Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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“disaster capitalism,” where private interests descend on a torn-up region in the wake of a natural or manmade disaster, snatching up land and chunks of the public sphere in a feeding frenzy, while their allies in government ram unpopular neoliberal programs past the distracted public. Klein describes the process of disaster capitalism as cyclical, as the consolidation of private power in the aftermath of disaster often weakens public infrastructure and contributes to climate change, facilitating more disasters.
✏️ The cyclical nature is what’s most damning. A disaster happens, private power grabs more land, public infrastructure weakens, this leads to more climate change, and that leads to more disasters. 🔗 View Highlight
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When sugarcane and pineapple plantations began to form in the mid-1800s, they were only barely distinguishable from slave plantations. Native Hawaiian and migrant workers signed three- or five-year contracts with their employers and could be jailed for “deserting.” Plantations had set bedtimes for workers, drove them to work with dogs, fined them for lateness, and paid pennies on the dollar compared to laborers elsewhere in the world. The plantation barons were the disaster capitalist speculators of their day — buying low in the wake of colonial plunder, cutting labor costs by every legal measure, and going on to accumulate massive fortunes. Their power became so enormous that they were able to orchestrate the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.
✏️ The colonial, capitalist history of Hawaii 🔗 View Highlight
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Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Portuguese, and Native Hawaiian workers shared meals at work, resulting in the mishmash of foods found in popular plate lunches in Hawaii today. Eventually the workers began to form labor unions, first separated by ethnicity but eventually joined together by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, into a powerful force able to dramatically improve working conditions.
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as sugar production began shifting to places like the Philippines and Indonesia where labor protections were weaker, plantations on Hawaii like the Pioneer Mill Company began to shut down. This took the bottom out of the local economy, as now-solid union jobs were replaced by generally unorganized jobs in the tourism industry. As tourism thrived, the hyper-wealthy began buying up land, leaving locals priced out of the market.
id588185153
former fields were overtaken by invasive grasses. It was these highly flammable invasive species that allowed a fire to grow into the infernal blaze that consumed Lāhainā.