> Also, in my experience, there is some truth to the statement that wealthy people learn things that people don't learn in school.
There's a very interesting book called A Framework for Understanding Poverty that talks about the unwritten rules of each social class and how it's difficult to move up the ladder if you don't understand the rules. Someone who is born into a wealthy family is going to have an inherent advantage at maintaining a lifestyle of wealth because they understand the social rules of being part of the wealthy class. It's a fascinating read.
>What exactly is the ideal way that society should be organized and function after Capitalism has been abolished? [...] What I mean by this is how would a "stateless, classless, moneyless society" even work exactly?[...] I guess what I'm ultimately getting at is, how does a truly post-capitalist system work?
Karl Marx wrote in <em>The German Ideology</em>
>Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
Anyone who claims to know what a post-capitalist society will look like is just guessing, honestly.
Like you said, there are many different theories and ideas on how to establish socialism / communism, and what that should look like.
Should it be a revolutionary vanguard party taking control of the state on behalf of the working-class? Direct seizure over the instruments of production by the workers? Should co-ops within capitalism wrest supremacy in the market? General strikes and riots to pressure the ruling-class to capitulate? Should socialists support reformist parties under capitalism or only advocate for direct workers control?
I think you're right to struggle with these questions because they dont have easy answers, and what type of praxis should be attempted or advocated for will depend on the material circumstances, ideological climate, etc.
A book I read recently that tries to lay out an actual concrete plan is Richard D. Wolff's <em>Democracy at Work</em>, but keep in mind his ideas are not the end-all-be-all.
Your brother is likely a Timmy.
He believes in the Warren Buffet BS of "it is important to save money and invest in good companies"; "the path to riches is compound interest over your investment"; etc.
It's not that Buffet is wrong. Saving is important and is one of the most important paths to wealth. Receiving compound interest also is an important path to wealth. The thing you've got to keep in mind is that this Warren fundamentalist B&H BS has become a full blown mania/bubble. Fundamentalist analysis / valuation work as it is proven by Benjamin Graham and his followers (Buffet among them). The problem is that this mania shifted from research good companies and worry with capital preservation to buy index funds and never sell. People are buying stock index funds because they tend to represent the overall performance of the economy or of a sector and they just mindlessly put their money in there believing the price will only go up and, if it ever crashes, it doesn't matter because it will recover. People are buying bonds with ridiculously low interest rates that are far from being safe.
Anyway, I think that you should read the book, but be careful with the B&H myth surrounding Warren Buffer. I also suggest you read This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly and then take a look at the US debt. Look into the NIRP in Europe and the QE 1, 2 and 3 in the US. Etc.
Good luck.
Buy land, because god won't make more.
This is the syllogism they are using.
A) Black people use this social program B) Republicans want to cut this social program
Therefore, Republicans want to cut social programs because Black people use them.
So if you want to cut welfare you hate black people. If you point out that the large majority of people who use welfare in America are not black, so why you hear, "DIBRPORITONALLHY BLACK." These people have no idea what a proportion is or what it should mean. Ask someone, "What is the proper proportion that something should be of another thing?" They have no idea and can't unpack it.
Bonus points, if instead of talking about disproportionate black people they instead say "people of color" you can ask them how they got so racist that they would use an old-timey racist phrase like "colored people" AND lump in all races into one group as if Cubans, and Italians, and Arabs and Indians and African Americans and Koreans are all the same, have no special identity that matters to them and their only feature is not being white. Sounds like a white supremacist talking point, doesn't it?
Edit: People should actually just read this book instead of launching misinformed and unrelated arguments against what I said. It turns out the professional academic goes into a little more detail and cites extensive sources, unlike my exceedingly brief reddit comment. Literally, go read a book. It's very short, because half of it is citations.
If you're interested, here's a great book: "This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly." It's about exactly this phenomenon. The people who are getting rich always think that their success is because they are smarter than other people and they've figured out what went wrong last time. It's part of an essential fallacy wherein people attribute their successes to their own efforts/genius and externalize their failures.
> debt to the government is absolutely fucking irrelevant
Oh god this is so misguided it's terrifying.
Go read This Time Is Different
Or ask yourself why Zimbabwe couldn't currency-control itself out of financial collapse. Yes, government debt is more complex than consumer debt, and controlling the monetary supply is a powerful tool. But it's not a license to do whatever the fuck you want. Countries can and do misuse this power all the time to their own peril. The US is no different. We must manage this stuff, and right now we're not. We're doing the opposite of what we should be doing.
Ideally we would have stayed Neutral during ww1 and mirrored our military like the Swiss's militia system. Iran is a problem because the CIA & British fooled around with Iran which blew up in their faces. We still feel the repercussions of their mess up yet the organizations who caused the mess in the first place say that things will be different this time.
You can construct most of micro from
a. People have complete, transitive preferences over bundles of goods and services.
b. People choose the most preferred bundle in the choice set.
a. Firms have technologies to convert inputs to outputs.
b. Firms choose the input-output bundle that minimizes cost or maximizes profit.
a. In the simplest case, this is the anonymous, price-taking market.
b. But it could be more complicated, as in a game theory model.
c. Usually this goes under the heading of an "equilibrium concept."
> What does this have to do with North Korea?
North Korea buys almost exclusively products made in North Korea. Their money doesn't flow anywhere but into themselves, yet they are still extremely poor. It is an example of an economy that works in the way you describe you want Mexico to work, yet has the exact opposite result of what you seem to expect (yet the exact result that economists would expect).
> No wealth is being created
Incorrect. See above link on comparative advantage for reason why.
I recommend this free book as a good introduction to economics. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. If you're willing to spend some money, this one is also supposed to be quite good: Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan. Both of these authors can explain these concepts much more concisely than I can.
There is a reason the classic book on bubbles and panics is titled <em>This Time Is Different</em>. To paraphrase JK Galbraith, for every bubble there must be an essential element of newness -- not to convince people, but to allow those who wish to believe to do so. That this time the rules have changed and it won't end the way it literally always has.
The SoV argument is a weird one, because "store of value" is not really a financial concept anyone used before Bitcoin. (It's taken from the standard list of things needed to be a currency.) The closest thing is "inflation hedge", something you expect to retain its value in the event of inflation in fiat, like gold. But you generally don't expect the real value of an inflation hedge to go up -- its nominal value may rise as the dollar (or whatever) falls, but the whole point is that it retains value rather than increasing.
Basically, there are a lot of reasons to think that Bitcoin is in a pretty classic speculative bubble like all those that have come before, so the burden of proof would seem to fall on its defenders. "Number go up" is not a defense, since that's exactly what you'd expect in a bubble.
I think the difference with Bitcoin is that the protocol itself both diffuses the responsibility for the scam and makes it easy to bring back. In a typical Ponzi, the collapse exposes the perpetrator and destroys the instrument of the scheme. The fund goes bust, the company collapses, and so on. In a speculative bubble (which is a sort of "natural" Ponzi scheme) the bubbling asset is widely discredited and people wonder how it could ever have been so trusted.
With Bitcoin, though, even in the event of a collapse, as long as there are enough true believers who keep mining, the thing keeps existing and can draw in a fresh round of suckers once people forget. There's no fund or company or product to shut down, ultimately. And its easy for people to rationalize the failures by blaming everything but the protocol itself.
It also helps that Bitcoin is unlike most things that have come before (n.b. this doesn't make it good). There's a reason that the rallying cry of speculative bubbles is "this time is different", and with Bitcoin it's easy to convince yourself that it's different, especially if your ideology already leans toward libertarian.
It's an interesting subject.
One factor is that the black population tends to be younger, which has an impact.
Thomas Sowell went into this in more depth in his book, "Discrimination and Disparities."
The book changed my perspective, which had previously been that our institutions were riddled with so much racial bias and corruption as to be almost useless, to something more tempered.
There's definitely discrimination at play. But for a real, more permanent, more effective, and faster solution, we will need to look deeper. But there are other factors that may make it appear worse than it is. And these factors should inform the solution.
For instance, banks owned by blacks are actually less likely to make loans to black borrowers, and that's the case in both single-factor and multi-factor analysis.
The point is, to win the fight against racism, not fight people or companies that simply happen to look racist, when, in fact, they may be applying policies that have nothing to do with racism.
Because the situation is not always as it seems at first glance.
Send me a message if you'd like to talk about this, because my family and I have been discussing it, back and forth, for some time.
There's a book ("Espresso coffee. The science of quality") written by Andrea Illy and Rinantonio Viani. You'll find very interesting details there. Available at Amazon
Discrimination and Disparities https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541645634/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_4kCuFb699QVY1
Her entire argument is trashed by a much more intelligent man than her. Thomas Sowell is the boss when it comes to these topics.
Quote him and watch them call him a racist. Then drop a picture of him. 😂
Yeah, I have seen those exact same threads before.
Every single time there is a bunch of comments high on hopium saying "this time is different <X_SCAM_COMPANY> is not like <Y_SCAM_COMPANY>", all the way to the point where shit explodes. Then a few still will be around in <X_SCAM_COMPANY> subreddit huffing on hopium, like the folks on /r/CelsiusNetwork or /r/terraluna, etc.
It's just how this goes, every single fucking time, lol.
Bottom of most reports or analysis from Denver Metro Association of Realtors has the disclaimer: “All data from REcolorado or Ires”. This indicates their statistics likely only include sales that occurred through member realtors who participated in their multi list service. FSBO and investor purchases that did not use a realtor would not be included.
Current market is not that similar to 15 years ago. On the other hand, THIS TIME IS ALWAYS DIFFERENT.
https://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financial/dp/0691152640
This Time is Different by Rogoff and Reinhart
https://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financial/dp/0691152640
Modern crashes are a bit different and I suggest you read Bernanke's latest book on those:
Dude, it's not my responsibility to educate you if you're too fucking stupid to understand Econ 101.
Let me know if you have any further questions after having read: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Dummies-Sean-Masaki-Flynn/dp/1119476380/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=56365768552&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlrPGsZOL-AIV2h-tBh3bmg3GEAAYASAAEgIxa_D_BwE&hvadid=274698185700&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9026928&hvnetw=g&...
While I certainly didn't have time to read all of that (you didn't either...wokes rarely do) I did read enough to see that there were very little actual disparities in the few I was able to read. I agree that there's a 5-10% cost of racism and we should work toward getting rid of that. But CRT posits that everything is racist and must be changed. That would be bad for everyone, including black people.
As a counter, I offer https://www.amazon.com/Discrimination-Disparities-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1541645634
I'm also a big fan of John McWhorter https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/critical-race-theory.html?searchResultPosition=3
As a mediocre American, you are about as unqualified to speak on either of these topics as a human being could possibly be.
Yo creo que estamos en diferente horizonte de conocimiento y al ignorar el tema piensas que estoy confundido.
No te preocupes, no pasa nada todos ignoramos cosas. Te dejo un libro que acabo de leer para que puedas entender un poquito más sobre el tema
https://www.amazon.com.mx/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471
Book links were not sent for you to counter in a reply. They were provided in case you, or anyone reading this, would like to go deeper into the topic/data. Our back in forth communication with links to articles is a good starting point to try and dig into what reality is but a book with years, or a lifetime of research, is much more effective/useful. Unfortunately the media does a great job of manipulating data and swaying popular opinion with misleading headlines and biased/misleading articles to push a grand narratives and make money. Books are the most useful antidote. Again, if anyone is interested, what I consider the two most important book links are below.
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Thomas Sowell should be a house hold name. Man is a genius. Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell...
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Data, data and more data. Facing Reality by Charles Murray...
In the African slave trade (lets say approx. 1500s-1800s), there were potentially as many as 1-1.5 million white, European enslaved laborers taken to Africa (source: Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities) - most of this occurred before and just as the North American Slave Trade was starting. Now this number, despite being high, is still significantly smaller than the 10-14 million African enslaved laborers brought to North America.
And that number pales in comparison to the estimated 40 million humans currently living in enslaved conditions with ~71% are women used in some form of human/sex trafficking.
TLDR; slavery was and continues to be rampant.
This is probably the stupidest and most harmful thing I’ve ever read on this sub.
Sovereign default means that people stop lending money to governments (or only so so at exorbitant interest rates in order to compensate them for the risk of another default). Without loans, government spending in these countries needs to be severely curtailed, and the government can not use debt to augment low tax revenue during recessions. In the absence of loans to boost and smooth government spending, recessions become both more common and more severe, housing markets crash, hyperinflation is common as governments try to print their way out. Unemployment spikes and remains high for years or decades after default, and suicides spike as well. There are countless research papers on this, here’s a book summarising many of them.
There are real people being harmed and even killed by this, try stopping your socialist revolutionary LARP long enough to see that.
This guy is 100% right.
The only value of decentralization is as meme/marketing material. It's the element of crypto that allows people to believe that this is new, that the laws of financial reality no longer apply, that <em>this time is different</em>.
If you could launch a crypto today that was completely centralized -- literally just run it on Amazon cloud or something -- and keep anyone from finding this out, it would outperform every other project in terms of speed and fees. (Of course, that doesn't guarantee you financial success.)
As an educator, it is not the education system that is failing. It is systemic poverty that is creating what we are experiencing as a decline. People in poverty don't value education, they resent it.
Here is a quick read if you have the time. A Framework for Understanding Poverty 4th Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1929229488/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_E3VN82NCK991ZX7A0GJ6
The issue does not lie with our system, but via the petty politics as previously mentioned.
Additionally, we are a military super-power. Our entire country and economy is designed around waging war.
Profit comes before the people as well. We have outsourced everything.
It seems we practice isolationism in the wrong ways.
I do agree we are ignorant when it comes to foreign languages.
The question is not really how do we change education in the country. It is how do we convince those that don't value education to value it?
We can't reach every kid. It is a sobering truth. I, myself, don't worry about kids that get A's I can't tell you their names at the end of the year. I worry about the kids with D's and lower whose family has been destroyed by poverty and addiction. Because if I can get one of them away from the community after graduation, they can raise a family with a chance of success.
Just finished Democracy at Work by Richard Wolff. I recommend it, it's quite an easy read (no economics or philosophy background required). This book is an argument for worker coops, but is light on the details of how they operate.
btw this can depend on who you're talking about.
Look at who we held down, and how they are next to their closest control group.
Compare African Americans to Africans. Compare Indians now to those in the past, or compare to uncontacted tribes which still exist. Who would be more likely to wish to trade places? African Americans or Africans?
One of my people, now laid off, was from Pakistan. Arranged marriage, etc. It wasn't all peaches and rainbows, but they made it very clear to me they considered English occupation to be a good thing overall. Without it they wouldn't have infrastructure now, is what they told me. Very educated people.
Another thing to compare. African American vs 1st generation African immigrant work ethic etc.
I only bring these things up because what you say does not stand up to basic scientific scrutiny.
You should read some Thomas Sowell. I highly recommend it. You're a smart guy but I don't think you've looked in to it past the main talking points. Understandable, you're very busy.
#1 in several topics. Only 320 pages. https://www.amazon.com/Discrimination-Disparities-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1541645634/ I haven't read it yet tbh but it's on my list.
Reinhart and Rogoff's This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Its not about theory, but real economic and financial history. Any theory you have should fit this data.