4 ms·

>Inequality doesn't materially harm anyone as long as it's caused by the rich Asset inflation disagrees with you. You end up in a situation where you make more

by pixl97 7mo ago

>Inequality doesn't materially harm anyone as long as it's caused by the rich Asset inflation disagrees with you. You end up in a situation where you make more money, and you can buy more stuff, except stuff in a few particular but important categories. For example physical properties.

mindslight 7mo ago
Note that a similar effect has now moved into traditionally consumer markets as well. It started showing at the grassroots with hoarding toilet paper and whatnot during the first Grump catastrophe, but has now solidified with things like completely fucking up the market for computing hardware. I think I liked it better when the elites mainly conspired while playing mega golf - having that as the social attractor made for a naturally limiting effect on the imaginations of the people poised to do damage. If you would have gone to most coaches of distance-pissing teams (eg Gold Mansacks) in the 90's and asked for trillions of dollars to buy up all the RAM chips, you would have gotten answers on the order of "Kernel who?!". Now they're like "this guy looks like a serious nerd, we better not get left behind!"
- pixl97 7mo ago
  Eh, I won't say buying up of commodities to manipulate markets is a new things exactly. Hell, look up the "Onion futures act". I think maybe the change here is a more of an institutional collapse of government entities that would attempt to stop this.
  - mindslight 7mo ago
    Another new thing is that the disruption is framed in terms of a purportedly productive-investment purpose, getting more people and capital onboard. Also with the coordinated irrationality there is a lot more momentum for priming a pump that will endure long term. Sure we can fantasize that all of these datacenter buildouts will go bust, leading to a glut of RAM and we can party like it's 2001. But does anybody think that will actually happen? I'd say the real upstream problem is the lack of new "thick" business creation. Which is a tough thing to analyze in terms of semiconductor fabs, as they are notoriously centralized-capital-intensive regardless. So I'm not looking to flesh out that argument in this context, but it does fit the anti-competitive less-efficient market pattern I've noticed across the board. The main pressure relief valve on the horizon seems to be China building new fabs, but that kind of demonstrates how our own Western-aligned market has eaten itself.
Ajedi32 7mo ago
The term you're looking for is "real wages". Obviously I'm not claiming that someone making the same nominal wage in 1980 as they do now in 2026 is just as well off. That would count as "getting poorer". US median real wages, for reference: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
- mindslight 7mo ago
  That doesn't account for the growing asymmetry in the CPI. In the CPI, the asset bubble really only shows up as housing and perhaps transportation. Meanwhile consumer goods go down to compensate (as you'd expect from CPI being in the feedback path for the monetary creation "operational amplifier"). So we're left with everyday expenses continuing to be affordable (eg food, toiletries) while life expenses become ever more unaffordable (eg buying a house). If you want to refute the argument, you have to find a graph of wages normalized in terms of the cost of a starter home in areas with active economies. But I suspect that is going to be hard.
  - Ajedi32 7mo ago
    Yes, if you cherry pick a few things that are disproportionately going up in price and say inflation should be calculated based solely on those things then you can make the numbers look worse. Or the reverse if you cherry pick things that are going down in price. I don't think either of those would be a more reasonable approach than looking at CPI.
    - mindslight 7mo ago
      It's not a "cherry pick" - the critique is specifically about the asset bubble. Owning assets is what it takes to be economically enfranchised in our system. Even though the asset bubble encompasses much more than just housing, I was meeting you halfway by focusing on where the asset bubble connects to the CPI metric. But with this response it seems as if you're intentionally trying to dodge the issue by focusing on the CPI.

by pixl97 7mo ago

mindslight 7mo ago

Note that a similar effect has now moved into traditionally consumer markets as well. It started showing at the grassroots with hoarding toilet paper and whatnot during the first Grump catastrophe, but has now solidified with things like completely fucking up the market for computing hardware. I think I liked it better when the elites mainly conspired while playing mega golf - having that as the social attractor made for a naturally limiting effect on the imaginations of the people poised to do damage. If you would have gone to most coaches of distance-pissing teams (eg Gold Mansacks) in the 90's and asked for trillions of dollars to buy up all the RAM chips, you would have gotten answers on the order of "Kernel who?!". Now they're like "this guy looks like a serious nerd, we better not get left behind!"

pixl97 7mo ago
Eh, I won't say buying up of commodities to manipulate markets is a new things exactly. Hell, look up the "Onion futures act". I think maybe the change here is a more of an institutional collapse of government entities that would attempt to stop this.
- mindslight 7mo ago
  Another new thing is that the disruption is framed in terms of a purportedly productive-investment purpose, getting more people and capital onboard. Also with the coordinated irrationality there is a lot more momentum for priming a pump that will endure long term. Sure we can fantasize that all of these datacenter buildouts will go bust, leading to a glut of RAM and we can party like it's 2001. But does anybody think that will actually happen? I'd say the real upstream problem is the lack of new "thick" business creation. Which is a tough thing to analyze in terms of semiconductor fabs, as they are notoriously centralized-capital-intensive regardless. So I'm not looking to flesh out that argument in this context, but it does fit the anti-competitive less-efficient market pattern I've noticed across the board. The main pressure relief valve on the horizon seems to be China building new fabs, but that kind of demonstrates how our own Western-aligned market has eaten itself.

Ajedi32 7mo ago

The term you're looking for is "real wages". Obviously I'm not claiming that someone making the same nominal wage in 1980 as they do now in 2026 is just as well off. That would count as "getting poorer". US median real wages, for reference: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

mindslight 7mo ago
That doesn't account for the growing asymmetry in the CPI. In the CPI, the asset bubble really only shows up as housing and perhaps transportation. Meanwhile consumer goods go down to compensate (as you'd expect from CPI being in the feedback path for the monetary creation "operational amplifier"). So we're left with everyday expenses continuing to be affordable (eg food, toiletries) while life expenses become ever more unaffordable (eg buying a house). If you want to refute the argument, you have to find a graph of wages normalized in terms of the cost of a starter home in areas with active economies. But I suspect that is going to be hard.
- Ajedi32 7mo ago
  Yes, if you cherry pick a few things that are disproportionately going up in price and say inflation should be calculated based solely on those things then you can make the numbers look worse. Or the reverse if you cherry pick things that are going down in price. I don't think either of those would be a more reasonable approach than looking at CPI.
  - mindslight 7mo ago
    It's not a "cherry pick" - the critique is specifically about the asset bubble. Owning assets is what it takes to be economically enfranchised in our system. Even though the asset bubble encompasses much more than just housing, I was meeting you halfway by focusing on where the asset bubble connects to the CPI metric. But with this response it seems as if you're intentionally trying to dodge the issue by focusing on the CPI.