Today’s links How America’s oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale: Temporarily embarrassed millionaires aren’t born, they’re made. Come see me on tour!: LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Amherst, Torino, Tartu. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading How America’s oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale (permalink) Capitalism is a vibes-based system. Sure, we all know about Keynes’s “Animal Spirits” that see “bulls” and “bears” vying to set the market’s future, but beyond that, there’s just a hell of a lot of narrative. Writing for The American Prospect, Adam M Lowenstein reviews two books that tell the histories of the stories that are used to sell American capitalism to the American people – the stories that turn workers into “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”: https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-02-16-stories-corporations-tell-williams-waterhouse-review/ The first of these books is Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation, by Kyle Edward Williams, a kind of pre-history of “woke capitalism”: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867237 Taming is a history of the low-water marks for Big Business’s reputation in America, and how each was overcome through PR campaigns that declared a turning point in which business leaders would pursue the common good, even at the expense of their shareholders’ interests. The story starts in the 1950s, when DuPont and other massive firms had gained a well-deserved reputation…Pluralistic: Come see me on tour; How America's oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale (16 Feb 2024)