• Max Weber Was Wrong
    http://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/max-weber-was-wrong

    Max Weber, the north German economist, proud reserve officer in the Kaiser’s army, literal dueler with academic opponents, and co-founder of modern sociology, sits on every college reading list for his 1905 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. If you didn’t read it in college, it’s time to turn off the TV, Google it, and do so. It’s a stunning performance, one of my top 100 nonfiction books of the 20th century. The book is brilliant, readable, short. (By the way, henceforth you should exhibit your sophistication by pronouncing his name correctly. It’s “VAY-ber,” not like the “WEB-er” hamburger grill you’ve just put away for the year. You get extra points for saying “Max” in echt deutsch: “Maahx,” not like “Mad Max.”)

    But that a book is “great” does not mean it is correct, or is to be taken as good history or good economics or good theology. Marx’s Das Kapital is indubitably a great book, one of the very greatest of the 19th century, as I say to annoyed friends of libertarian or conservative bent. But then I say to my left-wing friends, annoying them too, that Marx was wrong on almost every point of economics, history, and politics. Which is why I haven’t got any friends.

    So what’s wrong with Weber’s argument? First we need the argument. (Reading this summary is not an excuse for skipping the actual book.) Weber thinks that there is such a thing as, to use the Marxist word, modern “capitalism,” originating in the 16th century. By capitalism he means, as the name implies, the focused accumulation of capital in masses. The focused accumulation, he says, depends on ample saving and hard work, characteristic of the Protestant north Germans as against the lazy, Catholic Bavarians.

    How to get the ample saving and hard work? Spirit, Geist, runs things, he says (and I do too). He claims that the doctrine of salvation put forward by John Calvin emerged as the new spirit’s engine. People saved and worked because they wanted to prove to themselves that they were in fact among the few “elect,” predestined since the beginning by an omniscient God to be saved from hell’s fire.

  • Cory Doctorow’s ’Fully Automated Luxury Communist Civilization’ - Reason.com
    http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/12/cory-doctorows-fully-automated

    But I also think that prediction is way overrated. I like what Dante did to the fortune tellers. He put them in a pit of molten shit up to their nipples with their heads twisted around backwards, weeping into their own ass cracks for having pretended that the future was knowable. If the future is knowable then it’s inevitable. And if it’s inevitable, why are we even bothering? Why get out of bed if the future is going to happen no matter what we do? Except I guess you’re foreordained to.

    I’m not a fatalist. The reason I’m an activist is because I think that the future, at least in part, is up for grabs. I think that there are great forces that produce some outcomes that are deterministic or semi-deterministic. And there are other elements that are up for grabs.

    But I think Uber is normal and dystopian for a lot of people, too. All the dysfunctions of Uber’s reputation economics, where it’s one-sided—I can tank your business by giving you an unfair review. You have this weird, mannered kabuki in some Ubers where people are super obsequious to try and get you to five-star them

    Google runs this data center in Belgium in a place where two-thirds of the time it’s so cool that they don’t need the air conditioning, and the other third of the time they just turn [the data center] off. And their file system is so good at migrating data away from places that are shutting down and into places that are running that it doesn’t really matter.

    A lot of places that do aluminum smelting, because it’s so energy intensive, they use aluminum smelting as a kind of battery. They say: We need to smelt so many tons of this this year, and when we have lots of solar or lots of wind or lots of tidal power, and we don’t have anything to use it for, we smelt the aluminum then, and not at the moment when other people are trying to turn on their lights or run their air conditioning or run their Google data centers.

    That kind of coordination—where at the moment that something is needed, and at the moment where it’s cheap to do it, it’s done—is characteristic of the efficient-market hypothesis. It’s characteristic of planned economy theory. It’s the thing that everyone is shooting for.

    The thing that free and open-source software has given us is the ability to coordinate ourselves very efficiently without having to put up with a lot of hierarchy. To be able to take things that we’ve done together, where we’ve reached a breaking point, and split them in two and have each of us pursue it in our own direction, without having to pay too high a cost or even have a lot of acrimony.

    That’s the free software world I’m trying to imagine. What would it be like to build skyscrapers the way we make encyclopedias in the 21st century?

    #Cory_Doctorow #Science-fiction

  • Young Men Are Playing Video Games Instead of Getting Jobs. That’s OK. (For Now.) - Reason.com
    http://reason.com/archives/2017/06/13/young-men-are-playing-video-ga

    Basic income proposals vary (see “The Indestructible Idea of the Universal Basic Income”), but the core idea is to provide everyone, rich or poor, with a guaranteed payment (…)

    Left unanswered is the question of what happens after one’s basic needs are provided for. (…) What, in other words, would people do with their time?

    Hurst’s research suggests that many people, or at least many low-skilled young men, would use it to play video games. Those living with and off of their parents are, in effect, already receiving a kind of basic income, administered privately at the family level. That is enough to survive, but for most people it is not enough to feel content.

    That’s where games come in.

    #jeux_vidéo #temps #travail #revenu_de_base

    • Much of the game involves menial chores.

      ah je comprend mieux ces jeunes hommes qui prétendent faire la moitié des tâches domestiques et ménagères. Il les font dans leur imagination, c’est sur que cette méthode permet de se sentir heureux.
      Hurst explique que le fait que ca soit des jeunes hommes, et non des jeunes femmes, qui restent à jouer chez leurs parents est causé par l’offre des jeux qui cible les garçons. J’imagine que les femmes doivent uniquement joué à mon petit poney et ce genre de jeux pour ce Hurst.
      Que les jeux donnent des satisfactions psychologiques aux hommes, en particulier aux jeunes hommes n’est pas surprenant vu que ces jeux sont conçus pour ca. Ils valorisent la virilité (jeux de guerre, compétition, male-gaze...) et permettent de s’y adonné en immersion H24 pendant que leur mère se tape le sale travail.

      Le texte précise que les jeunes hommes au chaumage qui jouent énormément aux JV ne vont pas faire de émeutes pendant ce temps. Les JV sont un bon moyen de contrôle et de maintiens de la hiérarchie patriarco-capitaliste, tout à fait comme dans le Meilleur des mondes .

      Video games, you might say, offer a sort of universal basic income for the soul.

      Au passage je pointe une utilisation de l’universel au masculin. Vu que ce sont les hommes qui bénéficient de ce revenu d’âme et de ces satisfaction, on ne peu pas le qualifié d’universel.

      Today, all of us are gainfully employed, and most are married with kids. We don’t play Counter-Strike or any other games together anymore, but despite having dispersed across the country, we remain a close-knit group, gathering together most years and emailing dozens of times a day. The email listserv we use to communicate is named after our Counter-Strike team. A video game helped me make some of the closest and longest-lasting friendships of my life.

      Ici on peu voire le bénéfice sociale à long thermes que retire les hommes des jeux-videos. Les sois disant nerd, sois disant asociaux qui jouent intensivement aux JV, sont finalement mariés avec des enfants et profitent de la #fraternité forte de la communauté très masculine des amateurs de Counter-Strike.

  • The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining - Reason.com
    http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/28/the-secret-dangerous-world-of

    the main factor driving Venezuelans to take up bitcoin mining is a price control put in place by the socialist government: Electricity is virtually free.

    (...) #Bitcoin mining isn’t illegal in Venezuela, so Padrón was charged with “contraband,” for not having the proper paperwork to import the computers from China (Padrón says he did), and for “electricity theft.” When they raided his office, the SEBIN officers chastised him for “misusing electricity” and “causing the power outages.”

    The charge of “electricity theft” does relate to an ongoing debate in the bitcoin community: Is mining a waste of power? Even if it’s not, should it be happening in Venezuela, of all places? The country suffers from severe power shortages.

    #Venezuela #vol_d'électricité
    ça rappellera des souvenirs à @laurent !

  • Herbert Hagen, le vrai SS Hans « The Jew Hunter » Landa

    Dans le film Inglourious Basterds de Quentin Tarantino Christoph Waltz joue un officier SS cultivé, sarcastique et d’une brutalité froide exceptionnelle. L’auteur ou l’acteur se sont évidemment laissés inspirer par la déscription d’un certain type d’officier SS.

    AKENS Informationen 33/34, Paul : « Von Judenangelegenheiten hatte er bis dahin keine Ahnung. »
    http://www.akens.org/akens/texte/info/33/333407.html


    SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Martin Hagen (sur la droite)

    Die SD-Führung setzte sich 1936 aus Männern zusammen, die im Durchschnitt gerade einmal 30 Jahre alt waren und deren Lebensläufe erhebliche Parallelen aufwiesen. [10] Wie Reinhard Heydrich und Werner Best gehörten sie der ’politischen Generation’ der Kriegsjugend an, hatten ihre entscheidenden politischen Erfahrungen in den Wirren der Nachkriegszeit gesammelt und waren früh in kleinen elitären rechtsradikalen Bünden und Organisationen der völkischen Jugendbewegung sowie der ’konservativen Revolution’ tätig gewesen. Hier hatten sie ein ausgeprägtes Selbstbewußtsein entwickelt, „das durch radikal-völkisches Denken, einen elitären, ’massen’-feindlichen Idealismus und Mißtrauen gegen die ältere Generation der ’nationalen’ Politiker gekennzeichnet war. ’Sachlichkeit’, persönliche Kühle, betont ’hartes’ Auftreten einerseits, unbedingte Leistungsbereitschaft, akademischer Ehrgeiz sowie vor allem ein weltanschaulich fundierter Radikalismus andererseits“ [11] waren die Kennzeichen des Selbstbildes jener SD-Führer, mit denen es Hagen zu tun hatte und deren Verhalten zunehmend auf ihn abfärbte.

    Der NSDAP bzw. Massenorganisationen wie der SA standen diese Männer eher distanziert gegenüber; vielmehr begriffen sie sich als Hüter der ’reinen Lehre’ des Nationalsozialismus, den sie als weltanschauliches, nach rassischen und gesellschaftsbiologischen Kategorien geformtes Gesamtkonzept verstanden, nach dem die Welt zu gestalten war.

    Das Klima im SD-Hauptamt entsprach denn auch eher einer modernen Denkfabrik als einer bürokratischen Dienststelle. „Die Mitarbeiter des SD-Hauptamtes taten ihre ’Arbeit’ aus Überzeugung und Phantasie, sie wurden dazu angehalten, eigene Vorschläge auszuarbeiten, Ideen und ’Lösungen’ zu entwickeln und zur ständigen Effizienzsteigerung des Apparates beizutragen.“

    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hagen

    L’attitude de ces jeunes loups et le personnage du jeune officier SS ressemblent à l’image du jeune innovateur de Silicon Valley . Pour Tarantino cette ressemblance avec les jeunes loups modernes permet de mettre en question les idées recues à propos du bon et du mauvais. Bertold Brecht disait :

    „Ihr aber lernet, wie man sieht, statt stiert. […] Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch.“

    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_R%C3%A9sistible_Ascension_d%27Arturo_Ui

    That Glourious Basterd
    http://reason.com/archives/2009/08/27/that-glourious-basterd

    Tarantino engages in this sort of doubling throughout the movie. In the film’s first segment, an SS officer nicknamed the Jew Hunter (played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz) delivers a speech echoing the Nazi propaganda theme that Jews are equivalent to rats. In the second segment, Pitt’s Nazi-hunting commando delivers a speech that treats German soldiers as vermin fit only to be killed. And when Laurent’s character prepares for an evening of killing Nazis, the soundtrack thunders with David Bowie’s theme from Cat People. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Tarantino selected a track by a musician who infamously flirted with fascism in the mid-1970s. But surely it means something that the song he chose keeps returning to the line “I’ve been putting out fire with gasoline.” When Inglourious Basterds shows anti-Nazis emulating Nazis, it’s more than willing to raise the possibility that such tactics will make things worse.

    It’s also willing to suggest that the bastards deserve it. From Death Wish to Thelma and Louise, critics have accused revenge movies and their cinematic kin of being fascist. When Tarantino shows us Hitler reacting gleefully to a film filled with cathartic violence, he takes that charge seriously. But he also poses a question of his own: What if the people your vigilantes are killing are fascists themselves?

    Der jüdische Untergrund hatte Kontakt mit Eichmann
    Archivquellen belegen die wenig bekannte Episode
    http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article581152/Der-juedische-Untergrund-hatte-Kontakt-mit-Eichmann.html

    #cinema #fascisme #shoa #shoah

  • The Punishment Is the Crime - Reason.com
    http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/20/the-punishment-is-the-crime

    Nine years ago, Ronald Washington swiped two Michael Jordan jerseys from a Foot Locker in Shreveport, Louisiana. Although the shirts were on sale for $45 each, they were officially priced at $60, putting their combined value above $100. The difference between the discounted price and the list price was the difference between a misdemeanor punishable by no more than six months in jail and a felony that triggered a life sentence.

    Washington is one of the prisoners profiled in a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on nonviolent offenders serving sentences of life without parole (LWOP). There were at least 3,278 such prisoners in the U.S. at the end of 2012, an astonishing number that reflects decades of tough-on-crime policies unconstrained by justice, wisdom, or compassion.

    #délit_mineur #perpet #prison

  • Half of the Facts You Know Are Probably Wrong - Reason.com
    http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/02/half-of-the-facts-you-know-are-probably

    In the modern world facts change all of the time, according to Samuel Arbesman, author of The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. 

    Arbesman, a senior scholar at the Kaufmann Foundation and an expert in scientometrics, looks at how facts are made and remade in the modern world. And since fact-making is speeding up, he worries that most of us don’t keep up to date and base our decisions on facts we dimly remember from school and university classes that turn out to be wrong.

    via @iactu dont le résumé est :

    La moitié des faits que vous connaissez sont probablement faux – Reason.com
    Samuel Arbesman de la Fondation Kaufman est l’auteur de “La demi vie des faits : pourquoi tout ce que nous connaissons a une date d’expiration”. Le chercheur s’inquiète que de plus en plus de nos décisions s’appuient sur des connaissances fausses, qu’on traîne avec nous depuis l’école ou la fac. Les données scientifiques doublent tous les 15 ans, et leur taux de croissance serait environ de 4,7 % par an depuis le 17e siècle. Les connaissances d’une génération de chercheurs s’avèrent donc fausses au bout d’une génération ou deux, 30 à 45 ans. Nous avons tendance à savoir ajouter de nouveaux faits à ceux que nous connaissons déjà, plus qu’à assimiler de nouveaux faits qui contredisent ce que nous pensions. Le fait de savoir que nos connaissances ont une durée de vie limitée et qu’il faudra les remettre en cause serait déjà une bonne base, estime le chercheur.