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American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

economist.com

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Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#71

Post by sevenzero »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
abuob wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're genuinely curious, a few suggestions that I personally found incredibly enlightening: Anand Giridhardas, Winners Take All: The book is fantastic, there's also his now infamous google talk where he talks about dismantling google: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century: Probably the most comprehensive (but at times also longwinded) outline on how wealth inequalit…

How about a summary of Piketty's argument? We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?

[flagged]

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#72

Post by WalterBright »

wvenable wrote: post #49
WalterBright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> How does creating wealth hurt others? Creating wealth doesn't. Extracting wealth does. We have long switched from a creating economy to an extracting economy.

[flagged]

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#73

Post by srean »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
abuob wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're genuinely curious, a few suggestions that I personally found incredibly enlightening: Anand Giridhardas, Winners Take All: The book is fantastic, there's also his now infamous google talk where he talks about dismantling google: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century: Probably the most comprehensive (but at times also longwinded) outline on how wealth inequalit…

How about a summary of Piketty's argument? We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?

Let me address the second part.

If we define wealth as it's often used colloquially -- the amount of liquid cash one has -- then your potential share of the pie of goods and services shrinks. This is true unless the pie itself grows proportionately.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with parent comment, the rate of growth of the pie certainly does not feel like it is growing as fast as accumulation of nominal wealth of some.

Historically one usually amassed monetary wealth in exchange of providing goods and services. Stock markets, high frequency arbitrage markets have broken this. Yes there is liquidity insertion, but is that liquidity worth so much ? At microsecond scale ? I don't think so.

Stock market let's one encash a perception of promised future delivery of goods and services without the need to actually deliver it. Yes the market will eventually, hopefully, price it correctly, but by then some other retail sucker is holding that bag.

When people complain about others getting disproportionately wealthy they are talking about the shrinking share of the pie.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#74

Post by shric »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
abuob wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're genuinely curious, a few suggestions that I personally found incredibly enlightening: Anand Giridhardas, Winners Take All: The book is fantastic, there's also his now infamous google talk where he talks about dismantling google: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century: Probably the most comprehensive (but at times also longwinded) outline on how wealth inequalit…

How about a summary of Piketty's argument? We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?

Walter, I believe the idea against wealth inequality is not purely that there are wealthier people but that their wealth should be redistributed such that the wealthier people are less wealthy (but still wealthier) and the poorer people are less poor (but still poorer).

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#75

Post by thyrsus »

anon291 wrote: post #50

America is a communist nation since the majority of the populace holds the majority of the productive capacity in joint ownership

That claim needs explanation. My understanding is that substantially less than 20% hold the controlling ownership of U.S. productive capacity.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#76

Post by Retric »

avidiax wrote: post #52
Stitch4223 wrote: post #8

> Perhaps the danger is not 2008, 1999, 1973 or even 1873, but 1789. 1789 was the year of the French Revolution [1]. The rest are years with financial crises. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

The French Revolution is no longer possible. The surveillance state plus wealth mobility means the wealthy will be in New Zealand before anyone erects a guillotine, and the people that would foment a revolution are heavily surveilled and infiltrated.

New Zealand is zero defense vs a large populist uprising, especially one taking place in New Zealand.

That’s the thing social structures like money and nations only mean something when the masses decide they mean something. Billionaires only get a vote by convincing other people what to believe.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#77

Post by thothless »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
abuob wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're genuinely curious, a few suggestions that I personally found incredibly enlightening: Anand Giridhardas, Winners Take All: The book is fantastic, there's also his now infamous google talk where he talks about dismantling google: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century: Probably the most comprehensive (but at times also longwinded) outline on how wealth inequalit…

How about a summary of Piketty's argument? We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?

your first question was better.

"how does creating wealth hurt others?"

most of this "wealth" is not "created" out of thin air. nor created at all.

more like, transferred.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#78

Post by achierius »

anon291 wrote: post #59

No ones labor is worthless. Guys this is so retarded but I understand why tech people find this difficult. Humanity runs off of romance. This is not sexual romantic love but rather the thrill of other human people. An AI cannot provide this. This interaction has value. Technology frees us from having to deal with the mundane so we can deal with the exemplary. Just go to a poorer country and see that it is not possibl…

Why are there homeless people then?

Capital doesn't care about whether your work is "inherently valuable". That you think poor countries are somehow fundamentally different in this regard, exposed to the downsides of the market in a way that we here are not, is a defect of imagination.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#79

Post by ai_fry_ur_brain »

matrix87 wrote: post #25

I'm kind of confused. It's not clear to me how or why the line keeps going up. People are spending less because of economic insecurity, everything is more expensive because of tariffs and war, interest rates have been high for four years. The general cultural mood feels unsustainable. Like the peak-woke period around 2022 before the pendulum swung really hard in the opposite direction. I don't know if there's a word…

We've (tech workers) been in the labor aristocracy for the last 15 years ignoring the plights of the rest of labor. We kind of have it coming.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#80

Post by maxdo »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #47
maxdo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just named symptoms not cause. 1. People vote for old idiots . 2. Local politics is all about milking any potential work with permits. Sky rocket housing due to that . 3. American lost engineering culture everywhere except software . Now software is dead as industry we used to know

> American lost engineering culture everywhere except software microprocessor design : Apple Silicon and lately Intel Panther Lake and later?

Both companies created in the previous century and running on old fuel of past success
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