The Lie Banks Use To Protect Their Late-Fee ProfitsMuch of modern economics borrows from physics. Some of these appropriations, like how the scientific concept of maximum energy has influenced the study of consumer behavior, proved immensely valuable. But somewhere along the way, neoliberals and economic pundits misappropriated a physics concept — the conservation of energy — to fend off any attack on hidden fees or ill-gotten profits. Physics holds that energy is neither created nor destroyed but merely changes form. When interpreted through economics, this new conservation theory implies that any attempt to tamp down on profits from one illicit activity will automatically lead to a newfound source of profits elsewhere. Under this highly convenient theory for monopolists and their hangers-on, profits are like the air in a balloon; squeeze one side and the balloon expands on the other. I have named this theory the “Conservation of Ill-Gotten Profits” fallacy, admittedly a mouthful. Duncan Bowen Black, an economist who blogs under the pseudonym Atrios, has named it the “Lump of Profits” fallacy, inspired by the more common “Lump of Labor” fallacy in economics.
https://www.levernews.com/the-lie-banks-use-to-protect-their-late-fee-profits/Readers recommend: ‘Dune, part 2’Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 2 is a cinematic masterpiece, showing the brutal reality of imperialism, and offering insight into the struggles that can take place within liberation movements. The film is an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 epic sci-fi novel. The plot follows Paul Atreides on the desert planet Arrakis, the source of the valuable commodity ‘spice’. Control of this resource is used by various galactic ruling factions to maintain power, including the capacity for interplanetary travel. At the end of part one, we saw Paul ally with the colonised Arrakis natives, the Fremen, to wage war against their brutal, spice-hungry oppressors, the Harkonnens. The Harkonnens refer to Fremen as ‘rats’. Their aim is to exterminate this entire race from the planet, in order to secure spice supplies and crush their competitors. Dune: Part 2 does not hold back from setting the scene with its depiction of Harkonnen brutality towards the Fremen. One harrowing scene, for example, shows the devastation of a brutal bombing campaign, completely flattening a Fremen holy site. What we see, at its core, is a fight between various powers over resources, ruthlessly played out on Arrakis land. The parallels to our world today are clear.
https://communist.red/readers-recommend-dune-part-2/Frederick Engels: Excerpt from Revolution and Counter-Revolution in GermanyNow, insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them. Those rules, logical deductions from the nature of the parties and the circumstances one has to deal with in such a case, are so plain and simple that the short experience of 1848 had made the Germans pretty well acquainted with them. Firstly, never play with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of organization, discipline, and habitual authority: unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, the insurrectionary career once entered upon, act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattering, prepare new successes, however small, but daily; keep up the moral ascendancy which the first successful rising has given to you; rally those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the strongest impulse, and which always look out for the safer side; force your enemies to a retreat before they can collect their strength against you; in the words of Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary policy yet known, de l'audace, de l'audace, encore de l'audace!
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch17.htm