Ayn Marx

Given not everyone is as startlingly erudite as your good self :-
Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off.

TheBig3

How are you defining capitalism in this case?

I only ask because I'm currently reading The Mushroom at the End of the World, and the author suggests that markets alone don't make capitalism, it requires investment. It's a poorly written book (because economists can't write) but the subject matter is interesting, and she's a Left-wing economist endorsed by Adam Tooze so you might enjoy it.

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Frownland

In the Marxist sense (who has underrated writing style btw).

I generally agree with that but think it's more important to note the violent foundations of the power imbalance between those who can make such investments and those who are exploited by them.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

TheBig3

Well then you might love Mushroom, violence in capitalism is a solid portion of the book.

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jwb

actually i think it's not mentioned mostly because that book made all sorts of outlandish predictions that never happened... If I'm thinking of the right book anyway that's what i heard

These days decreasing birth rates pose a bigger problem than overpopulation in much of the world.... China is going to be extra ****ed because they put in that one child policy largely in reaction to this hype and it backfired. Now they have reversed it and still can't convince most Chinese people to have more than one kid because it's become culturally ingrained

jadis

Never read her but FWIW Tsing is an anthropologist, and those have a reputation for being great writers (at least the two most famous anthropologists of the 20th century, Margaret Mead and Claude Lévi-Strauss, were famously great writers). Though of course there's no universal standard, some would say Lévi-Strauss wrote in unintelligible jargon etc.

I love the 18th Brumaire and the other texts where he's in a more essayistic and aphoristic mode but the Capital is tough going for my humanities-addled brain, doubt I'll ever push myself through it from beginning to end.

TheBig3

She sort of does that. She didn't appear to have an editor (that did any work) she suffers from Academese, and she goes off on these semi- to completely unrelated tangents. Why John Cage comes up AT ALL is based on the title of one of his works?

It does make for a better Anthro book, and I think I'd be less hostile toward it if it had been labeled that way. The story of the matsutake pickers is fascinating though.

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Frownland

The biggest thing for me is his repetitiveness but whenever he goes off on the imagery of capital's metamorphoses or sassy takedowns of classical economists, it's good ****.

Cage was a dedicated mycologist who had a capitalist critique or two himself, so it's not that surprising.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

TheBig3

Look, can't you just let me ****ing hate John Cage?

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Frownland

Of course not.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.