Sunday, October 15, 2017

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Ian Welsh neatly summarizes the rules needed to ensure that capitalism doesn't drown out social good:
Capitalism, as it works, destroys itself in a number of ways. For capitalism to work, it must be prevented from doing so:
  1. it must not be allowed to form unregulated monopolies and oligopolies;
  2. it must not be allowed to run bubbles; it must not be allowed to engage in mass fraud;
  3. the money gained from it must not be allowed to turn into power which controls government;
  4. and money must not, generally speaking be allowed to buy anything that matters: from health care to a good education.
Capitalism, as the standard saying runs, is a good servant, and a terrible master. Only fools let capitalists actually control anything in their society that truly matters.
- Jessica Elgot reports on Jeremy Corbyn's much-needed acknowledgment that the structural unfairness in the UK's economy demands fundamental change. And Paul Krugman highlights the many lies behind the Republicans' attempt to warp the U.S. economy even further in favour of the wealthy.

- Bruce Campbell points out the lessons we should have learned from the Lac-Megantic explosion - and contrasts them against a resulting investigation which is scapegoating a few workers while ignoring the systemic causes of a preventable disaster.

- Paul Wells examines the challenges involved in responding to Canada's opioid crisis.

- Finally, Taiaiake Alfred discusses the need to move past a colonial mindset in order to pursue reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. And Murray Mandryk writes about the Sixties Scoop and other recent and ongoing examples of systemic racism in Saskatchewan.

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