If everyone says they feel like the economy is bad, but the metrics say the economy is good, maybe the metrics are wrong or measuring the wrong things!
Possible; it’s also possible they’re believing lies being told to them by people who benefit from others having false beliefs.
Information asymmetry often works to the benefit of employers and landlords, for example. If workers and tenants do have lots of options, but don’t believe they do, they’re more likely to settle for shitty jobs and housing.
There’s a common lie told by upper managers in a lot of industries: “Our business is perpetually in danger; so we can’t afford to pay you more because then we will go out of business and you’ll all lose your jobs anyway.”
If workers and tenants do have lots of options, but don’t believe they do, they’re more likely to settle for shitty jobs and housing.
If workers and tenants are settling for shitty jobs and housing, the economy is bad. It doesn’t matter if they technically have lots of options because the economy is structured to make them feel like they don’t.
The weird thing is, these information asymmetries make capitalism less efficient than it would be with less asymmetry. They don’t serve the interests of capital; they serve the interests of management.
We’ve stopped being capitalist a long time ago. Now we have corporate feudalism. We prop up old companies, tamp down on startups, and do our best to make sure companies make most of their money from rent seeking.
Marx characterized this as “anarchy of production” - without centralize control, the whims of the market inevitably undermine economic growth. It’s what causes the boom and bust cycles.
I think Marx also underestimated the class interest of the managerial class, which shows up rather vividly in actually-existing socialisms as well. Principal/agent problems are a doozy.
I think Marx underestimated the class divisions created by colonialism between colonizers and the colonized. It turns out that settlers could be bribed with the superprofits created through the superexploitation of colonized people. It took later theorizing by Lenin and Mao and Fanon and Du Bois to advance theory to that point.
Sure, although once we foreground the concept of “colonialism” it also crops up in those socialist contexts too: see the Bolsheviks’ treatment of Ukraine, or the ongoing maintenance of North Korea as a source of slave labor.
This. Wallstreet is doing great. The average US citizen not so much. But politicians really only care that CEOs are still getting their bonus checks, not that minimum wage workers are having to work multiple jobs to just barely scrape by. We need to reevaluate the metrics we use to drive policy decisions because they’re rewarding the people that need it the least.
GDP was invented during the great depression. The rich have figured out how to game the metric: wealth inequality. You can give more and more to an ever narrowing slice of the country and “average GDP” can still be going up…despite the fact that much of that went to Elon Musk so he can buy another PJ or whatever.
If everyone says they feel like the economy is bad, but the metrics say the economy is good, maybe the metrics are wrong or measuring the wrong things!
Possible; it’s also possible they’re believing lies being told to them by people who benefit from others having false beliefs.
Information asymmetry often works to the benefit of employers and landlords, for example. If workers and tenants do have lots of options, but don’t believe they do, they’re more likely to settle for shitty jobs and housing.
There’s a common lie told by upper managers in a lot of industries: “Our business is perpetually in danger; so we can’t afford to pay you more because then we will go out of business and you’ll all lose your jobs anyway.”
If workers and tenants are settling for shitty jobs and housing, the economy is bad. It doesn’t matter if they technically have lots of options because the economy is structured to make them feel like they don’t.
Capitalism working as intended 👍
Firing them into the sun would be extremely expensive. It’s cheaper to just send them into deep space.
OceanGate had the right idea.
Crushing billionaires in the depths of the ocean is actually a good way to get their carbon back into long-term storage
Good point. Make gravity work for us rather than against us.
It’s even cheaper to let them build submersibles.
The weird thing is, these information asymmetries make capitalism less efficient than it would be with less asymmetry. They don’t serve the interests of capital; they serve the interests of management.
We’ve stopped being capitalist a long time ago. Now we have corporate feudalism. We prop up old companies, tamp down on startups, and do our best to make sure companies make most of their money from rent seeking.
(pst that’s just capitalism)
Marx characterized this as “anarchy of production” - without centralize control, the whims of the market inevitably undermine economic growth. It’s what causes the boom and bust cycles.
I think Marx also underestimated the class interest of the managerial class, which shows up rather vividly in actually-existing socialisms as well. Principal/agent problems are a doozy.
Maybe.
I think Marx underestimated the class divisions created by colonialism between colonizers and the colonized. It turns out that settlers could be bribed with the superprofits created through the superexploitation of colonized people. It took later theorizing by Lenin and Mao and Fanon and Du Bois to advance theory to that point.
Sure, although once we foreground the concept of “colonialism” it also crops up in those socialist contexts too: see the Bolsheviks’ treatment of Ukraine, or the ongoing maintenance of North Korea as a source of slave labor.
This. Wallstreet is doing great. The average US citizen not so much. But politicians really only care that CEOs are still getting their bonus checks, not that minimum wage workers are having to work multiple jobs to just barely scrape by. We need to reevaluate the metrics we use to drive policy decisions because they’re rewarding the people that need it the least.
GDP was invented during the great depression. The rich have figured out how to game the metric: wealth inequality. You can give more and more to an ever narrowing slice of the country and “average GDP” can still be going up…despite the fact that much of that went to Elon Musk so he can buy another PJ or whatever.