A ruling from the US Second Circuit against the Internet Archive and in favor of publisher Hachette has just thrown that promise of equality into doubt by limiting libraries’ access to digital lending.

To understand why this is so important to the future of libraries, you first have to understand the dire state of library e-book lending.

Libraries have traditionally operated on a basic premise: Once they purchase a book, they can lend it out to patrons as much (or as little) as they like. Library copies often come from publishers, but they can also come from donations, used book sales, or other libraries. However the library obtains the book, once the library legally owns it, it is theirs to lend as they see fit.

Not so for digital books. To make licensed e-books available to patrons, libraries have to pay publishers multiple times over. First, they must subscribe (for a fee) to aggregator platforms such as Overdrive. Aggregators, like streaming services such as HBO’s Max, have total control over adding or removing content from their catalogue. Content can be removed at any time, for any reason, without input from your local library. The decision happens not at the community level but at the corporate one, thousands of miles from the patrons affected.

Then libraries must purchase each individual copy of each individual title that they want to offer as an e-book. These e-book copies are not only priced at a steep markup—up to 300% over consumer retail—but are also time- and loan-limited, meaning the files self-destruct after a certain number of loans. The library then needs to repurchase the same book, at a new price, in order to keep it in stock.

This upending of the traditional order puts massive financial strain on libraries and the taxpayers that fund them. It also opens up a world of privacy concerns; while libraries are restricted in the reader data they can collect and share, private companies are under no such obligation.
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It doesn’t stop there. This decision also renders the fair use doctrine—legally crucial in everything from parody to education to news reporting—almost unusable. And while there were occasional moments of sanity (such as recognizing that a “Donate here” button does not magically turn a nonprofit into a commercial enterprise), this decision fractured, rather than clarified, the law.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/11/1103838/why-a-ruling-against-the-internet-archive-threatens-the-future-of-americas-libraries/

"Voters and politicians whistling past the graveyard being prepared for our children may have neglected to consult a recent article in Nature which holds that “the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emissions choices” "

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/growth-degrowth-kohei-saito-susskind/

https://apnews.com/article/hamas-israel-generals-plan-eiland-gaza-219d7eb9a3050e281ccc032d5a56263c?

Trump’s victory adds record $64bn to wealth of richest top 10 | Rich lists | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/07/trump-victory-adds-record-wealth-richest-top-10

UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war | OHCHR
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-committee-finds-israels-warfare-methods-gaza-consistent-genocide

TLDR: right-wing billionaires funded the creation of a far-right media network. This is not possible for the left.

https://www.usermag.co/p/why-democrats-wont-build-their-own

For some professional observers—those tasked with making money rather than policy—there were signs of trouble all along. In June, analysts with the asset management firm Apollo published a mid-year outlook report ominously titled An Unstable Economic Equilibrium. They acknowledged the “stamina,” “resilience,” and “underlying strength” of the American economy, which showed no signs of recession, despite doomsayers’ prognoses.

[...]

But under the frothy surface, trouble was stirring. “Credit card delinquencies for the youngest households have risen sharply,” notes the Apollo report, “and are approaching rates last seen during the Global Financial Crisis.” Likewise, “people in their 30s and below are falling behind on their auto loans at a faster pace than during the pandemic,” nearing rates “almost as bad as . . . at the peak in 2008.” Even when not crushed by debt, workers simply have less money.

[...]

For those focused on short-term macroeconomic indicators like growth and unemployment, that immiseration has been hard to see—and voters’ cries of misery beggared belief. How could so many people be drowning when GDP growth was so robust and unemployment so low? The Apollo report was clear-eyed. The post-pandemic recovery was “a story of two cohorts.” One group owes money and has been crushed by high interest rates; the other owns assets and has never been better off financially. For the latter, inflation was a nuisance at worst; it was hard to believe anything was fundamentally wrong. But as the Financial Times noted on the eve of the election, “the bottom 40 per cent by income now account for 20 per cent of all spending while the richest 20 per cent account for 40 per cent”—“the widest gap on record.” Elite consumption is so lopsided that it appears to be driving much of the economy, while the rest barely hang on.

[...] Ferguson and Storm found average real weekly earnings fell across all wage classes, with disproportionate declines in the median, the third quartile, and the ninth decile of earners. These, of course, are the very income bands in which Trump made inroads in 2024.

Given all this, a plausible case can be made that any incumbent would have lost to any challenger, almost regardless of strategy, messaging, or platform. As many commentators have noted, in the past year incumbent parties around the world—from Argentina to France to India—have suffered political defeats attributable to the pain of inflation. One notable exception to this trend, however, is Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and leftist Jewish woman who won over a deeply Catholic, oil-producing, and still profoundly patriarchal country hit by an even worse bout of inflation than the US. Her triumph shows that the substance of politics actually matters: the impressionistic abstractions of comparative social science should offer little comfort to American liberals. Incumbents aren’t interchangeable variables, but rather actors that create particular kinds of social politics as much as they are created by them.

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/as-good-as-it-gets/

"At first glance, it may appear that the newly elected Trump administration will accept and adjust to declining U.S. influence because of its focus on domestic change under an America First agenda. More likely, however, Trump and his team will pursue the illusion of U.S. influence while accelerating its decline."

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-multipolarity/

"To truly shift power, we need to focus on four critical areas. First, invest in sustained organizing that builds trust and relationships within black, Latino, and working-class communities. Second, create a strong, year-round financial and electoral infrastructure that bolsters groups like Justice Democrats, the Jewish Vote, WFP, and DSA, allowing them to compete with AIPAC’s financial muscle and support candidates well beyond election cycles. Third, develop a civic engagement model that targets likely primary voters around clear policy objectives, keeping them consistently engaged. Fourth, forge durable liberal-left coalitions with institutions like labor unions, progressives, faith organizations, and youth movements. Without this strategic shift, we’ll continue to fall short."

https://jacobin.com/2024/11/the-left-gaza-democrats-movement/