We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

If the purpose of the co-op is to ensure that profits go to the workers and not to company owners/investors, then either you plan to fail at that purpose or you're not interesting to the investors. If the lion's share of the operating profits would go to the investors, it's no better than Uber, if the lion's share of the operating profits would go to the drivers, then what's the motivation to invest?

I did grocery delivery for a while, and I agree that 'alienating' was a great term for it. Yeah, it was 'flexible', but I was doing it for money, so I ended up on a lot of 12AM-2AM runs for college students who wanted booze, since payouts were based on a.) how many drivers there were and b.) the cost of the order and booze meant more $$$$.

We talk about these things like they are separate closed systems when they are not.

It is an innovation and banking problem. There are all kinds of feedback loops involved.

The ridiculous amount of liquidity in the global system changes and distorts risk preferences.

It also creates these giant sinks of brain power that are just moving money around. We have had amazing innovation the past twenty years in electronic markets, hedge funds, venture capital firms, cryptocurrency. Think of how much brain power is being wasted just modeling capital structures instead of something actually innovating because there is so much capital moving around that needs to be modeled.

How much brain power is being wasted at hedge funds? I have read hedge fund manager Jim Simons say he thinks he has the best research department in the world inside his hedge fund. It is not that much different than dedicating the best research department in the world to playing better poker. It is an utter waste of resources and we see it all around us with the complete lack of innovation.

It's the individuals who invent the things that are truly the most worthwhile, and the small groups surrounding them who bring more prototypes into reality. The kinds of new things that can become universally desirable without so much actually needing to disrupt anything old or established.

The capitalists might still be able to offer the best leverage to approach universality, but 50 years ago their currency was drastically debased like everyone else up and down the food chain.

These are losses that have never been recovered, but it still left the surviving capitalists in much stronger financial control relative to everyone else. Millions more citizens of a quite smaller country were pushed downward into more survival-type activities in place of the structure which had allowed the benefits of increased productivity to trickle down. There was great pressure to reverse the flow of that wealth trickle, which eventually prevailed and grew exponentially, it became more & more of a "consumer economy", trickling up. Until the vast majority of individuals' generational resources that could be allocated to innovation have been tapped out along with all kinds of other stores of wealth which is the only way a recovery at the top could be expected possible in the fewest decades.

Capitalism is not the problem when it benevolently leverages innovation, the damage is done when it leverages greed. It does not have to be ugly if you can truly afford better, and have the conviction to carry it out.

But the more financial control and resources you have access to the more money you can always make doing carefully crafted financial deals involving existing wealth, most people in that position are less likely to accept something new anyway.

So you really need inspirational amounts of resources to permeate much deeper into the population because you need so many millions more people empowered to work more innovatively if they so choose, because that's where you find the potential to turn "nothing" into something to begin with. Very few will actually make the absolutely incredible breakthroughs, so you need millions to whom it is just plain more within reach.

Probably about like when a single-income semi-skilled paycheck could still support a homeowning or suburban family lifestyle. Even if it's not the suburban-living crowd you expect to be doing the innovating. Sheesh, that's about 50 years behind us too isn't it?

When Wells Fargo is sitting on kilos of gold, there's always going to be people who are so impressed that they can see no value in anything else. Especially not turning nothing into something, when there is so much wealth already accumulated there to desire or get their hands on in some much more expedient way. Even more so when almost nobody has any gold at all unless Wells Fargo shows up and puts some on the table. If there was ever really enough to go around, why you wouldn't need Wells Fargo at all anymore.

again, in the nyc market, it was fine, if not very good.

most drivers i spoke to seemed to like the medallions as they offered some long term investment potential and a sort of seniority reward. there was of course big capital at play, but drivers could have complained to the tlc... what can they do now? file a support ticket?