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It seems odd to associate extinction with that of the human race, yet with global warming, overpopulation, and the threat of self-annihilation through weaponry, this is becoming a reality. Humanity is left with only one opportunity to ensure our continued survival: we must escape. But where do we find our future sanctuary?

Why the cosmos, of course!

Existential risks are risks that might lead to the extinction of humankind[1]. Natural existential risks (such as asteroids that might crash into Earth) are basically constant. The risks of a giant asteroid crashing into Earth today is the same as it was 500 years ago. Anthropogenic, man-made existential risks, on the other hand, are growing in number and severity. They are a side-effect of technological progress: The more we develop technologically, the greater man-made existential risks become. Nuclear weapons, to name only one example, are a direct consequence of scientific and technological progress. There are different approaches to existential risk mitigation. One approach is to develop targeted strategies for specific existential risks. If we want to reduce the existential risk posed by nuclear weapons, then we can and should develop specific strategies for that risk. Another approach is to develop and pursue what can be called meta-strategies that target all existential risks at once. One of most effective meta-strategies for tackling existential risks in general is space colonization: If we manage to establish permanent and self-sustainable human habitats beyond Earth, then our proverbial existential eggs are not all in one basket anymore. For example, if disaster strikes on Earth, but there are billions of humans living on Venus and Mars, humankind would continue to exist even with Earth-humans gone. Because of existential risks, a long-term future in which humankind still exists almost certainly has to be a future in which humankind has succeeded in colonizing space. Today, even though we regularly venture into space, we do not yet have space colonization capabilities. There are a number of technological challenges that we need to overcome in order to become capable of space colonization. One of those challenges is energy. There are several reasons why. First, if we establish permanent and self-sustaining habitats beyond Earth, those habitats will have to power themselves somehow. Even if our goal is to establish only one small colony on Mars that consists of no more than 10’000 people, that colony will have to have a reliable supply of energy at its disposal. Second, habitats beyond Earth will almost certainly be less hospitable than Earth in the early stages of space colonization. There is no planet or moon in the vicinity of our Solar system that is as pleasant as Earth. For example, we can easily survive a couple of days without electricity on Earth. In a colony on Mars, on the other hand, a couple of days without electricity would almost certainly mean swift and, for those affected, horrific death, because Mars is much colder than Earth and contains no breathable air in its atmosphere. In other words: The energy requirements for sustaining one human life are likely to be much greater beyond Earth than they are on Earth. Third, energy sources will also play a role for transit in space. Space colonization means that (many) more humans than today will be voyaging through space. In order to make long-term space voyage possible, we will need to have adequate energy sources available on board, both for the purpose of life support as well as for propulsion. 1.2 Criteria for colonization-conducive energy sources If future energy sources are an important part of space colonization capabilities, what kind of energy sources do we need? Obviously (and unfortunately), we do not know with certainty today what energy sources might be available in the future. But we can specify a set of criteria that future energy sources have to meet as much as possible in order to help achieve the goal of space colonization. There are at least five such criteria: 1. Portability. Future energy sources must be as portable as possible so that they can be used in as many circumstances as possible. For example, a hydroelectric power plant has very low portability. A spaceship could never be powered by a hydroelectric power plant. 2. Availability. The energy sources have to be readily available, both in a geographical and a temporal scope. If, for example, some new form of fuel was very hard to obtain, then that fuel would represent a source of energy with very low availability; almost no one could use it. 3. Sustainability. The energy sources should not be finite and easily depletable, but ideally abundantly available and practically unlimited (or “renewable”). For example, crude oil is not sustainable, because its quantity is limited to the steadily depleting reserves on Earth. 4. Energy Density. Per unit of mass, future energy sources should oer as much energy as possible. For example, a kilogram of wood provides less energy than a kilogram of crude oil. Technically speaking, this criterion is not energy density but specific energy; energy density refers to energy per unit of volume. I use the term “energy density” for the sake of simplicity. In cases where energy density (or specific energy) is not really applicable because to fuel in the traditional sense is used, we can approximate energy density by looking at power density (e.g., wind), the energy output per unit of surface area. 5. Acceptable levels of risk. Future sources of energy should create as few and as small risks as possible. Through the lens of these criteria, we can take a look at existing sources of energy and at potential future sources of energy and assess whether and to what degree they are “future-proof”. The better an energy source meets the five criteria outlined above, the more “future proof” it is, in the sense of having high utility for sustaining human habitats beyond Earth.

The idea of providing a stipend to every person in a given country—or even across the globe— seems like it would be a project that socialists would love. And while there are certainly a large number of socialists that do or would support the establishment of a universal basic income (UBI), there are many left criticisms of UBI that have produced a great deal of skepticism about the idea. Most of the critics of UBI treat its advocates as though they believe UBI would solve all or most socioeconomic problems, at least in the Global North.1 I have yet to come across any serious UBI advocate who takes such an expansive position. My point here will be to provide reasons for why socialists should support a thick conception of UBI as a kind of radical reform from within capitalism, as part of a broader left agenda.2 In order to make this case, this essay will focus on three main contentions that are generally raised by left critics of UBI: (1) UBI would be used to dismantle existing social welfare programs, leaving the poor worse off than they were before; (2) UBI doesn’t do anything for workers within the workplace; and (3) UBI doesn’t challenge capitalism. (1) First, it is quite true that not all UBI programs would be worth supporting. Any UBI program that would have the likelihood of leaving the poor and vulnerable worse off should certainly be opposed by any socialist or progressive. This kind of welfare-state replacement UBI is the kind that white supremacist and conservative thought-leader Charles Murray and other libertarians often support. 3 However, simply because not all UBI programs are worth supporting, does not mean that there are not thick or expansive conceptions of UBI that absolutely are. An example of a conception of UBI that socialists should support would be one that is—as the acronym requires—universal and also set at or above subsistence. This means that all people, regardless of their ability or willingness to work, would at least be much more likely to live a life without lacking any fundamental necessities. A subsistence (or higher) UBI would likely only be able to achieve the goal of eradicating extreme poverty if it was also combined with a universal health care and tuition-free public higher education system. If the poor still had to pay or go into massive debt to afford basic health care and education, a subsistence UBI would be nearly functionally irrelevant—or worse. (2) Second, it is simply not true that UBI is irrelevant to workers and the workplace—again provided we are discussing a thick version of UBI. There are two key reasons why UBI would help workers in the workplace. First, if workers did not rely entirely on their wage for their subsistence, they would likely be able to take more aggressive positions in collective bargaining (Andy Stern, former president of the SEIU, has referred to UBI as a “national strike fund”). 4 A subsistence UBI would decrease the opportunity-costs of hardline negotiating for higher wages, better benefits, fewer hours, and better working conditions. Workers, in such a position, could also demand greater democratic rights within the workplace. This is not to suggest that wages would cease to be a site of contention. On the contrary, by providing a stronger foundation from which to negotiate wages and benefits, there would be an opportunity for an increase in labor struggles. The second way that UBI would aid workers in the workplace is more speculative. If a subsistence UBI were to be achieved, there is almost no way of imagining this taking place without massive organized support from workers. It would need to be collective demand that itself would require organizing and mobilizing workers, alongside the unemployed and homeless, and even stay-at-home moms and dads. The kind of social solidarity that such a radical policy position like a subsistence-level UBI would require would undoubtedly have important consequences for the organization of the workplace. (3) The idea that an expansive UBI program could not be a direct challenge to capitalism is frankly laughable. There are two main reasons why a subsistence UBI (or higher) could be a challenge to capitalism, but it is important to note that in the very short-term there is the chance of some increase in stability brought to the capitalist system by the Keynesian effects of the policy, if enacted in even a single globally-crucial economy like the US, the EU, or even China or India. 5 This stability would be short-lived and could lead to progress towards socialism, for the reasons that follow. The first reason builds on the points made under the previous section: a subsistence UBI that did not replace existing, or was implemented alongside expanded, social welfare programs would require a mass movement in order to be achieved. It would also take workers in enormous numbers out of the realm of necessity and closer to the realm of freedom (as described by Marx). With a subsistence UBI, workers would no longer be forced to work at low-paying, degrading, unsafe, or mindless jobs. These jobs would then likely become the first sites of full automation. If systematically-compelled wage-labor is the sine qua non of the capitalist mode of production, then a subsistence-or-above UBI would be a direct challenge to the foundation of capitalism. Secondly, a thick UBI could change how people think about their value in society. By declaring, not with mere rhetoric, but with serious policy, that all people, regardless of status, effort, place of birth, gender, race, sexuality, or any other category, are worthy of the dignity of the means to support themselves, society has a powerful opportunity to evolve in a more just and democratic direction. It wouldn’t necessarily be a smooth transition, but it would certainly provide the basis for a practicable transition from capitalism to an egalitarian democratic postcapitalism (i.e., socialism). These two points are in direct opposition to the position articulated by Daniel Zamora in Jacobin. 6 Zamora argues that UBI reinforces the market ideology by simply allowing more people to participate in consumption. What Zamora misses (though this is basically true of most socialist critics of UBI) is the progressive decommodification of work and life in general that UBI can contribute to. If I don’t have to work or don’t want to work under undemocratic or unsafe conditions, I wouldn’t have to. Yes, labor would still be commodified to some degree— but not universally or necessarily. In the same way that we could imagine a world where basic necessities are not commodified but luxury goods could be. With an expansive UBI, I wouldn’t be required to sell my labor to survive. And while there would certainly still be a market for consumer goods at this stage, buying goods in the market is not the defining trait of capitalism. With an expansive UBI, the connection between structurally-coerced labor and one’s ability to live a (decent) life—the foundational relationship of the capitalist mode of production—would be progressively severed.7 Imagine the creative “work” people could participate in of their own accord if they didn’t have to “get a job” to survive. Remember, not all UBI proposals are created equal and therefore not all UBI plans should be supported by those on the left. There are however very good reasons why a thick conception of UBI should be part of any socialist project aiming beyond capitalism but moving forward from within capitalism. There are no guarantees here, and it is imperative to think UBI within a much broader left program. There is, after all, no good reason to think that any one or two policies or demands would ever be successful on their own, especially not without the mass movement any one of them would necessarily need to have behind them in order to be achieved.

5. EPISTEMOLOGICAL RACISM Epistemological racism in academe is ingrained in our academic knowledge system. James Scheurich (1997), an American educational researcher, discusses it as part of civilizational racism in education, which privileges the modernist (or postmodernist) assumptions of white Euro-American civilization and positions them as superior to the knowledges embraced by other civilizations, cultures, or peoples. The predominance of white perspectives is circulated through discourse as Van Dijk (1993) demonstrated in his analysis of sociology textbooks in English and school textbooks used in the Netherland. This form of racism works as epistemological hegemony, compelling non-Euro-American people of color to adopt these white assumptions as legitimate knowledge. In the fields of education and language education, the dominance and normativity of white Euro-American-centered knowledge in school curricula have been challenged (e.g. Willinsky 1998; Kubota 2004; Abdi 2006; May and Sleeter 2010). Gloria Joseph, a black feminist educator, characterized the US school curriculum as ‘White studies’ and ‘male studies’, ‘focusing on achievements, cultures, experiences and perspectives of white men and omitting or distorting the histories, experiences, cultures, and perspectives of people of color, and women of all colors’ (Joseph 1988: 178). Advocates and researchers supporting students of color promote culturally relevant teaching (LadsonBillings 1994), which honors the history, culture, language, and identity of minoritized learners. The predominance of white Euro-American-centered school and academic knowledge—in music, art, history, science, research theories, and methodologies—can be observed in non-Euro-American countries as well, indicating its global hegemony (Kubota 2017). The field of teaching English as a foreign language is a case in point. Japanese curricula and instruction, for example, emphasize standardized English and overrepresent inner circle countries, especially the USA, as well as whiteness (Yamada 2015). This is reflected in Japanese students’ preference for white native English-speaking teachers over black or Asian ones (Rivers and Ross 2013). The Eurocentrism of knowledge often excludes research focused on nonEuro-American issues produced in non-Euro-American locations or utilizing alternative orientations, especially when it is produced by non-Euro-American scholars of color. As Canagarajah (2002) argued, local knowledge, which has been suppressed by the Western mainstream epistemological paradigm, offers an alternative intellectual practice of thinking in research. To illustrate some of these points, I will present three episodes—one experienced by researchers in Brazil and the other two by me. Consistent with the spirit of critical race theory, my intention here is to offer subjective accounts based on my own positionality and to contextualize my subsequent theoretical discussion, rather than providing data for empirical analysis or objective interpretations.

Spinoza's relational view of power means that people preserve themselves by forming associations. Members join these associations and organizations because they agree with other members.® The associations, as Gatens and Lloyd describe, "congeal into institutional forms, such as juridical norms, through which the inevitable disagreements between individuals (as members, subjects, or citizens of a complex body) will be settled. Initially, however, the formation of viable associations will depend mostly upon the passions of hope and fear and will create common causes for these passions.... The simplest means for securing agreement within a collective is by creating common causes of hope of reward and fear of punishment. Such associations draw their force from Spinoza's notion of passion and imagination, rather than reason. "67 Harmony occurs when the individual person's power is aligned with that of the collective. There must be unity. The individual and the collective, in other words, are mutually reinforcing. According to Gatens and Lloyd, "The political problem (how do we form associations) is analogous to the epistemological problem (how do we come to form adequate ideas?"68 These forms become mutually reinforcing. Together, they form a well-functioning unity. All people must seek harmony to enhance their power. A community, therefore, revolves around the principle that the more virtuous people are, the more power they have. The most desirable community, moreover, is one where this type of power has spawned peace or harmony.70 A critical conception of care An ethic of care based upon Spinoza's view of common notions and Deleuze's interrelated conception of difference offers us a morality that could humanize capitalism. Unlike the social constructionists' work on an ethic of care, this ethic would not be based on humanist metaphysics. Care would not stem from benevolence or the kindness of family members and strangers, something that makes some ethicists wary. Grounding a care ethic on critical theory means that it would be founded upon a different conception of what it is to be human. Nonetheless, this critical care ethic still retains the four pillars of the old one. First, the idea that human beings are relational is interwoven into the very fabric of a critical conception of care. Spinoza's idea that people depend upon each other is not derived from the fact that we are "good" people. Neither Spinoza, Deleuze, nor Guattari rely on altruism. To them, Man is God to Man and Woman. People depend upon each other not because it makes them feel better, but because they realize that it is in their own self-interest. The abstract notion of an individual that drives capitalism and liberalism is not independent, as Hobbes and Locke argue, but rather interdependent, as Spinoza points out. This critical morality makes needs, not care, the operative term. Needs should be taken into account not because of benevolence or because women are more caring than men. Benevolence smacks of paternalism. The problem is that others impose their will. Hirschmann and Eisenstein are properly cautious about second guessing. A care ethic should not mean that independent people (read caregivers) are dictating what dependent people (care-receivers) should do. Both the independent and the dependent should be free. This freedom stems from the realization that all human beings are interdependent. We depend upon each other to survive. The theoretical myth of autonomy that liberalism, and capitalism perpetuate must be broken. An ethic of care should recognize needs and individuality as part of the human condition. This condition is based on doing rather than being. The state and society should have no preconceived notion of norms or identities. Rather, an ethic of care should start with "you need this to do that." It should be based on a positive conception of liberty that is not burdened by the Rousseauian dilemma of second-guessing because everyone is involved in determining needs. Integrating such a care ethic into the workplace would introduce sociability--no worker would stand alone. A harmonious workplace is one that promotes the capacities and powers of its workers, not for their sake alone but for the sake of the entire workplace. The needs of the individual and the collective are mutually reinforcing. To be sure, the doing of the individual must be juxtaposed with the doing of the collective. The individual pursuing his difference would not be trampled if a system of proportional representation, not winner take all, is instituted. If a man stays home with the children, then he will have certain needs that emerge not from his identity as a man, but as a person interested in painting. An ethic of care based on individuality acknowledges both the mind and the body and its infinite possibilities.A Spinozian ethic of care retains the second pillar of the feminist morality. It too makes no distinction between the public and the private spheres, as do capitalism and liberalism, which are governed by an ethic of rights. The public is simply an extension of the private. For Spinoza, how two people get along is multiplied and extended to all of the state and society. The personal is the political. Spinoza, Deleuze, and Guattari argue that the body is a microcosm of society and the state. Beginning with a body, they extend their idea to all bodies- the individual can be extended to the multitude. As explained earlier, Spinoza coins the term common notions to illustrate how everyone should be regarded as interdependent and that there is no distinction between personal and public spaces. The third pillar of an ethic of care-difference-is exhibited in its critical incarnation. A critical conception of a care ethic begins with the notion of difference. Spinoza, Deleuze, and Guattari, however, perceive of difference not in terms of identity or being, but in terms of doing. They agree with the ethicists that difference is not second best. Their notion of difference and becoming helps create an ethic of care based on needs that are not static or rigid. Needs can be universal and yet not phallocentric as long as the Cartesian dualism is replaced with Spinoza's monism. The final, fourth pillar that an ethic of care is discursive is also an integral part of the new conception of care. A critical ethic of care rests on the idea that there are no universals. Spinoza, Deleuze, and Guattari reject universals from the point of Cartesian epistemology. They all question knowledge. These critical theorists go further than the traditional ethic in that they reject the duality of the mind and body. Examining our corporeality transcends the categories of sex, gender, race, and sexuality. Location, location, location Creating an ethic of care in the workplace could also put bodies in revolt. Difference can be transformed into resistance. Critics of Foucault insist that his work is so pessimistic that it offers no chance for reform.? If Foucault argues that power is everywhere, then is there any room for resistance?72 Jurgen Habermas sums up Foucault's paradox simply as "why fight? 73 Foucault's critics, however, overlook his argument that power relations can be unmasked in local areas. Casting aside universals, Foucault claimed that power and resistance exist in specific locations, like a prison or a workplace. 4 Foucault treats power and resistance as analytical conditions of each other by deconstructing dualisms like power and powerlessness or the individual and society. To Foucault, resistance, like power, is a socially constructed category. It cannot be perceived as "out there" or as a freestanding category.75 Resistance is both an element of the functioning of power and, as Dierter Freundlieb describes it, a source of its perpetual disorder.76 Resistance is associated with self-creation." Hence, there is a possibility for resistance wherever power is exercised.78 Furthermore, Foucault insists that particular exercises of power should be understood in terms of the resistances they confront, generate, or even promote.? Resistance is what eludes power. As a result, power seeks out resistance- its adversary. For power to minimize resistance, Foucault maintains, it must divide-and-conquer, or as he explains it, "individua-lize" the forces of the institutions that it creates. Inequality constitutes an essential element of power, whereas resistance must be associated with an absence of hierarchy in what Foucault calls "counterpower." Resistance or counterpower, however, cannot be characterized as antimatter or a negation of power, though Foucault links resistance with horizontal conjunctions and equality. Like power, it can also be productive or affirmative. Resistance relies on strategic knowledge and represents Foucault's ideas of revolutionary action.80

CARE WORK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER. In the midst of the vast devastation that constitutes the ongoing, intertwined, and still unfolding crises of state-sponsored anti-Black violence and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that we care for each other. Care is a continuum. Mourning the victims of police violence and intubating coronavirus patients are examples of urgent, necessary care work. The necessity of such work has been laid bare in2020.Exposing and exploiting the pre-existing conditions of our society, these twin crises of racism and virus act along social fault lines, hierarchies, and inequalities. Care is what we can offer in the face of unmitigated disaster. It is care and caretaking, nurturing relationships and collectivities formed amidst crises, that engender resilience and survival. Yet, intervening to dismantle oppressive structures before they create the conditions that warrant intubation or mourning is the highest form of care. We might call it structural care. Structural care shifts the structures that inequitably produce the need for care, working to redistribute harm and risk in response to the dangers posed by white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, capitalism, and other forms of oppression. Structural care simultaneously dismantles oppressive structures and builds liberatory structures. Tremendous deficiencies in available care and the neglect of care obligations by our institutions mean that in this time, archival care work, though sometimes less immediate, is also urgent and necessary. We need archival care even in the face of—especially because of—the emergency of the crises we face. While archives cannot hope to alleviate physical suffering, end discrimination and stigma, or to stall death, alone, they can be a manifestation of the kind of care that we can actually provide right now. It will take decades, and not just weeks of frenzied collecting, to formulate archival responses to our intertwined crises and the others that have preceded and will come in their aftermath. Care encompasses, as we wrote in 2016, “both the often bodily labours of providing what is necessary for the health, sustainment, and protection of someone or something, and the feeling of concern and attachment that provokes such acts.”2Archival labor, then is a means of taking responsibility, of caring for bodies of records, and mostly importantly, the bodies of those whose lives are implicated in them. The most vital archival responses will be marked by care—care for the most oppressed people who create, use, and steward records, and care for each other, as archivists, as the editors of this special issue assert. More than ever, we stand by our earlier assertion, records are not the most important aspect of archival work; people are. We need to examine the current deficits in archival care’s reach, who remains uncared for, for as 2020 has shown us, archival work should not just center people, but the needs, realities, and lives of oppressed people specifically. 32. CARE WORK IS MORE UNDERVALUED THAN EVER. In our current moment, the burden of care for the victims and survivors of the twin crises of racism and COVID-19 has fallen greatly on the shoulders of women, particularly BIPOC women, and particularly Black women, once again. Data demonstrates already a harsh reality where working mothers are being pushed out of the workforce in unprecedented numbers while shouldering greater child-rearing labor. Women of color are put at additional risk by being overrepresented in high-risk essential care jobs. Along with care, comes risk—medical, professional, and emotional risk. Unsurprisingly, care and risk are not meted out equitably, but along the fault lines of oppressive structures. Essential medical workers lack adequate personal protective equipment while no expense is spared outfitting police in combat gear. A feminist ethics of care resists the use of austerity to justify privatization and refuses to invoke “the natural” or “the medical” as an excuse for manufactured mass death brought on by state failure. Instead, a feminist ethics of care not only makes visible the labor of care, but values that labor, professionally and monetarily. In archives, this means supporting the labor of care, refusing to dismiss care as a “soft skill,” protecting care workers from the risks they incur, and adequately compensating those archivists who excel at it, especially BIPOC women. We are encouraged by recent examples of mutual aid in the field, such as the Society of American Archivists’ Archival Workers Emergency Fund, providing direct aid to archivists whose income has been made precarious due to COVID-19.3Another exciting example is the emerging Community Archives Collaborative through which grassroots memory workers are sharing skills, advocating for resources, and engaging in peer-to-peer mentoring.4As legal scholar Dean Spade writes, mutual aid efforts both meet basic survival needs and build “a shared understanding that the conditions in which we are made to live are unjust.”5Care demands both of these tactics, immediate and long-term, individual and structural, simultaneously. 3. RADICAL EMPATHY DEMANDS A POWER ANALYSIS. In our original article, we posited that empathy was most radical when it was extended to those who are least deserving of it. In 2021, we would like to issue a correction: empathy is radical when it centers the needs of those who are most oppressed by the dominant forces of white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and colonialism. We do not ask archivists (or anyone else for that matter) from oppressed communities to empathize with their oppressors; one should not be tasked with empathizing with those who deny the validity of one’s own existence. Such a request puts an undue burden on and risks further harm to oppressed people. Instead, empathy must be taken up in tandem with a power analysis in order to be radical. Radical empathy should be a tool for those of use with access to power not to further entrench ourselves into the hierarchies of power, but instead to open doors behind ourselves, to make archives permeable by creating holes in our structures and systems where power can be redistributed in ways that always prioritize the needs and desires of those made vulnerable by oppressive structures. Empathy in such a practice is a means to challenge, subvert, undermine, make possible, change.4. FEMINIST ETHICS ARE BOTH PERSONAL ANDSTRUCTURAL.As feminists have been asserting for decades, the personal is political. Care is structural, as is a failure to care. Radical empathy is not about being nice to each other; we should not suffer death by a thousand white women in “Be Kind” t-shirts.6Radical empathy is about recognizing our personal roles within power structures, dismantling oppressive structures (including, especially, the structures we may personally benefit from), and rebuilding liberatory structures that serve us all. We can use radical empathy to interrogate intersecting structures of violence, both public and private, taken together, as always already political. We must insist that care work leverages personal experience to dismantle systemic oppressions. Doing the work of feminist ethics now requires recognizing and contending with where we have been individuals, as a profession, and where we are now and where we are going. As feminist writer Roxane Gay has powerfully written of living amidst our current crises, “most of us are wondering when life will get back to normal but normal is what brought us to such a precarious place. Nothing should ever be the same again and while that is an unnerving prospect, it may also be our saving grace.”7Archives and archival work when done with a feminist ethics of care steeped in radical empathy have much to offer us during this moment of upheaval that enable us to cultivate critical understandings of the before, the during, and offer important opportunities to work out together what can come in the aftermath of this personal, social, and political upheaval. We are thrilled to be accompanying the contributors of this special issue as they build on, transform, and push back against our original formulations, as they do archival care. Let the discussions, critiques, applications, and refinements continue!

The gendered forms of violence in capitalist-patriarchal societies are, obviously, related to what is habitually recognized as violence against women. But as we do not assume that there is a coherent, much less biological or natural entity that could simply be called women, here we will use the category “women” descriptively. By using the term “gendered,” we will try to point out that both sex and gender are normative and artificial identifications. Being a cis woman, lesbian, trans woman, nonbinary person, man, and so on, is determined by socioeconomic, cultural, political and historical frameworks, while the normative ethos which imposes that gender dimorphism is beneficial for the mode of production and the gender division of labor that arises from it. Sex as a male-female empirical given fact does not exist. Sex is assigned at birth, then it is adopted or rejected, it is shaped by a whole web of coded behaviors, repetitions, rituals, and normalization practices, it is socially imposed and molded into the heterosexual sex/gender dimorphism. Therefore, sex is nothing natural, but something that is naturalized. To that extent, a “woman” is not a clearly recognizable empirical category with XX chromosomes and the ability to give birth—rather, to be a woman implies a series of complex processes that gender a large group of people as women. Therefore, gendered forms of violence do not refer only to those who society recognizes as women, but to all the “abject” who recognize themselves in that category, as well as to other subordinate identifications that are constituted in a similar way, and intertwined with gender-based normalization, disciplining and oppression. Gendered forms of violence are multiple and mutually intertwined: from femicide, domestic violence, the denial of choices concerning one’s own body and the attacks on reproductive autonomy, and obstetric violence, through sexual harassment, violence suffered by sex workers, violence suffered by transgender, gender-nonconforming, and other LGBTQIA+ people, and all the way to imposed gendered, racialized, often internalized norms of existence, expectations, stereotypes, discriminatory discourse, and other forms of marginalization and hatred related to sexuality, physical appearance, skin color, age, physical abilities and so on. Gender-based violence is ubiquitous and is often accompanied by other forms of violence that enable and situate it—instances of disciplining that are constituted by the normativization of heterosexual relationships and traditional family nuclei; subjugations in the name of imperialist and colonial divisions of the world; symbolic dimensions of violence; biopolitical violence, state, military and police violence; ecological violence which is affecting us at alarmingly high rates and so on. In order to theoretically consider the logic that generates and reproduces gendered forms of violence, it is not enough just to observe and enumerate empirical phenomena, it is necessary to address their connection through the consideration of the structural conditions of the possibility of violence. Today’s societies around the globalized world, regardless of historical-geographical specifics, are primarily connected by capitalist relations that enable the reproduction of capital. To that extent, various forms of gender-based oppression are essentially directly or indirectly bound into oppressive patriarchal labor-capital relations and the consequent violence they produce, that is, the structural or systemic violence that capitalism reproduces in specific social formations. The relations between exploitation and power situate all social interactions and relations, and the human being itself, Karl Marx argues, represents a set of intertwined social relations. In order to ascertain why gender-based violence exists, and what mechanisms produce and reproduce it through nation states, we must therefore seek an answer within the concrete historical analysis of capitalism and the structural logic of capital accumulation. This is sometimes not easy to perceive, because the violence of capital in capitalist societies does not appear as an excess, an aberration or as an anomaly, but as a norm. The compulsions and violence of the capital relation, which are primarily established as economic, are a regular instrument of subordination and discipline, something that has been stabilized by continuous repetition and pressure in such a way as to pervade every pore of our societies, embedded in our ways of thinking and perceiving, that is co-structuring our desires, language, permeating our bodies. It does not look like violence, but rather like a free contractual relationship. However, the violence of capital does not only rule over production in the narrow sense, and is therefore never only economic. Because of the fact that society as a whole is established to allow for the dominance of the capital relation in all spheres, this violence is structural. Gendered forms of violence are, in this sense, part of the package of violence by which capital maintains, reproduces and supports existing social relations. They are a part of the coercive and violent mechanisms that enable the functioning of the entire system, as well as the overcoming of its own crises and ruptures. Therefore, when speculating about gender-based violence, it is necessary to consider the nature of capitalist-patriarchal relations, property issues, and other pillars of capitalism, and to address the consequences of the supposed independence of productive from reproductive work, as well as the divisions within the working class. We will therefore try to point out the strong links between gender-based violence and capitalism.

The hearth of the US racial empire, maintained by Black women’s racialized, classed, and gendered labor, is embroiled in a history of struggle. In the efforts of enslaved women who “judged the plantation a viable site from which to wage war and engage in the process of emancipation” (Glymph, 2013: 492), and in the organizing campaigns of waged household workers (Nadasen, 2015), we trace a lineage of racialized oppression and resistance that calls for repoliticizing the domestic. For Black women, exploited to reproduce empire, the domestic signifies a parallel space of struggle, that of nurturing their own homes, families, and communities amidst the violence of internal colonialism (Davis, 1972). In the early 20th century, following mass migration to the North, Black women’s clubs organized neighborhood campaigns to address unsafe living conditions in overcrowded cities (Mann, 2011). This eco-feminist lineage persists in contemporary environmental justice, concerned with “the survivability of individual bodies, particular communities, national cultures, and the earth itself” (Di Chiro, 2008: 280). In sustaining sociality and personhood in excess of the demands of imperial reproduction, Black women have ensured the persistence of “remaindered life,” that is, “subaltern pathways of social and self-formation that remain beneath the threshold of visibility of raced subjects” (Tadiar, 2015: 156). Roberta’s history of fighting racial capitalism are a starting point to consider how feminist political geography and environmental justice scholarship might be strengthened by engaging with Black feminist theorizations of the domestic. We argue that Black social reproductive practices constitute an embodied form of geopolitical praxis, an unacknowledged engagement with the imperial state’s necropolitical governance of Black life (Smith, 2016). We identify three categories of labor as strategies of domestic geopolitics. The labor of keeping wake refers to practices of caring for, attending to, and registering deaths in the community, a secular ritual of valuing lives in death that are sacrificed in life (Sharpe, 2016). The labor of tactical expertise addresses how racialized people, living with double consciousness (Du Bois, 2008; Fanon, 2008/1967), must translate the lived experience of racial violence into scientific and legal discourses legible to the state. The labor of revolutionary mothering (Gumbs et al., 2016; James, 1997) describes the responsibility of nurturing communal life in the face of persistent death as a creative force of worldmaking. In the next sections, we describe the context of everyday life in Badin and Flint, abandoned as surplus populations by a state intent on facilitating racial capitalism, followed with a discussion of the labors that constitute domestic geopolitics’ challenge to the racial state.

By contrast, feminists exploring patriarchy give capitalism a historical dimension. Capitalism is a relative latecomer, they argue, only being introduced in the late eighteenth century, whereas patriarchy was not. On a theoretical level, the emergence of capitalism threatened patriarchal control. It destroyed many old institutions and created new ones, such as a "free" market in labor. Yet if capitalism eliminated differences of status among laborers, why did women remain in an inferior position in the "free" labor market? The feminist theorist Heidi Hartmann answers this question by developing the dual systems theory that is, men used capitalism's penchant for hierarchical organization and control to extend the traditional division of labor between the sexes. Capitalism and sexism operated hand in hand. Hartmann defines patriarchy as "a set of social relations, which has a material base and in which there are hierarchical relations, and solidarity among men that enable[s] them to dominate women. 27 Before capitalism, a patriarchal system existed where men controlled the labor of their wives and children. It was this system, she argues, that taught men "the techniques of hierarchical organization and control."28 Once industrialization occurred, these men refused to relinquish their control over the labor power of women. What did change was how patriarchy shaped the workplace. The direct personal system of control created by patriarchy was transformed into an indirect, impersonal system of control, mediated by society-wide institutions. Sexual stratification occurred alongside increasing productiveness and specialization in the work force.29 "Patriarchy, far from being vanquished by capitalism," Hartmann argues, "is still very virile.... »30 It helps direct and form and shape modern capitalism. At the same time, capitalism helps change traditional patriarchal institutions.

1.2. What Is Patriarchy? The patriarchal system is said to date back to before capitalism, where men dominated women and children within the family [13]. Patriarchy is commonly referred to as a structure or a system that governs social relations pertaining to binary genders within societies [14–16]. The main attribute of patriarchal social structures is the domination, oppression and exploitation of women by men [14,16,17]. It is worth noting that these generalized definitions of patriarchy do not adequately explain or address the obscurities and complexities of the term and its application in the social world, historically and currently, which are believed to be some of the reasons behind the sustainability of patriarchy over time [17,18]. It is imperative to fully understand and deconstruct all the elements of patriarchy and the male domination of all other genders, nature and property1 if we are to structurally and operationally dismantle it in the pursuit of equality [17,18]. Reasons behind its infiltration across cultures worldwide are not explicitly agreed upon, yet it is loosely attributed to colonization and the invasion of unclaimed/underprivileged territories [17]. Perhaps attempting to uncover patriarchal relations in the modern day, as discussed in this paper, will shed more light on its emergence and potentially poses a consequent step to this paper. It is perhaps striking, yet not so striking at the same time, that narratives on patriarchy persist in the literature where the same problems that existed decades ago, if not longer, are still discussed up to this day, with little to no progress on transforming the situation for the better or addressing the inequalities within the seemingly endless patriarchal system of this world [16,17,19]. Walby [16] (p. 214) discusses the operationalization of the concept of patriarchy; she states that “patriarchy is composed of six structures: the patriarchal mode of production, patriarchal relations in paid work, patriarchal relations in the state, male violence, patriarchal relations in sexuality, and patriarchal relations in cultural institutions, such as religion, the media and education”. Patriarchy is not derived from capitalism, although these six structures relate to it; it both pre-dates and post-dates capitalism [13,16]. Drastic changes undergone by patriarchy in the wake of capitalism are well acknowledged and do not alter the main argument of this paper, but they do provide a modern lens to be used for analyzing patriarchy relative to capitalism and, in particular, resource extractive industries that may have intensified the six structures mentioned above [16,17]. It is worth noting that this paper takes into consideration discrepancies regarding the definition of patriarchy. It is acknowledged that oppression against women is not seen as equal and experiences of women within patriarchal relations differ greatly across the globe and more specifically within extractive industries. Furthermore, domination of men by other men is also taken into consideration [16,20]. Arguably, one of the main premises of patriarchy was the confinement of women to the home due to the “mothering” claims and biological child bearing, which meant that men were obliged to fulfill the role of paid labor outside the home [13]. Such claims were threatening to the rise of capitalism, which mandated that everyone should work for money; however, the segregation of labor and the insistence on women’s “natural” reproductive role sustained the dominant role of males. This is not to say that there were/are no communities where women and men are seen as equal and patriarchy has no existence (see [13] for examples), but such cases are now considered exceptions. Patriarchy led to the development of hierarchical labor roles, placing women at the bottom of the hierarchy, especially pertaining to wages, forcing women to rely more on men and obliging them to marry men as per the social norms associated with binary genders, perform domestic chores, and so on. Such labor hierarchy and control over resources (financial or natural), will be explored in more detail through empirical examples in order to uncover such dynamics as they play out in modern day communities. Following the main objectives and goals, this paper theoretically discusses these often-hidden links and relationships—at least as hidden from mainstream literature and media—and the intricacies between them. Subsequently, this paper is not necessarily offering a solution to such institutional and systemic infestations of “power over”, but merely starting the conversation and strengthening the path towards effective transformation, both academically and operationally, through proper framing of these intertwined concepts. Based on the literature and preliminary findings, it is clear that there is an undeniable link between power relations, traditional patriarchal structures, socio-economic inequalities and gender disparities. The impacts of this linkage have been found to take different forms, some more apparent than others. These forms are intricately complex and are difficult to resolve, as they are embedded in capitalistic systems and subsequent large-scale industries of all types. Focusing on extractive industries and the energy sector, we find these complexities reproduced over time and attempts to transform into alternative gender dynamics, social structures and power relations have ultimately failed and did not properly address the underlying problems.

It is not simply the alliance of center-left and center-right party elites and the electorates that propel them to public office who are the culprits for imposing “socially irresponsible rule.” The radical Left and the Far Right have done their share in contracting the space of political contestation. Calls against inequality (from the left) and for safeguarding societies from troublesome incomers (from the right) share a particular logic: they help to politicize the social evils that globally integrated capitalism incurs in the terms of distribution of membership within a given social order. This prevents questioning the social order within which equality and inclusion are being sought. When social harm is thematized in terms of inclusion and equality, it misrepresents instances of what I labeled as systemic injustice in chapter 2 as relational injustice instead. In other words, problems of the model of well-being generated by the sociopolitical system are translated as problems of one’s place or inclu- sion within it. This invites remedial policies of redistribution or inclusion/exclusion rather than radically altering the rules of the game. The most disturbing example of the fallacious politiciza- tion of otherwise valid social grievances is the recourse to xeno- phobia, where political actors have used the most easily available language of political mobilization—that of hatred—to cash in on social discontent.

With the exception of environmental protest, which does indeed target the overall logic of capital accumulation (the way goods are produced, distributed and consumed), the shared myo- pia across forms of social protest and intellectual critique involves focusing attention on instances of injustice rooted in the asymmetrical distribution of economic, political, or symbolic power among actors, a practice engendering inequalities and exclusion. The logical solution, then, is to equalize power relations through redistribution and inclusion, rather than alter the very logic of social reproduction. This inability to question the political economy of capitalism and the democratic framework of politics in terms other than distribution and inclusion persists. It is well illustrated by the Occupy movement and what are now con- sidered radical calls for justice, such as “We Are the 99 Percent” and “Tax the Rich.” While anger is rightly and poignantly mobilized against the uneven distribution of advantage in our societies, it leaves the mechanisms that produce advantage unquestioned—and the whole way of life sodden with injustice for all.

Against the Marxist orthodoxy, which explained women's “oppression” and sub- ordination to men as a residuum of feudal relations, Dalla Costa and James argued that the exploitation of women has played a central function in the process of capitalist accumulation, insofar as women have been the producers and reproducers of the most essential capitalist commodity: labor-power. As Dalla Costa put it, women's unpaid labor in the home has been the pillar upon which the exploitation of the waged workers, "wage slavery," has been built, and the secret of its productivity (1972:31). Thus, the power differential between women and men in capitalist society cannot be attributed to the irrelevance of housework for capitalist accumulation — an irrelevance belied by the strict rules that have governed women's lives — nor to the survival of timeless cultural schemes. Rather, it should be interpreted as the effect of a social system of production that does not recognize the production and reproduction of the worker as social-economic activity, and a source of capital accumulation, but mystifies it instead as a natural resource or a personal service, while profiting from the wageless condition of the labor involved. By rooting the exploitation of women in capitalist society in the sexual division of labor and women's unpaid work, Dalla Costa and James showed the possibility of transcending the dichotomy between patriarchy and class, and gave patriarchy a specific historical content. They also opened the way for a reinterpretation of the history of capitalism and class struggle from a feminist viewpoint. It was in this spirit that Leopoldina Fortunati and I began to study what can only be euphemistically described as the "transition to capitalism," and began to search for a history that we had not been taught in school, but proved to be decisive for our education. This history not only offered a theoretical understanding of the genesis of house- work in its main structural components: the separation of production from reproduction, the specifically capitalist use of the wage to command the labor of the unwaged, and the devaluation of women's social position with the advent of capitalism. It also provided a genealogy of the modern concepts of femininity and masculinity that challenged the postmodern assumption of an almost ontological predisposition in "Western Culture" to capture gender through binary oppositions. Sexual hierarchies, we found, are always at the service of a project of domination that can sustain itself only by dividing, on a continuously renewed basis, those it intends to rule.

The growth of the welfare economy from a woman's perspective The modern welfare state in Denmark has a long history, but the development of a comprehensive welfare economy dates back to the beginning of the 1960s. The gradual development of the welfare state in this century has been closely connected to the growing influence of the Social Democratic Party. The Social Democratic Party has been in government since the end of the 1920s, as in Sweden, although always in a minority position and dependent on alliances with other political parties. Since the 1930s a Social Democratic model of a welfare society has become the dominant political form of state intervention. In the 1960s state intervention was extended to new areas of society - both in relation to the economy and in relation to human reproduction. The Social Democratic Party combined support for the capitalist accumulation process with a substantial social reform programme for the working class in order to alleviate some of the social inequalities created by capitalism. From the 1960s the Danish and Swedish welfare states began to distinguish themselves from other welfare states like the British, influenced more by liberal ideas, and the Danish and Swedish welfare states became a model for the most advanced welfare states in the west.° One important characteristic was the dramatic expansion of the social, health, and educational sectors with their corresponding expenditures and the creation of a welfare economy as an important part of the total economy. Another important characteristic which distinguished the Scandinavian welfare states from other welfare states was their distinct corporatist profile. 10 This corporatism was built on an institutionalized collaboration between the dominant classes. Huge and extremely hierarchical, male-dominated organizations representing different class and professional interests obtained increasing power and influence. Working conditions were negotiated by these organizations, and conflicts between employers' and workers' organizations were settled by a formalized system of rules with state representatives functioning as neutral arbitrators. This expansion of the welfare economy and of the sphere government intervention has had very different consequences for men and women. On the one hand the expansion of the welfare economy in relation to human reproduction has been an important precondition for married women's integration into the formal labour market and for their growing social and economic independence in relation to men. The state has, through its policies, ideology, and different forms of legislation, helped women to become integrated as employees. The state has also helped women accomplish important reforms like free abortions and the removal of explicit sex-discriminating rules. On the other hand the state has basically supported the hierarchical gender division of work and has continued to limit women's power and influence in the public sphere through the structure and policies of the corporatist system. In this way the development of the Danish welfare state has been a very contradictory process for women. We argue that the Danish welfare state has not been neutral to women, rather it has contributed actively both to facilitate women's integration into the formal labour market and to institutionalize and legitimize women's double roles as mothers and workers. We therefore disagree with the conclusion that women's position is determined primarily by economic forces, especially the need for women's labour power. Instead we find that the state is an important mediator between the needs of the economy and the interests of different political actors. This does not necessarily mean that state policies have had the explicit and conscious purpose of reproducing the hierarchical gender division of work and male domination, which has not been the case in Denmark, where the institutionalization of women's double roles as mothers and workers has had the unintended effect of strengthening male domination in the public sphere. The limitations of state policies in obtaining sexual equality have become more visible during the economic crisis with mass unemployment. In Denmark there have been no explicit attempts to push women out of the labour market, but cutbacks in public expenditure are clearly working in the direction of marginalizing women in relation to the labour market. In the following we shall explore the contradictions in public policies towards women in more detail and outline our conclusions about a strengthening of what has been called social patriarchy. One crucial factor in the analyses of women's relation to the welfare state has become the question of women's political power. The breakdown of the breadwinner-homemaker family has increased women's independence from their husbands and has at the same time made women more dependent on the state as employees, clients and consumers of public services.11 We argue, however, that there are important differences in the degrees of dependence in the different welfare states connected to differences between their status as employees, consumers and clients. We find that women in the Danish and Swedish welfare states are subiect to a different form of dependency than women in welfare states such as those of Britain or the United States. The large state sector means that women have primarily become dependent on the state as employees and consumers of social services and only to a smaller extent as clients. The opposite is the case in Britain and the US where women to a larger extent are still dependent either on their husbands or on the state as clients. In the following we shall look into women's different roles as employees, consumers and clients in more detail.

Do economic downturns generate pressure for diversionary conflict? Or might downturns encourage austerity and economizing behavior in foreign policy? This paper provides new evidence that economic stress is associated with conciliatory policies between strategic rivals. For states that view each other as military threats, the biggest step possible toward bilateral cooperation is to terminate the rivalry by taking political steps to manage the competition. Drawing on data from 109 distinct rival dyads since 1950, 67 of which terminated, the evidence suggests rivalries were approximately twice as likely to terminate during economic downturns than they were during periods of economic normalcy. This is true controlling for all of the main alternative explanations for peaceful relations between foes (democratic status, nuclear weapons possession, capability imbalance, common enemies, and international systemic changes), as well as many other possible confounding variables. This research questions existing theories claiming that economic downturns are associated with diversionary war, and instead argues that in certain circumstances peace may result from economic troubles. Defining and Measuring Rivalry and Rivalry Termination I define a rivalry as the perception by national elites of two states that the other state possesses conflicting interests and presents a military threat of sufficient severity that future military conflict is likely. Rivalry termination is the transition from a state of rivalry to one where conflicts of interest are not viewed as being so severe as to provoke interstate conflict and/or where a mutual recognition of the imbalance in military capabilities makes conflict-causing bargaining failures unlikely. In other words, rivalries terminate when the elites assess that the risks of military conflict between rivals has been reduced dramatically. This definition draws on a growing quantitative literature most closely associated with the research programs of William Thompson, J. Joseph Hewitt, and James P. Klein, Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl.1 My definition conforms to that of William Thompson. In work with Karen Rasler, they define rivalries as situations in which “[b]oth actors view each other as a significant political-military threat and, therefore, an enemy.”2 In other work, Thompson writing with Michael Colaresi, explains further: The presumption is that decisionmakers explicitly identify who they think are their foreign enemies. They orient their military preparations and foreign policies toward meeting their threats. They assure their constituents that they will not let their adversaries take advantage. Usually, these activities are done in public. Hence, we should be able to follow the explicit cues in decisionmaker utterances and writings, as well as in the descriptive political histories written about the foreign policies of specific countries.3 Drawing from available records and histories, Thompson and David Dreyer have generated a universe of strategic rivalries from 1494 to 2010 that serves as the basis for this project’s empirical analysis.4 This project measures rivalry termination as occurring on the last year that Thompson and Dreyer record the existence of a rivalry.5 Why Might Economic Crisis Cause Rivalry Termination? Economic crises lead to conciliatory behavior through five primary channels. (1) Economic crises lead to austerity pressures, which in turn incent leaders to search for ways to cut defense expenditures. (2) Economic crises also encourage strategic reassessment, so that leaders can argue to their peers and their publics that defense spending can be arrested without endangering the state. This can lead to threat deflation, where elites attempt to downplay the seriousness of the threat posed by a former rival. (3) If a state faces multiple threats, economic crises provoke elites to consider threat prioritization, a process that is postponed during periods of economic normalcy. (4) Economic crises increase the political and economic benefit from international economic cooperation. Leaders seek foreign aid, enhanced trade, and increased investment from abroad during periods of economic trouble. This search is made easier if tensions are reduced with historic rivals. (5) Finally, during crises, elites are more prone to select leaders who are perceived as capable of resolving economic difficulties, permitting the emergence of leaders who hold heterodox foreign policy views. Collectively, these mechanisms make it much more likely that a leader will prefer conciliatory policies compared to during periods of economic normalcy. This section reviews this causal logic in greater detail, while also providing historical examples that these mechanisms recur in practice.

Posen adds that COVID-19 is also likely to reduce international trade in the short to medium term. Those who believe economic interdependence is a powerful barrier to war might be alarmed by this development, but he points out that trade issues have been a source of considerable friction in recent years—especially between the United States and China—and a degree of decoupling might reduce tensions somewhat and cause the odds of war to recede.

For these reasons, the pandemic itself may be conducive to peace. But what about the relationship between broader economic conditions and the likelihood of war? Might a few leaders still convince themselves that provoking a crisis and going to war could still advance either long-term national interests or their own political fortunes? Are the other paths by which a deep and sustained economic downturn might make serious global conflict more likely?

The mainstream financial media is enamored with the idea that the Federal Reserve, after “heroically rescuing us” from the “home mortgage meltdown” can now engineer a “soft landing.” The media believes that a group of economists sitting comfortably in the Eccles Building in Washington, D.C. can “mastermind” the most important economic signals of all: the price and amount of money. In effect, the financial media—e.g., CNBC’s Steve Liesman and his ilk, but not Rick “Tea Party” Santelli—believes that the Federal Reserve can pull and push its economic "levers" and twist its economic dials like the “man behind the curtain” in the Wizard of Oz. They believe that by pulling levers and twisting dials in just the right combination, interest rates will gradually rise, the Fed’s so-called “quantitative easing” program will slowly unwind, and more than $4 trillion in “out of thin air money” created since 2009 will be “retired”—without triggering a recession. Would that it were true. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve cannot accomplish this feat today. Why is this a certainty? Because never in its 105-year history has the Fed been able to so do, even facing less daunting economic challenges. Indeed, every "tightening" cycle in the Fed’s star-crossed history has been followed by an economic downturn (recession) or even a depression.

Ultimately, increasing military contract prices expands opportunities for contractors to abuse the FFP contract designation, especially without preserving guardrails that prevent price gouging. Contractors knew what they signed up for when they agreed to FFP contracts, but now they expect an industry-wide bailout from Congress without pursuing relief through proper channels. As noted above, the Pentagon has maintained a restrained view on inflation relief, calling for more information from the defense industry to illustrate need. Pentagon acquisition chief LaPlante has underscored the importance of data-informed contract adjustments, stating in September, “I need data about companies that are either potentially going under or not bidding that are affected by inflation. Because we need to inform the Congress, we need to inform the Pentagon. I’m convinced there’s real-world examples of people being hurt … But we need to show the data.” Warren echoed LaPlante’s data requests in her letter to his office, asking several process-oriented and oversight questions regarding any potential inflation-related adjustments to Pentagon contracts. Still, there is no public evidence of businesses requesting inflation relief from the Pentagon. LaPlante’s office has said they will respond to Warren’s letter directly, and the Center for Defense Information (CDI) is keen to discover what information the Pentagon may have shared with her office. CDI has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all records and communications from LaPlante’s office regarding Warren’s letter, with the hope that such documents will unveil industry data and analysis to justify inflation-related contract adjustments. CDI has not yet received a substantive response to our FOIA request, but will update this piece if and when we receive documentation of DOD’s response to Warren’s letter. Until then, we have no reason to believe there’s an actual justification for increasing military contract prices due to inflation. The Pentagon, a member of Congress, and CDI have called on the defense industry to explicitly demonstrate the need for inflation relief on a company level — to no avail.

The defense industry has continually cited inflation to justify more military spending. One group of defense contractors, the National Defense Industrial Association, has justified such requests for inflation relief by claiming the Department of Defense will lose more than $110 billion in buying power from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal year 2023. But the Pentagon has yet to verify that claim, much less publicly advocate for sweeping adjustments to Pentagon contracts because of inflation. On the contrary, Pentagon Defense Pricing and Contracting Principal Director John Tenaglia has instructed contracting officers to limit such adjustments. While industry backed a legislative proposal to increase prices for what are known as firm fixed price (FFP) contracts, Tenaglia issued official guidance in both May and September pointing out that, according to the law, companies with FFP contracts must “bear the risk of cost increases, including those due to inflation.” He clarified that there is no authority to change the price of an existing FFP contract, unless that contract contains a clause authorizing a price adjustment resulting from an economic factor like unexpected inflation.

Today, the Fed’s Dual Mandate is interpreted as an inflation target. The Fed—and other central bankers—seek to keep inflation at 2%. Inflation is defined as the general change in the price of some basket of goods and services. Which goods, which services, and in what quantities are constantly debated. Each market participant and economist has his/her preferred metric, be it the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE), CPI excluding food and energy, core PCE, the price of gold, etc. Importantly, inflation no longer stands for monetary debasement (as there are no monetary standards to debase in fiat currency regimes; more on that here). Thus, inflation is subjective. Its presence, amount, and scope are constantly disputed. What’s not contested is how the Fed achieves its target. It’s widely held that adjusting the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) does the trick. "The orthodoxy guiding policy in the post-WWII era was Keynesian stabilization policy, motivated in large part by the painful memory of the unprecedented high unemployment in the United States and around the world during the 1930s. The focal point of these policies was the management of aggregate spending (demand) by way of the spending and taxation policies of the fiscal authority and the monetary policies of the central bank. The idea that monetary policy can and should be used to manage aggregate spending and stabilize economic activity is still a generally accepted tenet that guides the policies of the Federal Reserve and other central banks today." According to this Keynesian stance, which most academics support, the Fed impacts demand by adjusting the FFR. Raising it can “cool down” an overheated economy while lowering the FFR can stimulate an under-utilized one. Without getting into the details, the theory rests on the Taylor Rule, which links interest rates to levels of aggregate demand. As described below: "The theory …is based on the view that the economy can move above or below a full market-clearing equilibrium in the short run—called a “demand gap.” A positive demand gap means the economy is overheated; a negative demand gap means it is operating below capacity. Other than random shocks, the main disturbance preventing general equilibrium is a deviation of the real interest rate from the natural interest rate. The policy solution is to adjust the nominal fed funds rate to move the real rate to the natural rate. … Instead of using money supply as a policy tool, the Fed follows a Taylor rule in setting the fed funds rate target. To the extent that it can align inflation expectations with its own ultimate inflation target, the Fed is able to get actual inflation in its target range (typically close to a measured 2 percent rate)." This theory drives the Fed. It primarily conducts monetary policy by adjusting the FFR to achieve a 2% inflation rate. The Fed believes that changing the FFR impacts the overall level of demand for goods and services in the United States. According to the law of supply and demand, lower demand should lead to lower prices—on average—and vice versa. It’s a neat little theory. "Well, so, as I mentioned, you can see places where the demand is substantially in excess of supply. And what you’re seeing as a result of that is prices going up and at unsustainable levels, levels that are not consistent with 2 percent inflation. And so what our tools do is that as we raise interest rates, demand moderates: it moves down. Interest rates, you know—businesses will invest a little bit less, consumers will spend a little bit less. That’s how it works. But, ultimately, getting those, getting supply and demand back, you know, back in balance, is what gives us 2 percent inflation, which is what gives the economy a footing where people can lead successful economic lives and not worry about inflation." While orthodoxy today, some economists note that the “empirical evidence for this [theory linking interest rates to demand] is surprisingly weak … .” Interest rates simply don’t impact commercial investment and consumer spending as theorized. Thus, the interest rates-inflation link seems more myth than science. Yet this theory drives monetary policy globally. "The theory is that as interest rates rise, borrowers decide to borrow and spend less. The empirical evidence for this is surprisingly weak, for the most part. Empirical estimates of the elasticity of spending with respect to the interest rate generally show it does not matter much—with the exception of purchases of residential real estate. Low rates probably boost asset markets (including housing), but that does not feed directly into inflation." As an investor closely following individual companies for nearly 20 years, I’ve always found this popular theory bizarre. Prices are not a plaything for academics or central planners. They play a specific and vital role in commerce. By utilizing the language of money, prices mark the value at which items trade. As a result, they facilitate the movement of value from producer to consumer. It should be obvious that prices are not set from the top down. Rather, each business (and individual) engaged in trade meticulously derives them one by one. The goal, however, is not to maximize prices. Businesses seek to maximize profits. Prices are just a means to a business’s end. Profit maximization is not an abstract concept or “something nice to have.” It is a matter of survival. Each business consumes resources in order to create higher-value ones. Every input, from energy, labor, unfinished goods, websites, real estate, and financing, must first be acquired and organized before they can be transformed into output sold to others. Profit measures the value produced in this process. A loss represents a net consumption of resources. Thus, a money-losing entity cannot survive on its own. It consumes more than it produces and ultimately must perish (unless injected with fresh, outside capital). “I have to raise prices when I raise wages. That’s just how it works,” said Herridge, who doesn’t have enough staff to get all of his Burger King locations back to 24-hour operations. “That’s going to be the primary driver of inflation still over the next year or so.” Unsurprisingly, businesses respond to rising input costs by raising prices. Their revenues must keep up. Failure results in hardship and, potentially, catastrophic failure. Look no further than your local gas station. When the price of (crude) oil increases, so does gasoline at the pump. The gas station does not concern itself with a drop in demand (at least initially). It’s focused on survival. The same holds for every item. Gasoline prices are tightly correlated with the price of crude oil from which it’s derived. Contrary to theory, the Fed is forcing businesses to raise prices by hiking the FFR, both directly and indirectly. Higher interest rates lead to higher financing costs which must be paid for with revenue. While not all companies employ debt, all consume capital. Thus, raising the cost of capital impacts all commercial ventures to varying degrees.

Russia’s war with Ukraine. A 40-year high in both the consumer and producer price indexes. A spike in the price of critical raw materials, including nickel, aluminum, copper and lumber. A skyrocketing jump in the price of oil. Supply chain problems. Labor shortages. Excessive government spending. Exploding government debt. A $4 trillion increase in the nation’s money supply. All these factors (and others) are contributing to increased inflation. But am I worried? Not really. And you shouldn’t be either. Change happens. This has happened countless times before. We’ll adjust. Let me explain. I can adjust because, as a small business owner, I can and have increased my prices, as 68 percent of small businesses reportedly have, according to a recent report from the National Federation of Independent Businesses. My customers aren’t thrilled. But it’s not as if they’re not expecting it. That’s because they’re doing the same with their customers. My competitors are doing the same. Big brands are doing the same. It’s a market economy. And the market is shifting. So we shift with it. The economy doesn’t go away when prices go up. Things adjust. People spend differently. But they still spend. “When this happens, I get more rides,” my Uber driver said to me recently. “People would rather take an Uber than spend on gas for their car.” Another option for me, as a business owner, is cutting costs. And I’ll do that too. I’ll get an energy audit from my local utility company and more diligently monitor power usage in my office. I’ll cut back on travel where I can. I’ll buy products in bulk, comb through my overhead, limit discretionary spending and negotiate harder on contracts. And as countless other businesses are doing around the country, I’ll invest in more technologies that will get work done with fewer people. Like a Fortune 1,000 company, I’ll make these adjustments to maintain my profits. This is not hyperinflation, thank goodness. It’s just a good old-fashioned double-digit across the board price increase. The same kind of inflation Americans saw in the 1970s and 1920s and throughout the 19th century, and it’s the same inflation that millions of business owners from ancient Egypt to medieval Florence saw before that. But we’re not Venezuela. We’re the U.S., and the good news is that the U.S. economy is the largest in the world, and with that comes lots of buyers and sellers. People don’t go into caves when prices rise. They still buy and sell. That’s all fine for business owners like me. You may ask: But what if you’re not a business owner? What if you’re an employee or on a fixed income? Should you be worried about inflation? Not really. If you have a job – and I certainly hope you do – you’ll get cost of living increases. Why? Because employers like me don’t want to lose you in these times of tight labor. It’s not that we’re altruistic. It’s just that we understand that if we don’t pay you enough to keep up with inflation, you’ll look elsewhere. So, we will. Even so, you may decide to make a few extra bucks doing a side gig like my Uber driver. If so, then good for you. If you’re unable to work for health or other reasons or if you’re retired or on a fixed income, the government is mandated to pay your social security and Medicare at higher rates as the cost-of-living increases. Assuming you have a good financial adviser, your savings will also grow along with interest rates, which will rise this year. Will this be enough? Probably not. But when is it ever? Hopefully, you’ll do the same as me when it comes to expenses. Maybe you’ll spend less on frivolous things than before. Maybe you’ll wonder why you subscribe to so many streaming services (Is “Inventing Anna” really worth it?) or if it’s necessary to drive a gas-guzzling vehicle in lieu of a hybrid or electric one — or a bike. You’ll pay closer attention to your household expenses, your extracurricular expenditures (Really? A onesie for your Great Dane?) and your taxes. You’ll take more reasonable vacations and cook at home more often. (It’s still much cheaper than eating out, even with rising food prices.) You’ll be fine. You may even be happier. If you’re smart, you’ll also make sure your savings are keeping up with inflation. As I said earlier, as prices rise so will interest rates. That’s good news. You’ll make sure any excess cash is now in a savings account earning interest. You may also decide to (finally) meet with a financial planner and better invest your money like all those rich people always do. You may even invest in mutual funds that carry stock of those Fortune 1,000 companies that will do all of the above in order to keep their shareholders happy. (And they will, trust me, they will.) The media loves to report bad news, so you’ll inevitably read about the losers during this inflationary era. But there will be winners too. There will be people who profited and suffered thanks to the great and terrible decisions they made. There will be people who took unnecessary risks that paid off or didn’t. There will be people who were smart and people who were lazy and dumb. But those will be the exceptions, not the norm. Most of us will be paying more for the things we want, but we’ll be receiving more income too. It’s all relative. It’s just an adjustment. The price of a gallon of gas in 1950 was $0.27. So, whether you’re a business owner like me or not, please don’t worry so much about inflation. I’m not. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. Let’s just make sure that we’re smart about how we’re managing our money, that we’re paying attention to the economy and we’re watching our pennies. But then again, shouldn’t we always be doing that?