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by tharmas 12 days ago
I would argue that it is rent-seeking and asset accumulation that is a big problem. If the wealthy elite invested in production rather than consuming assets that would improve things. I don't share his politics but someone like Elon Musk at least invests in production whereas Blackrock is heavily into asset accumulation.

However, part of the problem of why the wealthy elite don't invest in production is because of the Petro-dollar. When the USA moved to the Petro-dollar that is when the economy started to go K-shaped. The British Empire had the same problem. The Chinese absolutely do NOT want to become the World's reserve currency as they know the same fate will befall them. Perhaps the USA should have listened to Keynes with his Bancor currency after all.
2 comments
inigyou 12 days ago
They are neither investing in production nor consuming assets really. Any billionaire's yacht is an insignificant fraction of the world's resources. What matters is capital misallocation - they are investing in things that aren't productive that they think are productive and because they have too much money to invest, a too great share of society's resources are going towards those unproductive investments and productive activities are seeing shortages (e.g. the RAM crisis in PC and console gaming).
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mlsu 12 days ago
This is why capital accumulation, of the extreme kind we see today in the USA, is wrong. Not because greed is a sin (although, it is, and most of these guys are going to burn in hell), but because it turns the country into functionally the USSR bureaucracy. We are basically doing central planning in huge swathes of the economy and surprise surprises, it’s not working.
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inigyou 12 days ago
It's very interesting how every comment I've made recently along these lines has been downvoted without any replies. I'd like to know why people think it's incorrect.
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andy_ppp 12 days ago
1000% I honestly believe this is why the US is such an economic powerhouse - the rich there deploy capital in a way that assumes optimistic win-win outcomes when they invest in startups! In the UK the investors are trying to get much higher percentages at half the valuation and it’s terrible for everyone even the investors to have people with 25% the upside of US companies.
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