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>> When did bald face lies become the norm in business ? When capital has nowhere to go, and the middle class become gamblers and speculators, and people who w

>> When did bald face lies become the norm in business ? When capital has nowhere to go, and the middle class become gamblers and speculators, and people who work become 'superfluous', lots of bad things start to happen. At least, that was my takeaway from "Origins of Totalitarianism". [edit] To be more specific: Lying (and foreign wars, too) become viable business models when the moneyed class has so much to invest that they no longer know what to do with it, and lack any new markets to pry open, or the education or creativity to produce anything new of value that isn't extractive, and even the extractive methods of generating wealth have begun to dry up locally. Call it a bubble, call it fascism; fascism is basically just a way of keeping a bubble from collapsing indefinitely by pirating neighboring peoples' wealth and cannibalizing one's own society. So there's not a great difference between that and the stated vision of the major AI companies ATM.

bubblewand 8mo ago
Yeah, my semi-informed WAG for the core cause of many of the ills of our current situation is that we're wildly over-capitalized. The "trickle down" focus to put more of the "pie" on the investment side (setting aside whether the "trickle down" effect itself was meaningfully real, not relevant to this "take") was probably barely justified at the time, if at all, and we've just kept shoveling more fuel into that fire in the decades since. You can't have demand without spreading buying power around. If you just keep shifting toward investment, that capital gets up to some really stupid shit because there's not enough demand to provide anything useful for it to do. Build a factory? Why would I do that, the returns are terrible. No, I'll "invest" in bitcoin... or do an NFT startup... or reserve way more memory capacity than I'll plausibly need just to fuck with my competition, in ways and in an environment that's so bubbly that this activity likely won't provoke capacity build-out to compensate... We really, really needed some capital (by which I just mean investor-money, not real productive assets) destruction in the '08 crisis, and we didn't get it.
- bilekas 8mo ago
  Ehhhh, you have some elementary points, but the market, is in theory, self adjusting right? So the 'idea' of trickle down is a real thing. It's not as dramatic or loud as something like OpenAI. But consider it as access to loans to fund a new business, the idea is you'll fund a company and gain some sales and employment, money moves around so happy. Basic stuff. You've shot too far and considered everything black and white. You build a factory if demand is high and it can increase supply while making profit.. > We really, really needed some capital (by which I just mean investor-money, not real productive assets) destruction in the '08 crisis, and we didn't get it. No, but that wasn't where the majority of money was locked up in poop, so maybe you might get at best a 90's dotcom bust. I'm old and I remember it was apocolyptic. But Maybe it's due.

bubblewand 8mo ago

Yeah, my semi-informed WAG for the core cause of many of the ills of our current situation is that we're wildly over-capitalized. The "trickle down" focus to put more of the "pie" on the investment side (setting aside whether the "trickle down" effect itself was meaningfully real, not relevant to this "take") was probably barely justified at the time, if at all, and we've just kept shoveling more fuel into that fire in the decades since. You can't have demand without spreading buying power around. If you just keep shifting toward investment, that capital gets up to some really stupid shit because there's not enough demand to provide anything useful for it to do. Build a factory? Why would I do that, the returns are terrible. No, I'll "invest" in bitcoin... or do an NFT startup... or reserve way more memory capacity than I'll plausibly need just to fuck with my competition, in ways and in an environment that's so bubbly that this activity likely won't provoke capacity build-out to compensate... We really, really needed some capital (by which I just mean investor-money, not real productive assets) destruction in the '08 crisis, and we didn't get it.

bilekas 8mo ago
Ehhhh, you have some elementary points, but the market, is in theory, self adjusting right? So the 'idea' of trickle down is a real thing. It's not as dramatic or loud as something like OpenAI. But consider it as access to loans to fund a new business, the idea is you'll fund a company and gain some sales and employment, money moves around so happy. Basic stuff. You've shot too far and considered everything black and white. You build a factory if demand is high and it can increase supply while making profit.. > We really, really needed some capital (by which I just mean investor-money, not real productive assets) destruction in the '08 crisis, and we didn't get it. No, but that wasn't where the majority of money was locked up in poop, so maybe you might get at best a 90's dotcom bust. I'm old and I remember it was apocolyptic. But Maybe it's due.