Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a coalition of monarchies, so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule, that began the bloodshed and invaded France. Blaming the Revolution for the Coalition wars is just bad history. In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution - you're surprised that the systems of govt honour a…
> In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution “Fundamentally inherent from” is such a broad statement that it’s difficult to argue with, but the US constitution predates the French Revolution. > so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule If the monarchies of Europe were so terrified of…
American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
271–280 of 360 posts
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know someone who has called it “The Ecommunist” for 20 years, so not everybody has the opinion that is is prestigious, but some see it as elitist.
Calling the Economist anything resembling "leftist" is emblematic of the psychosis in the system. The Economist is what the Wall Street Journal was before Murdoch bought it: Focused on encouraging long term thinking, gains, and wisdom, while reporting on the short term trends. The Economist is the absolute embodiment of the old man and the kid joke from the Sopranos: The investor: "Hey dad, let's run down this hill a…
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's money and not wealth and its a flow not stock and denominated in something that can depreciate, has it even been priced correctly ? I grant you that it is very hard to measure ownership of (wealth generating) assets, hidden behind legal obfuscations. Lorenz curve [0], GEI [1], Gini index of owned wealth generating assets would be the right thing to measure to see how understand one's share of the pie. But an e…
My bad, wrong chart (it's in real terms though) Here is net wealth increasing for all, let's celebrate: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1962-_Net_personal_w... My point is that the pie is growing and all are benefitting. Yes, rich may be getting more but not at the expense of poorer people as their wealth is increasing too. It's rather unfortunate but it seems that the pies grows fastest (and poor benefit fro…
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well, because obviously the finish line of the space race was the Moon. So, this choice is not super obvious to me. If it was called the moon race or whatever, I'd get it. But in this case it just feels like making up rules after the fact to make sure you "win". EDIT: I just realized you might be saying this sarcastically. I'm really bad at picking up on that sort of stuff, and apologize if that's the case.
it got silly when you wrote "first woman"
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money is being created. Land and other resources are not, hence they end up being concentrated in the hands of the super rich.
> Land and other resources are not Actually, they are being created. For example, people create more land in cities by building towers.
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#276Fascism needs existential threats. Nobody in their sane mind will accept their hateful ideology if they were not desperate, and in panic. > A millenarian economy is necessarily a paranoid one. The economy does not need to be paranoid, it becomes paranoid with inequality increases the stakes on everything, when you can be obscenely rich or depressingly poor and there is no in between. That makes reasonable people para…
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Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#277I'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…
>It's not clear to me how or why the line keeps going up Because people believe it will go up, it's a prediction market for attention. The stock market seems to have decoupled from underlying "real value" of a company and is closer to cryptocoins now. Of course the flipside is that you also have the same volatility of cryptocoins.
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#278"much of wall street is in a fatalistic mood" yeah the SPY is going vertical, sure sure.
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
But our bridges and infrastructure are crumbling
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How about another explanation. Your government is totally opposed to helping citizens for “free” (let’s ignore that most government revenue comes from good ol’ taxpayers) when the alternative is to farm out the provision of expensive services to lobbying corporates.
They’re more than happy to punish people however. For free _and_ for corporate profit.
Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, because obviously the finish line of the space race was the Moon. Had the Soviets declared the line on the "first woman in space", now we probably would use Soviet GPS, we would use Soviet maps of planet surfaces, we would have Soviet Mars rovers, Soviet Voyager... You get the idea.
> Well, because obviously the finish line of the space race was the Moon. So, this choice is not super obvious to me. If it was called the moon race or whatever, I'd get it. But in this case it just feels like making up rules after the fact to make sure you "win". EDIT: I just realized you might be saying this sarcastically. I'm really bad at picking up on that sort of stuff, and apologize if that's the case.
No need to apologize. In any case, I should apologize for hiding my point behind sarcasm.
/s