Life Inc.¶
Metadata¶
- Author: [[Douglas Rushkoff]]
- ASIN: B002BAPL3I
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002BAPL3I
- Kindle link
Highlights¶
The status quo is selfishness, and the toxically wealthy are our new heroes because only they seem capable of fully insulating themselves from the effects of their own actions. — location: 180 ^ref-52689
The American Revolution itself was less a revolt by colonists against Britain than by small businessmen against the chartered multinational corporation writing her laws. — location: 480 ^ref-16517
307 Fourteenth Amendment cases went before the Supreme Court. Two hundred eighty-eight of them were brought by corporations claiming their rights as natural persons. — location: 517 ^ref-65472
The free market is itself already sloped—highly regulated, in a sense—toward the interests of corporations and away from labor, small businesses, and local activity. If conservatives got their open marketplace and maintained a truly hands-off approach, most of the corporations they seek to liberate from government control would cease to exist. They couldn’t survive on a level playing field, because corporations are themselves a byproduct of government regulation. Meanwhile, liberals who promote government investment in corporate debt might as well be arguing for privatizing Social Security. Bailouts, even in the form of recoupable investments, just tie us further to the fortunes of the corporate sphere. We end up with a stake in restoring their future ability to extract value from our society while providing as little as possible in return. These supposedly polarized policy positions are mirror images of the very same corporatism. — location: 4646 ^ref-4373
The psychological hurdle to cross is the inability to accept that ten thousand dollars’ worth of one’s time spent making a local school better will create more value than thirty thousand dollars of one’s money spent on a private school. — location: 4783 ^ref-61161
This monolithic approach to society and its recovery is antisocial in intent, dehumanizing in effect, and, dare I repeat it, fascist in spirit. — location: 4804 ^ref-29579
The temptation to save the whole world—and get the credit—comes at the expense of steps we might better take to make our immediate world a more fruitful, engaging, sustainable, and satisfying place. — location: 4816 ^ref-54377