AdHom Smith 🔻

a volume in perpetual disintegration

[Linus Mixson @LinusMixson]

I'm so glad that we have LLMs to make computers more expensive for the first time since they were invented while also taking my job and making everyone illiterate

[Sean Padraig McCarthy @SeanMcCarthyCom]

The non-working upper class, the rentiers, are far more parasitic on society than the extremely small non-working section of the lower class. It is a major focus of propaganda to convince people that the opposite is the case. Nations aren’t weakened by the small fraction of GDP spent on food stamps, they are weakened by their rentier class. The stronger this class becomes the more it entrenches itself, the more it drains from the real productive economy.

Revolutions disrupt this. They clear out large swaths of the non-productive idle rich. They give opportunities to people of great talent who would otherwise be shut out of the system. This is why the United States, France, Russia and now China became vastly more powerful in the years after their revolutions. It is why all of them became nicer places to live with better metrics for health and education.

It is why China’s prosperity and power today is completely interlinked with Mao’s policies. Deng’s market reforms were all well and good but Mao did the heavy lifting when he cleared out the landlord class. Landlords are parasites. They contribute nothing to society and are in fact a net drain. This has been recognized by classical economists including Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the west about how China is finally economically powerful enough to choose not to do business with people who insult them. International football clubs worth billions now have to grovel and apologize to China. Good. These are the rewards for power in the international system.

If the West is so terrified of China’s power and of its values then why not emulate the policies that made them so powerful in the first place? If our western values of free speech and association are worth defending then why not clear out the idle class of landlords and rentiers who weaken them and our societies every day?

If we cannot do that then there is no point in complaining. China will supplant us because their economic system works better. And that’s how it should be.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@eveverett64 totally agree. but "rentier" is a technical term that includes usurers. it does not just mean landlords

"An individual who receives an income, usually interest, rent, dividends, capital gains, or profits from his or her assets and investments."

https://t.co/eIwzf0x5BZ

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@Mont_Jiang This is basically the distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty

[🇰🇵단일성 Commie on the Rez 단일성 🇰🇵 @patriach2051]

It's funny the average sq ft of a studio apartment in the US is 450-500. And the capitalist solution to homelessness is jail

[Rob @robrousseau]

I'm just glad I don't live in a dictatorship but a free democracy where every few years I can vote for a different banker or lawyer or landlord that represents the vast network of powerful corporate interests that controls every aspect of my life from cradle to grave

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

Hayek was a midwit snake-oil salesman of the first order. Put simply, the legally established negative liberty he champions permits the unequal ability of uncoerced individuals to achieve a very narrow and often unethically gained type of success in his ridiculously idealised 'market'. Then they monopolise market sectors and buy their way into power to exploit and coerce others. Result - the constant renewal and reproduction of the 1% revolving-door oligarchy. Tent cities getting bigger but GDP looks good and we've got AI! Hordes of unthinking wannabe strivers have been persuaded that this is the timeless moral and natural order of things.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@C2IRIS @log4j It's very funny that you earnestly believe the US "has been a strong force for good in the world" and are trying to persuade someone acting altruistically to instead sell an 0day to bad actors for profit.

[Michael Galant @michael_galant]

This set of quotes from @IsabellaMWeber’s new Anti-Fascist Economics really says it all

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@PippengerHarlo I was confused about 37. it sounds good, so why are billionaires pushing it? Then I noticed it's only for new construction.

[Clarence Thomas the Tank Engine @TheRealJChubby]

Kind of amazing watching a trillion dollar a year military get worked by drones and speed boats.

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

That's the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.

Allow me to summarise what I've been saying in one post and explain what's going on here. We need a clean energy system, our water systems, schools and hospitals are struggling, roads are crumbling and we're facing serious welfare cuts. We're told that we can't use public investment - unless it's on the military, of course - to fix all this because it'll "cause inflation" and "increase borrowing costs". Two huge lies - in fact the principal cause of inflation is rising energy costs and currency-issuing governments with central banks don't need to borrow money from parasitic 'bond markets'. Debt trouble occurs when nations with weak currencies - such as Argentina - owe debts payable only in a foreign currency, i.e. $ US. We are not in that situation.

Government bonds (called 'gilts' in the UK) are savings accounts giving big capital free money, nothing more - they don't fund our public spending. They're a relic from the age when the gold exchange system limited the money supply - this was abandoned between 1971 and 1978 when governments worldwide adopted fiat money systems. Just because bond traders jack up yields in the secondary market doesn't mean that governments need to increase yields in the primary auction. The problem is, as @JLMelenchon has just told the French, supine bought-off politicians and central bankers conforming to fiscal spending rules imposed on us by global money markets - the 'bond vigilantes'.

We're told that we should limit public spending because governments are wasteful and don't allocate capital properly - in other words utilities, schools, hospitals, infrastructure maintenance and other goods and services we really need don't make huge profits. Private investors allocate capital more efficiently and ensure progress - huge lie #3. Look below - private investors are wasting $ trillions on a huge AI bubble that'll inevitably burst. Tulip mania revisited. The 'animal spirits' of greedy, excitable private investors never learn.

But, to keep us in the dark, the investment elite - the wealthy corporations, banks and individuals who live off the free money we pay them as 'interest', 'yields' and 'returns' - won't let us see it burst. In the quite likely event that Western governments initially refuse to bail out the $4.2 trillion - yes, trillion - AI shortfall, there are contractual IPO (Initial Public Offering) mandates for compulsory 'public offerings' to fall back on. To cut a long story short, stupid pension, insurance fund, hedge fund, private equity and sovereign wealth fund managers, when they were told AI would be a bonanza, signed contracts to fund any bailout needed after 2030 and keep the AI shitshow on the road. We'll be paying for the system that steals our data, spies on us, give us the wrong answers to questions on ChatGPT, churns out cheat essays for students, ruins human creativity, and makes a mess of our NHS accounts etc. for the foreseeable future.

In other words, the geniuses who look after our savings and pensions are contracted to flush them down the toilet. But there's more. These private investment grifters do this thing called 'leveraging' - in other words, they use your savings and insurance premiums as derisking collateral to borrow loads more investment money at cheap preferential rate from their pals in the commercial banks. When the bubble bursts and threatens commercial bank liquidity, the central banks, like they did in 2008, will issue loads of public money as QE (Quantitative Easing). Yes indeed, the same public money we're told causes inflation and inefficiency when spent on utilities, hospitals, schools etc. will be shoved in the commercial banks' reserve accounts. Then the bond market will jack up yields, the governments and central bankers will conform and we'll pay them more interest for doing absolutely nothing constructive.

While all this is going on, China is still growing on the back of huge injections of public investment at 5% per annum with 1% inflation. This 300 year old loan-shark racket we call 'the market economy' in the West is finished. Melenchon is right.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@LibertyTemen @AragornEXDK @LinkofSunshine @slipperywerm Bro you're the one defending handouts for people who don't work for a living

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@NeolibMICDemon @AragornEXDK @LinkofSunshine @slipperywerm Someone who actually wants to live in it.

And if an irresponsible slumlord racked up $100k in necessary repairs, that should be reflected in a much lower selling price.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@twalkerp @Wyattandfun @HexcodeScarlet @emmma_camp_ @WSJFreeEx They should. Sitting on vacant units creates artificial scarcity, driving up rents for everyone.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@twalkerp @Wyattandfun @HexcodeScarlet @emmma_camp_ @WSJFreeEx Laws create the market; they created the conditions for earlier profitability, and new laws are reining in profits to protect renters.

That's a risk you take as an investor. Not everyone can be a winner.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@Wyattandfun @twalkerp @HexcodeScarlet @emmma_camp_ @WSJFreeEx That's the nature of any investment. The justification for the upside is that you're taking a risk.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@Wyattandfun @twalkerp @HexcodeScarlet @emmma_camp_ @WSJFreeEx They should sell -- probably at a loss -- to someone who will actually live in it. Landlords are not entitled to half of my paycheck. They can get a job.

Whoever moves in can fix it up. The projected cost of repairs should drive down the selling price to make it attractive.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@twalkerp @Wyattandfun @HexcodeScarlet @emmma_camp_ @WSJFreeEx I'd live in it, dumbass. Some of us work for a living.

[AdHom Smith 🔻 @future_schlock]

@Wyattandfun @twalkerp @HexcodeScarlet @emmma_camp_ @WSJFreeEx Tons of people would. Though maybe not at the price the owner feels entitled to ...

They made a bad business decision, they should sell at a loss to someone who will actually live in it.