Sunday Links
What I'm reading this long weekend.
Automation could set us free—if we didn’t live under capitalism. Luke Savage’s latest Jacobin piece explores why the Keynesian idea of the leisure society still remains out of reach over 90 years later. A key reason is that under neoliberalism, productivity increases go largely to shareholder capital rather than to labour. For Savage, profit trumps social need.
Australian universities to offer ‘microcredentials’ in key areas to address skills crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic; international student cuts; and stagnating wages have pushed out the investment frontier for many Australian universities. For the past year, senior university managers have focused on the promise of microcredentials as a new income stream. Save yourself the trouble and read influential sociologist Randall Collins’ book The Credential Society instead.
A private garden as an antidote to isolation. The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead profiles photographer Sian Davey on how her home garden plot gave her sanctuary over a three-year period. Then entropy returned.
The Right has a vigilante fetish. The New Republic’s Alex Thomas on the enduring cultural impact of right-wing violent heroes. For a generation raised on Dirty Harry and Death Wish, Daniel Penny provides moral vindication that liberal cities in the United States are cesspools of civilisational decline. It’s worse on the Dissident Right.
Death by debt. On 1st June 2023 my student loan debt went up by 7.1% by indexation. Student loan relief is not a coherent movement in Australia but it is in the United States. This profile of the debt cancellation movement highlights the personal costs to debtors and why for-profit companies are highly extractive.
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