yoused @yoused@talkedabout.social

@dougfir @ai6yr Culverts? Have you ever been to Moab? Arches up to the right, the plateau of Canyonlands to the left, the town is in a freakin’ ditch. Surprising it does not flood more.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin There are companies with data centers devoted to trading large blocks of instruments in millisecond time frames in an effort to extract profit in tiny changes in value. What value does that provide? Sorry, but I think one of the big problems with modern capitalism is the tunnel vision and only this thing matters, I do not need to look at anything else.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin except that the vast majority of stock/instrument trading does not involve actual investment but just passing notes around. The money goes from one investor to another, not to the company itself. There is a tradable instrument called ^VIX that lets you bet on the net price volatility of the market itself.

@zkrisher @piatpod 12 years ago, and I think they deleted that part after getting bad pub over it.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin There are really only two ways you can own something: by some sort of title document recognized by the government or by having the biggest and best guns to protect you from the people who want to take something away from you.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin The crucial aspect to any form of capitalism is support from the underlying system. The libertarians who advocate for minimal government obfuscate in the inextricable role the government plays in making the system work.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Then we have this whole raft of shit with the Stock Markets, where people make money on the change in perceived value of a business. Instrument trading and profiting on value shifts does not look to me like it contributes anything worthwhile to anyone other than the trader who profits. It is a big casino.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin We have immortal corporations in contemporary capitalism, but is that a defining quality or just what we call it right now? My mother was fond of saying that corporations were originally temporary collectives formed to accomplish a thing (e.g., build a dam) and then dissolved, which seems to sound preferable to what has been imposed on us.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin You are probably right. It is a complex subject that has a lot of vectors. One of the fundamentals is a mechanism for representing substantive and transient value symbolically (money in exchange for action or product). After that, it gets into what I think it means vs what you think it means and is highly influenced by cultural paradigms.

@Huntn00 @cykonot @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Capitalism exists in the form that we agree on as a society. If enough of us decide that computers should be the sole arbiters of what is symbolic value (money), then that is the system that it is. If we agree that these machines should decide whether a corporation should or should not continue to exist, then that would be how the system works.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin In a very real sense, “capitalism” is used by whomever to support whatever they want it to mean, so it is a highly diluted word. We think of “communism” as being autocratic, but the underlying principles would not trend that way (in an ideal world), and the capitalistic ideal of aggregating toward a larger goal is present there as well.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin There is of course much more to it than that, but the flow of money into aggregation is the primary principle of capitalism. The term does not explicitly demand a market economy or voluntary participation, but those are concepts that are normally applied to it. The “voluntary” aspect is portrayed by some as crucial, but then excuses are made for why the big players should be in control.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin In the most technical sense, “capitalism” is about capital, or the way money reflows from a lot of people into an aggregation that can be used to accomplish a larger result than any of the participants could on their own. “Capital” is Latin for “head”, so the body of revenue forms a gathered head aimed toward a goal.

@stevesilberman RFK Jr is a man of principle. That principle seems to be to keep the mainsail 3 sheets to the wind.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin How do you define capitalism? What is its function outsides the bounds of human interaction?

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Capitalism is an abstraction that describes a form of human interaction. It is not a thing unto itself. It does not exist in nature. Removing the human interaction turns it into nothing more than math.

@GGMcBG