Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Phoenix's avatar

Great post! I want to point out that one of the root issues here is the stock and futures market. This construct has dominated the economy of capitalist nations for over a century, and it's been a disaster. The only situation in which stocks are helpful to the overall economy is when a company sells them to raise capital (and promptly invests it with tangible benefit to production). I think if we counted up all sales of stocks and futures this would be a miniscule amount of total transactions. They're just a tool of speculation now. How many stocks could be paid back within 100 years by actual investor dividends? Again, I'd bet that few stocks could clear that criteria. So the majority of investors make their fortune by speculation, which leads to propaganda, market manipulation, flawed statistics, insider trading, and worst of all, the push for never ending growth. That last one is why the government is always spending and burying jars of money and importing immigrants. I genuinely don't think that free market capitalism can prosper as long as this speculatory fiction holds up.

Expand full comment
Brent Shadbolt's avatar

Love your work.

Anyone with basic common sense can see that resources should be allocated to those who can manage them responsibly.

"when someone works to create things of value, and then transfers that value to someone else, who has done nothing productive to earn it… If the transfer is voluntary, we call it charity. If it’s involuntary, we call it slavery.” This also sounds a lot like socialism.

In the soft-socialist state of Australia, it’s astonishing to see the government’s departure from the core principles of free-market capitalism. It seems they've discarded, with reckless abandon, any notion of limited government or decentralized decision-making. For instance, the Prime Minister recently ‘discovered’ funds in the upcoming Federal Budget to provide a $150 rebate on everyone’s power bill—the same power bill that has tripled in cost since the government began redistributing taxpayer money to the renewable energy sector, with the intention of deindustrialising to appease the climate gods. The rebate, however, is financed through even more debt. And the controlled opposition don’t offer any alternative. It’s all so absurd and counterproductive.

It makes me wonder what’s driving this shift—are they trying to justify and normalize their own lifestyles (living off the pig’s back), or is it simply a blatant attempt to buy votes and hold on to power - a reflection of power’s tendency to corrupt?

Expand full comment
13 more comments...

No posts