Macrodose

TICKETS: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at a surprising side effect of the war on Iran. As shares in arms manufacturers take an unexpected dip, has this conflict actually damaged the Western arms industry?

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station

Welcome to the After Order podcast - a new series from Macrodose and the Alameda Institute.

This series emerges from Alameda’s ongoing After Order research project, which begins from a simple but unsettling proposition, that we may no longer be living through an interregnum between stable systems, but in a period defined by recurring crises - a time after stable orders.

Over the coming weeks, host James Meadway will sit down with leading thinkers from around the globe, exploring topics from the decline of American hegemony and the rise of a multipolar world, to the struggle to reclaim digital sovereignty from Big Tech, and the geopolitical tensions emerging from the global energy transition under green capitalism.

We’ll ask, where does power actually lie in a world after order, and what new pathways might still be opened within it?

In today's episode, James meets with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff to discuss their new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.

Using Elon Musk as a lens, Quinn and Ben unpack what they call Muskism - a new political-economic logic emerging out of the ashes of neoliberalism, and one that might - just as Fordism did a century earlier - provide a roadmap to the ideological terrain of our present moment.

If the neoliberal era is coming to an end, can Muskism help us interpret the ensuing disorder? And what can be done to push back against it?

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the latest economics fall-out from the war on Iran (2:25), oil thieves in East Anglia, and how they are a harbinger of the near future (11:14), and Verdant - a new think tank launched by James himself (14:22).

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station

UK Food resilience:
https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/news/article/uk-food-needs-radical-transformation-on-scale-not-seen-since-second-world-war
https://nationalpreparednesscommission.uk/publications/just-in-case-7-steps-to-narrow-the-uk-civil-food-resilience-gap/

Verdant's first report on government efficiency sacings:
https://www.verdantthinking.org/publications/wastenot

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how the ongoing Iran war forms part of a longer story of US decline (0:45), why a direct consequence of the war is higher borrowing costs for government (7:50), and what the UK government actually doing in response to the crisis (12:22).

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the disruption to global food supplies that surge in oil prices is now causing (2:01), how fossil fuel companies are profiteering from the crisis (5:51), and why the fresh enthusiasm for motorhome ownership is an unexpected side-effect of climate change (10:40).

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station

Come to the 'Dark Money' launch event on March 19th:
https://dice.fm/event/oevl5r-dark-money-how-billionaires-destroyed-britain-and-how-to-make-them-pay-19th-mar-earth-london-tickets

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the how the US-Israel war on Iran will impact global food prices (3:07), and how data centres are the newest target in modern warfare (9:47).

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

Apply for Planet B's Digital Content Lead job opportunity: https://planet-b-productions.homerun.co/digital-content-lead/en

Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:

https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station

Capitalism is often defended on the basis of freedom — “free markets”, free choice, as well as being credited with producing the wealth and material abundance that has freed countless people from poverty.

Marx, meanwhile, described workers under capitalism as “free in the double sense”: “free” to sell their labour power in the market, and “free” or divorced from the means of production: the land, machinery or materials to sustain themselves on their own. In other words: not particularly free, at all. 

We can add to this the countless things that are, within market systems, “free” insofar as they are assigned no value, from the free gifts of nature to uncompensated environmental destruction and the unpaid labour that creates and sustains life. 

What, then, does freedom really mean within a capitalist society? When wealth is so vastly unequal, can it really be argued that market exchange is “free” in any real sense? And when the harms of our economic actions are invisible in the prices we pay—from deforestation to child labour—can we really be said to be making “free choices”? These are the questions at the heart of Alyssa Battistoni’s book Free Gifts. In this episode, she joins Adrienne to talk about value, the politics of nature, and how we might live freely in a finite world. 

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran (1:18), and the stark international economic constraints now facing the UK (9:37).

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

Apply for Planet B's Digital Content Lead job opportunity: https://planet-b-productions.homerun.co/digital-content-lead/en

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the US supreme court shooting down Trump’s tariff bonanza (1:00), how a global hotel chain is preparing for climate change affecting their business (7:45), and the possible “green shoots” of the UK’s economic recovery (11:14)

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at fresh warnings that climate change is coming straight for your supermarket shelf (0:40), and a rare piece of good climate news - from India - where a solar boom is helping leapfrog the old, fossil-fuelled path to industrialisation (8:26).

Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.

Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.