New York 2140

by Kim Stanley Robinson

We’ve been paying a fraction of what things really cost to make, but meanwhile the planet, and the workers who made the stuff, take the unpaid costs right in the teeth.”

Besides, what’s scarier than right now?” “Change? I don’t know.” “Why should change be scary? You can’t even read the news, right? Because it’s too fucking scary?”

Efficiency, n. The speed and frictionlessness with which money moves from the poor to the rich.

Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Money, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

They put it in bumper sticker terms: massive sea level rise sure to follow our unprecedented release of CO2! They published their papers, and shouted and waved their arms, and a few canny and deeply thoughtful sci-fi writers wrote up lurid accounts of such an eventuality, and the rest of civilization went on torching the planet like a Burning Man pyromasterpiece. Really. That’s how much those knuckleheads cared about their grandchildren, and that’s how much they believed their scientists, even though every time they felt a slight cold coming on they ran to the nearest scientist (i.e. doctor) to seek aid.

The one percent get nasty when their assets are threatened.

Private money and public (or state) money work together and to the same end. Their actions have been absolutely complementary during the crisis, aimed at safeguarding the markets for which they are ready to sacrifice society, social cohesion, and democracy. claimed Maurizio Lazzarato

Fungibility, n. The tendency of everything to be completely interchangeable with money. Health, for instance.

The invisible hand never picks up the check.

It’s the Lusk Committee map, the so-called Red Scare map. Ethnic groups, see? Where they lived. Which was where all the horrible revolutionaries were supposed to come from.” “What year was this?” “1919.”