The comments on that video 🤐🤐
Steve still doesn’t quite see that this is the capitalist system working as intended - serving the owner (capitalist) class, but he’s definitely getting radicalized by the current reality of it.
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capitalism worked pretty well in the 40’s and 50’s, in the USA, and then the corporate leaders realized that they could be overlords if they just stopped caring about everything but money.
We know kindness and money can coexist, but if little boy jack is taught from day one that if you don’t game the system, you will lose, he’s going to grow up to be Elon Musk.
It worked pretty well because there were a lot of regulations that kept it in check. Capitalism works fine if it’s regulated either by governments or by workers through unions.
Capitalism works fine if it’s regulated either by governments or by workers through unions.
Both at the same time, and the third necessary component - customer associations, three independent forces as a minimum.
EDIT: This is free market, “market” and not “jungle” - because there are regulated rules, “free” - because all participants are free to associate, including association to delegate association choices. “Capitalism” is a bad word because it’s a term for everything from semi-traditional economies to mercantilism to libertarianism, that has interoperability of resources and assets.
Once capitalism has regulations to keep it in check and a democratically elected government is in charge and willing to do those things it’s no longer capitalism. Capitalism is putting monied interests first and crossing your fingers that the free hand of the market is anything more than a fairy told to naive idiots to make them support a corrupt-by-design system, such that those monied interests can be said to be chosen “democratically”(vote with your wallets).
Capitalism just sucks. It was made up so parasites nobles didn’t have to give up their ill-gotten wealth when feudalism ended. Fuckin’ thing is rotten to its core.
They knew they could be overlords and were that before The Great Depression too. We are just surpassing the level of wealth inequality that was reached prior to the system collapsing back then. What followed in the 40s and 50s was an abnormal period created by the implementation of a significant number of socialist policies that stemmed the desire for blood by the disposessed masses. These fuckers have been working to dismantle them ever since. If we find a formula that allows for such reforms to stick for longer than several decades, that would be nice. There’s good reasons for skepticism though.
What followed in the 40s and 50s was an abnormal period created by the implementation of a significant number of socialist policies that stemmed the desire for blood by the disposessed masses. These fuckers have been working to dismantle them ever since.
It’s not quite true, USA and Canada were also far more anarchist in government traditionally, because, well, at some point they had too much territory loosely controlled and too many developing settlements and too thinly spread populations, and very dependent on new development.
40s and 50s were in many things driven by the defeat of Nazi ideology and imperialism crumbling. Not only humanism and peace were in fashion, but also nobody wanted to go to efforts to keep some brown or yellow people enslaved - sometimes it was “let them live” and sometimes “I don’t wanna die”, but the general mood was that it’s obsolete to rob colonies.
So. Both socialist and western parts of the world somewhat choked that cultural desire of the populace by malicious compliance.
But one thing that didn’t go through a cycle was the tendency for more fine-grained and total control, more detailed laws and overreach. That only grew in the course of XX century. Laws of the 50s were so simple compared to our day, that an average EULA is harder to understand. Laws of the 20s were as they show in the western movies.
So, I’m not going to say libertarianism is key, because any -ism being adopted doesn’t mean automatically finding the solution. But the solution if it’s found will be to this growth of complexity, empowering legal middlemen and interpretators and one nail drawers, and weakening anyone trying to live by the rules.
Yep, lots of regulation, not necessarily even socialist stuff , some of it was just prudent financial system management. Glass-Steagall for example and bretton-woods and stuff that limited limited power and sought to tame some animal spirits.
The worst of it hasn’t happened yet. The point where consumers can no longer afford to consume is coming. The system isn’t self sustainable if they continue to chase profits in the short term regardless of what happens in the long term. They’re creating a system where only they will be consumers and that leads to a devaluation of all the currency they’re hoarding.
Prices can’t continue to go up if people can’t afford things. This price hike is going to have far reaching consequences and increase prices of everything.
The people of Germany were burning German marks in the street. They traded goods for goods when they were available, and burned the money for warmth.
The rich of our current generation seem to think they can golden parachute out of this. They have t thought about the long term repercussions of a world power of the US’s magnitude defending to third world country status, but that’s what is coming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic
The worst of it hasn’t happened yet. The point where consumers can no longer afford to consume is coming.
Its mostly already arrived.
“As of June 30, the top 20% of earners accounted for more than 63% of all spending”
This means that the other 80% of Americans represent only 37% of the spending done today. If a company is looking to maximize profits the typical path is to do so by marketing to the group where they could earn the most money. That is less and less the bottom 80% of Americans.
But the top 20% can still spend. That number is going to drop off a cliff when the stock market tumbles, and the spending with it.
Capitalism can work well when it’s coupled into a virtuous circle of funding R&D to create new products and services to increase income to put back into more R&D.
At the moment it seems that a lot of companies are just trying to seek ever increasing rent extraction on existing products rather than investing in trying to innovate and relying on high barriers to entry to keep competition out.
I don’t know why this is getting down voted. With regulation and healthy competition, this is what happens. When antitrust regulation is weak, R&D and innovation stops and rent seeking takes its place.
If you look at the history of capitalism you could observe the stage where capitalism does put profits into R&D is temporary. Eventually capitalists reach enough power that lets them generate profts without significant reinvestment and instead spend them on luxury goods. Happened in the late 19th/early 20th century. It’s happening now as well. In-between that there was a massive state intervention that took significant economic power from capitalist class and put it into the state. The period when capitalism worked well for the majority was a deviation from the mean. Relevant.
I mean, yeah, this is the system working as intended: corporations chasing profits and feeling no regrets about burning bridges in the process.
The creator in that video seems to think the Chips Act subsidies were to benefit consumers by having affordable memory produced domestically. That wasn’t the goal. The goal was to derive drive GDP by having another source of domestic production, and drive job growth/tax revenue from workers working at the domestic facility. Lastly, it was to have strategic domestic production decoupled from other nations so we, as a nation, could not be held hostage by another nation (like we do to so many other nations) for crucial (pun very much intended) resources we need.
Nothing about that is about making RAM cheaper for retail consumers.
I think that’s the surface level, rational reading, but I think the realistic reading is it was simply a kickback to fortune 500 companies that got these politicians elected. Haven’t we already funded at least one factory that ended up being smoke and mirrors?
but I think the realistic reading is it was simply a kickback to fortune 500 companies that got these politicians elected.
If there were no legitimate geopolitical reasons, then the “simply a kickback” would be much more plausible. Also, if it was a single source company, then “simply a kickback” would look true. Additionally, if was perhaps just domestic companies “simply a kickback” would certainly be even more likely. Lastly, the Chips act wasn’t just about production domestically. It also blocked sales/exports of completed high end chips and chip making equipment to China. If the Chips act was “simple a kickback” you wouldn’t do all that other stuff, and you certainly wouldn’t allow foreign winners (like Taiwan’s TSMC).
Was their rewards because of industry lobbying? Certainly. However, unless you’re in a purely communist system of government where all the companies are owned by the state, you’re always going to have private companies benefiting from government spending, tax breaks, and subsidies. As to this just applying to fortune 500 companies, there isn’t really a “mom and pop” semiconductor industry making handfuls of chips at a time except outside of engineering sample that are used in R&D for fortune 500 companies.
The concept of a “corrupt industry” doesn’t really make sense.
Corruption only works in non-profit/political/governmental contexts. It’s when you have a job that requires you to value some specific higher goal more than your own personal benefit.
The whole purpose and the higher goal of an industry, same as capitalism in general is personal benefit. A capitalist cannot be corrupt. Or to put it differently: The thing that would make e.g. a public servant corrupt is the modus operandi of capitalism.
I used to order micron ram directly, best ram I could find. Now I buy laptops because they’re cheaper than building a pc
