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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

#351

Post by gamerslexus »

fragmede wrote: post #328
gamerslexus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of true: > ... federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists. > This new effort follows President Donald Trump's National Security Presidential Memo 7, which instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and "anti-capitalism” beliefs. https://www.wired.com/sto…

It's laundered through data brokers and 3rd parties, but with ICE subpoenaing reddit et Al for people that shit post about ICE online, do you really think we're that far off? Especially if the person shit posting is in the US on a visa?

I know what you mean, just saying relative to French revolution, they not only had no such surveillance tech but also no such tech for organizing protests and stuff. Which one tops which in US?

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#352

Post by saulapremium »

crossbody wrote: post #320
saulapremium wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk donated a lot of money and among many other things, his companies avoided investigations. The fact that neither Trump or Putin have any loyalty doesn't negate the fact that money buys you tremendous power.

It doesn't negate the influence gain, however the Putin and Trump examples show that this influence is often (very) limited and short lived, not "tremendous"

Elon Musk, by his own words, would be in prison if the Democrats had won. It seems to me that he got exactly what he wanted.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#353

Post by polotics »

xp84 wrote: post #335
polotics wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reference needed

https://www.yahoo.com/news/taxpayers-fund-trans-surgery-inma... Hope this helps.

Sure, untreated mental illness is a tragedy, and humanity sucks balls at biology, so hard it's as if we wished to be made of silicon. How does this make for a trend or justify the idea that the WEIRD's least-harm decisions explain broader resources allocation in real monetary terms. We're talking about the price of how much concrete pouring in the sad story you linked? (WEIRD: Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic, indeed a dying breed)

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#354

Post by tadfisher »

eduction wrote: post #38
tadfisher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not at all dense. It’s axiomatic that as societal wealth increases so does the potential for wealth inequality, and in a capitalist system it is a given that inequality will also actually increase. Perfectly reasonable to debate if there is too much wealth inequality but just hand waving at its mere existence doesn’t add anything to the discussion. The person you’re replying to was calling this out. Ironically, you’r…

I had assumed the parent was ragebaiting with the explicit redefinition of "wealth inequality" as "creating wealth". Is that the definition you're operating under?

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#355

Post by queenkjuul »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #311
strenholme wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Southwest thing is confirmed: https://archive.ph/20250311162848/https://www.cnbc.com/2025/... “Southwest has been under increasing pressure to raise revenue and improve returns after activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management took a stake in the airline last year and pushed for changes to the carrier’s business model.”

Elliot showed up because southwests entire computer system imploded over the holidays which cost them massive amounts of money and reputation. Changes were absolutely needed at southwest.

Yeah removing the most famous and beloved perk of the airline will go a long way to building back that consumer trust

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#356

Post by queenkjuul »

giardini wrote: post #345

"The Economist" is falling into the rut that the remainder of British publishing has been bogged down in for a decade: increasingly liberal headlines generated via social-media topic measures to gain increased eyeballs (enough to survive). Increasingly, British news sources are drifting leftward, primarily b/c right-wing sources are increasingly rare and, let's be honest, dull . Maybe with a little bit of say, "DEI",…

It's fascinating there are people that believe things like this

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#357

Post by xp84 »

polotics wrote: post #353
xp84 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/taxpayers-fund-trans-surgery-inma... Hope this helps.

Sure, untreated mental illness is a tragedy, and humanity sucks balls at biology, so hard it's as if we wished to be made of silicon. How does this make for a trend or justify the idea that the WEIRD's least-harm decisions explain broader resources allocation in real monetary terms. We're talking about the price of how much concrete pouring in the sad story you linked? (WEIRD: Western Educated Industrialized Rich Dem…

I think the story I linked is if anything more damning than "the wall" in what it tells you about the minds who think it's appropriate.

At least "the wall" passes the first smell test: Want fewer people move between A and B: Build wall between A and B. It just falls apart when you fill in the details (visa overstays, tunnels, ladders, etc. etc.)

In contrast, baby-rapist-murderers obviously do not deserve free, very costly surgeries for non-life-threatening[1] conditions that non-murderers don't get subsidies for. For starters, they're baby-rapist-murderers.

But anyway, I just picked one example. I'm sure the Wall costs are thousands of times more than just trans surgeries for prisoners. That doesn't mean there aren't many, many billions wasted on Team Blue boondoggles.

[1] And no, these surgeries don't decrease chances of suicide. Studies don't all agree but some have found that they increase those chances. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38699117/

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#358

Post by Schnitz »

cm2012 wrote: post #284
Schnitz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be in a fatalistic mood and buy.

No, you cannot say the mood is fatalistic when purchase interest in stocks is at an all time high

Please look up what fatalistic means. It doesn’t mean that one believes things are going badly. It means one believes that events are already predetermined and as a result it doesn’t matter what you do.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#359

Post by giardini »

queenkjuul wrote: post #356
giardini wrote: post #345

"The Economist" is falling into the rut that the remainder of British publishing has been bogged down in for a decade: increasingly liberal headlines generated via social-media topic measures to gain increased eyeballs (enough to survive). Increasingly, British news sources are drifting leftward, primarily b/c right-wing sources are increasingly rare and, let's be honest, dull . Maybe with a little bit of say, "DEI",…

It's fascinating there are people that believe things like this

Not nearly as fascinating [that] people believe.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#360

Post by eduction »

tadfisher wrote: post #354
eduction wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all dense. It’s axiomatic that as societal wealth increases so does the potential for wealth inequality, and in a capitalist system it is a given that inequality will also actually increase. Perfectly reasonable to debate if there is too much wealth inequality but just hand waving at its mere existence doesn’t add anything to the discussion. The person you’re replying to was calling this out. Ironically, you’r…

I had assumed the parent was ragebaiting with the explicit redefinition of "wealth inequality" as "creating wealth". Is that the definition you're operating under?

That's not my memory of the post but it's gone now. My second sentence sums up my thoughts in the area, but I never suggest simply equating one word with another, nor do I use the term "creating wealth."

Still, I can rephrase my contention: In a basically capitalist society, growing societal aggregate wealth necessarily grows inequality. Even a Nordic welfare state, which many (including me) hold up as a robust way to promote income equality, is going to show more variance in the size of pie pieces as the size of the pie grows (even when you account for taxes).

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