So, the most obvious case we highlight is the corporation. On one level, we think of the corporation as a typical organizational form of modern capitalism. But in another sense it's simply a body of people with some sort of hierarchy and defined roles, engaged in some kind of productive process.

It's not inherently engaged in producing commodities for profit. And if we go back to the prehistory of the corporation, the corporation was just a legally chartered body that carried out some kind of function. It got appropriated as an organizational form for capitalism specifically, but it didn't start out as that.

The other side of the coin is that there's a long tradition of thinkers, including Galbraith, Keynes, Veblen, and many others, who saw a natural, or at least possible, evolution of the corporation into the basis of some kind of planning or collective organization of production --that it could easily cease to be oriented toward the needs of profit maximization.

So if you think that type of evolution is possible, then you ask, why hasn't it happened? I would argue that the answer is that somebody stopped it from happening -- that there are people in society whose job it is to prevent that from happening. There are people and institutions whose job it is to ensure that corporations remain within capitalist logic, that they remain oriented towards production for sale and for profit. On some level, this is the fundamental role of shareholders and their advocates, and of institutions like private equity.

Get Ready for a New Chernobyl in Ukraine -- Oriental Review

According to analysts from Energy Research & Social Science [actuallya journal title], there is an 80% probability of a "serious accident" at one of Ukraine's nuclear power plants before the year 2020. This is due both to the increased burden on the nuclear plants caused by the widespread shutdowns of Ukraine's thermal power plants (the raw material they consumed - coal from the Donbass - is in critically short supply) and also because of the severe physical deterioration of their Soviet-era nuclear equipment and the catastrophic underfunding of this industry.

Plus, the Ukrainians are determined to replace Russian fuel assemblies by Westinghouse's product, even if experimental and practical experience has been dire.

the accident rate at Ukraine's nuclear plants has increased 400% since 2010 [...]

In addition to the use of knockoff fuel, the biggest reason for the increased number of incidents at Ukraine's nuclear plants has been the chronic underfunding of the industry. In the 25 years since the collapse of the USSR, literally not a cent has been invested in that sector. But in the meantime, the reactors that have outlived their 30-year lifespan either need to be closed (which would cost money that Energoatom does not have) or have their service life extended [...]

[...] Kiev arbitrarily decided to extend the operation of the reactors back in 2015, but it was not until 2017 - after the fact - that it sent that (pre-approved) program to update the nuclear plants to its neighboring countries and international environmental organizations for study.

This was a simultaneous breach of two UN Conventions that require signatories to obtain public and intergovernmental approval prior to (not after) commencing work at a nuclear power plant [...]

Serious concerns are being raised about the fact that the Ukrainian state agencies responsible for nuclear energy have not yet devised ways to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste, now that the service life of the reactors has been extended and given the fact that Ukraine is refusing to use Russian storage facilities.

The Athenians had to keep those bodies flowing smoothly, then, and that was largely a matter of keeping track of who belonged where and when. They also had to maintain a smooth and dependable flow of the information generated by those bodies -- the votes, the decrees, the endless speechifying. They had, in short, to do a lot of stuff that modern information technology would have helped them tremendously to do, and nonetheless they managed pretty well, with the materials at hand, to build the tools they needed to make their system work.

Those tools -- the info tech of ancient Athenian democracy -- are the subject of the following Notes. I present them now without further ado.

They built quite fancy devices.

... Although there can be no doubt that the assemblies held at Uruk during the time of Gilgamesh were less advanced than those held in later Greece or Rome, the situation that brought about the convening of Uruk's bicameral assemblies is not dissimilar to the one that ancient Greece faced some 2400 years later. Sumer, like Greece, was made up of a number of independent city-states, each of them vying for power and supremacy over the region and its people. In a reversal of the veto power that the assembly of the arms-bearing men had over the elders in Uruk, the Spartan* elders (a council of twenty-eight men, all over sixty years of age) had the power to overrule any `crooked decree' that was passed by the popular assembly. ...

(*)Note that the origin of "Spartans" in the Peloponnese is contested among professional classicsts. Some say they were not "Greek"-speakers but "Indo-Iranian" speaking colonizers from Eurasia, contemporaneously associated with "Sea People", Hurrian or Hittite cultures and conquests, 2nd millenium BCE.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Nothing expresses calm confidence better than a caps-locked scream of 'DO SOMETHING!' pic.twitter.com/zXxTSmwTta

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 29, 2017

Say Mueller reveals hard proof that the Trump campaign knowingly colluded with Russia, strategically using leaked emails to hurt Clinton's campaign. Say the president -- backed by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Fox News, Breitbart, most of the US Cabinet, half the panelists on CNN, most of the radio talk show hosts in the country, and an enormous network of Russian-paid hackers and volunteer shitposters working through social media -- rejects the evidence.

They might say Mueller is compromised. It's a Hillary/"deep state" plot. There's nothing wrong with colluding with Russia in this particular way. Dems did it first. All of the above. Whatever. Say the entire right-wing media machine kicks to life and dismisses the whole thing as a scam -- and conservatives believe them. The conservative base remains committed to Trump, politicians remain scared to cross the base, and US politics remains stuck in partisan paralysis, unable to act on what Mueller discovers.

In short, what if Mueller proves the case and it's not enough? What if there is no longer any evidentiary standard that could overcome the influence of right-wing media?

My bold

keep to the Fen Causeway

"When I got back from a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement--signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias--specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings."

Essentially, the Clinton campaign bought the party in August 2015.