[NickRandom]

My prediction: The Rich will continue to get richer and corporate profits will continue to skyrocket while the poor continue to get screwed over because the global economy is in recession while in fact the global elite continue to profit at the expense of the common man.

Ok, not much insight there (aka ‘same as it ever was’) but I am always fascinated about how easily human behaviour can be moulded, moderated and distracted simply by reducing the amount of crumbs left on the table to create infighting and disharmony instead of focusing attention on where the money is going and to who.

I mean, I get it - When the choice is between paying the bills and keeping a roof over your head or fighting for social justice and equality then the choice (on an individual level) is an easy one but I'm always disappointed that the populace are so easily distracted and divided by the creation of artificial scarcity and that they/we/us continue to fall for it every single time.

[c22]

I don't know. When I was younger and worked menial jobs and lived in crappy places it was pretty easy for me to surf through two recessions by just adapting to where I was (true, I did live in a car for two months in 2008). Now I have more wealth, but also more bills. If my wife loses her job or I lose too many clients we will have a problem. I'm still better off than those guys in suits flinging themselves from the top of an office building.

[NickRandom]

And of the twice (now thrice) that it happened to yourself? Who profited? Was it yourself?

To quote your reply "If my wife loses her job or I lose too many clients we will have a problem." Ask yourself this - Cui bono? ("to whom is it a benefit?")

(I presume the 'guys flinging themselves from buildings’ refers to the Black Friday 1869 Stock Market crash?) [From Wikipedia] The crash was a consequence of an attempt by financier Jay Gould and railway magnate James Fisk to corner the gold market and drive up the price.

Perhaps it was a reference to the 1929 Wall Street Crash? If so perhaps a quote would help - "How can a very serious Stock Exchange collapse produce a serious setback to industry when industrial production is for the most part in a healthy and balanced condition?"

Consider both points and wonder whether or not the people like yourself are being played as pawns.

[Edit to update]: When I refer to the global elite I don't mean any particular race or religion because at the end of the day the only true global religion at this point in human history is who has the biggest bank balance. Consider this - Elon Musk's top position has now been displaced by the CEO of LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton). In every single recession the profits from luxury goods has increased. Ask yourself why.

[c22]

From my laymen's perspective it seems most people lose out during a recession, across the socioeconomic spectrum. I think those who do manage to profit, despite what some of them may tell you, simply got lucky.

For what it's worth, I don't think this repeated boom/bust cycle is a good way to run the economy, but I am not convinced it's intentionally malicious. Nor am I convinced that concentrated wealth at rest really has much of an impact on anything at all (what really matters is the flow of cash, and this is where recessions can retard the arc of progress).

For all of its faults the economic system we find ourselves in actually has delivered on its promise of "growing the pie" which I suspect is why we continue to choose it. Even while living in a car I was able to obtain extremely cheap access to warm showers and a refrigerator--amenities that would be far out of reach of the homeless just 100 years ago.

It makes sense that Arnault has eclipsed Musk, luxury goods have a ridiculous profit margin and Elon has been wasting his wealth as of late.

There have always been powerful elites, but anyone who believes the elites possess more power over the proletariat now than in the past has not studied much history.

Furthermore the pool of elites, themselves, are more diversified and more likely to change from generation to generation than at any other time recorded.

So is it true that some with concentrated wealth may find it easier to weather a downturn than others without? Absolutely. Is it true that redistributing this wealth arbitrarily would systemically improve our society? Perhaps, but of this I am less sure.

We are still just scratching the surface of the potential global coordination modern communications technology can allow, I hope with time we can escape this local optimum we find ourselves in. Until then I see no point breathlessly railing against a system that while flawed is not without some merits and is assuredly keeping us at least pointed in the correct direction.

[chubot]

In the past I've not been a fan of the phrase "global elite" , or given it all that much thought.

But a few things have made me rethink that:

(1) I watched The Century of Self by Adam Curtis, which was a recommended documentary in this recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799789

I feel like as an educated person in his 40's, I should have at least heard of Edward Bernays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

But I hadn't until that documentary. Summary of what I got out of it: once TV arrived, it was inevitable that someone figured out the best ways to influence people's opinions with that medium.

i.e. everything people are complaining about with social media is not new. Once TV was invented, there was way to influence elections more effectively, etc.

It was very interesting to see who were the analogs of "Elon/Trump/Kanye" in the 50's. i.e. how politicians, businessmen, and entertainers all vied for attention and control over ideas. And paid for it handsomely!

I guess the main idea is how money can be converted directly and deterministically into the opinions of the masses.

I'm sure this is all old hat to people who study media, but ironically the current reflection about social media seems mostly ignorant of this, i.e. ahistorical. I had to learn this from a 20-year-old documentary!

---

(2) This is kind of dark, but it was clear through watching some of Kanye's unhinged interviews that he thinks of population influence as sort of an engineering feat. He admires objective metrics, aligned interests, power, etc.

He is amoral about it -- if trolling works, it works. It doesn't matter what it means.

He would love Bernays, or he probably knows 1000x more about him and his methods than any of us do.

He constantly talks about Elon and Trump because he admires how they control populations -- he says this explicitly. And Kanye is successful at it himself, so this is not an empty opinion. It's an interesting case of the mentally ill being more in touch with reality along one specific dimension than "normal people".

---

(3) "It's not greed that drives the world, but envy" -- Charlie Munger

(4) The idea of "mimetic desire" from Rene Girard (who Thiel studied at Stanford, etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimetic_theory

So to me those are all basically the same idea, and a bit depressing ...

And it works on me too. Because even if you don't have social media accounts or "keep up with the news" (I've been failing at this lately), I still think you're the "average of the 5 or 10 people closest to you". And those 5 or 10 people are influenced by these memes / media, etc. It does feel like a trap

It is not an accident that someone paid $44 B for Twitter ... Control over the zeitgeist is simply valuable.

[NickRandom]

Also: https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/kennedy-nixon-d...

[chubot]

I had a great middle school teacher who would always get us to talk about politics, around the Bush 92 era. She told us about this election being the one where the better looking guy won, because TV existed.

But it sounds like it was mostly an "accident" on both sides, or at least Nixon's, due to not understanding the new medium.

What Bernays did was more sophisticated IMO -- it was intentional "hacking" of public opinion, fueled by money. This includes helping to overthrow a democratically elected government in Guatemala (which BTW people told me about decades ago, but I failed to pay enough attention to)

[NickRandom]

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.