But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
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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 yes, this is an excellent goal which we wholeheartedly support
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@ireneista @jenniferplusplus
not arguing against full stoppages, but a strike without goals or demands doesn't seem very useful to me@Doomed_Daniel @ireneista
They're pretty clear about their goals, actually
https://thenetworkstate.com/ -
@jenniferplusplus I have not heard of capital strike until now and it sounds like how retail storefronts stay empty while rents keep increasing and squeezing out small business owners.
@zompus Yeah, same basic dynamic. But there's only so far they can push that before people just leave and the capitalists lose the power they had by virtue of owning all the real estate. Which is why they went so hard on forced return to office plans.
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@jenniferplusplus And 'free market' means freedom to manage and deploy capital... not money.
The rhetorical land mine is the 'free' in Free Market. Markets need to be Fair, not Free. Because people are criminals.
So here's the rule: as varies risk, so must vary regulation, both inside and out. "Capitalists" want less regulation and wonder why people think they're crooks
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967
But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
@jenniferplusplus It costs much more to produce AI than it returns. It is just another scam from the epstein class.
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@zompus Yeah, same basic dynamic. But there's only so far they can push that before people just leave and the capitalists lose the power they had by virtue of owning all the real estate. Which is why they went so hard on forced return to office plans.
@jenniferplusplus Yep. I work in HVAC engineering and there's lots of talk about how office buildings are very vacant and new construction is down as a result. Then again the uncertainty from having senile fascist narcissists in charge of the country doesn't help.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967
But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
I think the best news of all is that reasonable business leaders will cut their losses and won't keep pouring endless money down the drain or setting it on fire. This "AI" hype is finally over!
/s
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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 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.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967
But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
@jenniferplusplus "Your organization rarely has good ideas, ideas being expensive to implement was actually helping"
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@jenniferplusplus capitalism is always a denial-of-service attack on human potential; it’s not always this direct
@ShadSterling @jenniferplusplus
And all this, at the moment where those resources are desperately needed for mitigating climate change, fixing infrastructure, and rescuing public health.
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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.
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/115197695217930073
@jenniferplusplus Seems akin to:
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@jenniferplusplus @ireneista
if I just silently refuse to work and maybe embezzle my employers resources without any communicated goal that wouldn't be called a "strike" either@jenniferplusplus @ireneista
ok, maybe a "strike" like in "airstrike" -
@jenniferplusplus isn’t it that for instance the ancient Egyptian pyramids can be seen as similar efforts? Maybe a way to funnel excess wealth into sth that has zero value and is of no real world use.
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.
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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.
