#Musk is a useful example of the #nastyfew: wealthy technocrats wrapping themselves in the cloak of progress while undermining the foundations of any, let alone a just future. These stories and narratives about innovation are a high-tech rebrand of green capitalism, a slick façade masking the same old decaying systems of extraction, inequality, and authoritarianism.
The problem they push is that instead of confronting the #KISS causes of our social and planetary crises, these people offer us distraction: electric cars for the elitists, fantasies of Mars colonies, and #AI overlords dressed up as saviours. This isn’t transformation – it’s #deathcult worshiping continuity in crisis.
People like Musk are useful to the #deathcult because they peddle a seductive, market-friendly myth: that we don’t need to change our behaviour, our economics, or our power structures, we just need to upgrade our tech. Comforting, isn’t it? For those who benefit from the status quo, it’s the perfect nasty con.
He personally embodies the worst of the #geekproblem: the cult of the engineer, disconnected from social reality, obsessed with “fixing” the world through code and hardware while ignoring the human systems that create the problems in the first place. This is dead libertarian ideology dressed in the shrowed of innovation.
We urgently need to compost these myths. Not just resist them, actively decompose them, mix them with grounded knowledge, and grow something better from this soil.
That’s where projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network) come in – a project seeded in the messy, composted soil of decades of grassroots media and digital commons. Unlike the sleek towers of technocratic illusion, #OMN is rooted in public-first values: transparency, participation, autonomy, and trust. It’s not about building new silos or chasing the next unicorn, it’s about connecting the islands of resistance, amplifying local grassroots voices to rebuild public infrastructure for storytelling, organising, and governance.
The #OMN isn’t anti-tech – it’s pro-human. It’s a network built with people, for people – not for investors or ego-driven billionaires. It draws from the radical legacy of projects like #indymediaback, and threads in tools like #OGB to bring coherence and shared narrative to the fractured #openweb reboot. So please stop chasing tech cults and start growing rooted alternatives.
“Use and abuse” is a good strategy for dealing with the #dotcons while they continue to dominate our digital and social infrastructure. Why? Because refusing to engage with these platforms outright is the equivalent of shouting into the void – or living in a cave. And caves, while romantic to a certain type of purist, are never effective social solutions.
The truth is this #dotcons are still where the #mainstreaming people live, and mainstream attention is power, even if borrowed. As radicals or progressives, using their platforms to push counter-narratives, while simultaneously undermining their legitimacy and building our own independent infrastructure, is both necessary and strategic. Think of it as exiting from within by using their reach to grow the seeds of your alt-path.
The #nastyfew are now building bunkers, literally, escaping with their bodyguards when the shit hits the fan. That’s the plan. No fixing the mess, no community care – just winning and escape. It’s #deathcult logic all the way down from now on – with pushing #geekproblem tech fixes as a cross fingers wing and a prayer, to stop any grassroots drift to green sustainable alternatives.
This is simply the next stage of the #deathcult worship of endless growth, and infinite tech “solutions”. It’s now about rebooting capitalism, so the machine can keep grinding. #NothingNew in a very bad way. This is the normal empathy for corporations, and brutal Darwinism for actual people like you and me. The #dotcons of big tech are moving visible to the business of manufacturing distraction to avoid facing the collapse they pushed for the last 20 years. The mess of #AI and #Bitcoin are energy black holes, sucking resources while pretending to be futuristic.
It should now be “common sense” that colonialism never ended – it rebranded. That’s how the consumerist growth cult started: exploit, extract, repeat. Capitalist “progress” is cancerous, more #GDP doesn’t mean better life – growth isn’t about thriving, it’s about churn. #TechCurn. The current #mainstreaming solutions are always more tech, more control, more conferences, and less reality. The #GeekProblem, with the #techbros philosophical inspiration: Nietzsche, or rather, a cherry-picked remix by his fascist sister, stitched together without context. The wannabe’s quotes “Will to Power” as gospel to justify trying to control the rest of us.
To the #nastyfew, education doesn’t mean opportunity – it means instability. A literate person is someone who questions power, organizes, votes, and leave toxic relationships. A curious mind is unpredictable. A well-informed population is a threat.
They know that: A literate woman may not rely on a man for shelter. An educated Black or Brown voter may vote in their own self-interest, unlike the more easily manipulated MAGA base. A widely read immigrant may advocate for systems beyond the #deathcult of vulture capitalism – community care, cooperative ownership, real democracy.
Education creates the conditions for social mobility, leading to change and challenge, which the #nastyfew see as an existential risk to their self defined stratified order and elitist based statues. Keeping people in their “place” is essential to maintaining control. Stagnation is strategic.
This is why capital flows into campaigns to undermine grassroots media, activists, public schools, libraries, independent publishers, school boards, and non-corporate scientific research institutions. The #nastyfew goal isn’t only profit – it’s cultural hegemony. Anything that feeds critical thinking or encourages civic imagination becomes a target.
From a progressive mainstreaming point of view, this agenda includes:
Attacks on Wikipedia, a freely accessible repository of public knowledge.
It’s a war on #4opens, public knowledge, disguised as common sense “parental rights” and “free markets.” In truth, it’s about maintaining control by keeping people uninformed and isolated, a core part of #stupidindividualism we have all been #mainstreaming for the last 40 years.
When we defend grassroots projects, activism, schools, libraries, open-source platforms, small publishers, and public institutions, we are not just defending information, we are defending democracy itself. The battle for truth is inseparable from the battle for justice. We have to build our own compost piles, plant what matters, and ignore the bling. These #nastyfew and their billionaires funders aren’t saving us – they’re digging deeper bunkers and writing climate denial checks. It well pastime to stop playing the #mainstreaming game.
Yes, I read the post. And yes, the despair is real. The #openweb is being bulldozed by #GenerativeAI like a forest clear-cut by machines driven not by need, but by greed, profit and power for the #nsatyfew. Yes, the #deathcult of techno-capitalism is running its script to the bitter and dead-end. And yes, I too wonder if we’ll survive this, but as you say we have a path, and it’s not new. It’s simple, it’s human, and it’s working.
It’s called the #Fediverse and the next step is “native” applications on this path like the #OMN – the Open Media Network – and it’s built from the bones and dreams of the old web: #4opens, #KISS principles, and trust-based, #DIY infrastructure. It’s a messy, human soup of tagged data and federated flows where people and content are commons by default, not walled gardens or extractive silos.
The magic? It’s not even in the tech (though that matters). It’s in the “common sense” at the core – Anything in, anything out – mediated by trust. Lossy? Yes. Redundant? Absolutely. But that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s what makes it resilient. The #geekproblem keeps trying to engineer this out, but we need to compost that #techshit into something useful, working tools for real people, growing radical networks of care and change.
To those staring into the digital abyss and seeing only Ozymandias and decay, look sideways, the #Fediverse lives. The #openweb still works. And we’re building new foundations from the compost of the old. We do not need to be swept along with the gray goo of #AI, we can simply not go there, and instead stay here and do the work that is needed.
“I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” –Percy Bysshe Shelley
And yes, I see it too, we’ve been holding back on our own power, hesitant. Maybe our despair is part of the mess we need to shake ourselves awake from. So I ask what positive path can we walk? What part of the #OMN can we all help compost, code, shape, or share?
Let’s rebuild the net with hands in the soil and eyes on the stars. Because the answer isn’t new. It’s what we’ve always done when things fall apart, we grow.
Q: People are angry about #AI scrapers and that this is exploiting everything for “free” – our art, our words, our data. But let’s be honest, we’ve spent the last 40 years gorging on “free” content online, music, games, video, writing, without paying for a thing unless forced to with a paywall. Yes. We block the ads, we hate the tracking, and we very rarely donate. So… with the idea that everything has to be paid for, are we really that different from the AI scraping machine?
A: The current “common sense” frames this as a moral issue, but it’s better seen as a systematic one. And that’s where people keep getting lost in talking about this.
We live in a society rooted in greed and extraction. That’s the baseline. It’s called capitalism, and for the last 40 years it’s been accelerated by the neoliberal #deathcult, where today “ethics” is bought in plastic tubs of organic yogurt at our local supermarket.
What grows out of this shit heap? #Stupidindividualism, people demanding everything for free while shouting about their personal rights to consume. They want to save the planet, but only with next-day delivery and zero commitment. Then you’ve got the #fashionistas – the “good people” who “perform” care while feeding the same destructive paths. It’s not irony, it’s the logic of the path we take.
No, I don’t want tracking ads. No, I don’t want my ideas and writing turned into #AI sludge. But I’m also not pretending this is a matter of “personal choice”, when we need to shout loudly and continually that it’s a system built to turn “creators” into social shit and call it innovation, when better to speak truth and call it compost.
We don’t fix this by feeling guilty, we fix it by building something else. That’s what #OMN is for, that’s why #4opens matter. Public media, open processes, radical trust, of native #openweb paths, not just another polished platform for exploitation with feel good #UX
It’s not about blame. It’s about digging over the rot and planting something more real #KISS
We’ve got a new bunch of #mainstreaming tech devs flooding into the #Fediverse. Some from burned-out Big Tech, some from the academic funding circuits, some just looking for the next shiny project after the #AI hype wore thin.
Now, this could be good. IF even a few of them started working on native, grassroots tech – tools built for and by the communities who actually use them, not just more #dotcons platform clones.
Right now, we’re at a turning point. The first wave of the Fediverse was all about copying the #dotcons:
#Mastodon as “ethical Twitter”
#PeerTube mimicking YouTube
#Mobilizon as a Facebook Events replacement
#Lemmy doing Reddit but federated
All of this was necessary, it helped people jump ship and start imagining life beyond the dotcons. But that wave is peaking, and the second step is overdue. That next step? It’s about original, grassroots infrastructure. A federated trust graph instead of reinventing karma points or like-buttons. Protocols for local-first publishing, like the #p2p side of the #OMN or radical #4opens-inspired news and tools for community trust flows, moderation and accountability, rooted in values, not corporate TOS and PR management. Infrastructure for interoperability and redundancy, so projects don’t die when a maintainer burns out or a server goes down
But here’s the risk, if the new #devs only copy the #dotconsAGAIN, it’s a fail. Worse still, if they get sucked into the #NGO vampire nests, the slow, bureaucratic funding black holes of the worst paths of #nlnet and #NGI, we’ll just see more “safe” projects that burn grant money building tools nobody uses.
Let’s be clear, these institutions do some small good, on basic infrastructure, but their #NGO sides are hoovering up resources by pushing for risk-free deliverables, and ignore the actual needs of grassroots groups. This funding is way too often shaped by #mainstreaming politics and careerism, not lived practice. We’ve seen it before, and we’re seeing it again.
What we need now are tools that grow from compost, not code sprints. Tools built from social use, not tech fashion. We need radical simplicity, transparency, and flexibility, tech that can’t be easily co-opted by the forces we’re trying to move beyond.
So if you’re a dev stepping into this space, welcome. But please don’t make another Mastodon, but with more “privacy” or #AI features. Instead, work with those who’ve been composting here for years. Build with the messy, weird, and beautiful people who need to shape new paths, not, boringly, recreate the old ones with shinier branding.
#Mainstreaming talk about the internet generally completely misses the point, yep, it’s the FT so no surprise I suppose. The actual internet, the one we built before the takeover of the #dotcons, this is a culture of #4opens protocols, stitched together with moth-eaten mythologies and some messy traditions. It was never clean or pure, but it was ours.
What this guy in the article is describing isn’t the internet, it’s the #dotcons layer that’s been built on top of that original infrastructure. Worse, it’s very crap path that we helped build, by feeding it with our time, attention, and data. Yes, it’s a mess. But, the bigger problem is what we often do is add to this mess instead of composting it.
From “unstoppable slop” to “enshittification” to the idea of a “hostile internet”, all of these have explanatory power, but none really get to the root issues. The sickness isn’t just tech, it’s culture, warped by power and profit. What we’re living in now isn’t a broken system, it’s a deliberately built one. Designed not for us, but to extract from us. This #hostileinternet is not inevitable. It’s the result of a thousand bad decisions made by #deathcult tech and #VC backed greed, and not by accident but by design.
The FT piece ends up saying: “The internet makes us seem mad, always connected, always performing, always consuming – like streetcorner eccentrics amplified to global scale.” And yeah, it does feel like that. But that’s not the fault of the internet. It’s the fault of which internet we’ve chosen to feed. To fix this, we don’t need a new system. We need to remember the old one. Compost the current slop. Rebuild from the roots. Base it on native #4opens, community, and the culture that carried us before this #dotcons mess took over.
A conversation with Professor Stephen Rosen and Professor Shivaji Sondhi on artificial intelligence in warfare. The talk stays on the surface, not offering deep insights, but it does stimulate thinking, which is maybe its purpose. We are already well down this path.
Some of my takeaways: #AI in war functions as a force multiplier, but the key question is how nations deploy it. Ukraine shows that both sides use similar technology. A major limitation of current AI use is that it is too expensive to be integrated into cheap drones and autonomous weapons. To bypass communication jamming, control is shifting to space, which then requires AI to operate in space as well.
A stopgap is drone relays flying at high altitudes, but these become targets themselves. Simple autonomy (using basic image recognition) is being developed to maintain functionality when communications are jammed, for both targeting and navigation. With this we highlight the issue of autonomy and decision-making, if AI is to be increasingly used to managing battles, then the advantage will go to those who trust it most. Authoritarian states embrace AI more readily, as they do not trust their own people. This “first strike advantage” AI brings increases instability in conflicts.
This rises, the issue of why the U.S. Fails in War. The answer might be simple, the U.S. often struggles in warfare due to a lack of understanding of other cultures, leading to psychological biases in strategy. AI might help identify these blind spots by analysing what people actually fear. However, there’s scepticism, will AI truly improve decision-making, or will it reinforce existing biases?
Vulnerabilities and decision-making, it is already used in autonomous machine decision-making for missile defence, where human response times are too slow. People are more ready to accept AI in a defensive role because it does not involve direct human casualties, but history shows that similar systems have been used offensively, sometimes dangerously. The Soviet Union’s use of automated nuclear systems for attack nearly led to disaster. The increasing reliance on AI in space-based “defence” systems raises concerns about whether similar failures could occur today.
Let’s step back from that brink, to look at the future of AI in war in wider senses. In the near future, the battlefield is moving to space, where communication for AI-controlled drones and communications is increasingly shifting. Ukraine’s use of Starlink: SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network has been crucial for Ukraine, allowing drones and soldiers to maintain communication even under heavy Russian jamming.
A scary likely future scenario is AI-controlled satellites managing drone vs. drone warfare, where AI systems fight each other in a logistics and targeting battle, without direct human involvement. This creates new arms control challenges, how do you regulate AI-driven weapons? How do you verify compliance when AI systems operate in secret?
AI and economic warfare: #Capitalism vs. #Socialism, AI is also shifting the balance of power between capitalist and socialist economies. For example: China’s “social credit system”: AI-driven surveillance and data collection allow China to exert social planing while improving resource allocation. Silicon Valley’s AI in finance: AI algorithms in the U.S. optimize high-frequency trading, automating stock market decisions and reinforcing economic inequalities.
Could AI reshape military-industrial production? AI could redefine supply chains, making economies less dependent on foreign production. AI-powered cyber warfare could cripple rival economies without direct military engagement. This raises a final question, will AI-driven economies favour authoritarian or democratic paths?
Conclusion, the future of AI in war, the panel discussion raises far more questions than answers. Will AI create more stable deterrence, or increase instability by enabling preemptive strikes? Will “democracies” fall behind authoritarian regimes in AI warfare due to ethical constraints? How will AI shape the future of economic and military power?
The only certainty #AI is already changing the nature of warfare, and we are not in any way prepared for this.
With each passing day, we’re witnessing the acceleration of the global far-right resurgence, a modern incarnation of #fascism, adapted to our times. This #neofascism wears the mask of democracy, claiming legitimacy through hollow elections, while quietly dismantling political freedoms. It thrives on the wreckage of #neoliberalism and the crises this mess has left and unleashed, feeding on fear, resentment, and social breakdown.
The growing number of neofascist regimes around the world may lack the overt military displays of the past, but their violence is no less real. It simmers beneath the surface, ready to erupt when they feel threatened and is needed. And unlike the old fascism’s obsession with state control, this new version embraces the worst of #neoliberalism, surrendering public welfare to private greed, while doubling down on nationalism, racism, and hostility to any form of collective humanistic liberation.
With escalating #climatechaos pushing systemic social collapse, this is not just a political threat but an existential one. These forces are accelerating our collective destruction, blocking meaningful environmental action, and fuelling division at precisely the moment we need solidarity just to survive, let along flourish.
So where is the path out of this mess? The answer isn’t found in bunkers or prepper fantasies, survival in the face of collapse requires cooperation, not isolation. And it certainly won’t come from the #dotcons or the #NGO complex, which are too entangled with the systems they claim to resist. From my expirence, a step on the needed path is composting the crisis by reclaiming the #openweb.
We need to build a grassroots counterforce, grounded in the principles of the #4opens, to cultivate digital and physical spaces of resistance. The #openweb offers us a framework for doing this, a messy, imperfect garden where we plant alternatives and nurture them with care. But it only grows if people use it. We need joined-up thinking, not the fractured, piecemeal approach of the #fashernista crowd. We need people to commit to using and building tools outside the corporate silos, even when it’s inconvenient. Because in the end our communities are all that matters, in the end every click, every post, every conversation shapes the landscape we inhabit.
It’s pastime to move, don’t ask, just do it, please don’t wait for permission or perfect conditions. Pick up a shovel and start composting the current mess. Rebuild local networks, create spaces for collective storytelling, and amplify voices that push back against #neofascist narratives. Use tools like the #OMN to link these efforts together into a larger ecosystem of resistance.
The fascist wave may be rising, but history shows us that these forces can be stopped, not by isolated individuals, but by collective movements. The seeds of this change and challenge are already in our hands. The question is whether we have the courage to plant them.
The #dotcons have turned web searches into a cesspit of algorithm-driven consumerist and political ideological propaganda. What was a tool for discovery and connection is now a tightly controlled funnel, pushing people towards preordained narratives and commercialized echo chambers. Nowhere is this more obvious than on Google, the go-to gatekeeper of information, where what you find is shaped not by the richness of human knowledge, but by whatever serves the interests of the #nastyfew with power and capital.
This isn’t just an “inconvenience”; it’s a crisis for public knowledge and collective memory. When dissenting views, grassroots history, and alternative voices are buried under layers of #SEO spam, ad-driven results, and opaque censorship, we lose the ability to shape any understanding of the world. So what’s the plan to step outside this mess?
A real path is to build and use the #openweb to actively shift our habits to support networks, platforms and projects built on the #4opens principles – open source, open data, open process, and open standards. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one path to reclaiming these collective narratives, by creating decentralized, community-driven archives where stories are curated by people, not algorithms.
With the #dotcons shift to #AI in everything, resisting this algorithmic trap is key, that the more people understand how these systems blind us, the less power they have. Building native #4opens tech is a very good first step, then teaching media literacy, by running workshops on the dangers of algorithmic control, and spreading knowledge about decentralized alternatives, so this can gradually chip away at the illusion of choice presented by the #closedweb paths.
This is a big step to #Rewilding the digital commons, the web was meant to be a messy, vibrant ecosystem, not a manicured, walled garden. We need to plant seeds in neglected corners of the internet, build hyperlocal networks, and use peer-to-peer tech to share knowledge directly. The more we create and share outside the #dotcons, the harder it becomes for them to control the narrative.
The next step is to create and nurture alternative search tools, we used to run an instance of #Searx which is #metasearch tool which works outside the algorithm as much as possible. But we had to shut this down due to lack of support, this lack of support is a real continuing issue we urgently need to overcome, we need users, contributors, and champions to increase usage of these tools and promote their development to build the infrastructure for an alternative discovery layer that need to bypass the #dotcons.
This is based on #KISS just do it, don’t wait for permission or a perfect alternative to emerge. Start archiving, writing, and sharing now. Build your own small-scale #4opens projects and connect them to others. The #OMN isn’t some grand centralized solution, it’s a framework for thousands of messy, local, independent nodes, each adding to a larger network of people-powered knowledge. This is a shovel-ready project. We don’t need to beg the #dotcons to change, and we certainly don’t need to play by their rules. Let’s get our hands dirty, compost the rotting remains of the algorithmic web, and start cultivating a truly human-centred internet again.
This lecture will explore the shortcomings of market-driven solutions to the climate crisis, the role of green energy, and the structural limits of capitalism in addressing environmental challenges.
The climate crisis is getting worse, not better. We are burning more fossil fuels, not less. Even with the massive expansion of renewables, energy use is still rising, because green growth adds to consumption rather than replacing it.
So, what’s blocking real change? Professor Brett Christophers lays it out: It’s not economics—it’s politics. The cost of renewables is dropping, largely thanks to China’s command economy driving down manufacturing costs. But the real problem is deployment, not production. Governments in the rich world still rely on the private sector to make the energy transition, using subsidies, tax incentives, and market nudges.
But capitalism is not built to save us, the market won’t solve this. The profit motive is a #blocking force. The oil and energy sectors are oligarchic, meaning investment only flows where market control guarantees profit. Renewable energy doesn’t work this way. Once solar panels or wind farms are built, everyone benefits, so investors can’t “capture” the value in the same way fossil fuel companies can.
This is why China is leading the transition. In 2023, 65% of global renewable investment was happening in China, before that, it was 90%. In contrast, the for-profit world is barely moving. The left is starting to rethink public ownership, but decades of privatization and #neoliberal dogma make this difficult, especially in the Global South, where many countries lost their public energy sectors over the last 40 years.
One small but key issue is that we are trapped in a modernist mindset, where the lights must come on when you flick the switch. The market logic of energy scarcity (storage = control = profit) is at odds with the need to stabilize and expand access. When energy storage becomes widespread, its market value drops, meaning investment dries up before it even begins.
Public ownership has a bad history, but so does privatization. Without cultural change, we are stuck with broken systems that won’t save us. The Coming Storm, in the next 10–20 years, shit is going to hit the fan. #climatechaos is not a distant threat, it’s already disrupting global energy grids. Look at China, where hydropower is failing due to extreme drought, and where record heat waves are driving air conditioning demand through the roof. These are feedback loops that increase carbon emissions, pushing us closer to tipping points.
Governments aren’t prepared for the chaos that’s coming. If history is any guide, they’ll do what they always do: double down on control, repression, and violence. As the crisis deepens, we could see a return to 20th-century authoritarian solutions, forced migration, resource wars, and military crackdowns. If you’re young today, ask yourself: What future are you walking into? What careers will put you on the wrong side of history? Which paths will put a gun in your hands, or leave you standing in front of one? These are grim questions, but they are real.
The #Deathcult has failed, what comes next? For 40 years, neoliberal capitalism has blocked systemic change. Market redesign might be possible, but power and politics shape the system, and the #deathcult that built this mess won’t give it up easily.
The #dotcons are stepping into the void. Big Tech is now playing the role governments used to play, guaranteeing long-term energy contracts to fund #datacenters and #AI infrastructure. But this is a narrow and unstable path, its more noise than signal.
We need alternatives, we need #publicownership, #commons-based solutions, and #4opens governance. We need to mediate our overconsumption, compost the #mainstreaming, and reclaim progressive paths before capitalism drives us into collapse.
If we don’t, the market’s failure will become our failure, and the planet won’t care whether we survive or not.
Market Failure: Climate Crisis, Green Energy and the Limits of Capitalism
Professor Brett Christophers (Uppsala University)
This lecture will explore the shortcomings of market-driven solutions to the climate crisis, the role of green energy, and the structural limits of capitalism in addressing environmental challenges.
My notes:
We are using more carbon based energy, adding to energy use with “green growth” this varies regionally, but the numbers are going up not down.
What is #blocking this, its political and policy he argues, the NIMBYs. The economics are not a problem, the costs are going down. The costs coming down is due to China with its central command economy, this is a useful view of the path we need to take. What’s #blocking it has to do with profitability not generating costs, what douse this mean? Deployment is the hidden “cost”, the hidden restraint. Governments in most parts of the world are relying on the private sector to make this energy change, using nudges, subsidy etc. the motivation is profit, and “confidence” in this profit.
Can capitalism save us?
The oil industry is full of oligarchy’s, this shapes investment. The electricity is the same, but how it’s generated has its own market value. Your ability to make a profit is only based on you capturing the market sector. The tech change helps everyone, so the is no profit, value if the investment can’t “capture” a sector.
He slags off the understanding of the Labour Party in the UK. One ansear is market redesign, that what we have is not “natural” but planned, it’s shaped by power and politics and for the agenda of this power. Then we have the artifice of “price” we have not planned this well enough yet, externality’s. In the UK the carbon tax could be argued to have worked with the phase out of the last coal power plant, drax, is shut. But the cost of a real carbon tax is to high for our “democracy” to implement. This is likely true.
More subsidy is an example, the Inflation Reduction Act in the US is an example. To incentivise the private sector to make the change in energy production.
The left criticises this, anti market, It’s still not working, this argument is likely true, look at china. Let’s look at this in 2023 its is 65% globe of renewables investment in China, before this it was 90% this almost nothing happening in the for-profit world, for profit is obviously not working. The left are starting to rethink public ownership as a path.
In China there are contradictions, it’s a mix of clean and dirty, energy demand is growing very fast, climate change is driving this in part, with the disruption of hydropower and the heat waves driving air conditioning, it’s a feedback loop. But it’s instructive with a very different political economy you can have very different outcomes in the energy transition.
This path might happen in the rich north, but will be hard to do in the weak south? They just don’t have the public budgets, some of these have only lost to privatization there public energy sectors over the last 40 years.
We are stuck in the modernist mind set, the lights must come on when you flick the switch. This is still a core #blocking force. Storage is to tame the market, to stabilize the price. The business model is based on the scarcity of storage so when we implement it can easily lose its market value, so investment will not flow in the first place.
Culture change is needed as public ownership does have a bad history as much a for-profit ownership, without this cultural change we don’t solve any of the mess.
One path is blended finance, but the is very little of this existing, so it’s not going to happen in a meaningful way despite the fluffy propaganda people spread.
The question of responsibility?
In the next 10–20 years shit is hitting the fan with #climatechaos we are likely to go back to the 20th century tradition of shooting people, I am wondering, for this generations job prospective, what careers are likely to lead to you being shot when this history repeats and what careers will leave you with the metaphorical gun in your hands, both of course are bad outcomes. But would be useful for young people to think about this to help choices a path after #Oxford
The question of cross discipline for the students comes up, but he says this is really hard, narrow areas, grants, and culture. His ansear is pessimistic, to play the game, till you have the power not to play the game, mess. He does not like it, but advises young people to play. Market redesign, the #deathcult fucked over this path over the last 40 years.
AI and distributed energy, the #dotcons are pushing this, the preform the same role governments used to play, by garentlying prices in long term contracts for there new data centres, they promise long term fixed price which lets the banks fund projects. This is a very limited funding flow, so more noise than signal.
At the Oxford Arms Dealer School, in the room with the “enemy“, the business class, we gathered to hear Rain Newton-Smith, Chief Economist and CEO of the Confederation of British Industry, preach to the “faithful”. But at the drinks after I find the ordnance is actorly a mix of locals and academics, less enemy than frenemy. The wine and nibbles are good.
The message of the talk? Confidence is the mythical glue that holds together the #deathcult of #neoliberalism. The sermon? A familiar tale: business must be given free rein, deregulation is the key to prosperity, and any redistribution is a sin against the gods of capital. If only we believe hard enough, the market will save us. The myths of confidence and growth, Newton-Smith speaks of investment, but not for public good, this is about private wealth. Her concern is business confidence, the great phantom that, if disturbed, will cause the economy to crumble. The solution? Keep to the path, no change, no challenge. Keep worshipping the deathcult, and perhaps the gods of profit will smile upon us.
A nod to #climatechaos, but only as an economic opportunity. No mention of the wreckage it has already caused, only that with the right “leadership” (read: the same leadership that led us here) we can turn catastrophe into a marketplace. Innovation will save us, more mythology.
China? She’s pragmatic, trade first, morality later. The UK? She hopes for “stability”, a stable continuation of 40 years of destruction, a sweeping away of the mess, not to fix it, but to make the temple of capital more presentable, more safe for capital.
Fear and the business priesthood, is the overriding theme of the event. Fear of uncertainty, fear of change, fear that the high priests of capital in the current government might lose faith and deviate from doctrine. The business class wants certainty, certainty that their power remains untouched, their profits unchallenged, their control intact.
The EU? Negotiation, to reduce fear. Trade? More important than people, the fear of disruption. Regulation? Only if it removes uncertainty, fear is the real enemy.
The Q&A touches on AI. A bubble of nonsense inflates and then bursts, but somehow the same mythology survives. #AI will fix capitalism’s problems, we are told. A few #climatechaos activists push back, capitalism will heal itself through “innovation” and faith she says. At every turn, she circles back to the cult, unwilling or unable, to step outside the narrow doctrine of the worship of capital.
Conclusion, the mythology in this space remains Intact, this event, like the building it’s held in, is a temple to the #deathcult. Nothing changes, because they fear change more than they fear collapse. The business class doesn’t seek solutions, it seeks certainty. It doesn’t want to fix the mess, it just wants to ensure its own survival as the world burns. Regulation is acceptable, but only if it protects them from risk. Innovation is holy, but only when it upholds the status quo.
Yes, this is the same 40 years of mess, we do need to break free from #KISS
There is a tech ideology that masks corporate power, and this view of #mainstreaming Cyber libertarianism is a bizarre ideological mishmash, a combination of hippie flower power, economic neoliberalism, and a heavy dose of technological determinism. It’s the credo of Silicon Valley, so much so that for years it was known as the “Californian Ideology.” this “thinking” shapes the tech bros and their billionaire overlords, who for the last ten years have push #cryptocurrencys and now claim that technologies like #AI hold the key to solving all human problems and offers “endless opportunities” for wealth, power, and pleasure. Naturally, anything that stands in the way of this vision, government regulation, public oversight, and most importantly collective action, must be swept aside. For meany years, this sounded like a progress path to some, but it’s riddled with obvious contradictions and dangers.
Many of the problems we face are inherently political, requiring systemic solutions that involving collective governance. Yet, the CEOs, executives, and vulture capitalists would rather you believe that the solutions lie in the “free-market”, that is then conveniently funnelled through their platforms and products. This serves their interests in maintaining power and wealth while pushing aside meaningful public accountability and any possible of an alternative.
This fusion of #geekproblem libertarian engineers and anti-government #fahernistas gave rise to the foundational myths of this #geekproblem flow, that technology empowers individuals to create a better world. In the 1990, cyber libertarianism become the dominant ideology in Silicon Valley. Yet, as this ideology flourished, it should have been clear that its vision of “freedom” was fundamentally flawed.
The rhetoric of #techbrow claims to be about freedom—freedom from government oversight, freedom of speech, and freedom to innovate. But in practice, this freedom is selective. It serves the powerful and nasty few while ignoring or exploiting the vast majority. This omission is central to the current #dotcons and parts of our #openweb reboot By focusing exclusively on the dangers of government tyranny, it ignores how corporations can wield just as much, if not more, power over people. This isn’t an accident—it’s the entire point. Silicon Valley’s billionaires don’t want less power for themselves; they want less oversight from governments and the public.
Neoliberalism becomes the new normal to justify policies that benefit the nasty rich. This path of our current #dotcons oligarchs is no accident. The vague anti-government ethos provides the perfect cover for neoliberal policies. By dressing up deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and the dismantling of public services in the language of “freedom,” both tech billionaires and neoliberal politicians can push their agendas without ever addressing the systemic issues of capitalism, inequality and exploitation.
The Musk empire is a prime example, while he rails against government interference, he eagerly accepts billions in subsidies, pushes for deregulation that benefits his companies, and weaponises his platforms to amplify far-right ideologies. Since taking over Twitter, Musk has turned it into a haven for white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, throttled links to media outlets he dislikes, and boosted his own tweets to ensure maximum visibility.
This is the logical conclusion of the path we have all walked down with our embrace of the #dotcons. By rejecting democratic oversight and embracing a narrow, individualistic definition of freedom, we have consolidates power in the hands of the few wealthy, nasty #techbrows and their acolytes. For all the rhetoric about empowering individuals, this path has always been about protecting the privileges of the nasty few.
We see in the USA this Silicon Valley influence growing. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to challenge these paths and step away from the #dotcons these inadequate and nasty people control. We need to understand that freedom isn’t about the absence of government oversight, it’s about creating a humanistic society where power is accountable, resources are shared more equitably, and everyone has the opportunity to grow. The spreading fascism hiding behind the ideology of Cyber libertarianism offers none of this, Instead, it offers us a neo feudalism, tech kings, knights and priests who claim to liberate us while consolidating their control. It’s time to see through the shiny algorithm driven façade and make the effort and focus to build something better. With the native #openweb reboot we have the tools to do this, with #OMN there is a different technological path we can take.
