‘Whomsoever is possessed of magisterial strength is courted; while whomsoever has inferior strength pays court to others. It is for this reason that the shrewd ruler strives for might.’
Marijn Bolhuis sums up the devastating effects that a decade of Rutte government has in the Netherlands but people keep electing him. It follows from this that Dutch people are a bunch of piggies.
Another big volley towards more tenants’ rights in Berlin that if won will provoke a vast shift in thinking around housing politics both locally and globally.
But on the other hand, it becomes a society where all the assets are in the hands of one group of people. And that group of people transmits these assets to the next generation. So I think it becomes a very interesting question, to ask whether current trends might not lead to an even more segmented and stratified society than the one we have now.
De organisatiestructuur is sowieso een kwetsbaarheid van Nederland crisisland, verzucht Arjen Boin. Allereerst is het probleem dat onze ministeries niet meer de capaciteiten in huis hebben om zelf het heft in handen te nemen. Den Haag heeft steeds meer een monitorende en coördinerende functie gekregen. Ambtenaren zijn in veel gevallen geen specialisten meer op de dossiers die ze beheren — hun specialiteit is vergaderen en managen en ze rouleren door de organisatie.Grofweg kun je als bestuur in tijden van crisis twee dingen doen: optie één is overschakelen op een crisisstructuur, zegt Boin. Daarbij centraliseer je de macht en breng je het aantal mensen dat mag meepraten terug. Dan kiezen we de mensen die namens ons de belangrijkste beslissingen nemen. Na afloop rekenen we af. Een crisisorganisatie is georganiseerd in een trechter. Aan het eind van die trechter zit de persoon die zich goed laat adviseren en op een gegeven moment zegt: ‘We gaan naar links of naar rechts.’
Uiteindelijk komt het bij de aanpak van zo’n crisis voor een groot deel aan op het politiek leiderschap
He believed that the ‘blood sacrifice’ of a few would regenerate the national consciousness and lead, by force of Irish arms, to the eventual withdrawal of Britain from Ireland.
> Perhaps this was one of those things which would have been better off left to legal professionals, rather than being put to trial-by-Clubhouse.
> both peddling books which really should have been tweets
> While both women make passing references to social movements, neither are particularly interested in the terrain of collective struggle.
> reparations isn’t an individual white person giving money to an individual Black or brown person (apart from when I personally am broke and want a cocktail, in which case it’s very much that)
> Rather it has intensified their consumption of political content — particularly material which equates white guilt with anti-racist solidarity.> The influencers have invented intersectional Thatcherism.
De Toeslagenaffaire laat zien dat de Belastingdienst en grote delen van de Nederlandse politiek (en hier ook het journaille, specifiek de Correspondent) verrot zijn.
It sounds like a great idea here by Albert Wenger to force all major web properties to provide full read and write access to their APIs and in doing so promote the much needed competition.
The government has made it clear that its main purpose is not to save lives or protect the vulnerable. It exists to ensure that assets never depreciate and that wealth is never redistributed downward. Capital has never seemed so fictitious.
“The technology is not the hard part. It’s already invented, but we have to pay ourselves to install it fast. So, again, that’s an economic question, and it doesn’t work in capitalism. We have the means right now to arrange for everybody alive today to have adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, education, and healthcare, within the biosphere’s carrying capacity.”
Foul things fled, fierce things tame; discord turned to harmony! For how could there be greed where all had enough? How could the vice, the crime, the ignorance, the brutality, that spring from poverty and the fear of poverty, exist where poverty had vanished? Who should crouch where all were freemen; who oppress where all were peers?
“Ist es extrem, leben zu wollen? Ist der Wunsch extrem, deinem Kind nicht dabei zusehen zu müssen, wie es von Polizisten erschossen wird? Oder, nicht mehr jeden Cent zweimal umdrehen zu müssen? Nein. Die Ansicht, dass das extrem sei, ist extrem. Und zwar extrem menschenfeindlich.”
The types of resistance available to women are particularly interesting: They themselves understand their daily tasks — the upkeep of their homes and the care of their families — as a form of steadfast resistance.
“There must be agreement on a coalition between labor and capital, whose interests are aligned in seeking taxation from landowners rather than workers or productive activity.”
Scaling up successful government bureaucracies is something I’ve considered as well and which has lots of benefits over privatization (and could be a real solution for the fragmented administration that Germany has for instance).
I want to echo this and add that once you realize what the git `master` refers to, it is unconscionable that we reproduce it so often and so callously every day of our working lives. (Disclosure: Alicia reports to me.)
Frédéric Lordon tries to own Piketty but comes around at the end anyway because as he says: the data is there, the timing is there and Piketty is a decent guy.
An interesting argument that uses Scott’s critique of high modernism to cast doubt on how beneficial machine learning will be for authoritarian regimes. Also a bit reminiscent of Weyl’s critique of technocracy.
A striking reconstruction by Jaap Stronks tracking the Netherlands’ faulty COVID strategy and the efforts of a group of activists (with whom I’m loosely associated) to bring to light the discrepancies.
The Cantillon effect has been menioned regularly as part of the government bailouts but it is important to read this explanation of what it is and how money is not neutral.
“Wie kann es sein, dass die aufwändig erarbeiteten und austarierten Betreuungs- und Versorgungsnetze aus Kita, Schule, Hort, Babysitter*in, Großeltern, Tagesmutter-/vater und weiteren Mitbetreuenden, von Verpflegung in Einrichtungen und haushaltsnahen Dienstleistungen von heute auf morgen von behördlicher Seite gestrichen werden, ohne dass gleichzeitig Aussichten auf Kompensations- und Unterstützungsangebote gemacht werden?”
“If I have learned anything from the experience I’ve just described, it’s that the desire to shape, bait, surf, defy, find meaning in, or otherwise control and draw sharp lines between myself and the haters puts me on risky psychic territory. It’s dangerous. My provisional conclusion? That the best path for me, should hating on my person ever recur at scale, is to deploy, to the best of my ability, relentless sincerity, credulity, wit, and yes, shamelessness, but, crucially, shameability, too—openness to being justly shamed. If I become unshameable, after all, what good is my shamelessness? If I start assuming in advance, deep down, that no one whom I’ve upset with my words has valid points to make, what will I have become? I found it least harmful, actually, to keep my eyes and ears open throughout the dogpiles, experiencing them as reminders that the revolution will not be content-moderated; that I am fighting for things that make people hate me and that that’s sort of okay, I can respect it (plus, hey, it’s mutual).”
Een lang en grondig interview met Cody Hochstenbach over de wooncrisis in Nederland. Studio Tegengif is een favoriete podcast wat een soort Nederlandse versie van The Weeds lijkt te worden.
I listened to the writer of this book explain how the people in the Obama administration thought things would work the same way as they did in The West Wing. Properly hilarious stuff with very serious consequences.
Instead, the system—in America and around the world—has been organized to siphon the gains from innovation upward, such that the fortunes of the world’s billionaires now grow at more than double the pace of everyone else’s, and the top 10 percent of humanity have come to hold 90 percent of the planet’s wealth.