3 ms·

In modern history - nearly ever major infrastructure effort has been financed with debt. This is especially true for the US. IFF we used to be able to build

• clairity 5y ago
  you're conflating financing with financialization, which are two very different points in a multidimensional spectrum. financing is certainly helpful to allow capital projects to shift forward (or backward) in time to deliver (and perhaps capture) greater value. and under the constraints of scarcity, it helps allocate resources more efficiently, price risk more accurately, and provides necessarily liquidity in markets. we're way beyond the constraints of scarcity and the ideals of efficient resource allocation because we've decoupled finance and the money supply from the natural constraints under which our economic theories "work" (i use that term loosely, since economics has done a poor job of accounting for actual human behavior vs. the idealized). we're at a point where economic activity is about the money itself, rather than what it represents in the real world, things like bridges, restaurants, and dry cleaning. that's financialization, when it becomes decoupled from real value. all that takes away from wanting to build real things, because the perception is that it's just easier to "get rich quick" via financialization schemes. if you can get the money without the hard work of delivering real value, why not? is the thinking. that's corrosive to social fabrics, not to mention economies themselves. that's why we're where we're at, rather than a simplistic demonization of 'financing' in isolation.