Melissa Naschek, Colonial Plunder Didn’t Create Capitalism. Jacobin Magazine, Dec 14, 2025. Vivek points out that capitalism really started in 14th and 15th century England. It did not start with the Spanish and Portuguese empires, because they simply accumulated gold and goods without turning them into reinvestable capital. In England, however, the feudal relationships between nobles and peasants eroded as nobles displaced peasants from their land. Peasants’ traditional rights to land were eviscerated. This forced English peasants to offer their labor and products at lower costs, seeking efficiencies. The cultural and institutional motivation to use money as investment capital was driven by insecurity. Britain’s imperial expansion followed capitalism and expanded it, but did not create it. Thus: “You can think of the welfare state as something where people are given access to basic necessities as a matter of right, which is what they had in feudalism. They had access to basic necessities because they had rights to the land. And just like that was a barrier to capitalism back then, the welfare state is seen by capitalists as a barrier to their growing expansion and profitability today. And that’s why capitalists oppose what’s called “decommodification” — this is when goods that have been bought and sold in the market are taken off the market by giving them to people as rights.”

Leo Gerard, Walmart, Armstrong Seek Redemption Without Remorse. Huffington Post, Jan 21, 2013.

Joshua Davis, Meet the Man Who Sold His Fate to Investors at $1 a Share. Wired, Mar 28, 2013.  raises deep questions about both corporate personhood and the morality of investors

Bill Mears, Justice Back Corporations In Overseas Abuse Case. CNN, Apr 17, 2013.

Jordan Weissmann, Entrepreneurship: The Ultimate White Privilege? The Atlantic, Aug 16, 2013.

John Green, Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? Vlog Brothers, Aug 20, 2013.

David R. Henson, Criminalizing Christ: The Nationwide Targeting of Homeless. Sojourners, Sep 4, 2013.

Phillip Martin, Underground Trade: Why Human Trafficking is Called Modern Day Slavery. Huffington Post, Oct 1, 2013.

Marcus Bleasdale, Conflict Minerals: Minerals in Our Electronics Have Bankrolled Unspeakable Violence in the Congo. National Geographic, Oct 2013.

Denmark is Considered the Happiest Country. You'll Never Guess Why. Huffington Post, Oct 23, 2013.

Chris Miles, Ten Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy - This Chart Shows How. PolicyMic, Oct 31, 2013.

The Daily Take, Meet America's Biggest Welfare Queens. Truthout, Nov 25, 2013.

Richard Kirsch, Courageous Boeing Workers Say No to Corporate Extortion. Next New Deal, Roosevelt Institute blog, Nov 29, 2013.

Jeff Faux, NAFTA at 20: State of the North American Worker. Foreign Policy in Focus, Dec 13, 2013.

Rollie Williams, The Tradition of Engagement Rings is Barely a Tradition at All. Upworthy, Mar 12, 2014.

Zachary Davies Boren, Major Study Finds the US Is An Oligarchy. Business Insider, Apr 16, 2014.  although it was designed that way

Michael Zelenko, The Human Cost of Your Mother's Day Flowers. Vice, May 8, 2014.

Marvin Ammori, John Oliver's Hilarious Net Neutrality Piece Speaks the Truth. Slate, Jun 6, 2014.

Henry Grabar, The Suburb of the Future is Here. Salon, Jul 6, 2014.

Bruce Wydick, The Taste of Many Mountains. Thomas Nelon | Amazon page, Aug 2014.  about the global coffee trade and Christians working for change

Lindsay Abrams, Water is the New Oil: How Corporations Took Over a Basic Human Right. Salon, Oct 5, 2014.

Paul Krugman, Amazon's Monopsony is Not OK. New York Times, Oct 19, 2014.

David Smith, Tanzania Accused of Backtracking Over Sale of Masai's Ancestral Land. The Guardian, Nov 16, 2014.

Eric Lipton, Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General. New York Times, Dec 6, 2014.

Howard Meyerson, Shareholders' Big Skim. Washington Post, Mar 4, 2015.

David Grewal, Why Fast Track Isn't Free Trade. The American Conservative, Jun 11, 2015.

Alia Wong, History Class and the Fictions About Race in America. The Atlantic, Oct 21, 2015.  How government oppressed racial minorities.

Howard Meyerson, The Gross Oversight in the Fed's Decision to Raise Interest Rates. Washington Post, Dec 16, 2015.  Labor lost power to negotiate wages.

George Monbiot, Neoliberalism - The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems. The Guardian, Apr 15, 2016.

Eric Olin Wright, Two Approaches to Inequality and Their Normative Implications. Items, Jul 5, 2016.

Paul Mozur, How China is Changing Your Internet. New York Times, Aug 9, 2016.  The dangers of technology and information consolidation.

Todd C. Frankel, The Cobalt Pipeline. Washington Post, Sep 30, 2016.  about Congo and the mining of cobalt for lithium ion batteries.

Brian S. Feldman, The Decline of Black Business. Washington Monthly, Mar/Apr/May 2017.  "And what it means for American democracy" illuminates the relationship between economic independence and political liberty.

Margaret Harding McGill, John Oliver Again Fires Up Net Neutrality Debate. Politico, May 8, 2017.

Jon Gorey, What Real Estate Agents, Sellers Have to Tell Buyers - And What They Don't. Boston Magazine, Jun 1, 2017.  lack of transparency

Juliet Macur, Redskins Cheerleaders Describe Topless Photo Shoots and an Uneasy Night Out. New York Times, May 2, 2018.

Max Blau, ‘It Does Something to Your Soul When Everyone Losing Their Homes Looks Like You’. Politico, May 24, 2018.  re: evictions in Durham, NC

Lynn Parramore, Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America. Institute for New Economic Thinking, May 30, 2018.  "Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean"

Eliza Griswold, Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux | Amazon book, Jun 12, 2018.  re: the Appalachian region, environmental issues, and political divide between urban and rural America; see also review by Isaac Chotiner, “What Is the Source of Disenfranchisement for Rural Americans?” Slate, Jun 14, 2018.

Franklin Foer, Elizabeth Warren's Theory of Capitalism. The Atlantic, Aug 28, 2018.  emphasizing power relations built into corporate law and shareholder-executive-labor relations, prior to the distribution of wages; highlights the role of “pre-distribution” of wealth.

Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. Vintage | Amazon page, Oct 2019.  See interview by The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder, Guest Destroys Bloomberg Panel On the American Dream Lie. The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder, Jan 19, 2019.  How true meritocracy and democracy have been undermined by concentrations of wealth and power; see also Velshi & Ruhle, Is Taxing The Ultra-Wealthy ‘Punishing Success?’ Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC, Feb 12, 2019.  

Brian Feldman, Senators Introduce Data Portability Legislation. Which Is More Exciting Than It Sounds, I Swear. New York Magazine, Oct 23, 2019.  On data privacy and reigning in high-tech.

Adrian Tirtanadi, Creating Universal Access to Justice.  Passion Talks International, Nov 23, 2019.  Lack of access to legal assistance is a major driver of poverty.  Meaning we have decent laws and decent supports, but lack law enforcement in civil suits for people in poverty.  One legal aid attorney reduces property crime by 8x as one police officer.  Legal aid is the only factor known to reduce domestic violence.  Legal aid has about the same effect as affordable housing resources in reducing homelessness.  

Krystal Ball, The American Dream is Dead, Good Riddance. Rising | The Hill, Jun 12, 2020.  A brilliant takedown of the “myth of meritocracy” because of the vision of economic rights.

John Ganz, The Enigma of Peter Thiel. Unpopular Front, Jul 23, 2022. “Peter Thiel is a fascist. There’s really no better word for what he is. But, for some reason, people have trouble grasping this or just coming out and saying it…. Thiel’s libertarianism is about freedom—freedom for him and people like him, the entrepreneurial elite of the capitalist class. He’s openly antidemocratic. In an essay for the Cato Institute, Thiel once wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible…” Why? Because if you empower the demos, they will eventually vote for restrictions on the power of capitalists, and therefore, restrictions on their “freedom.””

Joseph Bernstein and Katherine Rosman, From Yale to Newsmax, Usha Vance Has Helped J.D. Vance Chart His Path. New York Times, Nov 1, 2022. “The Ohio Senate candidate’s wife, an accomplished lawyer, remains ensconced in the milieu he now rails against.”

Gary Stevenson, The Asset Economy. Gary’s Economics, March 12, 2023. When you save up enough money, usually you go by housing, right? Why?  Because you can raise the rent so that you can make passive income.  So housing is an asset, and a form of concentrated power.  The more the wealthy own housing, the more housing costs will go up, and the more rent will go up. See also Gary Stevenson, The Devaluation of Money.  Gary’s Economics, May 21, 2023. Gary asks why it is politically acceptable to say, “Real estate prices have gone up because the market is healthy,” but it is not acceptable to say, “Your wages have been slashed.”

Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Melville House | Amazon page, Feb 2024. See interview by Politics Joe, Yanis Varoufakis Explains How Big Tech Is Economically Dominating Your Life. Politics Joe, Oct 6, 2023.

Kyle Kulinski, ‘HE’S EVIL!’: Steve Bannon Goes Nuclear On ‘Racist’ Elon Musk. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Jan 13, 2025.

Noah Smith, The “Corporate Feudalism” Thing Won’t Work. Noahpinion | Substack, Mar 22, 2025.

Now progressivism in general is on the outs. And both the Warren and Bernie wings of the left have united to attack a new foe — the Abundance Agenda, championed by center-left types like Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, and Matt Yglesias. The Bernie people mostly either just hurl sarcastic insults, or mischaracterize the abundance faction as being “neoliberals” who just want to deregulate. (They didn’t read the book, and it shows.)

The Warrenites, however, are a more intellectual lot, and they have coalesced around a coherent critique of the abundance idea. In their view, it ignores corporate power. Abundance liberals want more housing, more energy, more transit, more health care, more everything, and they’re pretty agnostic about how we get there.

Matt Bruenig, What the “Abundance Agenda” Leaves Out. Jacobin Magazine, Mar 24, 2025.

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book Abundance has plenty of merits, writes Matt Bruenig, but its emphasis on growth and innovation must be married to other egalitarian concerns. The main policy argument of Abundance is that the administrative burdens placed on construction are too high. This argument is familiar to anyone who has followed debates about housing policy over the last decade. It’s the exact same thing but applied to transportation and energy infrastructure too. The secondary policy argument of Abundance is that the innovation system in the United States is broken in a number of ways, including too much risk aversion in science financing, high administrative burdens on scientific research, and too little support for converting scientific discoveries into efficient mass production.

The authors seem to think these two arguments, and the dozens of sub-arguments flowing from them, all fit together because they relate back to “abundance,” a word that appears to just mean growth and innovation. But I find myself agreeing with Mike Konczal’s point that bringing all these disparate things together causes unhelpful muddling. Lots of problems relate back to growth and innovation, but that does not mean they all avail themselves to similar analysis and solutions.

Ben Norton, Fake 'Populism': How Trump Helps the Rich and Hurts Everyone Else. Geopolitical Economy Report, Mar 25, 2025. Full of statistics and sources.

Kyle Kulinski, Professor Reveals Dark Truth Of Trump’s America. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Jul 8, 2025. Professor Scott Galloway says, “The bottom line is that rights in democracy has become purely a function of wealth in America. The wealthiest 1% are protected by the law but not bound by it. The bottom 99% are bound by the law but not protected by it.” Your rights are correlated to your wealth.

Steve Keen, Truth That Banks Know, Textbooks Don’t: Top Economist Explains. Prof Steve Keen, Aug 31, 2025. Banks do create money.

“This video challenges the textbook story that “zero interest rates boost spending” and that banks simply lend out savings. Using side-by-side simulations built in my Ravel software, I compare the loanable-funds model taught in most economics degrees with a monetary, double-entry view of how banks actually create money. You’ll see why the first model produces a debt/GDP crisis even with small deficits—while the real-world accounting model delivers rising GDP, stable interest burdens, and deposits that grow with government deficits. We also reference the Bank of England’s 2014 bulletin on money creation and explain why popular “America will go bankrupt” takes rest on a faulty framework. If you’ve ever been told government deficits “crowd out” investment, this breakdown shows what the textbooks miss: where money and debt originate, how central bank and treasury accounts interact, and why deficits add net financial assets to the private sector. Watch to the end for a clear, step-by-step walkthrough, then tell us which model matches reality in your view. If you value grounded, model-driven macro (without the myths), hit subscribe and share this with someone who still believes in loanable funds.”

Andy Spears, The Oligarchy Wins When Government is Shutdown. Advocate Andy | Substack, Oct 16, 2025. “While most of us lose in a shutdown, a few find a way to win”

Barry Ferns, Epstein Isn’t an Aberration. He’s an Inevitable Outcome. Barry’s Economics, Feb 8, 2026.

“The Epstein Scandal Should Be Called "The Billionaire Scandal." Everyone thinks Jeffrey Epstein was an aberration. The science says he was inevitable. This video breaks down the neuroscience, psychology, and economics that explain how extreme wealth concentration doesn't just create inequality. but manufactures monsters.”

Therese Lee, Epstein Was Not an Aberration. Therese, Feb 9, 2026. Therese examines Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Sade, Gilles De Rais, Thomas Thistlewood.

“The release of the Epstein files has reignited global outrage, but treating Jeffrey Epstein as an anomaly misses the terrifying reality: he is not unique. Throughout history, powerful men have utilized their status to exploit and abuse with impunity. In this video, we move beyond the sensationalism of true crime to analyze the historical parallels, comparing Epstein’s network to other figures who leveraged their influence to evade justice. This is a deep dive into the systems that protect abusers and why Epstein Island is just one chapter in a much longer story of patriarchal power.”