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    El orden y el creorden como expresión de “El capital como poder” en la perspectiva de Bichler y Nitzan
    (2025) Miranda Valdivia, Elfer G.; Miranda Lozano, Froylán E.
    RESUMEN. Los autores exploran la teoría de El capital como poder de los economistas Bichler y Nitzan, que redefine el capital como institución central del capitalismo al cuantificar el poder mediante la capitalización y acumulación diferenciales. Con base en sus postulados: a) critican las visiones neoclásica y marxista, vía la introducción de conceptos como el holograma social, la resonancia y la disonancia, para explicar la lógica totalizante del poder capitalista; b) describen el “creorden” como proceso de reconfiguración social impulsado por las élites y el sabotaje estratégico como mecanismo de limitación de la industria; y c) analizan el rol del Estado en el nomos capitalista y las nuevas “envolturas” de acumulación en situaciones de crisis. Como notas crítico-bibliográficas, además del valor de esta contribución, destacan lagunas en la propuesta original e insisten en integrar un análisis monetario e histórico más pormenorizado para enriquecer sus aproximaciones. ABSTRACT. The authors explore Bichler and Nitzan’s Capital as Power theory, which redefines capital as capitalism’s central institution by quantifying power through differential capitalization and accumulation. Based on their framework, they: a) critique Neoclassical and Marxist approaches by introducing concepts like social hologram, resonance, and dissonance to explain capitalism’s totalizing logic; b) describe “creorder” as elite-driven social reconfiguration and strategic sabotage as industrial limitation mechanisms; and c) analyze the state’s role in capitalist nomos and new accumulation “wrappings” during crises. As critical-bibliographic notes, while recognizing this contribution’s value, they highlight gaps in the original proposal and emphasize the need for more detailed monetary and historical analysis to enrich these theoretical approaches.
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    Roger Pielke Jr.’s Appallingly Bad Analysis of Billion Dollar Disasters
    (2025) Fix, Blair
    In the world of scientific disinformation, Roger Pielke Jr. is a well known player. A political scientist by training, Pielke has a long history of being a thorn in the side of climatologists who study natural disasters. Pielke’s latest entry in this genre is a 2024 paper called ‘Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”’. The paper takes aim at the ‘billion-dollar disasters’ dataset run by climatologists at the NOAA. As the name suggests, the database tracks the cost of US weather and climate-related disasters which have inflation-adjusted losses that exceed $1 billion. (Or rather, the database tracked these costs. The billion-dollar-disasters database was recently cancelled by the Trump regime. Afterwards, Pielke took to his blog to celebrate.) Now, my goal here is not to defend the billion-dollar-disasters dataset from Pielke’s criticism. Instead, my aim is to show that Pielke’s analysis is so flawed that it undermines his own appeal ‘scientific integrity’. For his part, Pielke claims that putting climatologists in charge of disaster loss estimation is ‘problematic’, and that the job would be better left to ‘proper economists’. Furthermore, Pielke argues that the billion-dollar-disasters dataset is so faulty that it violates the NOAA’s own standards on ‘scientific integrity’. Yet while Pielke sits on this high horse, he manages to so horribly botch his own analysis that one wonders if he is unintentionally writing satire. In what follows, I’ll spend a whole essay unpacking and debunking a single chart. Figure 1 shows Pielke’s published analysis of the billion-dollar-disasters dataset. The graph seems to show a steady decline in average disaster costs as a share of US GDP. The implicit message is that when climatologists warn about worsening natural disasters, they’re overreacting. If anything, economic growth seems to be making disaster costs more trivial. Or so Pielke claims.
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    Insights from the Lotka-Volterra Model
    (2025) Fix, Blair
    In science, there’s an inherent trade off between comprehensibility and realism. Realistic models tend to be intricate … even convoluted. But to be comprehensible, a model must be simple. For a good example of this trade off, look to high-school physics. In the real world, we know that projectiles are affected by aerodynamics. (That’s why frisbees fly differently than baseballs.) But since aerodynamics are complicated, high school teachers ignore them. Instead, they teach students that earthbound projectiles behave as they would on the moon — blissfully unaffected by air drag. This simplification is a lie, of course. But it’s useful for teaching students about the essence of Newton’s equations. Science is filled with this sort of simplification. We learn about the world by developing toy models — models which simplify reality, yet retain (we hope) an element of truth. In economics, there’s no shortage of toy models. But most of these playthings belong in the landfill; they’re models that assume away the most pertinent features of the real world. (For example, neoclassical economic models capitalism by assuming ‘perfect competition’, whereas the real world is marked by pernicious oligarchy.) In short, if we want simple models that capture key elements of human behavior, it’s best to leave mainstream economics behind. Instead, a good place to start is with population biology — specifically the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey dynamics. Like projectile motion that neglects aerodynamics, the Lotka-Volterra equations are a toy model of how predator and prey populations respond to each other. In a sense, it’s the simplest ‘systems model’ that still provides useful insights about the real world.
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    Neurodiversity Planning and Accommodation: The Responsibilities of Urban Planners
    (2025-12-15) Switzer, Samuel; Taylor, Laura
    One of the key questions in modern planning corresponds to what the responsibilities are for planners. Are planners responsible for accommodating for the neurodiverse in the built form? In this paper, I aim to answer this question with extensive research into neurodiversity, its interactions with the built form, and how they can be accommodated for. I will express this through the use of walkabout interviews with neurodivergent participants regarding how their neurodiversity is influenced by the built form, as well as an interview with a planning professional regarding the existing state of accessibility in planning practice. From these interviews, I will compare them together, and contrast it with additional research into neurodiversity and planning as a means of exploring the connection between neurodiversity and the built form, and ultimately exploring different methods for how the neurodiverse can be accommodated. Finally, I hope to encourage the incorporation of Neurodiversity Planning into the broader planning world, as a key driver behind developments moving forward.
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    Contesting Land and Power: Colonialism, Capitalism,and Resistance at Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek
    (2025-12-16) Foster, Erin; Kipfer, Stefan
    Protests at Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek started with a small group of activists and quickly grew to become a large movement that included direct action at multiple sites on the West Coast of Vancouver Island as well as a large online following that spanned across the country and to other parts of the world. The actions taken to stop logging at Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek by protesters and the various responses to those actions have raised many questions about decision making in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasing numbers of old-growth-forest-dependent species at risk. It has also drawn attention to crown-industry-Indigenous relations and to questions about land including title rights, jurisdiction, and responsibilities to the land and to each other on both unceded and treaty land in British Columbia. Marxist state theories, theories of colonialism and racial capitalism help explain different facets of these interrelated questions, all of which can be tied to colonialism and the resulting ongoing quest for control over land, the goal of extinguishing Indigenous peoples either through assimilation or genocide, the expansion of colonial capitalist system, as well as the ongoing resistance to these systems and relations. Scholarship has noted that current realities cannot be isolated from their histories and that to both understand current events and enact change one must understand past actions and the traces these have left. Situating the Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek case in economic, social, and environmental context and in a British Columbia influenced by colonialism, capitalism, and climate change, this paper examines the historical preconditions for the controversy at Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek and how these conditions remain reflected in current events and conversations that have taken place during the protests.