The rich aren't necessarily the problem, but they definitely are recipients of the benefits of the problem.
Of course wages did stagnate because the labor pool grew massively, but the government wants you to own assets in part so that they can count the assets that you own. To incentivize this, they print a bunch of money and that money almost immediately ends up in the markets. Even when it doesn't end up in the markets, it basically ends up in the hands of government because a good chunk of it goes into bonds.
So you have three different things going on at once: because the labor will grows the value of an individual worker goes down. Because of inflation caused by debt and monetary policies, just giving workers fairly low wage increases is actually a huge pay cut, and most of that money that gets printed ends up in financial assets so people who own assets instead of selling their labor and up wealthier.
So once you reach a critical mass of assets, at that point basically you just keep getting richer and richer even though you're not actually doing anything productive.
Elon Musk is my favorite example of this. Earlier this week he had hit $500 billion of net worth. The fuckin guy doesn't have any successful businesses. Tesla is a barely profitable car company, SpaceX is a barely profitable space company, Twitter is a barely profitable social media site, but he's learned how to play the game and so all of that excess money has to go somewhere and a lot of it seems to be going to his companies.
You can't get that mad at him, if people kept throwing money at you what are you going to do, not take it?
Of course wages did stagnate because the labor pool grew massively, but the government wants you to own assets in part so that they can count the assets that you own. To incentivize this, they print a bunch of money and that money almost immediately ends up in the markets. Even when it doesn't end up in the markets, it basically ends up in the hands of government because a good chunk of it goes into bonds.
So you have three different things going on at once: because the labor will grows the value of an individual worker goes down. Because of inflation caused by debt and monetary policies, just giving workers fairly low wage increases is actually a huge pay cut, and most of that money that gets printed ends up in financial assets so people who own assets instead of selling their labor and up wealthier.
So once you reach a critical mass of assets, at that point basically you just keep getting richer and richer even though you're not actually doing anything productive.
Elon Musk is my favorite example of this. Earlier this week he had hit $500 billion of net worth. The fuckin guy doesn't have any successful businesses. Tesla is a barely profitable car company, SpaceX is a barely profitable space company, Twitter is a barely profitable social media site, but he's learned how to play the game and so all of that excess money has to go somewhere and a lot of it seems to be going to his companies.
You can't get that mad at him, if people kept throwing money at you what are you going to do, not take it?
It's a shame none of these young commies ever ask about LGBT representation in the Soviet Union. Because it would be really funny if they found that out.
Imagine: there isn't enough money to run courts, despite courts working fine back when the state was 3-5% of GDP and now it's 30-50% of GDP.
New York City was denied twice the cost of the entire federal judiciary for just the second avenue subway and hudson tunnel projects.
Most of the judiciary isn't even mandatory spending like judge salaries, which only take about 800 million per year.
Annual payments to bondholders represent 100 times more money spent than the entire federal court system.
The state court systems which adjudicate most crimes are individually smaller than the federal court system, with even a state like California only paying about 3 billion per year for their courts, but together puts the vital role at about 25 billion per year nationwide. Including the federal judiciary that's less than 35 billion, which is still 1/1000 of the federal debt and 1/30 of federal debt maintenance, about the same as NASA, about the same cost as 3 aircraft carriers.
It's pretty strange when you think about it. Unlike NASA, the courts are a core function of government, but they struggle to "find money" for this core function while there are many non-productive things they can magically find lots of money for. The reliance on plea deals is certainly in part justified by the incongruity.
New York City was denied twice the cost of the entire federal judiciary for just the second avenue subway and hudson tunnel projects.
Most of the judiciary isn't even mandatory spending like judge salaries, which only take about 800 million per year.
Annual payments to bondholders represent 100 times more money spent than the entire federal court system.
The state court systems which adjudicate most crimes are individually smaller than the federal court system, with even a state like California only paying about 3 billion per year for their courts, but together puts the vital role at about 25 billion per year nationwide. Including the federal judiciary that's less than 35 billion, which is still 1/1000 of the federal debt and 1/30 of federal debt maintenance, about the same as NASA, about the same cost as 3 aircraft carriers.
It's pretty strange when you think about it. Unlike NASA, the courts are a core function of government, but they struggle to "find money" for this core function while there are many non-productive things they can magically find lots of money for. The reliance on plea deals is certainly in part justified by the incongruity.
It'd be really straightforward, if not necessarily easy.
Minds implemented ActivityPub and nostr support, not much different here I'd suspect.
Minds implemented ActivityPub and nostr support, not much different here I'd suspect.
It's funny -- that "past performance is not indicative of future returns" is a common bit of legalese used to say "hey don't just assume because something went up yesterday it'll go up today", but in reality we've based our entire modernist epistemology on the idea that past performance is in fact indicative of future returns. That's the fundamental concept behind science and technology. The idea that you can measure a thing, build a model, then use the model to predict the future specifically enough to design stuff that's super complicated but not only works on paper but in the real world (like the CPUs we're all using that perform billions of instructions every second of every minute of every hour of every day) is not the way previous humans thought.
It's a revolutionary idea and it's right -- but not entirely. We know that even scientifically we have to set within our models the reality that we can't predict things perfectly, and often we can't even measure things perfectly or they get predictably unpredictable. Which shows that modernist rationalism and empiricism is just one superposed truth among many.
It's a revolutionary idea and it's right -- but not entirely. We know that even scientifically we have to set within our models the reality that we can't predict things perfectly, and often we can't even measure things perfectly or they get predictably unpredictable. Which shows that modernist rationalism and empiricism is just one superposed truth among many.
The loving empathetic people seem to find it tough to coexist with people who are virtually identical to them. Bluesky is Satre's No Exit: Hell is other people.
Meanwhile, darkside fedi is filled with the chillest folks you ever saw waving a swastika.
Meanwhile, darkside fedi is filled with the chillest folks you ever saw waving a swastika.
I am the Chuunibyou of my anime.
Fantasy is my body, and delusion is my blood.
I have created over a thousand backstories.
Unaware of cringe, nor aware of restraint.
Withstood ridicule to craft countless powers,
waiting for the day my true rival appears.
I have no regrets. This is the only path.
Thus I pray, Unlimited Chuunibyou Works!!!
(Eminence in shadow is joining isekai quartet)
Fantasy is my body, and delusion is my blood.
I have created over a thousand backstories.
Unaware of cringe, nor aware of restraint.
Withstood ridicule to craft countless powers,
waiting for the day my true rival appears.
I have no regrets. This is the only path.
Thus I pray, Unlimited Chuunibyou Works!!!
(Eminence in shadow is joining isekai quartet)
I do hope it's obvious I'm just a mildly retarded blue collar guy who occasionally writes. If anyone thinks I'm trying to look smart or educated or anything, please be advised I'm just some guy from the sticks.
Who said a nation can only be wealthy with oil?
A nation requires access to energy, but you can access energy using methods other than just having oil. Free markets are useful for that.
Unfortunately, the USA, China, and Japan are also all inconvenient examples of economic success, since they all became "rich" in part by overwhelming deficit spending and central economic planning.
The problem is that eventually the amount of growth you get for the money slows and you're in a situation like Japan -- they're 30 years into a "lost decade", rates stuck at 0%, and the national debt is massive.
A nation requires access to energy, but you can access energy using methods other than just having oil. Free markets are useful for that.
Unfortunately, the USA, China, and Japan are also all inconvenient examples of economic success, since they all became "rich" in part by overwhelming deficit spending and central economic planning.
The problem is that eventually the amount of growth you get for the money slows and you're in a situation like Japan -- they're 30 years into a "lost decade", rates stuck at 0%, and the national debt is massive.
Thanks!
It's nuts thinking about how quickly time goes. I published that right before my son was born (which was a good thing because I now realize finishing the publishing with a newborn baby in the house was never going to happen), he's almost 4 now.
It's nuts thinking about how quickly time goes. I published that right before my son was born (which was a good thing because I now realize finishing the publishing with a newborn baby in the house was never going to happen), he's almost 4 now.
My first book is called The Graysonian Ethic: Lessons for my unborn son. It's a book of different essays with life lessons for my son (who is now born, of course).
My second just got released this month, it's called Future Sepsis. It's a speculative fiction/science fiction book about four people from 2024 who wake up in 2124 and have to navigate a world that's different than ours. Two examples of the changes are that (at least in this location) religion is once again a much more central part of social and civic life, and education has been totally rewired to try to form virtuous people rather than people with diplomas, but there's a lot of differences that are revealed over time.
My third book was mostly completed during the second, it's the philosophical underpinnings of the second book. I don't have a title for it yet, but the working title is "Meditations on post-metamodern superpositional epistemology". It started off as some appendixes to the second book, but I realized I had almost generated as many words in that as in the book proper and I didn't think that made sense to include by itself since a lot of people wouldn't be that interested in a bunch of esoteric discussions about a potential system of thought that might surpass postmodernism or metamodernism. I'm adding some work that's going to tie into a Future Sepsis sequel.
My second just got released this month, it's called Future Sepsis. It's a speculative fiction/science fiction book about four people from 2024 who wake up in 2124 and have to navigate a world that's different than ours. Two examples of the changes are that (at least in this location) religion is once again a much more central part of social and civic life, and education has been totally rewired to try to form virtuous people rather than people with diplomas, but there's a lot of differences that are revealed over time.
My third book was mostly completed during the second, it's the philosophical underpinnings of the second book. I don't have a title for it yet, but the working title is "Meditations on post-metamodern superpositional epistemology". It started off as some appendixes to the second book, but I realized I had almost generated as many words in that as in the book proper and I didn't think that made sense to include by itself since a lot of people wouldn't be that interested in a bunch of esoteric discussions about a potential system of thought that might surpass postmodernism or metamodernism. I'm adding some work that's going to tie into a Future Sepsis sequel.
We don't talk about this enough.
Daycare can have a place in society, but the idea you'd work full time so you can afford to pay for childcare so you can work full time is insanity.
Daycare can have a place in society, but the idea you'd work full time so you can afford to pay for childcare so you can work full time is insanity.