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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Embargo work when they’re applied by a big economy over a small one, like the US over Cuba or North Korea. But they’re not effective when the difference on its size isn’t that big, like in the case of Russia, that found alternative markets on China, India and could keep moving their gas and oil to Europe with intermediaries. Now, the US trying to play that game with China is absurd. Maybe in the 90s could have worked, but nowadays almost every country in the world have bigger financial ties with China that with the US.






  • “‘Right-to-work’ means freedom and choice,” a Boston Globe op-ed explains. “As housing costs rise, some people are choosing to live on the road instead,” a Fox Business headline states. “If your insurance company isn’t doing right by you, you should have another, better choice,” reads Joe Biden’s campaign platform. We’re told repeatedly that “freedom of choice” is essential to a robust economy and human happiness. Economists, executives, politicians, and pundits insist that, the same way consumers shop for TVs, workers can choose their healthcare plan, parents can choose their kids’ school, and gig-economy workers can choose their own schedules and benefits.

    While this language is superficially appealing, it’s also profoundly deceitful. The notion of “choice” as a gateway to freedom and a sign of societal success isn’t a neutral call for people to exercise some abstract civic power; it’s free-market capitalist ideology manufactured by libertarian and neoliberal think tanks and their mercenary economists and media messaging nodes. Its purpose: to convince people that they have a choice while obscuring the economic factors that ensure they really don’t: People can’t “choose” to keep their employer-provided insurance if they’re fired from their jobs or “choose” to enroll their kids in private school if they can’t afford the tuition.

    In this episode, we examine the rise of “choice” rhetoric, how it cravenly appeals to our vanity, and how US media has uncritically adopted the framing–helping the right erode social services while atomizing us all into independent, self-interested collections of “choices.”

    We are joined by Jessica Stites, executive editor of In These Times.

    https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/citationsneeded/CN95_20191205_choice_Stites_v2.mp3?dest-id=542191