Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #103

From the CEO of America to autocapitalism, the global self-esteem crisis, utopian politics, subtraction & depth, a life that sparkles, the climate-fraud framework and people vs. big tech

Jan 22, 2025

THIS WEEK ↓
🖼️ Framings: The CEO of America // Autocapitalism // Self-Esteem Crisis
🌀 Re-Framings: Utopian Politics // Subtraction & Depth // A Life That Sparkles
🧬 Frameworks: ClimateFraud Framework
🎨 Works: People vs. Big Tech // Bioregional Weaving Guide // Form Follows Nature Park

⏳ Reading Time: 9 minutes

🖼️ Framings

~~Naming~~ Framing it! Giving something we all feel more prominence in a way that promotes a deeper reflection.

🇺🇸 The CEO of America

This is a simple but useful framing as Trump takes office again. I’d add that this isn’t about a sort of entrepreneurial understanding of business in terms of getting work done and creating value; it’s rather about the performative part of business: meetings, deals, branding, PR, short-term metrics, vision statements… coupled with what I framed as an old way of organizing: authoritarianism.

“Understanding Trump's successes cannot be done through the lens of traditional political logic. He is not a new kind of conservative; he is, quite simply, the CEO of the USA once again and the world is his marketplace. This is the foundation of his entire worldview. He doesn't care about politics, he builds businesses. And that's why his actions feel logical to so many voters - it’s a mindset that dominates the Western world and has infiltrated all our systems, from healthcare to education, turning everything into a transaction. The fact that this perspective has now fully entered the realm of politics should not be a surprise to us.
In Donald Trump's world, countries are not nations but enterprises where deals are negotiated, and resources optimized. He views Greenland as a potential asset to be strategically acquired from Denmark to strengthen the U.S.'s position and create synergies. He explores the possibility of merging with Canada to streamline operations across North America. Panama, on the other hand, is described as a business partner that must align with the U.S.'s corporate model or risk losing investments and support. […]
This corporate logic pervades everything he does today: relationships, statements, appointments, and political decisions. With the U.S. as his company and voters as shareholders, Trump has created a new global framework where short-term gains and business opportunities overshadow traditional diplomatic values and long-term collaboration.”

» Note by Anna Branten

🤖 Autocapitalism

I don’t fully agree with the following take on the near future of capitalism, but it’s nonetheless interesting and thought-provoking. I think that the AI hype in 2025 will shift more towards robotics for industrial use and that, unfortunately, there is still more capitalism in late-stage capitalism.

“We are not witnessing the end of capitalism, but the early formation of a new phase: autocapitalism, in which automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics are set to redefine the relationship between labour, capital, and production.
Autocapitalism represents a systematic departure from previous versions of capitalism. Historically, capitalism relied on mass human labour as the input that drove production, thus creating a perpetual tension between workers and capitalists. But artificial intelligence and robotisation have changed the equation. By replacing human labour with autonomous machines, capitalists can drastically reduce costs while still increasing output. It is no longer a matter of trying to negotiate labour costs down, or even of outsourcing labour to low-cost regions—it’s about eliminating labour altogether. […]
I am not arguing that this new phase of capitalism will be some kind of fully-automated luxury utopia, like the world of Star Trek […]. What I am arguing is that this new world will be even more capitalistic, at least in the sense that far fewer people will be wage labourers, selling their labour to the owners of corporations to survive. Instead, many more of us will have to make our livings as capitalists. An individual’s ability to navigate this new phase of capitalism will increasingly depend on their ability to own and monetise some form of capital—whether it’s intellectual property, shares in automated enterprises, social media, or control over personal technologies like robots or AI that can be directed to engage in productive activities.”

» This Is Not Late-Stage Capitalism by John Aziz

😶‍🌫️ The Self-Esteem Crisis

This is a great read and, at least to me, a very unexpected but meaningful framing that’s especially important in light of rapidly increasing wealth inequality.

“There is a global crisis in self-esteem. It affects more or less everybody, but (as I’ll argue) it affects globalised, economically unequal societies the worst. The crisis is almost imperceptible because we’re living it every day, but that only adds to its seriousness. By self-esteem, I mean one’s self-estimation: whether one feels successful, or at least capable of success, by one’s own standards. To lack self-esteem is to feel impotent, even worthless. The crisis is that there is a widespread lack of self-esteem, and a universal competition for it. […]
To see what I mean, compare the relationship between an ordinary middle-class college graduate and a billionaire in 2024 with the relationship between a serf and a king in, say, 1350. The ordinary middle-class college graduate has many more rights and liberties than the serf had, and has a few options at their disposal if they want to accumulate wealth for themself. That is precisely the problem: there is just enough fluidity between social positions to make it conceivable for anybody to become a billionaire, and this transforms the way ordinary people see themselves.
To be clear, I’m not saying social mobility is alive and well in Western democracies. It’s been on the decline for decades, and the chances of rising from the very bottom to the very top (or vice versa) are vanishingly small. Crucially, though, such a thing is imaginable. Everybody has, at some point, imagined themselves as a billionaire tech founder, YouTube celebrity or financier. Everybody feels at least a little guilty for not having managed it – and the worst part is that, since we see our achievements as an expression of our uniqueness, constitutive of our whole identities, we experience normality (and especially poverty) as a personal failure and source of shame.”

» The ‘masculinity crisis’ is actually a crisis of self-esteem by Leo Rogers

🌀 Re-Framings

A few short reframings that I’ve recently stumbled across:

🏝️ Utopian Politics

“‘Utopian’ has become synonymous with critique, and a utopian idea is now not a vision of a hopeful future but of an impossible one. […] But scholars of utopia ask us not to ring utopia’s death knell so soon. Some […] even go so far as to argue that now is a better time than ever to revitalise utopia in politics. […]
Utopia as a strategy for politics invigorates a praxis that is simultaneously critical, imaginative and, crucially, reflexive. Unlike the ‘grand narratives’ of utopian projects, this redefinition of utopia – focused on how utopia offers a radical new way of thinking about political engagement – poses significant affordances, especially in dark times.
Utopian thinking is a crucial reminder of something oft forgotten: that the social world is far more malleable than we think. […] In reminding us how much can be changed, utopianism equally reminds us of our own capacity do so. […]
Utopian thinking is not wishful thinking but, grounded in the realities of the present, it simply allows creativity and imagination to enter discussions about the status quo and its flexibility. […] Utopianism, then, is a sort of resistance to a politics that makes the possibility of transformation appear closed off.”

» We need the toolkit of utopian thinking, now more than ever by Caitlin Rajan

− Subtraction & Depth

“As platforms combust around us, brands are frantically asking, “Where to next?”.
We’ve done a familiar dance for over a decade: users have jumped from blogs to Myspace to Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat to TikTok, and brands and ads have duly followed, collecting ever more data on our lives along the way. […]
But what if the answer isn't to dial up the content creation on another platform in hopes of firing up a new version of the old growth engine? What if, instead, this is the moment to strategically subtract? […]
I think this is the moment to strip things back. To pause and think critically about the online worlds we want to build. To think about subtracting from rather than adding to your strategy. To prioritise depth over reach. […]
In a world of endless digital platforms and possibilities, the boldest strategy this year might be choosing what not to do.
What will you cut?”

» What if the best growth strategy this year is subtraction? by Matilda Lucy

✨ A Life That Sparkles

“Declaring “I don’t want a job” might not get me killed in today’s society, but it would and has ostracized me. […]
I now know that my feelings were more complicated than simply not wanting to work. (I now know I actually have an insatiable, veracious work ethic when I get to do meaningful, purposeful work chosen by me).
What I was trying to say was this: the system fucking sucks. I don’t want to spend most of my life doing something that doesn’t light me the fuck up. I don’t want to spend my days working for someone else, for their purpose. How can I live in a world that is demanding that of me?
I am sensitive, finely attuned, and as soon as I experience suffering, I have to pivot. I have no ability to stick it out. A quitter, you might call me. Undisciplined, Lazy, Child like, Weak, You might call me. I certainly called myself those things.
I now realise that my intolerance for suffering is one of my greatest gifts. […]
This perhaps, is a better way to describe my condition. Because I can suffer. You don’t finish writing novels without an ability to withstand pain. You don’t own your own business without being able to handle tax time, and that is true suffering. I can move through pain, but I have an intolerance for a life that doesn’t sparkle.
I must have magic. I demand a life that I love. These demands are reasonable. I want you to have these demands, too. […]
The fact that I wanted to both write and be paid for it… that felt as taboo as saying I really didn’t want a job. But these are the stories that need to change. Our work culture needs to change. Our veneration of TOIL must end.”