MHP Books

You can only bring down costs and combat things like hospital consolidations through a single payer system and dismantling private insurance (i.e. Bernie or Jayapal’s bills), so none of the “compromises” proposed by other candidates will do anything too meaningful. If you want a good breakdown on why, I recommend Tim Faust’s new book: https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/health-justice-now/ https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-death-panel/e/63311382

To anyone wondering what debt "means", or if some debts will ever be repaid, or wondering about "jubilees" where debts are forgiven, I recommend David Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5000 Years". I am not sure if some of the ideas about debt that Graeber argues are correct, but he does discuss a lot of interesting examples of debt from societies throughout history. https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/debt/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

The pre-internet version of this is Steve Albini's "The problem with music" which shows how major labels can end up costing bands quite a bit of money. Originally printed in Maximum Rock 'N Roll in 1993, but reproduced here on Negativland's site: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 It's worth the read if only for the amazing end line: "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked." Apparently, he'll be updating it for the digital age soon based this article from January: http://www.mhpbooks.com/steve-albini-to-update-the-problem-with-music/

Interestingly, Hemingway was famous for doing this. > When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and is it is cool and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have writ- ten and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and you may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can hap- pen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through. via https://www.mhpbooks.com/excerpt-ernest-hemingways-last-interview/

Discussion here: https://www.mhpbooks.com/did-everyone-get-the-first-line-of-beowulf-wr… Interesting, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h9TNfd9BCE, hwaet sounds like "WAT!"

Habeas Data, by Cyrus Farivar. Examines the history of privacy-related law in the USA - hard to put down once you start reading. https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/habeas-data/

https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/the-right-way-to-do-wrong/ By Harry Houdini

For anyone interested, there is literally no evidence that any society anywhere, ever, switched to using money because using barter was so onerous. [0] On an island like this one the inhabitants would inevitably create a system based on mutual aid and ongoing negotiation of responsibilities to one another. While this is a fun article, to me it exposes how cryptocurrencies are primarily useful as a value store and a means of speculation rather than a solution to actual human-scale problems. [0] From "Debt: The First 5000 Years," by David Graeber https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/debt/

If you ever wondered how to sharpen a pencil? https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/how-to-sharpen-pencils/

If you’re interested in the topic you might want to have a go over it once more. The author [0] is a leading North Korea watcher, most famous for his 2010 book, “The Cleanest Race”. [1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reynolds_Myers [1] https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/the-cleanest-race/

The book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" (https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/debt/) makes a compelling case that no societies on record have depended on a barter economy. The author also argues that debt even predates state sponsored currency.

The closest I can see to someone asserting they do is https://www.mhpbooks.com/is-amazon-one-of-the-companies-working-with-t… But the thrust of that article is more suspicion that Amazon is not mentioned in the leaks and questioning the reliability of the company's word. It does cite one source, described in the article as non-mainstream, which asserts that Amazon was a part of PRISM, but that source fails to cite any leak. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40822.html Edit: I should mention that the first article casting doubt on Amazon's reliability is published by an independent publishing company, historically an industry that has been at odds with Amazon and harmed by its business practices.

It's less than a year old (launched April 8 2015), which could explain why you've only recently seen it: http://www.mhpbooks.com/grove-atlantic-launches-lithub-com/

Context: http://www.mhpbooks.com/petition-for-a-historical-marker-at-isaac-asim…

For easy reference, Amazon's full statement is here: http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_fp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UT… Amazon made a similar offer to Macmillan several years ago, and in fact authors did end up being paid an "outage adjustment" as a result: http://www.mhpbooks.com/amazon-macmillan-pay-authors-for-books-that-we…

If you're interested about the kind of harm Amazon can potentially do to the publishing ecosystem (or good, depending on your position), than definitely check out the Melville House Publisher's blog. They've famously fought Amazon numerous times over their terms and write frequently about Amazon issues. http://www.mhpbooks.com/archive/

Aside from the obvious errors the publishers made, it's EXTREMELY SENSIBLE to see Amazon going 'we're going to sell your books at $10 but pay you like they were $16' and respond with 'what's the trick?' Obviously, if you're doing something like that, there's some sort of upside for you. What's the upside? Is it... just speculating here... pushing literally every other serious bookseller out of the market by selling things at a loss, attaining near-monopoly status, and acquiring the ability to make publishers do whatever you want so you can crank your revenues up? Of course, even if Amazon were doing something like that (how implausible! :-) ), the publishers weren't going to put a stop to it with the kind of antics they got up to... There are already examples of how bad Amazon's pricing and fees are in areas where they have little competition - for example, the cost to deliver ebook downloads to users. For example: In Japan, ebook download pricing is extremely low (in no small part due to manga). If it wasn't, nobody would sell their ebooks on amazon.co.jp, because they'd get utterly suffocated by the download fees. In every other country, the download fees are dramatically higher than those in japan. So much higher that it in fact drives independent authors to leave out illustrations and carefully optimize their PDF files to reduce costs. You can see http://www.mhpbooks.com/what-does-it-cost-to-deliver-an-ebook/ for an old article on the subject, but you can check the…

> Today, with agency pricing, the average price of an ebook is around $8. Hasn't that benefited consumers? Thanks to the settlement, Amazon can now [again] charge what it would like and the result was an immediate drop for titles by publishers that settled. Consumers were hurt by Apple and have benefited from the DOJ's case against Apple's business practices. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/80961.html > The settlement approved Thursday requires the publishers not only to kill their contracts with Apple within a week but also to end contracts with any e-book retailers that specifically place restrictions on a retailer’s ability to set prices on e-books. And the settlement also bars the publishers from granting a retailer “most favored nation” status for five years. And: http://www.mhpbooks.com/amazon-begins-discounting-macmillan-ebooks-pen…