Robert, how much is Susan worth?

Of the Canadian truckers, Naked Capitalism‘s Lambert Strether writes

If we ask ourselves what sort of trucker is able to drive their rig to Ottawa, stay there for days, and even render their truck dysfunctional, the answer is clear: Owner operators… [I]f this were a labor dispute, it would be ludicrous to think that the Canadian truckers (these Canadian truckers could or should represent all truckers, just as it would be ludicruous [sic] for labor aristocrats to claim they represnted [sic] gig workers.

For Strether, apparently the truckers are not working-class enough — they are apparently just two steps removed from being capitalists like Jeff Bezos or something.

However, Strether’s boss, Naked Capitalism owner Yves Smith, lives in a half-a-million dollar (as of 2/13/22) home in a ritzy neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama — where $500,000 probably goes farther than it does in, say, New York City.

If Strether is looking for someone’s bonafides to check, perhaps he can ask Smith.  I’m guessing she’s worth more than any of the truckers currently protesting in Canada.

Well, fuck.

As long as I’m giving people credit (which hopefully does not become a habit), I guess I should mention this:

Think of the left’s programs, and lay them against the PMC’s [professional-managerial class –Eric] interests. (1) Free College, even community college. Could devalue PMC credentials. Na ga happen. (2) MedicareForAll. Ends jobs guarantee for means-testing gatekeepers in government, profit-through-denial-of-care gatekeepers in the health insurance business, not to mention opposition from some medical guilds. Na ga happen. (3) Ending the empire (and reining in the national security state). The lights would go out all over Fairfax and Loudon counties. Na ga happen. These are all excellent policy goals. But let’s be clear that it’s not only billionaires who oppose them.

Please let this end now.

Fuck me.

Credit where credit is due:

Most of the writing about alternatives to capitalism still see the need to rely on a market system.  One interesting and different approach is embodied in the many decades of work by two political economists, Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, on participatory economics or parecon.  They and other point out that markets corrode human values and solidarity and propose a series of worker and consumer councils to make production decisions and allocations of goods and services.  While this may be difficult in practice, it is important food for thought.

Never thought I’d see anyone actually acknowledge parecon’s existence.  Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics is just one non-stop fact after another, though.  Yet 30 years later, no one knows what it is — a testament to the left’s ongoing and deep-seeded classism.