Subjects Archives: Monopoly

SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how six MPs enjoyed £400-£600 hospitality at Ditchley Park for Google’s ‘AI parliamentary scheme’ — supposedly to develop ‘effective scrutiny’ of artificial intelligence, but actually funded by the increasingly unsavoury tech giant itself.

Human societies are setting themselves on a collision course with climate-induced catastrophes. Lithium-ion batteries will soon be facing competition. How to deal with x and the conflicts it creates?

A popular coal-miner’s riddle from the 1930s summarizes one of capitalism’s most visible and absurd contradictions. After a daughter asks her father why their home is so cold, he tells her they don’t have any money to purchase coal.

Amazon Worker Solidarity sought to understand how Amazon makes it money to inform organizing strategy in the Amazon movement.

The former Labour Party leader’s new foreword to Claire Provost and Matt Kennard’s book ‘Silent Coup’ outlines his thoughts on the growing power of the private sector over society.

Since the global financial crisis, big banks have taken a backseat, and asset managers have become the—often self-appointed—new experts and administrators of capitalism.

Vulture Capitalism demolishes the idea of the ‘free market’ in the corporate age, but has limitations in its analysis of capitalism and how to challenge it, argues Dominic Alexander.

A study by the Urban Institute (UI) in 2018, before the pandemic struck, found that nearly 40 per cent of non-elderly adults and their families struggled to afford at least one basic need for health care, housing, utilities or food in 2017.

The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020–at a rate of $14 million per hour– while nearly five billion people have been made poorer, reveals a new Oxfam report on inequality and global corporate power.

One of the major problems faced by Global South countries is that they are saddled with immense debts in dollars, and Western corporations claim ownership over their resources.

The summit in Havana ends with document that also highlights the role of technology for development.

This accusation surfaced during the commencement of a historic trial, marking the most significant antitrust case in the U.S. in over twenty years.

Under monopoly capitalism of course this relationship between monopoly capitalists and the state becomes far closer. Rudolf Hilferding in his opus Das Finanzkapital had talked of a “personal union” between banks and industrial capital and the formation on this basis of a “financial oligarchy”, and had suggested a similar “personal union” between the “financial oligarchy” and the State.

Each member of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index made an average of over $14 million per day over the last six months—even as 47 percent of the world’s population barely survived on $6.25 a day.

A gas mogul’s case against Beto O’Rourke could deter candidates from ever talking about money in politics.

According to a new report published by Oxfam, the richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.

Seneca Lake’s picturesque setting belies its long history of conquest and extraction.

Despite the economically disastrous impact the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage will have on Europe, Western media still holds its tongue about it.

“Record heat and droughts are exposing millions to growing water and food scarcity issues across all continents,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a February 2022 report. “About half of the world’s population already experiences severe water scarcity for some part of the year.”

According to an analysis by Elements Newsletter based on the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2022, roughly 43% of the world’s oil production came from just three countries in 2021 — the US, Saudi Arabia, and the Russian Federation. Together, these three countries produced more oil than the rest of the top 10 combined.