Literate Machine

Innovation and the stars will not be enough to give us infinite growth in a capitalist economy and all you have to do to know why is look at the evidence Support this project at https://patreon.com/ericrosenfield and get early, ad free episodes, exclusive author's notes, and more for only $1. Support via one-time donation at: https://ko-fi.com/literatemachine Text Version: https://literatemachine.com/2026/06/21/no-infinite-growth-is-not-possible/ YouTube version: https://youtu.be/MLhhlgB59mY Bibliography: https://literatemachine.com/2026/06/21/no-infinite-growth-is-not-possible/#bibliography

What does comedic science fiction television show The Orville tell us about how capitalism will end? How did Germany go from having the largest and most powerful socialist movement in the world to finding its movement gutted and its country given over to fascists? How did Eduard Bernstein, despite his best intentioned, upend the Marxist movement and provide cover for those who wanted to destroy it? And was he actually right all along? All this and more will be answered! The previous video, Star Trek into Socialism, is not necessary for appreciating this one, but the two inform each other: https://youtu.be/LJKDF0BwepI Also mentioned in this video: * Loki and How Conservatives Become Fascists: https://youtu.be/kBfTYUadGts * How the Hippies Became Yuppies: The Trial of the Chicago 7: https://youtu.be/LONtgVNaa7A?si=DvWznzsFnMZyYHR2 Not by me: Using Corporate Governance to Understand Socialism: https://youtu.be/MmeIGcI60oc Text of the episode and other ways in which you can access it at https://literatemachine.com/2023/11/16/how-will-capitalism-end-the-orville-eduard-bernstein-and-what-is-to-be-done/ Excerpts of deleted material on the Patreon at https://patron.com/ericrosenfield, which you can get access to for as little as $1 an episode, and also get exclusive author's notes, draft excerpts, and early access to episodes. There's also a whole thing I wanted to get into here about the role of identity politics in all this, but it was too complicated and too much of a digression from the main point, so I'll probably talk about it there. Bibliography My primary literary sources were: - *The Preconditions of Socialism* by Eduard Bernstein, 1899, edited and translated by Henry Tudor, 1993 (originally published in English as *Evolutionary Socialism*) - *Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology*, edited and translated by Marius S. Ostrowski, 2021 - *The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism* by Manfred B. Steger, 1997 - *The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism* by Peter Gay, 1952 - *The German Revolution 1917-1923* by Pierre Broué, 1971 (translation 2005) - The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, 1848 - Capital Vol. 1 by Karl Marx, 1867 - Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx, 1875 - "The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution" by Karl Marx, 1848 - "Speech to the International Workingman's Association" by Karl Marx, 1863 - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engles - Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels, 1877 - Reform or Revolution? by Rosa Luxemburg - "The Russian Revolution" by Rosa Luxemburg, 1918 - *Capital in the 21st Century* by Thomas Piketty, 2014 More sources can be found at https://literatemachine.com/2023/11/16/how-will-capitalism-end-the-orville-eduard-bernstein-and-what-is-to-be-done/

Marvel's Loki shows us what fascism looks like, and how it comes to take root within innocuous conservatism. https://literatemachine.com https://Patreon.com/ericrosenfield Corrections: • Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Bros are not Jewish. Actual examples of Jewish funders of the right include Sheldon Adelson and Ike Perlmutter. I may upload a revised version of this audio with the names changed. • Malthus never directly said that the poor and unskilled should be liquidated, but he did oppose aid to the poor on the theory that they should be allowed to naturally die out if they were of no use to society in order to preserve resources. Interstitial music: "I Can't Stop" by Punch Deck | https://soundcloud.com/punch-deck Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US Bibliography and Further Reading David Brooks article on the foundations of conservatism: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/brooks-true-conservatism-dead-fox-news-voter-suppression/620853/?utm_source=feed George W. Bush says he looked in Putin's eyes and "saw his soul": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenia_Summit_2001 Mussolini on Totalitarianism and Fascism: http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html "Ur Fascism", Umberto Eco Rich Scott wants to raise taxes on the poorest: https://news.yahoo.com/rick-scott-lies-tax-proposal-171630154.html 10% of Americans own 89% of the stock market: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.htmlRight-wing proposals to nationalize Facebook: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/bannon_proposes_nationalizing_facebook_google_data Laura Ingraham on punishing Disney: https://www.thewrap.com/laura-ingraham-disney-apple-republican-retaliation/ Texas arresting parents of trans kids: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/10/texas-trans-kids-abortion-lgbtq-gender-ideology/ Republicans allowed the Child Tax Credit to expire, throwing 3.7 million children into poverty: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/study-child-poverty-rising-tax-credit-expires-83071832 FDR achievements: https://fdrsuite.org/americas-greatest-presidents-franklin-delano-roosevelts-top-achievements-as-president/ Half of Americans are "not American in any meaningful sense": https://americanmind.org/salvo/why-the-claremont-institute-is-not-conservative-and-you-shouldnt-be-either/ More than half of Republicans believe in Great Replacement Theory: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/09/nearly-half-republicans-agree-with-great-replacement-theory/ 77% of drug traffickers are US citizens, and come through ports of call: https://www.cato.org/blog/77-drug-traffickers-are-us-citizens-not-illegal-immigrants The border is not a "war zone": https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/not-war-zone-veterans-visit-texas-borderlands-military-outdoors-sierra-club Growing number of Republicans think Democracy is wrong for America: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/21/republicans-biden-trump-election-democracy GOP seizing the election system: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-01-01/insurrection-gop-seizes-election-power 401ks are a scam: https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses America's disappearing middle class: https://www.thedailybeast.com/in-the-future-well-all-be-renters-americas-disappearing-middle-class Peter Thiel's essay on how democracy is not compatible with freedom: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/ Republicans becoming anti-democratic in charts: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-democracy-13-charts More information on the Backfire Effect, where people dig into their beliefs when presented with contrary evidence: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2017/01/13/yanss-093-the-neuroscience-of-changing-your-mind/

Is the Paw Patrol an unintentional conservative utopia? What can the show tell us about how the political spectrum views the police, its purpose, and its funding. For as little as $1 an episode (going forward) you can get early access to episodes, as well as exclusive author's notes at Patreon.com/ericrosenfield. More information about the show and other formats in which it's available, including YouTube, can be found at https://literatemachine.com Bibliography and Further Reading How the regulations around tv shows as toy commercials were repealed in the Reagan administration How square dancing was popularized as a tool of white supremacy How EMTs are underpaid, overworked, and underrecognized About police officer Joe Crystal, shunned by police for trying to hold them accountable Wikipedia entry on the Blue Wall of Silence NYPD internal investigator called a "rat" Prosecutors don't like to prosecute cops Attorney General Letitia James plan for civilian oversight of the NYPD Police departments aren't largely being defunded Crime is rising in cities that did not defund their police the same as those that did How torture doesn't work About Abner Louima who was sodomized with a broken broomstick by the NYPD The great Forced Adversity video about the Punisher/Police Problem Some More News video about the Warrior Mentality training given to the police How congress buys equipment for the military that it doesn't want or need as pork barrel Study finding conservatives lack a sense of humor Last Week Tonight's video about Tucker Carlson and his lightly veiled fascism and even less well veiled white supremacy Edmund Burke and the origins of conservatism Conservatism defending the status quo The myth of meritocracy Book about how billionaires are funding the radical right: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer On prison labor in America The Thought Slime video that covers the video where John Doyle says that conservatives aren't about equality, they're about hierarchy and natural law Police will tell you to obey them if you value your life Republicans legalizing the automative murder of protesters Poor people can't just get a better job Why conservatives are more punitive than liberals The penal system as slave labor

Pete Doctor takes us into the meaning of life, but is there something hollow at its center of it? Bibliography and Further Reading * Soul using uncomfortable blackface: https://noripatterson.medium.com/whats-wrong-with-pixar-s-soul-animation-racism-and-blackface-c9a7709cd50f * Tom Wolfe's famous article declaring the 70s the "me decade": https://nymag.com/news/features/45938/ * Google ngram of the term "personal fulfillment" showing its rise in the 1960s and 70s: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Personal+fulfillment&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2CPersonal%20fulfillment%3B%2Cc0 * How distrust of the government among the hippy movement led them to embrace Libertarianism: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/may/19/comment * Twitter thread about conservative's using the "money can't buy happiness" slogan to say we don't need to raise the minimum wage: https://twitter.com/cons_owned/status/1372670714201968641/photo/1

In the 1990s, Myst and Doom fought a war for the soul of video games. Myst sold almost twice as many copies. Within ten years, the entire industry had remodeled itself around Doom. Special call out to Jimmy Maher at the Digital Antiquarian (https://filfre.net) whose work covering early video games I drew on extensively. Some Corrections: * I mention the Nintento 64 as the rival to the Genesis when I meant the Super Nintendo * Doom was not Id's last Shareware game; their next game, Quake, was also distributed as Shareware * First person mode was the primary mode of Ultima Underworld * There are 5 worlds in Myst, not 7 * Jimmy Maher points out the Lucasfilm's games declined in quality after 1993, and so poor design may still have been a factor in the decline of Adventure games. Bibliography and Further Reading Computer Programming Used to Be Women's Work: https://www.history.com/news/coding-used-to-be-a-womans-job-so-it-was-paid-less-and-undervalued, https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding, https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-result-of-computer-game-marketing-20-years-ago/ Sierra c-founder Ken Williams on the future of the medium: https://community.telltale.com/discussion/23327/roberta-williams-josh-mandel-discussion/p6] On the development and reception of Wolfenstein 3D: https://www.filfre.net/2020/05/the-shareware-scene-part-3-the-id-boys/wolf3d/ On Doom: https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-4-doom/ On Myst: https://www.filfre.net/2020/02/myst-or-the-drawbacks-to-success/ On Doom: https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-4-doom/ Computer ownership in the 1990s: https://www.bls.gov/cex/research_papers/pdf/computer-ownership-up-sharply-in-the-1990s.pdf Example list of the most popular games: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/g30910862/best-video-games/ Feminist Frequency, feminist critique of gaming and target of GamerGate: https://feministfrequency.com/ More about GamerGate: https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/gamergate-video-games-five-years-later.html, https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/video-games-shootings-el-paso-gamergate-8chan-connection.html

How the worms ate into my brain, what I did and did not understand about The Wall, and what it tells us about the rise of the Alt-Right. Follow me on Twitter at @ericrosenfield Support this show on Patreon for as little as $1 an episode at https://patreon.com/ericrosenfield and get access to show notes where I talk about how I produce episodes and the current state of the show. Bibliography and Further Reading * The Libertarian-to-Fascist Pipeline: http://[https://medium.com/@thomas.perrett97/from-hayek-to-hitler-an-analysis-of-the-libertarian-to-fascist-pipeline-dcd219fba473] * How Trump supporting figures like Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon literally don't believe in Democracy: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-trump-steve-bannon-peter-thiel-214490 * Study about how whites backed Trump because of the perceived threat to their dominance: https://www.prri.org/research/white-working-class-attitudes-economy-trade-immigration-election-donald-trump/ * Interview with Michael Kimmel about how people get swept up in Neo-Nazi movements: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/27/michael-kimmel-masculinity-far-right-angry-white-men * Film Critics Hulk's essay on the problems with Joker: https://www.patreon.com/posts/33213577 * And finally, Sean Skull's essential deep dive into how The Bell Curve is based on sand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo

Let's go back in time, to before the Pandemic, and see if we can change anything. You can support my Patreon for as little as $1 an episode: https://patreon.com/ericrosenfield Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericrosenfield Join the newsletter and get this in your inbox: https://mailchi.mp/aaab46d4f3f2/literatemachine If you enjoyed this, please share it with people; word-of-mouth is how shows like this grow. Thanks! Bibliography and Further Reading Unfortunately, the film 12 Monkeys is not on any streaming service as far as I know, but you can rent and buy digital and physical copies from the usual locations. The latest numbers on the Coronavirus in NYC The New York Times reporting on the effect of Covid-19 in Queens My last episode on the Doctor Who episode "Kerblam!" and its problems with a terrorist being told "the system is not the problem" The insane story of the cult leader who spread Covid-19 to thousands of people in South Korea Trump's Covid-19 response, or lack of it How the White House is confiscating PPE from States And handing it over to for-profit companies To sell to the highest bidder Maryland hiding their Covid-19 tests from the Federal Government Ted Chiang's piece about how we wouldn't believe this story in a book because it's an "idiot plot" People having a positive opinion of Tiger King characters for some reason Conditions on the Stimulus Checks Farmers dumping produce while food banks run out of food Printing money now unlikely to cause hyperinflation About Universal Basic Income and how we can afford it Or the superior Universal Basic Assets Medium Essay about how the corporate interests are going to gaslight us