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RE: The dangerous fallacy of "You can do it."
September 7, 2020 at 1:45 pm
Good stuff Sal
One of the most boggling things to me is that these huge corporations are just gobbling up little companies to the point that they are frankenopolies that wouldn't be allowed just a few decades ago. I remember HP being broken up because they figured there was no reason that a printer company should be working on medical technology so Agilent broke off to manage the medical side of things apart from HP. But just look at Google, Intel, Elon Musks companies, and Facebook and they are constantly acquiring companies that have nothing to do with their core product.
I just don't get it. The prevention of monopolies was something that was taught in my business classes as a necessary thing to allow the (BULLSHIT) invisible hand of the free market to do its thing and keep everything fair. Pay no attention to the externalities behind the curtain!
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RE: The dangerous fallacy of "You can do it."
September 7, 2020 at 2:02 pm
I have nothing against free market economies, it's capitalism that corrupts the free market. People usually frame it as if capitalism and a free market go hand-in-hand. Even a superficial reading on market economy, capitalism notwithstanding, is just a bunch of people offering without restriction their products and services in a public setting. Here, most people think of the usual medieval township market faire with farmers, blacksmiths and whatnot surrounding stalls and shopping buildings with some sort of currency (or just bartering) exchanging hands. Even here capitalism manages to ruin the day, given long enough time, wealth oligarchies naturally form in such microcosms.
Given the same setting, but instead of capitalist backed currency, how would it fare if an energy-based "currency" was involved? I honestly don't know, I don't think anyone really does. Although it's a fun little thought experiment. I am, however, of the conviction that most of the capitalist effects in such a microcosm wouldn't so easily form, such as oligarchies, seeing as the products and services there would be tied with energy used in the labour. How would even the notion of "property" be in an energy economy? Fuck if I know.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
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RE: The dangerous fallacy of "You can do it."
September 7, 2020 at 2:30 pm
I have heard of people trying to break work up into some sort of quanta to somehow create a value system. They found that the work it takes to pick up a penny is too great and you should wait for another one to land nearby to make it worth your while to bend over.
CEOS will get creamed in this system because they largely just sit in meetings. Maybe they would get a higher work quanta score based on effect of word? Maybe CEOs and Administrative Assistants will make similar wages due to similar keystrokes? Maybe data entry people will earn big bucks for all that typing or the person loading grain into a box car will be wealthy just based on expended energy? I doubt that would work because it doesn't take into account the scarcity of the worker or skills necessary for success.
Oh and BTW gold based money or really any commodity based money is a bad idea it fails to expand and contract with the economy and, back in the day, China was using that fact to deplete our gold which brought about the law that US citizens could not own gold! That begat the outrage within the system and from without that, "How could a currency be considered 'backed by gold' actually be backed by gold when you can't obtain the gold with which that currency is backed!?" This is the crux of the problem because any commodity will fluctuate based on market forces which adds a dynamic effect within that market so it is more difficult to know the value of a currency. The current fiat method based on basket of goods per capita and the demand for said money at least responds to the market better than a commodity based currency.
Yes, I'm aware of the dismal history related to fiat currency, but even given that for some reason the greenback keeps soldiering on. Probably because of our huge fuck-off military. So if any country is like, "Yo, your money isn't good." We park a carrier off the coast and their like, "Oh, my bad, I guess I'll use your currency to buy the oil that I need because I guess it IS worth what you say its worth."
