Paris Marx hosts the Tech Won't Save Us podcast and writes Disconnect, a critical technology newsletter. He’s also the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.
As tech companies tighten their grip on power, sci-fi visions of the future are proliferating. In Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer, automation meets the hyper-militarization of borders, only increasing exploitation. It’s a techno-dystopia alarmingly imaginable today.
A new report shows that the world’s top 1 percent is responsible for double the emissions of the entire bottom half of the planet. The message is clear: to fight climate change, we have to fight the ruling class.
A new Netflix film, The Social Dilemma, would have us believe that increasing social division and polarized political rhetoric is the product of Facebook and Twitter, and not the fact that income inequality has returned to pre–Great Depression levels.
We need a plan for public funding of the media that can revive the ability to do more in-depth investigative reporting, hold power to account, and prioritize local journalism. Socialists have solutions.
After riding the coattails of China’s boom for decades, Australian conservatives are now railing against China. They’re not just following a lead from Washington — the Liberal Party’s corporate backers are anxious to maintain Australian dominance in the South Pacific.
By throwing out landmark antitrust regulation, Hollywood just opened the floodgates toward even greater media concentration — all at the public’s expense.
Everybody has to go to the bathroom, yet toilet access is currently severely limited and essentially privatized throughout the United States. That must change — we need clean, free public bathrooms for all.
Airbnb bookings have completely collapsed during coronavirus, creating huge numbers of empty properties in the very cities that are suffering the worst housing crises. It’s a perfect time to crack down on Airbnb — including by public seizing of Airbnb units.
For a century our cities have been transformed by the car industry, making way for drivers at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians. A renewed movement for urban public transport is pushing back.
The airlines are in crisis. But instead of just bailing them out, we should use this opportunity to invest in rail and bus services and put transportation firmly in the hands of the public.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have a vision of space that serves the narrow interests of capitalists. But we don’t want to be indentured servants on a Martian colony — we want solar exploration that benefits humanity as a whole.
Elon Musk drew attention recently for announcing the name of his and Grimes’s new baby, X Æ A-12. But what’s more disturbing about Musk is the anti-democratic, quasi-eugenicist views that he and other tech elites espouse.
We not only need to defend the United States Postal Service from privatization — we need to deepen its role in our economy.
Instead of letting Amazon use coronavirus to dominate even more of the economy, the company should be nationalized and reoriented to serve the public good instead of predatory capitalism.
The airline industry will not survive the coronavirus. Now is the time to nationalize it — and use this moment to chart a course to a low-carbon future.
Tech CEOs like Musk sell themselves as visionaries of a liberated future. They are, of course, only looking out for themselves.
Jeff Bezos helped save the sci-fi TV show The Expanse because he wants to promote space colonization — on capitalist terms. But ironically, the show he saved depicts a grim and brutal life for workers on Earth and beyond.
Some were apparently surprised when Uber’s CEO defended the Saudi regime over its murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But from the start, Uber’s business model has been based on habitual criminality and a shocking indifference to human life.
Jeff Bezos wants us to leave Earth and save ourselves by building space colonies. We want to stay on Earth, build a viable future, and make Jeff Bezos leave.
Uber is rotten to its core. Despite the years of terrible press, it has not changed any of its anti-worker, profit-crazed ways. Uber should be abolished.