Speak.Collaborate.Listen

Was listening to a discussion on bbc or npr about youth unemployment in the UK. The commentators (all consultants or established, fusty radio journalists) came to the conclusion that rather than ‘relying on business and government’ to provide jobs, young people should ‘create jobs’ for themselves. The best they could come up with was starting online companies from home. In a nutshell: unemployment caused by the convulsions of capital is, at the same time, not capitalism’s fault. If we want to place blame we should look to this population’s lack of verve, of get-up-and-go. Aside from the small issue of startup money, I find it ridiculous when those in favour of the free market pretend that capital, let alone a nation, could support a workforce comprised entirely of entrepreneurs. 

This quote from Lauren Berlant again and again:

“The affective orchestration of the crisis has required blaming the vulnerable for feeling vulnerable; not due only to a general precarity but also to the political fact that there is no longer an infrastructure for holding the public as a public. The public must become entrepreneurial individuals. ” (X)