But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
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Sort of, but most of the labor used to build the pyramids was while the Nile was flooded and the majority of farmhands could not access the fields where they worked so it can also be seen as a jobs program for off-season farmhands.
Could they have been using that labor for other more productive things, sure, but it's definitely less bad than taking people off of food production for a vanity project would have been.
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What's a capital strike? That tends to be the question I get in response to this rant.
You know what a labor strike is, right? It's wielding labor as power, by witholding it, as a bargaining tactic.
A capital strike is the same thing, except with capital.
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That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.
So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.
And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.
Or dump ever more money into the stock market, an abstraction that doesn't generate anything tangible.
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That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.
So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.
And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.
OK, they are keeping resources occupied, but aren't they also setting fire to their own money? They are spending money that won't produce a return (Not that they would miss it). Is the object just to keep resources occupied or also make net asset value evaporate?
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@Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista
We need to end capitalism. We don't have to end markets. We don't have to (and shouldn't) end distributed decision-making. In fact, the real problem is a dearth of these things. We already have centralized control, thanks to our current economic system's ongoing concentration of wealth.
Imagine what an economy made up entirely of cooperatives would look like. Decision-making: distributed equally among stakeholders. Profit: distributed equally among stakeholders. No more perverse incentives to exploit workers and customers for the sake of far off shareholders who don't have to see the consequences of their actions on the local community, because the shareholders *are* the local community.
How much more money, and power over our own lives, would we all have if we didn't have to pay the transactional tax known as "profit" in perpetuity for a one-time investment of capital? *We* would have the capital then!
@hosford42 @Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista Are there steps people (ordinary people) can take to make this a reality?
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Here are the receipts-
https://policytensor.substack.com/p/the-generalized-dutch-disease -
OK, they are keeping resources occupied, but aren't they also setting fire to their own money? They are spending money that won't produce a return (Not that they would miss it). Is the object just to keep resources occupied or also make net asset value evaporate?
@CassandraVert I think the argument being made here is that it's a margin play. They're trying to squeeze the leverage of the working and middle classes by devaluing their ability to "compete" for fair wages etc.
Not sure if thats read correctly but thats how Im understanding it.
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@hosford42 @Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista Are there steps people (ordinary people) can take to make this a reality?
@Alsy @hosford42 @Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista You can start by joining a local co-op, or maybe start a new one.
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@Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista
We need to end capitalism. We don't have to end markets. We don't have to (and shouldn't) end distributed decision-making. In fact, the real problem is a dearth of these things. We already have centralized control, thanks to our current economic system's ongoing concentration of wealth.
Imagine what an economy made up entirely of cooperatives would look like. Decision-making: distributed equally among stakeholders. Profit: distributed equally among stakeholders. No more perverse incentives to exploit workers and customers for the sake of far off shareholders who don't have to see the consequences of their actions on the local community, because the shareholders *are* the local community.
How much more money, and power over our own lives, would we all have if we didn't have to pay the transactional tax known as "profit" in perpetuity for a one-time investment of capital? *We* would have the capital then!
@hosford42 @Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista This is the #solidarityeconomy. It's small, but it's growing.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967
But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
@jenniferplusplus and dont forget fired everyone, thats also dope for a consumer economy
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That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.
So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.
And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.
@jenniferplusplus See also - private equity buying and looting market segment after market segment.
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@jenniferplusplus I was thinking that Musk's data centres in space idea was to add solar panels to the list of items the AI industry is hoarding.
@stellarsarah @jenniferplusplus
This is not, at all, "just by chance". I think there's some political agenda to remove from any accessible market everything that empower users to be independent on computing (and on energy, and we will soon discover on what else). -
Incidentally, if you divert a trillion dollars to something and get "basically zero" economic activity around it, that's not an investment. It's sabotage. It's become the chief manifestation of the capital strike we've all been enduring since, roughly, the first half of 2022.
@jenniferplusplus But why would the powerful do a capital strike?
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967
But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
@jenniferplusplus This fits. I use AI to check work sometimes, but not to replace doing it in the first place. Any labor saving would come from automating tasks but AI cannot do that because it behaviour is not deterministic so does not allow me to let it do what a good code would do deterministically. I can make code more easily using AI but my work setup does not allow efficient use of one's own tools and one spends too much time being a dev and maintainer of private tools and does less work.
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That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.
So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.
And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.
@jenniferplusplus an essay that feels very related: “Capital as Power — The Business of Strategic Sabotage”.
https://capitalaspower.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/bichler_nitzan_recasp_2023.pdf
(I’d skip over the intro and dive in to section 2.)
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967
But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
@jenniferplusplus @petrillic @nixCraft It's one boondoggle, Jennifer, what could it cost? $1T?
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My understanding is that was less wasting wealth, more a jobs program to give laborers income during the agricultural off-season. Like unemployment insurance, it spread money around so people wouldn't starve.
Whereas all this "AI investment" is channeling more and more money into fewer and fewer hands.
@Kathmandu @jenniferplusplus that’s where they got this idea of trickle down economy from then?
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@Alsy @hosford42 @Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista You can start by joining a local co-op, or maybe start a new one.
Precisely this. We have two avenues available to us: Push for changes to the law, which is the long-term solution, and take our business (and labor!) to cooperatives, which is the short-term solution.
The third thing we can do is increase awareness. Talk about it. Spread the word. Things don't have to work the way they do. We have legitimate and *practical* options!
@Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista -
@hosford42 @Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista This is the #solidarityeconomy. It's small, but it's growing.
I wasn't aware there was a movement already! I've been trying to start one myself. Thanks!
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Precisely this. We have two avenues available to us: Push for changes to the law, which is the long-term solution, and take our business (and labor!) to cooperatives, which is the short-term solution.
The third thing we can do is increase awareness. Talk about it. Spread the word. Things don't have to work the way they do. We have legitimate and *practical* options!
@Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista@hosford42 @Alsy @Doomed_Daniel @jenniferplusplus @ireneista I'd argue that working at and shopping at co-ops is a short-term solution AND and a long-term solution. Changes to the law are few and far between, inconsistently enforced, and in danger of being repealed. Expanding the presence of co-ops in the economy is a solution with both breadth and depth.
As for spreading the word, I'd love to refer you to a group I'm part of, GEO (geo.coop), which exists for just this reason. The website is crammed full of useful information, and I'm coordinating the relaunch of our print journal.
