It's not a chart of investment by patriotic US citizens seeking to better the country such that the country "wins" .. more like a chart of military and motte and bailey investments made by individual feuding Norman clans each seeking to be the last castle standing and in control of all the throttle points and gates across the country and ideally the world.
This is a good time to reflect on the etymology of "Banana Republic" [0]. I suspect most people don't see fruit companies as a major threat, but they'll kill and ravage to get people cheap bananas.
This idea that the morals of the people making investments is in any way relevant is a bit of a misframe. Investors are capable of any evil, the default position is of surprise if one of them is investing out of some sense of responsibility. The point of the economic system is it channels some of the most ghoulish and horrible people to do good as an accidental side effect of their mad rush to wealth and power. Works really well, on average everyone wins.
> The point of the economic system is it channels some of the most ghoulish and horrible people to do good as an accidental side effect of their mad rush to wealth and power. Works really well, on average everyone wins.
Now imagine how much money you have to invest in order to convince people that this weird theory makes sense.
Slightly off topic but the Vice banana documentary is a surprisingly interesting 15 minutes https://youtu.be/2Bm5NWCMlPo Some on banana republics and also much other stuff.
I'd say that we might both agree that the US economy is currently heavily dependent on the circular jerking of numbers between AI boosters .. remains to be seen what the average person gets to eat from slops.
How can you claim that just after speaking of Banana Republics? These clearly show that free markets alone are terrible for the vast majority of people.
> The point of the economic system is it channels some of the most ghoulish and horrible people to do good as an accidental side effect of their mad rush to wealth and power. Works really well, on average everyone wins.
When there is a functioning justice system that enforces the law, rather than a corrupt oligarchy/kleptocracy/kakistocracy.
The chart is also misleading because it paints investment as morally good but ignores most of this investment goes into closed source APIs while the rest of the world does open weights, and does so way more efficiently (spending less money) due to export controls