But then how would the billionaires make money?
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Won't somebody PLEASE think of the billionaires????
But what about the billionaires? Who's helping them out, huh?
Oh how will they SURVIVE???
WHAT IF:
We didn’t rely on a system that requires infinite growth to make shareholders money that drives under- and unemployment in order to make those profits?
What if:
- Our government didn't have the ability to print money? What if going to war meant raising taxes?
- We took the control of the money supply out of their hands and instead used free and open source software to create money and move it around?
- Our economy wasn't predicated on a target 2-3% inflation rate? What if you were not incentivized to spend your money because it's just losing value every day you don't spend it? How might our consumption/production patterns change? How might that impact sustainability?
- The government couldn't move money from the 99% to the 1% every time a bank needed to be bailed out? What if they didn't print away all the value of money you earned? What if when the economy grew, the value of your money increased just as it would naturally if somebody wasn't printing away the difference?
How might the world look different?
Small but steady inflation is good. The macroeconomic fear is that people will just hold onto their money in the form of raw currency. That's bad. Currency is for a more convenient representation of value. I can't compensate a roofer in computer code, so currency is a stand-in. But it also shouldn't languish or else the economy stagnates. The world used to regularly experience zero inflation or deflation, which hurt the economy. As much as we've had some instability lately, things are nowhere near as bad as they could be.
Of course the flip side - hyperinflation - is also bad, but that's not what we're talking about here.
Good for who? Where does value move when your currency is reduced in value by an expansion in the supply? To regular people? No. Lower and middle class people are the ones who have the most cash, they have a higher ratio of cash to net worth than rich people who can put their money into assets. They have an emergency fund. They are saving up to become property owners.
Humanity survived and grew total economic output for millennia before inflationary paper currency came around. Inflationary paper currency is a relatively recent phenomenon. I'm not saying we should go back to the gold standard, but that ended in 1971. That's pretty recent.
If you live in a hyperinflation environment, you will spend your money on anything because it's better than holding onto that money and see it become worthless. It might seem silly to own 12 blenders, but buying yet another blender is a better investment than simply sitting on your money for a month in Turkey. At least a blender can blend and maybe be re-sold at a later date. That effect still happens in mildly inflationary economies: we are incentivized to buy goods and services we don't need because the alternative is just slowly watching our money lose value. This is not a great incentive to have baked into our financial system when we live on a planet with finite resources.
On the other hand, if your money is expected to retain or gain value, somebody has to really convince you to part with it. Does that mean products are built to last? Built more repairable or sustainable? Perhaps. You will still buy things of course, everybody needs stuff, but at least the incentive is trending in the right direction instead of towards needless consumption.
Ok ok ok. Now explain to me: if inflation is supposed to ensure people don't horde money/value
How is it possible that Jeff Besos hords the income of a country?
Yes his value is bound in shares and stuff but still he is holding 185 Billion $ of value to his person.
In comparison to see how much money that is look at this website :
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
It seems that at a certain point of wealth the rules don't apply anymore.
He is putting that wealth to work by keeping it invested in his company instead of stuffing it under his mattress. That's exactly how it's supposed to work. That wealth is doing work for him and for the rest of the economy in the form of Amazon stock (setting aside various ethical qualms about Amazon). Stock is nothing more than an abstract representation of a slice of a company to allow for distributed ownership and for companies to raise capital. So instead of purchasing goods and services from a company, a shareholder provides raw capital to exchange for a slice of the company. That would make sense for a wealthier person who can only buy so many yachts and massages (goods and services), but it applies equally well to someone who is trying to sock some money away for retirement and have it grow over time.
you are so close to admitting it's imaginary
Printing money is just one way that inflation can appear. The latest trends in that respect are in fact not caused by money-printing.
I can tell you want would happen. The Collaps of Capitalims. Because Capitalism needs the State to protect it with police force, Military and Bailouts. Thats the only reason States exist. The Ruleing classes need to work together to keep the rest under controll and to legitamise themselfes with Laws. States are always a tool of one class to rule over the others. They will never change in that regard.
Dear capitalists: If your excuse that you can’t ‘survive’ (actual excuse I’ve heard from capitalists) without gouging people, your system is busted.
That's kind of a scary thought, that I think humanity is about to try out next. As in, who needs the humans anymore, when robots will do the same tasks with far less effort?:-|
And that's when the poor people get to just fucking starve to death!
You are here
Shit.
I can’t starve to death if I have an EdibleFriend though, come visit.
Maybe not just poor people this time! Don't really even need a working class at all if there's no work to be done
i mean we have movies about that. the family friendly one is Wall-E
Try Soilent Green (TM) as your new fave cupcake flavor!
The trick is to do the very minimum to help the lower class, get them to hate each other, and hate immigrants.. but for some reason, not pay attention to the billionaires hiding behind the curtain.
It's existed since slavery. Thinly veiled with 'we're an individualistic society' and 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps'.
This meme format is the same as the Lisa one.
OR ELSE...!
You'll be happy with what you got.
This post reported to the Federal Commission of UnAmerican Activities
We fucking didn't. Our lords n masters decided they needed a new underclass to keep them going and this is all gonna end very very badly. Importing people from fucking fighting nations into polite nations causes 2 fighting nations.
This presupposes that there aren't extensively connected sociopaths in your community.
Why?
Because greedy, selfish assholes are very, very good at abusing and ruining a society for their own benefit. Keeping them out of the way and from making trouble is the only way the kind of society OP posted about would have any chance to survive long-term.
We really need to find a way to do that. Maybe entice them away with a kingship on Mars, or something?
I think the solution is for all the non assholes to work together to stamp out the assholes and remove them from having power. Incredibly difficult, but not impossible. It's the same class war that's been waged by the wealthy for decades. Theyve never stopped attacking, we just suck at working together and have allowed them to gain waaaay too much ground.
They're always going to be on the bus, but we can at least push them to the back where they can't fuck with where we want to go.
I think you just need equal power and more horizontal structures, nothing to abuse then.
OK, so propose a system that's actually been used at scale before that doesn't have the same issues as capitalism. I'm all ears
Lmao, The fact that something hasnt been used at scale doesn't mean it isn't feasible.
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