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Global economic problems were not caused by COVID19; it was just a convenient opportunity deflect blame away from more fundamental issues. One of the main real

Global economic problems were not caused by COVID19; it was just a convenient opportunity deflect blame away from more fundamental issues. One of the main real problems is that a decade of near 0% interest rates had led to money printing on such a scale that certain activities which would otherwise not have been profitable were able to be profitable (in nominal fiat terms)... But while these activities were reaping high nominal revenues and profits, they were destroying real value from the economy. Eventually, the situation became clear to some people at the top but by that point it was too late to prevent a catastrophic economic crash, so when they heard about COVID19, they pressured politicians to respond aggressively with lockdowns; that way the virus could serve as a convenient scapegoat for the crash and as a justification for massive fiscal stimulus to allow the elites to quickly cash out of their investments... The elites knew that after 2008, their reputations couldn't take another beating. They couldn't let themselves take the blame again. The unfortunate reality is that the COVID19 fiscal stimulus didn't solve any problem at all for the average person; it was purely a money-printing scheme to allow the elites to cash out by appropriating the wealth of regular citizens via the dilution of the value of their employment contracts and fiat-denominated savings. The inflation we are experiencing now is a direct result of the elites' appropriation of public funds from the money printers. Now we are facing some significant problems; after a decade of living in a parallel monetary universe in which irrationality, recklessness and negligence is rewarded, we have collectively lost our common sense. Our ideas about business, success, startups, finance, the economy, politics, everything is all wrong. For 10+ years, we trained ourselves to function in a totally dysfunctional environment and learned all kinds of lessons which only make sense in the context of that dysfunction. As we head into a more contractionary monetary environment, we have to unlearn everything and re-evaluate all business relationships; we have to disregard people's past financial track records (since they are meaningless in the context of a functioning system). In fact, it seems unlikely that someone who is particularly successful in the context of a dysfunctional system would also be successful in the context of a functional system... It's a totally different skillset.

ModernMech 4y ago
> For 10+ years, we trained ourselves to function in a totally dysfunctional environment and learned all kinds of lessons which only make sense in the context of that dysfunction. For me, cryptocurrencies and Web 3.0 are the culmination and perfect distillation of this whole era. Interested to see how they weather this storm. I heard a commercial the other day which stated along the lines "have you ever wished you could invest your retirement account in crypto? Well now you can!" That's when I knew the shark has officially been jumped.
- jokestir 4y ago
  Do not forget the influencers. I know 16yr olds with zero coding skills earning 100k+ annually. All they do is peddle web3 APIs on twitter. We live in a bizarre world.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    tl;dr - just a rant. you're not missing anything. And it all comes back to the fact that has been true since 2003 that Google earns 90% of its revenue on ads, and despite decades of trying at this point they still can't figure out how to move past that. I mean, I think they've improved a bit, I've seen the number 70%, but still; a company as innovative as Google should be making money from innovations, not selling ads. Where's the disconnect? I read this the other day and it's really stuck with me: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ It's about how we live in a world where companies are incentivized by short term quarterly growth expectations to outsource literally everything, including its core competency. What is left of a company like this? It's a legal structure and holder of IP, all of which is completely imaginary, yet every company aspires to be as such. Why? Because it's profitable, which is of course a made up concept. Yet what if every company aspires to do evolve this way? What happens to an entire country if the corporations therein are just empty shells that hold IP? What happens if everything important you do is done "somewhere else"?. So if every company is either just holding intellectual property (imaginary), moving around money (imaginary), producing advertising (imaginary), holding other companies (imaginary concepts), redirecting eyeballs, aggregating data (but never doing anything with it), and all the legal machinations therein... then what actual work is anyone doing?! All of that is just imaginary made-up trifling nonsense. I once read that RedBull is really just an advertising firm. The whole company. They don't do a damn thing but make ads. Everything that goes into the actual drink itself is "done elsewhere". Even the actual work that gets done, like building homes, is meaningless. Yes people do actual work to create the home and the materials, but to what end? To house a human being? No! Of course not! All that work was done to create an investment vehicle that will remain empty, but whose sole purpose is to inflate a number on a balance sheet (imaginary). All of the trees that were felled and processed into lumber, the iron that was extracted from the ground and turned into nails, the tools, the shipping of all the materials around the world, the equipment delivered to the job site, the innumerable man hours of all the humans involved in directing this supply chain to bring this house into existence... all of that work just to inflate an imaginary number that will be traded on an imaginary market. And so we see the consequence is the emergence of proto-trillionaires who use their ownership of assets (imaginary) to borrow money (imaginary) to buy companies (imaginary) that have a real impact on public discourse. If you think I'm talking about Musk here, I had Bezos in mind, but the point is that if you're a billionaire, you buy a media company to influence public discourse. It's part of your evolution. And you might say the assets are real but of course their values are not! Covid times revealed a complete disconnect between stock price and company valuation, revenue, or any other real metrics and proved once and for all that the stock market as a system is completely imaginary as well. It's measuring nothing of worth whatsoever. But that's not the worst of it. Circling back to Google, and let's throw Facebook into the mix as well, is that they have such an outsized impact on the industry that they and the rest of FAANG suck up so much talent that it creates a vortex. And what do they do with that talent but put them to work on maximizing metrics like "engagement" so that they can drive eyeballs to advertisements, and collect data for resell. Again, completely imaginary work. So then everyone wants to do this kind of thing. And even if you don't, you need to compete with everyone who does, because they're offering ridiculous salaries of $200k+, which of course are pegged to ridiculous stock prices that are completely disconnected from anything tangible Google produces. So Google and Facebook and all the rest of them are paying their employees imaginary wages pegged to imaginary valuations so they can do imaginary work. And it impacts absolutely everything! Universities can't hire professors because FAANG is sucking up all the CS PhDs. Research is funded by FAANG; conferences are funded by FAANG; grad students are therefore doing research aligned with FAANG interests; professors are writing grant proposals on those same lines and getting governments to fund them as well; undergrads dream of working for FAANG; professors are therefor asked to spend time teaching students to pass FAANG entrance exams... all for what? For what?! To drive eyeballs to ads and collect data. It's maddening. So anyway... seems like this should hold up in the long run yeah? A society of people devoted to doing imaginary work sounds durable and will certainly hold up well under a crisis like a global pandemic, or worse.
tome 4y ago
> it was purely a money-printing scheme to allow the elites to cash out What did the elites cash out to?
- cryptica 4y ago
  Cash, precious metals, value businesses, real estate.
legutierr 4y ago
> The unfortunate reality is that the COVID19 fiscal stimulus didn't solve any problem at all for the average person; it was purely a money-printing scheme to allow the elites to cash out by appropriating the wealth of regular citizens via the dilution of the value of their employment contracts and fiat-denominated savings. If the value of fiat-denomiated savings is being diluted, then how exactly are elites cashing out?

ModernMech 4y ago

> For 10+ years, we trained ourselves to function in a totally dysfunctional environment and learned all kinds of lessons which only make sense in the context of that dysfunction. For me, cryptocurrencies and Web 3.0 are the culmination and perfect distillation of this whole era. Interested to see how they weather this storm. I heard a commercial the other day which stated along the lines "have you ever wished you could invest your retirement account in crypto? Well now you can!" That's when I knew the shark has officially been jumped.

jokestir 4y ago
Do not forget the influencers. I know 16yr olds with zero coding skills earning 100k+ annually. All they do is peddle web3 APIs on twitter. We live in a bizarre world.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  tl;dr - just a rant. you're not missing anything. And it all comes back to the fact that has been true since 2003 that Google earns 90% of its revenue on ads, and despite decades of trying at this point they still can't figure out how to move past that. I mean, I think they've improved a bit, I've seen the number 70%, but still; a company as innovative as Google should be making money from innovations, not selling ads. Where's the disconnect? I read this the other day and it's really stuck with me: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ It's about how we live in a world where companies are incentivized by short term quarterly growth expectations to outsource literally everything, including its core competency. What is left of a company like this? It's a legal structure and holder of IP, all of which is completely imaginary, yet every company aspires to be as such. Why? Because it's profitable, which is of course a made up concept. Yet what if every company aspires to do evolve this way? What happens to an entire country if the corporations therein are just empty shells that hold IP? What happens if everything important you do is done "somewhere else"?. So if every company is either just holding intellectual property (imaginary), moving around money (imaginary), producing advertising (imaginary), holding other companies (imaginary concepts), redirecting eyeballs, aggregating data (but never doing anything with it), and all the legal machinations therein... then what actual work is anyone doing?! All of that is just imaginary made-up trifling nonsense. I once read that RedBull is really just an advertising firm. The whole company. They don't do a damn thing but make ads. Everything that goes into the actual drink itself is "done elsewhere". Even the actual work that gets done, like building homes, is meaningless. Yes people do actual work to create the home and the materials, but to what end? To house a human being? No! Of course not! All that work was done to create an investment vehicle that will remain empty, but whose sole purpose is to inflate a number on a balance sheet (imaginary). All of the trees that were felled and processed into lumber, the iron that was extracted from the ground and turned into nails, the tools, the shipping of all the materials around the world, the equipment delivered to the job site, the innumerable man hours of all the humans involved in directing this supply chain to bring this house into existence... all of that work just to inflate an imaginary number that will be traded on an imaginary market. And so we see the consequence is the emergence of proto-trillionaires who use their ownership of assets (imaginary) to borrow money (imaginary) to buy companies (imaginary) that have a real impact on public discourse. If you think I'm talking about Musk here, I had Bezos in mind, but the point is that if you're a billionaire, you buy a media company to influence public discourse. It's part of your evolution. And you might say the assets are real but of course their values are not! Covid times revealed a complete disconnect between stock price and company valuation, revenue, or any other real metrics and proved once and for all that the stock market as a system is completely imaginary as well. It's measuring nothing of worth whatsoever. But that's not the worst of it. Circling back to Google, and let's throw Facebook into the mix as well, is that they have such an outsized impact on the industry that they and the rest of FAANG suck up so much talent that it creates a vortex. And what do they do with that talent but put them to work on maximizing metrics like "engagement" so that they can drive eyeballs to advertisements, and collect data for resell. Again, completely imaginary work. So then everyone wants to do this kind of thing. And even if you don't, you need to compete with everyone who does, because they're offering ridiculous salaries of $200k+, which of course are pegged to ridiculous stock prices that are completely disconnected from anything tangible Google produces. So Google and Facebook and all the rest of them are paying their employees imaginary wages pegged to imaginary valuations so they can do imaginary work. And it impacts absolutely everything! Universities can't hire professors because FAANG is sucking up all the CS PhDs. Research is funded by FAANG; conferences are funded by FAANG; grad students are therefore doing research aligned with FAANG interests; professors are writing grant proposals on those same lines and getting governments to fund them as well; undergrads dream of working for FAANG; professors are therefor asked to spend time teaching students to pass FAANG entrance exams... all for what? For what?! To drive eyeballs to ads and collect data. It's maddening. So anyway... seems like this should hold up in the long run yeah? A society of people devoted to doing imaginary work sounds durable and will certainly hold up well under a crisis like a global pandemic, or worse.

tome 4y ago

> it was purely a money-printing scheme to allow the elites to cash out What did the elites cash out to?

cryptica 4y ago
Cash, precious metals, value businesses, real estate.

legutierr 4y ago

> The unfortunate reality is that the COVID19 fiscal stimulus didn't solve any problem at all for the average person; it was purely a money-printing scheme to allow the elites to cash out by appropriating the wealth of regular citizens via the dilution of the value of their employment contracts and fiat-denominated savings. If the value of fiat-denomiated savings is being diluted, then how exactly are elites cashing out?