extractivism

Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World

by Brett Chistophers  · 25 Apr 2023  · 404pp  · 106,233 words

institutional sources. They also suffer the indignity of realising subpar rates of return from the managed investment of those meagre resources. Asset Management and Fiscal Extractivism Extractivism versus mutualism The recent history of the investment strategy of AP3 – the third of Sweden’s five main public pension funds – looks much like that

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by Glass and Vanatta represented fiscal mutualism, what we see around us now can perhaps best be thought of instead as a form of fiscal extractivism. The public’s capital is once again being mobilised to fund public-use infrastructures. Yet the linchpin of this investment cycle is today a private

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-sector actor actively extracting tribute from the fiscal domain. Fiscal extractivism and shareholder loans That fiscal extractivism is an appropriate conceptualisation for asset-manager society is underscored by a series of important further fiscal considerations. Coincidentally, we can approach

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make gains (in the form of tax receipts) in this case was that the asset manager would do so: such is the crux of fiscal extractivism. During the course of the relatively brief history of asset-manager society, the particular type of loan advanced by Innisfree to SHP has indeed represented

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a common vehicle of said extractivism. A so-called shareholder loan, it involves one or more shareholders lending money to the company in which equity is held (see Chapter 1). The

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doubt that the sole purpose of this shareholder loan at a 15% interest was to reduce taxable income on profits’.41 Alternative mechanisms of fiscal extractivism Before returning one last time to Solna and SHP–Innisfree, it is important to note that shareholder loans are not the only mechanism that asset

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rival asset manager, the Madrid-based Q-Energy. More pointedly still, private debt funds serve as quintessential instruments of asset-manager society’s signature fiscal extractivism. Like shareholder loans, debt financing of real assets that is organised through private investment funds has the effect of suppressing de jure government taxes on

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profits by imposing a de facto asset-manager debt-servicing ‘tax’. In short, one way or another, fiscal duty is essentially privatised and siphoned off. Extractivism at large Of course, if the taxes not paid by, say, SHP, Allity or Fidere Patrimonio on operating profits effectively were paid in equivalent measure

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and dividends that such managers extract, then there would be no net gain to the asset manager or loss to the state – and no fiscal extractivism. But there is, for one thing, a crucial geographical issue at stake here: Where are any such taxes paid? For example, do Blackstone and the

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above, worried specifically that the high-yielding Innisfree loans would reduce taxable profits ‘in Sweden’. Fiscal extractivism is territorial as much as it is political and economic. Interestingly, uncovering the territoriality of the fiscal extractivism effected by real-asset asset managers has seemingly become something of a speciality of Scandinavian investigative journalists

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suggests that the ultimate winner from the state’s losses is the asset manager itself; it is both principal architect and prime beneficiary of fiscal extractivism. Nowhere, perhaps, is this dynamic – namely that of the asset manager capturing gains that one might have expected to flow to the state – clearer than

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renewables, 155 European Union (EU), 279, 282 eviction, 199, 200, 206, 272n38. See also Summer House lawsuits, 3 mass evictions, 2, 4, 5, 8 extractivism. See fiscal extractivism Factiva, 97, 263, 264 Fairbairn, Madeleine, 121, 122 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 103, 268 Farmer, Stephanie, 175, 178, 179, 180 farmland, 120–3

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, 283–4 Financial Times (newspaper), 101, 152, 206, 246, 252, 253, 288, 293 Fink, Larry, 99, 282, 284–5, 294 fiscal capacity, 105, 177 fiscal extractivism, 239–50 fiscal mutualism, 239–50 Flatt, Bruce, v, 211, 220, 293, 295 Florida, 33, 200 Ford, Jonathan, 206, 207, 208, 209, 243, 294, 295

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein  · 15 Sep 2014  · 829pp  · 229,566 words

. Public and Paid For: Overcoming the Ideological Blocks to the Next Economy 4. Planning and Banning: Slapping the Invisible Hand, Building a Movement 5. Beyond Extractivism: Confronting the Climate Denier Within PART TWO MAGICAL THINKING 6. Fruits, Not Roots: The Disastrous Merger of Big Business and Big Green 7. No Messiahs

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will. This is a shift that challenges not only capitalism, but also the building blocks of materialism that preceded modern capitalism, a mentality some call “extractivism.” Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of

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overseas, which according to one analysis by the CO2 Scorecard Group has “more than offset” the emissions savings from natural gas since 2007. 5 * * * BEYOND EXTRACTIVISM Confronting the Climate Denier Within “The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas comes out.” —Republican U

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place, or in the atmosphere, once the extracted material is burned. This carelessness is at the core of an economic model some political scientists call “extractivism,” a term originally used to describe economies based on removing ever more raw materials from the earth, usually for export to traditional colonial powers, where

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ideological spectrum now embrace this resource-depleting model as a road to development, and it is this logic that climate change calls profoundly into question. Extractivism is a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth, one purely of taking. It is the opposite of stewardship, which involves taking but also taking

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care that regeneration and future life continue. Extractivism is the mentality of the mountaintop remover and the old-growth clear-cutter. It is the reduction of life into objects for the use of

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reservations. In an extractivist economy, the interconnections among these various objectified components of life are ignored; the consequences of severing them are of no concern. Extractivism is also directly connected to the notion of sacrifice zones—places that, to their extractors, somehow don’t count and therefore can be poisoned, drained

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, because in order to have sacrifice zones, you need to have people and cultures who count so little that they are considered deserving of sacrifice. Extractivism ran rampant under colonialism because relating to the world as a frontier of conquest—rather than as home—fosters this particular brand of irresponsibility. The

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tar sands and gearing up to tap massive reserves in the Arctic—calls into question whether these countries are indeed charting a path away from extractivism.40 In Latin America and Africa, moving away from overdependence on raw resource extraction and export, and toward more diversified economies, has always been a

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country, in terms of oil and now also mining.” Indeed Latin American intellectuals have invented a new term to describe what they are experiencing: “progressive extractivism.”45 The governments claim they have no choice—that they need to pursue extractive policies in order to pay for programs that alleviate poverty. And

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raised by the effort should be spent on pensions, not used to pay back creditors. In other words: they were not providing an alternative to extractivism but simply had better plans for distributing the spoils. Far from seeing climate change as an opportunity to argue for their socialist utopia, as conservative

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, non-Indigenous progressive movements are being exposed to worldviews based on relationships of reciprocity and interconnection with the natural world that are the antithesis of extractivism. These movements have truly heard the message of climate change and are winning battles to keep significant amounts of carbon in the ground. Some Warnings

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rather than as its engineers or mechanics, giving birth to the field of Ecological Economics. It was in this context that the underlying logic of extractivism—that there would always be more earth for us to consume—began to be forcefully challenged within the mainstream. The pinnacle of this debate came

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while we wait, we keep digging in deeper. Only when we dispense with these various forms of magical thinking will we be ready to leave extractivism behind and build the societies we need within the boundaries we have—a world with no sacrifice zones, no new Naurus. * * * I. “In the morning

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up until quite recently, that has held up as the grand bargain of the carbon age: the people reaping the bulk of the benefits of extractivism pretend not to see the costs of that comfort so long as the sacrifice zones are kept safely out of view. But in less than

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of all of its inhabitants, may lie at the center of the shift in worldview that must take place if we are to move beyond extractivism. A worldview based on regeneration and renewal rather than domination and depletion. An Aquatic Miscarriage Since I had already quit the clinic, I had no

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designed to promote more life.”36 The statement stopped me in my tracks. It struck me that this guiding purpose was the very antithesis of extractivism, which is based on the premise that life can be drained indefinitely, and which, far from promoting future life, specializes in turning living systems into

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our bodies and under our paved lives. A great many of us just forgot about them for a while. * * * As communities move from simply resisting extractivism to constructing the world that must rise in its rubble, protecting the fertility cycle is at the heart of the most rapidly multiplying models, from

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had a huge influence on me, as have the complete works of Clive Hamilton. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson helped me to understand the underlying logic of extractivism, and Renee Lertzman, Kari Marie Norgaard, Sally Weintrobe, and Rosemary Randall made me see climate change denial in a whole new light. The political economy

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Times, June 13, 2013; Larry Rohter, “Brazil’s Workers Take to Streets in One-Day Strike,” New York Times, July 11, 2013. CHAPTER 5: BEYOND EXTRACTIVISM 1. Steve Stockman, Twitter post, March 21, 2013, 2:33 p.m. ET, https://twitter.com. 2. Ben Dangl, “Miners Just Took 43 Police Officers

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,” Development 54 (2011): 442–43; Martínez in Temper et al., “Towards a Post-Oil Civilization,” p.17; Eduardo Gudynas, “The New Extractivism of the 21st Century: Ten Urgent Theses About Extractivism in Relation to Current South American Progressivism,” Americas Program Report, Washington, D.C.: Center for International Policy, January 21, 2010. 46

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Sun, June 5, 2010; “SYSTEM IS BROKEN”: Christopher Walsh, “Northern Gateway Pipeline Approved by National Energy Board,” Edmonton Beacon, December 19, 2013, 56. Edgardo Lander, “Extractivism and Protest Against It in Latin America,” presented at The Question of Power: Alternatives for the Energy Sector in Greece and Its European and Global

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Rights with Equal Status for Mother Earth,” Guardian, April 10, 2011; Clare Kendall, “A New Law of Nature,” Guardian, September 23, 2008; FOOTNOTE: Edgardo Lander, “Extractivism and Protest Against It in Latin America,” presented at the Question of Power: Alternatives for the Energy Sector in Greece and Its European and Global

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movement and, 354–55, 401 renewable energy investment by, 401–2 Colombia, 202, 348, 376–77 colonialism, 154, 370, 414–16 coal and, 173, 176 extractivism and, 169–70 Industrial Revolution and, 171, 175, 457 Scientific Revolution and, 170–71 Colorado, 52, 357n Colorado School of Public Health, 428 Combes, Maxime

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, 118, 127, 418 tobacco companies compared to, 355 transient culture of, 343–44 water requirements of, 346 see also fossil fuels; specific industries and operations extractivism, 161–87, 442, 443, 459, 460–61 colonialism and, 169–70 defined, 169 postcolonial, 179–82 progressive, 181–82 sustainability and, 447 Exxon, 145, 147

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emissions fossil fuel era, 266, 311 fossil fuels, 2, 16, 20–21, 90 capitalism and, 176 depletion of, 233 extracted from nature preserves, 192–96 extractivism and, 170 in fertilizers, 134 global economy’s dependence on, 39 and liberation from nature, 173–75 phasing out of, 7, 69, 137–38 regulation

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in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, 406 lead particulates, 203 Leard State Forest (Australia), 301 Lee, Marc, 112 left wing: climate change and, 63 extractivism and, 178–82 political potential of climate change ignored by, 157 traditional institutions of, 158 legislation, environmental, 141, 150–51 Lehrer, Eli, 50–51, 234

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social democracy, 132, 179 socialism, 38, 40, 75, 159, 177, 184, 210n authoritarian, 44, 178–79 centralization under, 179 Chávez’s “Twenty-first Century,” 182 extractivism and, 178 5-year plans under, 133 social isolation, 105 social justice, 36, 59, 61, 117 social media, in Blockadia movement, 303, 466 social movements

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, 36, 59, 182, 460, 461, 462, 466 dominance-based, 36–37, 41, 44, 56–57, 59–60, 75, 177, 184, 186, 424, 462 extractivist, see extractivism regenerative, 23, 25, 60–61, 182, 395, 396, 424, 442–48 World War I, collective sacrifice in, 16, 115 World War II: collective sacrifice in

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism

by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias  · 19 Aug 2019  · 458pp  · 116,832 words

corporations can derive value is possible only through a material process of extraction, the second of the concepts we are discussing. As Naomi Klein observes, extractivism implies a “nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth” that creates sacrifice zones, “places that, to their extractors, somehow don’t count and therefore can

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meaning.”19 Life, extracted through data relations, acquires a devalued meaning and becomes a mere factor in capitalist production. Warnings about the perils of data extractivism are not new, as Evgeny Morozov reminds us.20 But we can now be more specific about how this process unfolds through a series of

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mentioned in chapter 1. They help make all the small choices involved with data relations seem rational and common sense. The 4X’s of Data Extractivism Looking at data relations with colonial precedents explicitly in mind, as we do in this section, helps us see how it is that the extractive

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achieve this, we have organized our analysis in terms of the 4X’s of strategy video games mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. Explore Extractivism began at the point of contact between the colonizer and the colonized. This initial encounter contained within it the terms of exploitation to be deployed

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Internet of Things operationalizes the capitalization of life without limit. We can also capture the Internet of Things through the lens of colonialism. Whereas the extractivism of historical colonialism “relat[ed] to the world as a frontier of conquest—rather than as home,”126 data colonialism brings extraction home, literally into

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regimes of labor. 38. On the expansion of extraction, see Mezzadra and Neilson, “Frontiers of Extraction”; and compare Morozov, “Will Tech Giants Move” on “data extractivism.” 39. That claim was rejected in a landmark European Court of Justice ruling in December 2017 (Bowcott, “Stricter EU Regulation”). 40. As first noted by

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data, 46–48; by social quantification sector, xiv–xvi; terminology for, 223n2; totality of, 202–3. See also autonomy; decolonizing data; 4X model of data extractivism; infrastructures of connection “Data Colonialism” (Thatcher, O’Sullivan, Mahmoudi), 223n2 datafication: for behavior monitoring, 134–37; Big Data, 125–31, 163–64, 178; defined, 52

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Fogg, B. J., 150 “force-relations,” 170 Foucault, Michel, 33–34, 42, 99, 100, 231n135–136 Fourcade, Marion, 148 Foursquare, 170 4X model of data extractivism: and digital natives, 108–11; expansion, xvi–xviii, 97–101; exploitation, 101–5; exploration, 92–97; extermination, 106–8; overview, 83–87, 91 Foxconn, 46

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao  · 19 May 2025  · 660pp  · 179,531 words

, published just that year, argued that Silicon Valley’s pervasive datafication of everything was leading to a return of disturbing historical patterns of conquest and extractivism.[*] The following year, a paper called “Decolonial AI” from Shakir Mohamed and William Isaac at DeepMind and Marie-Therese Png at the University of Oxford

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of so-called scaling laws, is exactly the same. It is not a natural phenomenon. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Skip Notes * The term extractivism comes from the Spanish word extractivismo and the Portuguese word extrativismo, coined decades ago by Latin American scholars seeking to describe a global economic order

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benefit, a history and experience I detail more in chapter 12. I borrow the words of feminist scholars Rosemary Collard and Jessica Dempsey, who write: “Extractivism is more than extraction. Extraction is the not inherently damaging removal of matter from nature and its transformation into things useful to humans

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. Extractivism, a term born of anti-colonial struggle and thought in the Americas, is a mode of accumulation based on hyper-extraction with lopsided benefits and

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that makes it relevant to higher geopolitical powers. And so, as the AI boom arrived, Chile would become ground zero for a new scale of extractivism, as the supplier of the industry’s insatiable appetite for raw resources, not just its copper and lithium in the north but also its land

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of cancer. Daniel Pena, a sociology researcher at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo who has for years studied the politics of this environmental extractivism, draws a direct connection to Uruguay’s colonial history. He drives around the country in a beat-up pickup truck to interview farmers and residents

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means to create an industry of AI—on the rest of the world. Chile could be a leader in resisting that imposition. After centuries of extractivism, the country intimately understands what it means for its land to be hollowed out, dispossessed, and destroyed under a banner of progress. It could use

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small and task specific, their training data contained and knowable, ridding the incentives for widespread exploitative and psychologically harmful labor practices and the all-consuming extractivism of producing and running massive supercomputers. The creation of AI can be community driven, consensual, respectful of local context and history; its application can uplift

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speaking with MOSACAT in Chile and reaching out to as many other communities as possible that are also resisting the tech industry’s exploitation and extractivism. By connecting their movements across borders, by sharing information and resistance strategies with one another, he sees a path to building more collective power that

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Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2019), 1–352. For more reading on the concept of extractivism, refer to Rosemary Collard and Jessica Dempsey, “ ‘Extractivism’ Is Destroying Nature: To Tackle It Cop15 Must Go Beyond Simple Targets,” The Guardian, December 8, 2022, theguardian.com/environment/2022

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/dec/08/extractivism-is-destroying-nature-to-tackle-it-cop15-must-go-beyond-simple-targets; and one of the foundational texts that defined the concept: Eduardo Gudynas, “Diez

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, an Uruguayan agronomist and farmer who heads an organization to protect local farmers and crops, and Daniel Pena, an Uruguayan researcher who studies the environmental extractivism of multinationals in his country, June 2024; as well as “Uruguay: Drought Losses Estimated at USD 1.200 million, Minister Says,” MercoPress, February 2, 2023

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child sex abuse material (CSAM), 137, 180–81, 189, 192, 208, 237–39, 241, 242 Chile, 15, 271–81 data centers, 285–91, 295–99 extractivism, 272, 273–74, 281–85, 296–99, 417 Chilean coup d’état of 1973, 273 Chilean protests of 2019-2022, 291, 296–97 Chile Project

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–90, 294, 295, 419, 451n Enigma, 91 environmental impact, 20–21, 57, 79–80, 84, 89, 134, 165, 170–71, 309, 417, 420. See also extractivism; water resources plundered Earth, 271–300 Equinix, 274 Estallido Social, 291, 296 Etcheverry, Aisén, 300 European Commission, 105 European Union (EU), 283 AI Act, 311

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, 250, 317, 319–20, 377 expected values, 229–30 expert systems, 94–95 Exploratory Research, 149, 151–52 extinction, 24, 26–27, 55, 232, 378 extractivism, 104, 417 in Chile, 272, 273–74, 281–85, 296–99 in Uruguay, 291–96 use of term, 104n F Facebook, 11, 15, 16, 51

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, Sundar, 169, 311 Picoult, Jodi, 135 Pinochet, Augusto, 273, 296 Pioneer Building, 73–74, 316, 397 Piper, Kelsey, 388–90, 394, 403 plundered earth. See extractivism Png, Marie-Therese, 104 Poe, 324 pornographic content, 108, 162, 189, 237–38. See also child sex abuse material Posada, Julian, 196, 197, 291 poverty

Big Data Analytics: Turning Big Data Into Big Money

by Frank J. Ohlhorst  · 28 Nov 2012  · 133pp  · 42,254 words

the Big Data concept. Gathering the data is usually half the battle in the analytics game. SMBs can search the Web with tools like 80Legs, Extractiv, and Needlebase, all of which offer capabilities for gathering data from the Web. The data can include social networking information, sales lists, real estate listings

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is pretty hard to beat many of the tools that are readily available on the market. For those looking for point-and-click simplicity, Extractiv (http://www.extractiv.com) and Mozenda (http://www.mozenda.com) offer the ability to acquire data from multiple sources and to search the Web for information. Another

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medicine Evolution of Big Data algorithms current issues future developments modern era origins of Expectations Expediency-accuracy tradeoff External data Extract, transform, and load (ETL) Extractiv F Facebook Filters Financial controllers Financial sector Financial transactions Flexibility of storage systems 4Vs of Big Data G Gartner General Electric (GE) Gephi Goal setting

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

by Harsha Walia  · 9 Feb 2021

against citizens, the West against the rest—is a ruling-class ideology. It breaks internationalist solidarity, lowers the wage floor for all workers, and maintains extractivism and exclusion in a warming world. Right-wing nationalism purports to defend the working class but is vehemently anticommunist. The politics of fear is a

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of nonrecyclable waste on the Philippines. The president, though, is no environmentalist. The Lumad people continue to face threats to their lands and livelihoods from extractivism, and have long been fighting to uphold their customary laws and cultures against a “systemic war of extinction.”50 Threats to their communal lands have

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as picket lines preventing state and capital’s expropriation of land by asserting legitimate Indigenous jurisdiction. This is urgent because in this time of frontier extractivism, the price for Indigenous caretaking labor and land stewardship is high. Across Turtle Island, warriors in the Idle No More, Protect Mauna Kea, Standing Rock

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 words

progressive distribution of national income. And it means building economies that are organised around renewable energy and ecological regeneration rather than around fossil fuels and extractivism. It’s important to remember that many of these policies were used widely across the South in the post-colonial decades, from the 1950s to

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plunder continue to this day, with ruinous consequences. To the extent that degrowth in high-income nations releases global South communities from the grip of extractivism, it represents decolonisation in the truest sense of the term. * My years of researching degrowth have given me something I didn’t really expect – hope

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation

by Paris Marx  · 4 Jul 2022  · 295pp  · 81,861 words

been wrought in the Global South by mining and oil companies. Riofrancos warned that a transport system centered around electric vehicles risks creating a green extractivism that subordinates “human rights and ecosystems to endless extraction in the name of ‘solving’ climate change,” thereby ignoring “the very real harm it inflicts on

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Pencil,” Logic Magazine, December 20, 2020, Logicmag.io. 26 Le Guin, “A Rant About ‘Technology.’” 27 Thea Riofrancos, Resource Radicals: From Petro- Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador, Duke University Press, 2020. 28 Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” in New Dimensions 3, ed. Richard Silverberg

Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside - Finding Home in an English Country Garden

by Marchelle Farrell  · 2 Aug 2023  · 217pp  · 76,056 words

world. The issues of colonial conquest, or the racism that it bred to further and uphold itself, of the inequality it engendered, of the exponential extractivism it created that fuels the climate crisis – they swirl round my brain like a tornado. Each issue linked, each feeding the other in an endless

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian  · 7 Oct 2024  · 336pp  · 104,899 words

it finally achieved independence in 1968. Rather than fitting into contemporary categories of state and nonstate, Nauru’s shifting, vulnerable status enabled what scholars call extractivism: when “territories, populations, and animal and plant life [are] rendered into commodities for the taking so as to enrich world economic centers,” as the anthropologist

Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation

by Grace Blakeley  · 9 Sep 2019  · 263pp  · 80,594 words

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

by Naomi Klein  · 12 Jun 2017  · 357pp  · 94,852 words

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

by Tao Leigh. Goffe  · 14 Mar 2025  · 441pp  · 122,013 words