Podcasts about upton sinclair it

Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country where, they said, a man might earn three roubles a day; and Jurgis figured what three roubles a day would mean, with prices as they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain. In that country, rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials—he might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man. In this episode of Made You Think, we discuss The Jungle by Upton Sinclair It is a novel that portraits realistically the life at the time of immigrant families. Aimed to promote socialism, it ended conceiving the first laws of consumer protection in the United States after the scandal created by the revelation of meat packing malpractices. “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder. Jurgis.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: The 3-day weekend A list of malpractices in the meatpacking industry that ended Embalmed meat killing soldiers in Spain Children labor in tech startups Monstrous sized apples and food stamps diets Businesses taking advantage of illegal immigrants Fiverr ads in NY and the Gig economy And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, counterpoint to The Jungle, a book that vows for Capitalism, as well as our Recap episode, where we summarize our first 20 books, all under the effects of alcohol :). Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more.   Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Lacroix [0:41] Pure Food and Drugs Act [2:46] Meat Inspection Act [2:46] Kettle & Fire [48:26] Food stamps don’t cover the cost of healthy eating [49:01] Costco [50:43] Peter Attia at the Joe Rogan experience - Cocaine Revolutionized Surgery [59:19] Snus – Chewing Tobacco [1:01:28] Lindy Effect [1:02:34] Verizon AT&T-Time Warner Trust [1:14:17] Interstellar [1:15:52] North Star Podcast [1:17:29] Foxconn [1:19:50] Nike [1:19:50] Patreon [1:38:19] Distracted Boyfriend meme - Socialists vs. reality [1:42:17] Uber [1:50:25] Fiverr Ads in NY [1:50:25] UpWork [1:51:28] Hinge [2:01:55] Books mentioned The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Nat's notes) Uncle's Tom Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe [3:20] Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott [3:52] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [4:11] The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker [24] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis [25:] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [37-42] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [1:03:18] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Leverage Points by Donella Meadows [1:22:15] (article episode) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [1:23:32] Animal Farm by George Orwell [1:44:49] The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell [1:48:12] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson [1:49:38] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Das Kapital by Karl Marx [2:04:37] War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy [2:05:22] Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [2:05:35] People mentioned Upton Sinclair Adil Majid [37:42] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [56:01] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Chris Christie (sports betting in New Jersey) [56:52] Neil deGrasse Tyson [1:17:02] David Perell from the North Star podcast [1:17:29] George Orwell [1:44:21] Jordan B. Peterson [1:45:16] (on Twitter) (12 Rules episode) Warren Buffet [1:46:23] Elon Musk [2:04:05] (on this podcast) Jeff Bezos [2:05:06] Show Topics 0:00 – The Jungle It is a book commonly read in High School, but probably the intention gets missed when read young. The content of the story is very dark. At first it seems to be a book about the terrors of the meat industry, but Sinclair aimed at the perils of Capitalism. It shows the problems with pure Laissez-faire economic systems (while other books as Atlas Shrugged critique Top-Down economies). 4:28 –  Sinclair was upset that his book didn’t meet the goal to promote socialism, all it had was the effect of changing how the US regulates the meat industry.  The value of safety nets and consumer protection laws. 7:14 – We didn't had weekends as we know them today. Some people suggest we will be able to mitigate some of the effects of automation by shortening the work week even more. Some startups and companies already offer Summer Fridays, where employees take Friday off. This is backed by noticing that does not affect productivity. 11:47 – Sinclair disavowed Socialism, he said it was not well implemented. Also, that Unions are an equally corrupt part of the system too. However, the book seems quasi religious, as lacks critics to Socialism. 14:39 – The book tells the story of Jurgis, who decides to move from Lithuania to Chicago with his family. He first feel betrayed with his friend, which he thought was rich. At that time, moving was one-way, people didn't have the money to travel back. The experience to moving to a completely extraneous place you never saw and with different language. Practically there is no culture living in complete isolation today, given the spread of the Internet and the English language. 20:02 – Jurgis gets his first job is sweeping guts and parts of cattle into a pit. The joy of having a job and the feeling of being settled. Not being paid for partial clock ours or waiting ours. Investment banking seems like a modern upper middle class version of the same problem. 25:44 – No security. Jurgis get injured and rests at home, without being paid. Hard work spirit. “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder.” 26:05 – Sinclair attacks meritocracy. It's not those who work hard that are the ones who are wealthy. The people who had made it are not the people who'd done a good job, it's the people who'd figured out how to rig the system. Meritocracy, honesty (or dishonesty), conditions at birth and luck as the shapers of one's future. Reconciling the victim mentality with the meritocratic attitude. 28:45 – White privilege is probably true, but people started very poor and developed wealth through generations. The leap from "making money to stay alive" to "making money and build wealth". College funds compounding. 32:52 – Part of why we create wealth is to pass it to our children. Taking out inheritance plus giving immigrants upper-middle class quality of life from the start, as Socialism suggest, would take out incentives to create wealth. Socialism as the evolution of King-and-Serve model, in the way that somebody else take care of you once you pay the access to the system. 35:30 – Parents that bring their kids to America but want them to maintain their customs of origin. Contingencies buying a house. Having to send the kids to sustain the mortgage payment. Our senses ignore the static, concentrate on changes. 38:45 – Child labor was common 100 years ago. Is it OK to forbid child labor? Imposing modern values to pre-modern societies. China negating climate protocols. What if children work in tech positions at startups? 43:36 – How bad the meat packing industry was in terms of what went into the final product. A list of malpractices in the meat industry. Embalmed meat killing soldiers in Spain. Poisoned bread for rats. Sausages diluted with potato flour. Diluted or doctored food. The bargain of the peasant and hunter-gatherer lifestyle vs modern society. 49:01 – Optimizing food stamps to get the best diet. Why produce are not nutritious any more. Charging crops by weight as a bad incentive to produce nutritious crops. Size difference between wild and domesticated fruit species. Comparing fruits with candies and soda. Coca tea good for altitude sickness. 56:00 – Drugs and gambling becoming ubiquitous in the US. Libertarian trend legalizing gay marriage, suicide, drugs, poker and weed, MDMA. Cocaine and marijuana schedules for trials for medical treatments. Consuming opioids and tobacco in natural form, reducing cancer and other unwanted long term effects. Overdosing sugar. 1:03:18 – Jurgis back to the job market at Packagetown, finds a job in the fertilizers plants. 1:05:27 – Scentbird: monthly subscription for premium perfumes and colognes, delivered at your door in convenient packaging and at incredible rates! Nat's favorite is Blue by Chanel, Neil's using Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue. Use our code to get 50% off the first month. 1:08:43 – Jurgis passes through jail. Spoiler alert! Jurgis is blacklisted from all jobs and becomes a bum. Parallel between the beef trust and the communications trust. Jurgis finally gets a better job in Downtown. 1:18:09 – When the supply of work is much greater than the demand. Working by the day. Immigrants taking US jobs working in illegal conditions. Unfair systems that can't be fixed by just replacing the pieces at the top. Businesses aren't much penalized, individuals are, when talking about illegal immigrants. 1:24:24 – The Government job to protect citizens. Markets can take care of most of their problems, but sometimes rules are needed. GMOs at Walmart. 1:26:24 – Jurgis loses all his family and becomes a bum, a modern version of the hunter gatherer. Jurgis gets into the underground. Suggestion that the only way to get rich in America is by breaking the law. 1:32:52 – Jurgis gets back in a meat packing business, but in a better position. Finally gets out of Chicago. 1:35:35 – The book slides down into Socialism. Blind political speeches. Distinguishing Socialism from Communism. Free associations and Patreon. Degrees of Libertarianism. Anarchism. Countries not implementing Socialism properly argument. 1:42:17 – Is Socialism impossible because of Human nature? Strong man arguments for and against Socialism. Orwell and Peterson common background at the Socialist Party. Socialism as a satisfying and seductive system for the intellectual part of our brains. 1:46:00 – Top-down beats Bottom-up messy chaos on paper, but the opposite happens in reality. We tend to give more importance to things that can be measured, but that doesn't mean unmeasured things doesn't exists. Argumentative tactics. The miss of a Socialist hero in the plot. The Gig economy. 1:53:14 – Sinclair shows that each individual who is involved in the system is following the incentives they have. Seeing a true need for government. 1:54:08 – Sponsors! Scentbird. Only $7.50 for your first month subscription using our code. Kettle & Fire’s grass fed bone broth to reconstitute your gut health, up to 28% discount plus free shipping using our code. We highly recommend the mushroom chicken and mushroom flavor. Get 20% off for your keto related products on Perfect Keto. Exogenous ketones supplements, and MCT oil to supplement your good fat needs. Drink Four Sigmatic, delicious mushroom coffee. Try their new Golden Latte Mushroom Mix with shitaki and turmeric, and the Chai Latte Mush with turkey tail and reishi. None of these have caffeine, ideal to drink them the whole day. Get 20% off your first order from Cup & Leaf. Try the Cream Earl Grey and the Lopson su chong, the whiskey of black teas. Get the black tea sampler to try all black teas. De-fund Bezos' rocket company by using our Amazon affiliate link. Hit us up on Twitter (Neil, Nat). If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

A summary of the Scotpound proposal, and why bitcoin adoption is the smarter option for Scotland's future. The New Economics Foundation and Common Weal have just released a proposal to create a new digital currency for Scotland - the Scotpound. Having read the 64 page document and attended the launch event with one of the authors, I’d like to summarise the content for you: Firstly, there’s some fantastic information on the current UK monetary system in there, and it echoes a lot of the information previously circulated by positive money, which is a group which proposes a similar solution for the UK as a whole. What is the Scotpound? It’s a digital currency, not unlike the pounds you have in your bank account right now. The difference being, it would be controlled by Banca Alba, instead of private banks, and it would be digital only without and paper cash equivalent. The proposal is to spend 3.71 million pounds of tax revenue setting up a payment network, central authority, and cross-platform apps; then use the helicopter money approach to distribute 250 scotpounds to each registered voter in Scotland. To clarify, it proposes injecting one billion scotpounds into the economy of Scotland by typing numbers into a computer. What an innovative idea! The report is quick to point out how morally abhorrent the creation of money by private banks is; whilst completely glossing over the fact that the proposed strategy is to centralise this money creation to one entity. As Lord Acton once said: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When questioned about what would happen to that new money, the author suggested that it would bounce through the economy generating tax revenue until eventually it was all back in the hands of the government. Thus revealing the true nature of the beast. It's just a thinly veiled tax. The long term proposal is for Banca Alba to type new scotpounds into existence and spend them on social programs. Where does this money come from? Well, technically this is called counterfeiting, and the value in the new money, comes from the reduction in value of each individual pound already in existence. The most infuriating part of the Scotcoin proposal, is this: The stated objectives are to provide a free and inclusive payment system, to allow SMEs who don’t accept digital payments to do so, and to prove that a new currency can be implemented. Bitcoin could achieve all of these objectives, for free, tomorrow. Unfortunately, this report only includes one reference to Bitcoin. “Only one currency has succeeded without first creating such a network and that is Bitcoin. In this case, entrepreneurs and innovators independently started to accept the currency after it came into existence, often because they had a financial stake in the success of the currency. This was helped by the clever issuance method (the ‘mining’ algorithm) which rewarded early adopters with a large quantity of Bitcoin. This can, however, be contrasted with over 300 other failed cryptocurrencies where no redemption network has emerged and the value of the currency remains low.” It is entirely apparent from this dismissal that the author has little to no understanding of Bitcoin as a technology. To explain this phenomenon I refer you to Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Let's compare Scotpound and Bitcoin. If the NEF and common weal really want to achieve their states goals on this front, they should encourage their supporters to adopt bitcoin, instead of proposing we spend 3.71 million pounds on a magical central bank of wonder dreams. Put your questions in the comments below, and remember to like share and subscribe if you want to keep up to date with bitcoin news from a UK perspective.