David Moscrop is a writer and political commentator. He hosts the podcast Open to Debate and is the author of Too Dumb For Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones.
“The robots are coming” need not be understood as heralding the apocalypse. An automated society in which states and worker-owned enterprises use technology to serve public ends while meeting individual needs is entirely consistent with the good life.
A platform backed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos lets day-to-day “investors” become landlords, twice removed, by buying shares in rental homes. It’s the app-ification of investment in the building blocks of social life.
Sam Altman may be the reigning king of the AI boom, but the story that matters isn’t his rise or fall. The sector will still demand scale, speed, and the right to run roughshod over the pesky public interest, no matter who wears the industry crown.
How do we solve a problem like the commodification of mass wearable surveillance? Social norms and market pressure are a start, but above all, we need a political response like regulation.
AI-assisted warfare extends a logic with roots in the industrial warfare of the 20th century: a cold distance that turns humans into points in a dataset.
A new report finds wealth inequality in Canada is reaching new heights, with a tiny elite enjoying lavish lifestyles while the many are left in the cold. The problem is not just moral obscenity but that democracy is perverted by vast wealth concentration.
As AI technologies spread, the next bold, brave frontier is not replacing labor but directing it. Rent A Human turns people into “meatsack” factotums and lackeys for algorithms, handing familiar elites a more efficient way to wield command.
AI is understood to be an unstoppable force, but it is still wholly dependent on human labor to function. Whether these technologies liberate or create misery will depend on who controls their development and deployment.
Backed by Silicon Valley–aligned venture capital and legal loopholes, prediction markets are creeping into every corner of life. They turn everything from measles outbreaks to government resignations to famine into opportunities for predatory speculation.
The leadership race in Canada’s New Democratic Party has exposed fractures between workers and professionals and between leader-driven branding and party democracy. Its survival as a serious left-wing force depends on successfully navigating these divides.
Automation was meant to lighten the load, not empty out the payroll. As Amazon axes 14,000 jobs and plans to cut tens of thousands more, the future of work under AI will depend on who owns the machines and what we, collectively, make them do.
As Canadian politicians proclaim their intention to protect national sovereignty, American shareholders are extracting revenues from Canada’s oil and gas industry — and stiffing workers.
Canadian ILWU president Rob Ashton is running for New Democratic Party leadership, arguing that the party has lost touch with its base. His campaign aims to put workers back in charge.
Most Giving Pledge dollars never reached the public, flowing instead to private foundations and donor-advised funds while billionaires grew richer, bought reputations for generosity, and handed back scraps to the people who made their fortunes.
The growing popularity of the “Bowie” bond — a security backed by royalties — may sound strange, but it’s nothing new. In treating songs like annuities, capitalists prove once again that nothing is too sacred, or silly, to be commodified.
Canada’s New Democratic Party once rallied workers around a bold social democratic vision. The leadership contest now unfolding shows a center left so busy virtue signaling it forgets how to build power.
Like past waves of automation, AI isn’t going away. Boom or bust, the fight is over whose interests it will serve.
Research shows that work shapes not only material life but also identity and community. If AI erases work as we know it, it could also erase the foundations of mass politics.
Culture warriors and industry lobbyists have turned electric vehicles into a proxy battle for deeper anxieties about class, control, and who might be left behind in a green economy. But most people just want a car they can afford.
Donald Trump’s tariffs may not amount to the end of neoliberalism. But their potential success — a sign that the neoliberal consensus is no longer hegemonic — suggests that the old world is dying, and the struggle over what replaces it has only just begun.