Economies, Power, and Systems That Make Harm Profitable

This is part 2 of my conversation with Guillaume.

If violence is not a distortion of economic life but one of its foundations, what does that mean for markets, governance, and political power? In the second part of the conversation with Guillaume Soto-Mayor, we sharpen our focus on the arguments and case studies explored in his book, The Economies of Violence.

We examine how violence creates value, sustains competitiveness, and infiltrates systems often considered legitimate, from labor markets and financial systems to development aid and democratic institutions. Along the way, we confront a difficult but necessary question: how can societies reclaim power and authority without reproducing the very violence they seek to overcome?

In this episode, we explore:

• 00:00:00 — Violence as a foundation of economic life00:04:45 — Legal vs illegal economies: a false separation00:11:25 — How GDP calculations absorb illicit economies00:17:55 — Prison labor and undocumented labor as competitiveness drivers00:26:35 — Organized crime in waste management, construction, and finance00:35:25 — Coercive supply chains in the fast fashion industry00:42:45 — Corruption as a central mechanism of structural violence00:50:25 — Algorithmic “prisons” and violence in the digital realm00:58:35 — Why mass social movements demanding justice so often fail01:06:55 — Reclaiming power and authority as contracts of responsibility01:14:45 — Building shared spaces for non-violent authority

  Links and resources:

  • The Economies of Violence: The Forgotten Variable — Guillaume Soto-Mayorhttps://brill.com/display/title/70924

  • Le Capitalisme de l’apocalypse (and other works) — Quinn Slobodianhttps://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/le-capitalisme-de-l-apocalypse-quinn-slobodian/9782021451405

  • Sand Talk — Tyson Yunkaportahttps://birchbarkbooks.com/products/sand-talk