Scotland’s news today is dominated by further lockdown restrictions. The measures may appear marginal: limitations on click and collect deliveries; firmer rules for takeaways; curbs around alcohol. But they are designed to stamp home the message that there is no imminent return to normality.
capitalism
Two stories today illuminate the absurdity of modern-day capitalism, where inequality is so profound that the economy appears broken in two, orbiting in completely different realities from one another. On the one hand, food bank usage in Scotland has more than doubled since the pandemic, up 108 per cent on the year previously according to […]
When the Ayn Rand dystopia becomes real
“The present is not inevitable; moving beyond it is. Stop telling yourself this works, or that it is as good as it gets. And stop saying next is bound to be worse.”
Robin McAlpine: You want radical? How about producers selling to consumers
“Far from our economic model being the realisation of Adam Smith’s dream, it is the embodiment of his worst fears. It’s not a ‘free market’ – it’s a cartel.”
Robin McAlpine: I’m a socialist – but I’m here to save capitalism
“The pandemic has reinforced what should already have been obvious: our mental health is affected – adversely, more often than not – by the external circumstances we find ourselves in.”
Sean Bell: A global mental health crisis can only be defeated by changing the world that created it
Earlier this month Scotland lost one of its most important contemporary intellectuals, Neil Davidson.
Beyond the Noise: Neil Davidson, 1957 – 2020
Deep-set demographic changes across the whole western world bring massive consequences for how we live, yet neither states nor markets are matching these new realities.
Care under capitalism is broken
“Even the cadres of state and business strategy are permitted a few hours of slack-jawed gawping and the sheer scope of the present derangement.”
In elite circles, the debate about how to make us pay has begun
“Whether our future builds on rediscovered human and ecological values and community connections, as so many hope, will depend on what we do now – not after the pandemic is over, when it will be too late. We don’t want to go back to ‘their normal’, but the alternative might be a whole lot worse.”
Sarah Glynn: After the deluge
“Right now, some people are telling you ‘we’ might recover from this. They mean neoliberalism as is – and it can’t. The question is not will there be change, but what kind of change?”