with bond set at $500,750, with her arraignment on August 28th. For comparison, Donald Trump, who has a private plane and has “joked” about fleeing to Russia, had his bond set at less than half that. Further, for the crime of defending herself while trans, Rose has been charged with assault and attempted murder:

Flagstaff, AZ — On the morning of August 11th, Epona Rose was attacked in downtown Kinłani/Flagstaff, Arizona by a group of three men while two or more watched. The men were drunk and sexually harassing her. The attack escalated into threats of rape, and then to physical violence, when they realized that Epona is transgender.

Epona defended herself bravely against this attack and did not call the police, but she was the only one arrested. Epona faces felony charges including aggravated assault. She was initially held on the men’s side of the Coconino County Jail in segregation with one hour a day out of her cell. She struggled to gain access to her prescribed medications. Political pressure seems to have improved her conditions; however, Epona is still unable to receive equitable treatment and has filed complaints of sexual harassment. Epona’s arraignment is August 28th and her bond is set for over $500,000. A team of national organizers and local support have mobilized and are fiercely working to overturn such an excessive amount and the fear mongering charges.

An initial arraignment on August 17th was vacated with no reason given by the courts. A rally was held with more than 25 people calling for Epona’s immediate release. A vigil was held outside of Coconino County Jail the previous evening, more than 40 people attended, sharing their stories and chanting, “Who keeps up safe? We keep us safe!”

Epona shared this statement from jail:

I was charged as a man, as I am a woman of trans experience. I was initially booked into jail on charges of aggravated assault, as well as attempted homicide, second degree, unjustly. I was defending myself, my womanhood, against three men. While I’ve been in this facility I’ve been mistreated. I have been treated as a man. I have been asked fourteen times about my genitalia by staff. I have been laughed at and ridiculed. I have been put into isolation. Make no mistakes, the United States is now living in the Weimar Republic era. I have been fighting the way I can from the inside with what little power I have from the inside.

Epona further stated, “I am not safe here, but I am holding on to hope, and I know that I will be free. I want to thank everybody who has shown support and is fighting for me on the outside. Thank you, loved ones, relatives, comrades. I look forward to seeing you. Thank you so much for the fight. Solidarity!”

The longer Epona is in jail, the much more at risk she is exposed to as a trans woman and abolitionist. We cannot let Epona be made an example out of by demanding the basic rights of genderqueer, third gender, Two Spirit, and/or trans people to exist!

Epona’s lawyer, Ryan Stevens of the Griffen & Stevens Law Firm in Flagstaff, explained, “Our priorities are clear: keep Epona safe; get her out; and present a complete defense to her charges in court. We are at the very beginning of what may be a long haul fighting for Epona and asserting her rights in court, including self-defense.”

Arraignment is scheduled for August 28th at 1pm; Epona’s supporters will be gathering at Coconino County Superior Court located at 200 N San Francisco st, Flagstaff, AZ 86001

Epona’s supporters are fundraising for her legal fees and associated costs; please specify that your donation is for Epona. You can also use the “rose” emoji.

Support Epona’s legal defense and bail fund:
Paypal: @brokebackwolfpack
Venmo: @brokebackwolfpack
Cashapp: $brokebackwolfpack

You can also contact the Coconino County Board of Supervisors and demand Epona is treated with dignity as a trans woman:

Phone: 928-679-7120

Toll Free: 877-679-7120 Emails: phorstman@coconino.az.gov, jvasquez@coconino.az.gov, mryan@coconino.az.gov, jbegay@coconino.az.gov, lfowler@coconino.az.gov

Contact Flagstaff City Council:
All council members: council@flagstaffaz.gov
Mayor: becky.daggett@flagstaffaz.gov
Phone: (928) 213-2065
#FreeEpona

There are a lot of problems with the US constitution, and with US law. One of the good things, even if it took almost a century and a civil war to get it, is the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [emphasis added]

My only real complaint about this is that it limits its protection to US citizens, rather than all people who find themselves under US jurisdiction. Other than that, this is good and important, and so naturally it’s often ignored by the US law enforcement system. There are many, many ways in which equal protection is denied to US citizens. I’m not talking hundreds of times per year, I’m talking thousands of times per day, across the country. The “trans panic” defense is one of the most heinous examples – a trans person (usually a woman) is assaulted or murdered, and the perpetrator claims that they “panicked” upon learning she was trans, and attacked her. This has existed for a long time, in a variety of forms. So far, the federal ban on this defense hasn’t gotten anywhere, but 17 states have passed their own bans, with New Hampshire being the latest, just 10 days ago (rare Sununu win). The NH ban only applies to homicides, though, so it won’t help people who were “just” assaulted. Arizona is not on that list, and the “panic” defense is still perfectly legal there.

Rose’s case feels as if the police took that “defense” as a matter of law, which made the violence of her attackers justified. That meant that, in the eyes of the police, Epona Rose had no right to self-defense in that situation. The police, and the judge who set a bail of – and I can’t stress this enough – over half a million dollars, have decided to punish her for defending herself, before the trial that is her right has even started. I also have to wonder what role her personal politics are playing in this – my impression is that people in the law enforcement system don’t like abolitionists, despite working so hard to make our case for us.

If you want to help in any way, all the information is in the block quote above. Hopefully Monday’s arraignment won’t be pushed back again, since that would mean still more time imprisoned and abused for defending herself. The extremely high trans murder rate (trans women of color in particular) is something that does get press, albeit far less than it should, but it’s also worth remembering that for every trans person murdered, there are others who are “merely” injured, and that almost never makes the news. This problem is not separate from the way the US “justice” system actively enables this violence, and even enacts this violence, as we are seeing in the case of Enola Rose.

Uber CEO’s Poverty Tourism Cannot Fix What Capitalism Has Broken by Design

Every once in a while, I come across the sentiment that if CEOs actually spent time doing what their lowest-paid workers do, then they’d be more inclined to go along with raises or better working conditions. The reality show franchise Undercover Boss is based on this idea, and it’s often pointed out on social media that the work done by a warehouse package-runner is far more difficult than anything Jeff Bezos does. This caught my attention because the CEO of Uber has been getting press for his brief stint “moonlighting” as a driver. He announced this in a Wall Street Journal puff piece back in April, but I guess he wanted more press, because now we’re getting articles about his “most nightmarish experience” while cosplaying as a peasant:

When asked the most nightmarish rider experience he had as an Uber driver, Khosrowshahi said that it wasn’t the riders that gave him issues — it was delivering food.

“I was trying to deliver food and I couldn’t find where to drop it off,” Khosrowshahi told The Wall Street Journal. “Trying to figure out the maze of apartment complexes was a challenge.”

Navigating large apartment complexes has been a pain point the company, an Uber spokesperson told Insider, adding that the company has tried to address this by providing users with more accurate drop-off pins.

Uber Eats wasn’t all bad, though.

“The most fun was delivering food to a touch football game,” Khosrowshahi said. “I was like, ‘Where’s the building I’m supposed to be delivering to?’ It was a field. There was a bunch of dudes.”

Still, Khosrowshahi seems to be aware that Uber drivers face a series of challenges during their shifts.

Improving the company’s working conditions for its drivers starts with corporate Uber employees “using our products” and “getting in the shoes of a driver,” he added.

I think I should say here that as long as we’re going to have CEOs the way we currently do, they absolutely should have to do the worst-paid work in their company. The harms done by hierarchy do seem to be mitigated, at least a little, by those at the top finding some way to empathize with those at the bottom. Unfortunately, this kind of empathy tends to be weak and insubstantial, or even entirely pretended, for appearances only.

See, companies already know how badly their workers are doing. There wasn’t some mystery that just had to be solved by the CEO going undercover as a lowly worker. The workers had already been talking about the problems they faced for years by the time Khosrowshahi had the brilliant idea of doing the work himself to “find out” why drivers didn’t seem to like their jobs.

CEOs don’t consider their employees to be people. Not really. They can’t be taken at their word when they describe problems with the company – those problems only count if the CEO witnesses them first-hand. As appalling as this is, it also underscores the two biggest problems with this misguided bid for improvement via capitalist empathy.

The first, which I already mentioned, is that most if not all CEOs know their workers are suffering, and routinely try to increase that suffering. When they try to justify their obscene wealth by talking about the “risk” they take on as owners and investors, it’s never a risk to their health, or their ability to afford a home. The real risk is losing enough money that they have to work for a living. Their biggest fear, and the risk for which they demand all the reward in the world, is becoming a worker like the people they exploit for their day job. I’ve said this before, but based on the actions of capitalists across the generations, if a worker is happy and fulfilled, that’s seen as proof that they’re not being sufficiently exploited.

The second problem is that there’s no way poverty tourism like this can ever actually generate a true understanding of what it’s like to live as a low-wage worker. The bosses all know that this is a temporary thing, like doing a “boot camp” program for a couple months, where you might have to suffer, but it’s an experience you’re taking on for your own benefit, knowing that you will be going back to your normal, luxurious life at the end of it. These CEOs do the work, and then go back to their mansion at the end of the day. They have the best healthcare money can buy, they can afford childcare, and they pay someone else to do their shopping, cooking, and cleaning. If they attempted to live on minimum wage for a month, or even a year, they would still be doing so with the knowledge that after a set period of time, their ordeal would be over.

People who are actually working those jobs to make ends meet have no such promise. The best most of them can hope for, as a “reward”, is that the job, bad conditions and low wages included, will still be there for them in the future. Even a modest retirement is a distant fantasy for a growing number of workers, sickness means loss of savings and/or debt, and rent just keeps on rising.

The only way to truly allow a CEO to experience what workers’ lives are like, is to put them in that situation, and to take away all hope of ever returning to their fortunes save by the same means available to those workers. That, however, would be considered a grave injustice in our society, no matter how they came by their wealth. So long as we have this kind of extreme hierarchy, there will always be a gap in understanding between the rich and the poor.

Empathy, while hugely important, cannot overcome the extreme divisions of the somewhat-soft caste system maintained by capitalism. As I said before, I’m in favor of CEOs doing low-wage work to see what it’s like, but that can’t be enough to fix our society, because capitalism requires the existence of grinding poverty in order to function. The only thing that has reliably improved life for working people is working people, working together, as unions continue to demonstrate.

Thanks to sonofrojblake for putting me onto this song, covered here by William Shatner.