babyfinland posted:AmericanNazbro posted:babyfinland posted:the really silly thing is that the amount extracted from your income as taxes could be allocated by the state far more efficiently than whatever private corporation towards the development of economic infrastructure that would enable greater profit in the future
i figure these guys aren't actually stupid with money so i figure it's just that, unfortunately, that's not the caseuhm what?
the state doesnt automatically invest efficiently
actually it does, since the state controls truth
Groulxsmith posted:I never understand why radicals generally understand that finance capitalism is by far the dominant aspect of the global economy yet they absolutely refuse to learn about it and instead treat it like a goon not wanting to know who Kim Kardashian or Nicki Minaj is. Finance? Feh
Groulxsmith posted:I never understand why radicals generally understand that finance capitalism is by far the dominant aspect of the global economy yet they absolutely refuse to learn about it and instead treat it like a goon not wanting to know who Kim Kardashian or Nicki Minaj is. Finance? Feh
um excuse me, i read zero hedge every day. buygoldnow.com
AmericanNazbro posted:that's the stupidest logic i've ever heard
"i don't want to make a million dollars because i'll have to pay 15% of it in taxes "
~dadchat~
shennong posted:Groulxsmith posted:I never understand why radicals generally understand that finance capitalism is by far the dominant aspect of the global economy yet they absolutely refuse to learn about it and instead treat it like a goon not wanting to know who Kim Kardashian or Nicki Minaj is. Finance? Feh
um excuse me, i read zero hedge every day. buygoldnow.com
same, except presented as an impressive thing and yall stroke yalls chins and say 'there goes a learned man'
Groulxsmith posted:Impper posted:that is literally how like everyone in finance thinks
The logic and behavior of mom and pop with etrade accounts is not remotely the same as institutional investors or corporate finance in general except maybe in the vaguest sense of tax avoidance or accumulation of wealth, but even then that's really not a constructive comparison.
I never understand why radicals generally understand that finance capitalism is by far the dominant aspect of the global economy yet they absolutely refuse to learn about it and instead treat it like a goon not wanting to know who Kim Kardashian or Nicki Minaj is. Finance? Feh
there's no point in learning stupid financial terminology or reading blog posts about insider gossip, learning algorithms and such, unless you actually planned to trade in the finance market yourself.
someone who is a "radical" and by this i assume you mean educated in marxism to some degree, they would implicity understand that the finance market is merely a confidence game and a giant casino, where without a significant amount of capital and leverage, making money is a difficult task.
i don't understand why you think anyone should bother, really. learning about finance in the way you referred to it, is really just learning the etymology of the stupid terms that get used and applied to the 'market'
girdles_gone_wild posted:who bought shares of facebook?
nasdaq shat itself for like 2 hours so probably a lot of really disappointed small timers out there
babyfinland posted:what does the facebook thing mean for the economy more generally
unemployment on the rise
babyfinland posted:what does the facebook thing mean for the economy more generally
technically its nothing special, just finance capital knowing when they can't pump any more and it's time to dump, but as facebook's been such a huge driver of consumer electronics and telecoms its death throes could tear chunks out of the whole edifice
although of course business is still a way bigger sector so were not talking anything revolutionary, just, you might wanna go back to getting your photographs printed etc
guidoanselmi posted:fun fact, i was almost a millionaire at age 14 because my dad let me pick stocks and buy them.
sadly not sell them because of capital gains tax. then the bubble happened and i lost most of it.
dodged a bullet there
babyfinland posted:what does the facebook thing mean for the economy more generally
My opinion is not popular in my own crowd, nor in the world at large. But I shall share it.
Facebook is not going to succeed in the long run. People will abandon it. Mark Zuckerberg is going to have a terrible fall, and we are all going to have to watch it.
Empathy posted:babyfinland posted:what does the facebook thing mean for the economy more generally
My opinion is not popular in my own crowd, nor in the world at large. But I shall share it.
Facebook is not going to succeed in the long run. People will abandon it. Mark Zuckerberg is going to have a terrible fall, and we are all going to have to watch it.
what's the unpopular part
Empathy posted:babyfinland posted:what does the facebook thing mean for the economy more generally
My opinion is not popular in my own crowd, nor in the world at large. But I shall share it.
Facebook is not going to succeed in the long run. People will abandon it. Mark Zuckerberg is going to have a terrible fall, and we are all going to have to watch it.
zuckerberg will be fine, he'll probably go work for microsoft or something
Anybody got any good essays or even posts (books maybe but i need something more succinct) to outline the big scam that the finance sector is?
Ironicwarcriminal posted:i have a friend who is smart but still sees the financial sector as something efficient or a force for good.
Anybody got any good essays or even posts (books maybe but i need something more succinct) to outline the big scam that the finance sector is?
this is the opposite of what u asked for but ur friend would love these guys
http://thefinancelab.org/
like facebook is an advertiser so they care about dedicated users that potentially see a lot of ads and have the money to buy things. for related reasons they care about people who drive traffic to their site. the huge bulk of people that sort of float around facebook using it casually and seeing ads like once a week or something are not that useful to the company. so it doesn't matter that everyone has a facebook account, it matters whether a small vanguard of well-off or cool people use it.
but like you can easily imagine a situation where intensity of use doesn't dramatically increase on facebook or actually declines a lot due to those important users fucking off to some other program because facebook is uncool or inadequate. which has happened to most of the programs like facebook anyway. and then facebook will become something like AOL home internet was, a sort of husk that rolls on but only advertises to moms that login once a week or something. not that it would disappear for a while or anything just that it would collapse as a company and get bought out and become a dinosaur.
if he hands the reins to someone who knows shit about fuck then facebook can probably be saved, but itll change into something nobody will want to use anymore, slowly becoming bullshit like myspace did
AmericanNazbro posted:Groulxsmith posted:Impper posted:that is literally how like everyone in finance thinks
The logic and behavior of mom and pop with etrade accounts is not remotely the same as institutional investors or corporate finance in general except maybe in the vaguest sense of tax avoidance or accumulation of wealth, but even then that's really not a constructive comparison.
I never understand why radicals generally understand that finance capitalism is by far the dominant aspect of the global economy yet they absolutely refuse to learn about it and instead treat it like a goon not wanting to know who Kim Kardashian or Nicki Minaj is. Finance? Fehthere's no point in learning stupid financial terminology or reading blog posts about insider gossip, learning algorithms and such, unless you actually planned to trade in the finance market yourself.
someone who is a "radical" and by this i assume you mean educated in marxism to some degree, they would implicity understand that the finance market is merely a confidence game and a giant casino, where without a significant amount of capital and leverage, making money is a difficult task.
i don't understand why you think anyone should bother, really. learning about finance in the way you referred to it, is really just learning the etymology of the stupid terms that get used and applied to the 'market'
There's quite a difference between learning jargon and having something beyond a superficial understanding of something everyone knows is very important. I don't think turn of the century Marxists needed I know how machines in factories work or how you harvest rubber trees or whatever, but they didn't throw up their hands because they found industrial capitalism toxically gauche. One of the reasons OWS is so cringe inducing is how they don't get the big picture and focus on things like ATM fees. In a sense it's a bit better, but I see misrepresentations that suggest real analytical problems (like that commodity traders benefit from high prices; at times, that's actually the opposite of true; they profit off volatility.) even in a broader sense it's mischaracterized, like the emphasis on stocks and bonds as if it was still 1930, and ignoring totally beyond a passing acknowledgment the extent to which financialization in general and the magnitude of derivative markets.
It's ok guys, you don't have to feign indifference to how the dominant aspect of the global economy works, it won't make you one of those banksters or even like frat boy finance majors, your Stalinist cred is safe with me
getfiscal posted:at some level, i just don't trust anyone that says they are interested in a general field but don't need to know the orthodoxy because it's bunk or whatever.
Only a liberal can be a true Marxist.
shennong posted:i distinctly recall bill black making the rounds at occupy giving lectures about ABS and CDS and most of the materials that i saw re:banking were calling for a nationalisation of banks so whatever deficiencies occupy might have a critique that is limited to stocks and ATM fees isn't one of them as far as i can tell
everything i know about ows is what i get from walking past it on the way to work, you might call me the 53%
i get the idea that most people have no idea what they want socialized businesses to do. it's like hey we'll put the banks under social ownership and then they won't have perverse incentives. but that's not true at all. all sorts of countries have large public stakes in their banking sector, and that has often contributed to the developmental state / dirigisme, but that's not really socialist in itself. it's just a differently managed form of capitalism.
i was listening to a phd student talk about his model of democratic banks and he knew what he was talking about but the whole "we'll make them democratic" or whatever is kind of a cop out in some sense, it doesn't say what should be financed in itself. like i think there is a good case for saying that almost any financial system is going to have intrinsic capitalist tendencies, because it is premised on the generalized production of commodities. because that's generally how organizations make money in order to pay their debts, by selling commodities. so there will always be a minimal level of "market discipline" involved.
for example, let's say you nationalize the banks. okay well what's their lending principle. are they going to only lend to unionized ecological worker cooperatives or will the money still go to finance houses in the suburbs. do we support a productivist model that tries to discipline workers to maximize productivity or do we support "degrowth" policies and just work a few hours a week or something. now obviously those should be democratic choices but you also need to have a coherent vision of what you want organizations to do before you take them over. that's actually the whole point, because you need certain values that you are trying to meet by nationalizing the banks.
