GAITHER STEWART—Twenty years later, in the year 2000, another of many family tragedies struck the Agnellis: Gianni’s only male son, Edoardo, committed suicide at age 46. Born in New York, schooled in Turin and university studies at Princeton, Edoardo was the natural male heir to FIAT leadership, as per tradition passing from father to son. Yet he was both inept and disinterested in the business world. Edoardo’s interests were mysticism, Buddhism and Islam, defense of the poor … and furthermore he was allegedly anti-capitalist. His life was solitude and unhappiness, caught in the trap between what he wanted to do with his life and what his loving family expected of him: Edoardo was both the love and the desperation of his adoring parents. Yet no more than bourgeois capitalism can be compatible with the authentic interests of the working class, Edoardo Agnelli and the capitalism of which FIAT was the symbol were incompatible. Leadership of the Agnelli empire had no place in Edoardo’s world.
READ ONCategory: CAPITALIST SICKNESS
Eric Schechter: Beyond Democracy
ERIC SCHCHTER—“We’re in danger of losing our democracy!” is a warning cry I hear often. A variant is that “we lost our democracy gradually over the last few decades.” They’re both wrong. The truth is that we never had a democracy; we’re in danger of losing our illusion of democracy.
READ ON
Internet Censorship Just Took An Unprecedented Leap Forward, And Hardly Anyone Noticed
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—he best way to deal with a manipulative sociopath is to point and make a lot of noise every time they do something weird and creepy. The more you let them abuse you in private, the more they can rope you in and get you playing along with their sick agendas. If you notice them doing something weird, the best way to nullify all the tools in their wicked little toolbox is to point and yell “Hey! What are you doing?? Why are you doing that? That’s weird!” Get people looking, because such beasts can’t advance their manipulations with a lot of critical eyes on them.
READ ON
Myth 5: The private sector is more efficient than the public sector
DINYAR GODREJ—Healthcare is where this myth is really given the lie. In the US, where healthcare spending is at its peak, with private spending on healthcare exceeding public spending, basic health outcomes are worse than in Cuba – which spends a fraction of the US amount per person in a totally public healthcare system (see table).
READ ON