Dunno how many of you know who Aaron Bastani is, so we'll start with a brief and hopefully fair pen-picture. Bastani is highly articulate, apparently well-read, and sharp. He's in the category I tend to describe as "honest lefties": with notable blind-spots and a distorted worldview (usually a variant of sub-marxism), they'll nevertheless generally bow to truth and logic when confronted inescapably. (The code for this is that they've noticed something is "problematic" - i.e. sits very awkwardly with their worldview, making them deeply uncomfortable, exactly because they feel the force of the logic and the truth.)
Plus, Bastani is a tough cookie, a serious and driven entrepreneur who Gets Things Done: notably, his impressive Novara Media creation, now a burgeoning mini-empire of alternative media. At the start of this project, his purposeful and businesslike conduct could have been labelled "social entrepreneurship", but it must now fast be reaching the point where he can start to cash in, if he wants to. (His commitment to leftism is clearly intellectual rather than temperamental, and he has many very traditional conservative traits: enthusiasm for family & becoming a house owner; married in church; etc etc.)
And now, hahah! he gets to interview "The World's Biggest Political Streamer", Turkish-American Hasan Piker, "arguably the most influential political voice on livestreaming service Twitch". Mr Piker, we very quickly realise, makes a shedload of money from his own ultra-successful leftie media activity.
Bastani is just wide-eyed & drooling with pleasure at talking to this guy. 54 minutes in, he gets to ask his new friend about ... his big, new, nice-part-of-LA *ahem* mansion and his costly new electric Porsche. Now to be fair to Bastani, he does kinda try to get his man to justify such expenditures; but boy, he let's him off the hook easily. They quickly agree that the Red Line is, never to become a landlord ... oh, and not to have three Porches - "that would be ridiculous!". Right, right. Everyone should have nice things that are within their means "... as long as your morals are not compromised." Ah yes, of course.
It's just so funny. Because it looks for all the world like Bastani is casting for arguments as to how he's gonna justify his own Porche in a year or two's time. Go for it, Aaron! You know that a part of you is capitalist, really.
ND
47 comments:
The world's biggest leftie's are the religions. Notice the difference between their preaching and their wealth. At least Bastani and Piker don't preach from a priceless throne in an expansive palace.
And if you look at the march of evangelism in the US. You see the same. Heavenly "jam tomorrow" in return for passing over your wealth to them today.
Follow the money
Same in Iran.
Don
Porsche
50% strike-rate on spelling not too bad for this blog, decnine.
Weren't the old left quite desirous of the workers having all the luxuries formerly only available to the ruling class? They were definitely consumerists, just on a universal basis. Its only the modern left with its eco-religion that has equated consumption with sin.
As they say, if Liberals didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have standards at all.
IOW, hair shirts and gruel for thee, but not for me.
Champagne socialists don't seem to have a problem with private education for their own kids, only other peoples.
'...three Porches'
Too many I agree. My house hasn't even got one!
No porches?
At Schloss Drew we have two: one for the family and visitors, one for servants and tradesmen. We feel it's our responsibility to afford the latter a measure of protection from the elements, while they conduct business on our behalf.
I must say, though, the lefties may be right about three ...
"arguably the most influential political voice on livestreaming service Twitch"
"Twitch"? OK. Never heard of it. Remember Bastani from when he was Communism as a cure rather than a foul malady.
Disconnecting from the internet make me feel better by the day...
Our front porch is used for storage: the items are pretty safe because even we can't open the front door. Our back porch acts as a potting shed.
Maybe we should have bought a bigger house but you can only buy what's on sale at the time.
> must now fast be reaching the point where he can start to cash in, if he wants to
Seems hard, as Novara Media is a trading name of Thousand Hands Ltd, and it is in companies house as a "Private company limited by guarantee without share capital", and Bastani isn't a director or a founding member. So he may be a member now, but probably just one of several. Rather looks like he does as he says! Calls itself a not-for-profit.
We don't have a porch so if you stand on our doorstep and it's raining and the guttering is full of leaves it is as if we are chucking buckets of water on your head. We do however have a lean-to at the back which is somewhat protective of the wellies since a roofer looked at it with a bit of sticky lead tape. However Justin Welby/Tony Blair/Ken Loach/Greta Thunberg's entourage never knock on our door in the rain so I seldom have to cast out the Devil.
We did have a Lib Dem canvasser once though...it wasn't raining. He just scurried off when I replied "Oh you poor Dear!" after he introduced himself as the latest candidate.
What is it with Porsches? Ugly noisy little cars. I'm pretty judgy about Porsche drivers...although you could have probably got a date back in the day if you drove an e type. Now I'm impressed by anyone who runs a car at all.
In the world of 2022, Mr W, there are many more ways of cashing in (For example, in the interview Mr Piker reveals he was given the Porsche)
Get with the program !
We all need to become Influencers ...
You are not wrong Mr Drew. My niece was given a top of the range Audi, by Audi. And has Hermes handbags coming out of her ears. Just because she's very, very pretty. (Doesn't get out of bed for less than etc etc)
Shame you didn’t have room to mention Bastani’s Magnum opus;
“Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto.”
In it everybody will have two porches and as many Porsche’s as desired and Wagyu for all.
What's in it for rich socialists ?
Is it to make them liked among their daughters and their daughters' friends ?
Porsche Macan parked outside my house the other day. Looked very nice.
If I had £70,000 spare I would consider a test drive.
E-K, if my ex brother in law (erstwhile Hedgie, arch capitalist Etonion now remarried to someone his children's age) is any kind of example, yes! He reads the Guardian and calls me a Terf....
Damn! Even I can see that I misspelled Etonian....
You know your, onions, Lilith.
Why the need for these guys to justify ANY sort of political position, other than to make themselves acceptable to those immediately around them ?
Perhaps their own products demand an ethical position among the Lefties who may buy them.
I note that the assumptions in advertising is that we're all now Lefty, BLM, Greenist...
The use of Albert Einstein to sell us energy saving appliance in radio adverts is a real piss take.
Hedgie rhymes with veggie E-K....
Albert Einstein?
Charles Darwin is the man for advertising.
https://youtu.be/0FARcF_LIkI
"Hellooo Mister Burns !" 0.40
Lilith - Also rhymes with wedgie... which was something we'd always give our chums whenever they got a bit too up 'emselves.
Guys stand to front and back of victim and pull his underpants up violently with obvious effect.
I think the Einstein adverts are trying to persuade you to have Smart Meter installed. These are not about energy saving. They are intended to make it easy for somebody sitting at a computer in the power company's office to cut off your electricity.
They also allow the company to keep track of your daily and weekly habits, when you go away on holiday, and so on.
It's all about having control over the consumer. Very smart.
Don Cox
As for "luxury Communism", have you read Stanislav Lem's "The Futurology Congress" ?
Don
Don, pardon me for saying so, but that is the most ridiculous paranoia.
Do you know how many data-points Amazon collects on its users?
Ans: 150,000
And how many the supermarkets collect?
Ans: 20,000
And the energy companies?
6. Yup, six.
They might be able to guess when you are on holiday.
Your credit-card company, your phone company, your social media - they know (a) exactly where you are on your holiday; (b) what you are doing at all times; (c) whom you are with; (d) how you got there and how / when you plan to return; etc etc etc
I was on the jury for a big murder trial recently. We were given evidence from 2,100 phonecalls; saw video from 46 CCTVs (forty six); and full data from numerous taxi journeys, all tracked.
And you're thinking the energy companies are planning to control you!? 6 data points! For efficiency's sake alone, they ought to be tracking more!
Take it from me, when it comes to Big Data and s/w in general, they are totally, utterly useless. Just think about those numbers.
"I think the Einstein adverts are trying to persuade you to have Smart Meter installed. These are not about energy saving. They are intended to make it easy for somebody sitting at a computer in the power company's office to cut off your electricity."
And as those who are going to try not to pay their electric bills will find out, smart meters make it easy for the supplier to switch you to a pre-payment tariff and there's nothing you can do about it. So many of those 'sticking it to the man' by not paying their electric bills will quickly find they have to choose between paying up front or having no electric.
@Nick Drew: Smart meters are nothing to do with data are they:
https://www.sms-plc.com/insights/smart-meters-making-the-smart-grid-possible/
Quote: 'Thanks to the mass of data collected by smart meters, distribution network operators will be armed with more accurate figures on the country’s energy use, and in turn will be able to better match energy supply with demand.'
Thats code for: we can cut your electric off whenever we determine you shouldn't have any, or make you pay through the nose to use it at times of our choosing.
Yes, the question is, who benefits from having a smart meter fitted?
It certainly isn't the end user.
Recently, quite a few acquaintances have reported that the power companies are getting quite persistent in getting people to have one fitted
We keep refusing a smart meter. I trust they'll offer us a "cash back" eventually. Then I'll say "I'd need a bigger bribe than that, matey!"
What strikes me is that they make no effort at all to tell me about the principles on which the things work or how I might gain any practical or financial advantage from them.
Agree that energy companies appear not be to smart but they are far more regulated than Amazon or supermarkets. Prime example is pre-pay meters where there ought to be a difference in tariffs. And there ought to be more varied tariffs to suit lifestyles - and to introduce some form of matching demand.
Take your local Tesco supermarket which has dual pricing. Allow Tesco's to profile you within an inch of your life and you get normal prices. If you don't allow them to profile you, you pay through the nose.
Follow the data.
Sobers - I simply ask: do you have a mobile phone? Credit card?
Anon has the measure of it (if I may use that phrase): there ought to be a smarter grid, and (other anon) more precisely differentiated energy tariffs on offer. We'll only get smarter consumer behaviour if it is rewarded
If you want the right to do whatever you please in your consumption of energy, but only pay an 'average' price, well, that's certainly one attitude to life. There are epithets for people who behave like that.
Personally, I believe in (a) personal choice; (b) being able to select the level of service I want; (c) paying for it on a rationally differentiated basis.
Capitalist. Clue's in the name of the blog.
" I simply ask: do you have a mobile phone? Credit card?"
Yes, but not a smart phone, because I'm not an idiot, and yes, but I hardly use it. AQlso note I have an alternative to a credit card - debit cards, paypal, cash. The credit card company can't suddenly say 'Sorry, we're turning your card off today, so you can't buy anything', because I can pay for stuff some other way. The electric supplier has a monopoly position, and the smart meter gives them instant power to turn you off, or up your cost unilaterally.
"Anon has the measure of it (if I may use that phrase): there ought to be a smarter grid, and (other anon) more precisely differentiated energy tariffs on offer. We'll only get smarter consumer behaviour if it is rewarded"
You say smarter behaviour will be rewarded I say behaviour considered undesirable by the authorities will be punished. There will be no benefits, just having to change your behaviour in order not to be at a detriment. It is a control measure, not something done for our (the consumer) benefit.
"If you want the right to do whatever you please in your consumption of energy, but only pay an 'average' price, well, that's certainly one attitude to life. There are epithets for people who behave like that."
I pay for water at a flat rate, regardless of when I buy or use it. I pay for petrol at a flat rate regardless of when I buy or use it. I pay for food at a flat rate regardless of when I buy or I use it. The price of bread doesn't go up and down depending on demand.
"Capitalist. Clue's in the name of the blog."
There is nothing capitalist about a bunch of companies doing the State's dirty work for them. In fact the State being hand in glove with big business is called something, if only I could remember what it was.........begins with F I think......
@ I pay for water at a flat rate, regardless of when I buy or use it. I pay for petrol at a flat rate regardless of when I buy or use it. I pay for food at a flat rate regardless of when I buy or I use it. The price of bread doesn't go up and down depending on demand.
That's pretty thin, Sobers; the world is more complicated than that
(a) water / petrol / food, like most commodities, are easily stored. It doesn't (much) matter what time of day you use them. With electricity it matters critically: grid balancing is necessarily conducted real-time, and if higher demand-peaks must be satisfied, it costs a great deal of money in both capital (additional capacity, used only for half an hour each day) and commodity costs. We should be rewarded for presenting a less-demanding consumption profile. Likewise, intermittent sources of electricity (windfarms, essentially) should be penalised for their useless supply profiles.
(b) if you have lower-than average water consumption, you are rewarded for having a meter installed. Dealing in blunt instruments only ever rewards those who are keen to have their own awkward, more-demanding-than-average profiles socialised.
(c) the price of bread is most definitely sensitive to the laws of supply and demand, as we will all find out soon. I can't believe you wrote that sentence on bread, actually
I hope you are all stockpiling corned beef and blankets....
(The) Richard North is cancelling his direct debit as he doesn't feel his bank account will cover the £316 (up from £170) monthly bills and has asked his power company to bill him monthly for actual usage. Seems quite sensible and I will probably do the same.
" the price of bread is most definitely sensitive to the laws of supply and demand, as we will all find out soon. I can't believe you wrote that sentence on bread, actually"
Not at different times of the day though is it? Nor do I get told I can't buy any because of who I am and where I live, while my next door neighbour can fill his trolley with it. If there's bread on the shelf and I have the cash, I can buy it, and its the same price at 9pm as 9am.
You haven't answered any of my points about how all this 'Smart Grid' and 'Smart Meter' stuff is not for our (as consumers) benefit, its for the benefit of the State who has decreed we can't have regular reliable electricity. No consumer demanded an electric grid that is liable to collapse if demand isn't 'managed', yet here we are.
To be honest I can't believe you're defending this utter shitstorm that is entirely political in genesis.
Sobers - I get you. Fact is that various governments (most of them Tory) have blocked energy and infrastructure investment and allowed the private companies to rake in profits and award their directors performance bonuses.
No fracking
No power stations
No gas storage
No reservoirs
No fixed leaks... and on.
Some things are way too important to be left to politics or the whims of the market or foreign governments.
---
Lilith - The direct debits amount to sizeable interest free loans from poor people to the energy companies. They have gone beyond 'smoothing'.
Lillith and E-K........ I've reverted to quarterly power bills. It's much simpler and means they don't get my money in advance.
Sobers, I have patiently explained the bread thing, which is really simple: there is no concept of real-time significance with commodities that are easily stored; hence no need whatsoever for real-time pricing. Electricity is different - very different. And with very big cost consequences.
I have also sketched the explanation for why anyone, libertarian or otherwise, should rationally want smart grid facilities to exist and be properly deployed, unless (selfishly) they are very sure their own electricity requirements are so painfully difficult to supply that they'd personally suffer the financial consequences of having their abnormal demand-profile priced rationally. You wanna charge your car at 6pm in winter, when everyone needs heating and cooking? OK fine; then pay for the privilege. You can comfortably have your supper at 8pm instead of 6pm? Great, here's a discount. You wanna be able to change your mind about your timings on your usage at any time? Sure; it'll just be reflected on the bill. Not too difficult to see this, surely?
You have a health condition that means you always need to eat at 6pm? There can always be rational debate as to the appropriate extent of socialising anything. But you seem to be averse to any diminution of the socialisation of electricity demand profiles.
Nobody (aside possibly from some civil servant somewhere), and certainly not I, would defend the ample quantities of nonsense perpetrated upon us via crass decisions about the structuring of the electricity system & 'market' - see this blog for the past 17 years. The system is significantly more capable and efficient than it was pre-privatisation (taking into account the un-priced imposition of windfarms etc, of which I have always been and remain a severe critic). There are intelligent new system developments under review. But it ain't remotely perfect AND it may break this coming winter. Wars do things like that to otherwise broadly stable situations.
Interesting to see Kev's summing-up thusly:
Some things are way too important to be left to politics or the whims of the market or foreign governments
OK, so: not politics; not the market; ... so, errrr, who? Who or what gets to "decide" these things, Kev? A rolling plebiscite? Online voting at the end of a BBC documentary? The civil service? The Clever Men at Oxford? Close study of Holy Scripture? Tell us your manifesto!
"OK, so: not politics; not the market; ... so, errrr, who?"
I'm all in favour of markets, where they can be made to work with multiple suppliers and multiple buyers. But utility supply tends to be a natural monopoly, so with private control often comes market abuse, such as Enron's less than glorious roll in the 2000-2001 electricity crisis in California. Sometimes private works well, sometimes public (see Joe Chamberlain's role in creating municipal gas and water supply for Birmingham Corporation).
On smart meters, I'm all for differential pricing through the day, provided it can be linked to a smart fridge or heating system. But that's not what's being offered, so I see no reason yet to switch from a dumb meter.
On direct debits, I pay quarterly in arrears, by bank transfer. I try and avoid direct debits since in authorising one, you are effectively giving a company carte blanche to dip into your bank account, whenever they feel like it. What could possibly go wrong?
"I have also sketched the explanation for why anyone, libertarian or otherwise, should rationally want smart grid facilities to exist and be properly deployed, unless (selfishly) they are very sure their own electricity requirements are so painfully difficult to supply that they'd personally suffer the financial consequences of having their abnormal demand-profile priced rationally. You wanna charge your car at 6pm in winter, when everyone needs heating and cooking? OK fine; then pay for the privilege. You can comfortably have your supper at 8pm instead of 6pm? Great, here's a discount. You wanna be able to change your mind about your timings on your usage at any time? Sure; it'll just be reflected on the bill. Not too difficult to see this, surely?"
If you think smart meters are just about variable pricing (which in itself is bad enough, because it won't be about anyone saving a penny from what they pay now, it'll just be about penalising people by making them pay more) then you need your head examining. The whole point of smart meters is it gives the power to decide who has electricity at any given point to the supply company, and by proxy, the State. As it is they need a warrant to come in and cut off your supply, with smart meters they can do it remotely. Oh, but they'll never use that power I hear you cry. Well if history teaches us one thing it's that power given to the State will end up being used, and usually in egregious manners that no-one ever considered thinkable before.
All you can see is the efficient running of your precious 'market' for electricity, when what we are seeing being created is a State control network for energy. Who gets it, how much, and when will all be under the remote control of the State. And you're all in favour because you might save a few pence by doing your washing in the middle of the night......talk about missing the wood for the trees. Just goes to show that very clever people can be also be incredibly stupid.
The in-store bakery may reduce prices at tea time, to clear the day's production.
Don
I'm pretty sure that the Oxford PPE degree course doesn't include a module on power supply grids.
How are politicians supposed to learn about these things ?
Don
Perhaps we need our politicians to have a much more diverse range of backgrounds (and I'm not talking about ethnicity here).
Midwit wannabees walking out of an Oxbridge PPE degree and straight into a career climbing the greasy pole to PM etc. has done nothing but harm to this country.
How many existing politicians are engineers, mathematicians, entrepreneurs and so on?
Or for all it matters, a stock market whizz with a knack for beating the market, like that Pelosi woman in the US?
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