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The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

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Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#121

Post by pixl97 »

xyzelement wrote: post #74
glogla wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I succeeded - I have a condo, summer house and drive a damned Jaguar. I just have empathy with people who don't, because they weren't lucky, like me. I'm not going to go tell people "do it! go buy more lottery tickets! don't give up! you will get there eventually" because I won the lottery.

Would you tell people "acquire valuable skills, seek to sell them to quality employers or start your own business delivering tangible value"?

Seek valuable skills... oops, sorry I just invented an AI that replaces those skills. Too bad about that loan you took out on a house.

Value is not a given unless you get big enough to lobby for rent seeking.

For the rest of us it's a lottery.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#122

Post by [deleted] »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #115
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either that, or they're history buffs. What precipitates the redistribution of wealth, historically? Some kind of gigantic disaster -- war, famine, plague, social collapse. You're mistaking redistribution for destruction... Sure, things are technically more equal if everyone becomes homeless. But there wasn't really a redistribution...

>You're mistaking redistribution for destruction... No, you are. With respect, you should consider reading some history. Try reading about the conditions of the peasantry after the black plague, or postwar Europe, or even the various falls of the various iterations of Rome. Fire destroys the previous order, yes, but it also sows the seeds for growth. But fire bad! Yes, yes, I know; but this forest isn't the only fore…

[deleted]

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#123

Post by xyzelement »

hotpotamus wrote: post #106
xyzelement wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because it still doesn't serve you. Some people still strived for better lives, just with much lower return on investment. And then get the fuck out to the West when you can.

And how did you measure who had the best life in such a system?

Easy comparison:

Level 1: dead from alcoholism before 40. Level 2: share a "communal apartment" with 3 other families. Level 3: work your way into being able to bribe someone to expedite your own apartment to only a 20 year wait. Still suffer shortages of food and basics, no hot water. Level 4: emigrate to the West and exceed all that within 5 years, even though you started from zero

Very easily measurement

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#124

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #115
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either that, or they're history buffs. What precipitates the redistribution of wealth, historically? Some kind of gigantic disaster -- war, famine, plague, social collapse. You're mistaking redistribution for destruction... Sure, things are technically more equal if everyone becomes homeless. But there wasn't really a redistribution...

>You're mistaking redistribution for destruction... No, you are. With respect, you should consider reading some history. Try reading about the conditions of the peasantry after the black plague, or postwar Europe, or even the various falls of the various iterations of Rome. Fire destroys the previous order, yes, but it also sows the seeds for growth. But fire bad! Yes, yes, I know; but this forest isn't the only fore…

> Fire destroys the previous order, yes, but it also sows the seeds for growth.

You're ignoring base effects.

Of course peasants are going to "prosper" (on paper) if agriculture goes from 1% of the economy to 100%.

And, again, this isn't a "wealth redistribution". You've taken out 99% of the economy and left the remaining 1% in tact. It didn't grow. But it did grow relative to the rest that was destroyed.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#125

Post by hotpotamus »

xyzelement wrote: post #123
hotpotamus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how did you measure who had the best life in such a system?

Easy comparison: Level 1: dead from alcoholism before 40. Level 2: share a "communal apartment" with 3 other families. Level 3: work your way into being able to bribe someone to expedite your own apartment to only a 20 year wait. Still suffer shortages of food and basics, no hot water. Level 4: emigrate to the West and exceed all that within 5 years, even though you started from zero Very easily measurement

I'm inclined to wonder why they needed communal apartments. I assume because there weren't enough to go around to supply everyone with one. Interestingly, it would seem that we also lack supply in the modern US, but our solution is just to kick people out on the street.

It sounds like lifespan and ability to obtain independent living arrangements factor heavily into your KPIs, and it's interesting then that both seem to be in decline in the US.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#126

Post by importantbrian »

college_physics wrote: post #80
RandomLensman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith has morality baked into his works pretty solidly. Not sure I would see that decoupling as classic economic thinking.

Agree... I think I would put Adam Smith in the paleoclassical bucket as distinct from the neoclassical one.

The problem is terms like neoclassical already have established meaning in the field of economics, so it's probably best to use those terms in order to avoid confusion. Adam Smith is pretty much the father of classical economics, and most of the classical economists were doing works of political economy. The vast majority of them are very much concerned with the morality of the systems they advocate for. Neoclassical economics is most of the mainstream economists that come after Keynes up until the stagflation in the 70s. Now we have new classical economics, new Keynesian economics, and the new neoclassical synthesis. It gets pretty messy, but I'm not sure adding new terminology that has different meaning to the established terminology is particularly helpful.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#127

Post by revolvingocelot »

gizmo686 wrote: post #101
revolvingocelot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either that, or they're history buffs. What precipitates the redistribution of wealth, historically? Some kind of gigantic disaster -- war, famine, plague, social collapse. There's never been a time when the oligarchs/monarchy/landed-gentry just calmly gave up their temporal power after listening to reasoned socioeconomic arguments. It's always been some sort of calamity. You might find that those idiots are indeed a…

Controlled burns are part of modern forestry, for exactly the reasons you describe. As recent years show, the central banks are willing to cause ecenomic downturns to promote long term health. See most central banks increasing rates in response to inflation. It is worth noting that, in (oversimplified) MMT, inflation is the downside of over supporting the economy, and the signal to pull back. This past cycle has been…

Well, no. Controlled burns were suppressed for decades on end [0]. It's one of the reasons for the absolutely unforgettable fires (cf. "gigafire"[1]) various places on Earth have been experiencing for the past few years straight. "Modern forestry" is getting its act together, slowly, but I don't think it's particularly controversial to suggest that the historical prevent-fires-at-all-costs thing is because of a reflexive, unexamined "fire bad" -- nor to notice that the historical thing was prevent-fires-at-all-costs.

Maybe I'm an economic illiterate, but I think saying that "most central banks [have been] increasing rates in response to inflation" is something similar. It seems to me that, if the actual intent was to combat inflation, the rates' rise would have to be a little more aggressive than it's been.

If one understands "modern forestry" to have been mostly about a reflexive, individualistic "fire bad", then the seemingly-irrational departure from the thoughtful Native controlled-burn-style management makes sense. If one understands "MMT", or maybe just "neoliberalism", as a fig-leaf to cover whatever economic activity and behaviour and model-making is most profitable to the players of the modern Great Game, then the ways and means of "governmental" "macroeconomic" activity make sense, too.

Put another way, from the perspective of an adherent of steady-state economics, the "business cycle" looks like the wobble of a wheel spinning out of true. What is a wheel for?

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Complex_fire

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#128

Post by badpun »

WJW wrote: post #53
badpun wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a billionaire, you could inject billions into research on your specific condition and have reasonable expectation that something will come out of it within your lifetime.

Can you though? It's not as if (say) cancer or Alzheimer don't already receive billions in funding but a definitive cure seems as far away as ever. Not all problems can be solved with money, and even those that can be solved with money sometimes need a lot more than billions.

Cancer is way better than it was 50 years ago. It used to be mostly a death sentence, now many people live decades after diagnosis.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#129

Post by badpun »

danuker wrote: post #65
badpun wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It as always like that, so it doesn’t explain why more people want to see the world burn now.

In the 60s you could buy a median home with 2.1x the median income. In 2019, the ratio is 3.5x. https://themreport.com/news/data/02-02-2021/pressing-housing...

Median house in the 60s is not the same as median house in 2022. You could probably buy a median house from the 60s (i.e. 1000 sqft, no air condition, in a polluted area (this was pre-EPA time, so almost everywhere was polluted) etc.) right now for way below current median.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#130

Post by nerdponx »

tristor wrote: post #117
nerdponx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Younger generations are offsetting this with their own retirement savings. I've seen it argued that millennials are under-saving compared to their parents, but I remember seeing some data recently that contradicted this assertion. I would not be surprised if it were less evenly-distributed across the economy than prior generations. I don't think we are going to see net outflow from the stock market, maybe just a decr…

> Younger generations are offsetting this with their own retirement savings. Sounds like a Ponzi scheme, just like Social Security and pensions.

Does it? Is a lake with an inflow river and an outflow river a Ponzi lake?
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