JenniferplusplusRE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967
But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?
Or as I said previously
https://hachyderm.io/@jenniferplusplus/115537188922928571
https://hachyderm.io/@jenniferplusplus/115537188922928571
Incidentally, if you divert a trillion dollars to something and get "basically zero" economic activity around it, that's not an investment. It's sabotage. It's become the chief manifestation of the capital strike we've all been enduring since, roughly, the first half of 2022.
What's a capital strike? That tends to be the question I get in response to this rant.
You know what a labor strike is, right? It's wielding labor as power, by witholding it, as a bargaining tactic.
A capital strike is the same thing, except with capital.
But, you have to understand what capital actual is. It's not money. Money is a loose proxy for capital, but that's all. Really, capital is control over economic resources. Raw resources, sure. Big industrial machinery, sure. Networks of transportation and communication, yes. And labor.
Money is kind of the exchange medium for all of that. But capital isn't the money, and it's not the resources. It's the power to distort how those resources are used and applied to suit your own interests, at the expense of the other people involved.
Greg@jenniferplusplus equating "capitalism" with "trade" has been one of the biggest coups of discourse - you get people sincerely believing "well without capitalism would we just barter???" and now we must start everything by explaining that no, money was invented in 3000 BC, in fact Jesus was overturning moneylender tables 1500 years before the Dutch East India Company, etc
Grovewest@greg @jenniferplusplus It's also equating capitalism with ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. Capitalism existed before the US representative democracy. Up until the twentieth century it was closer to and existed alongside Feudalism, hardly free or democratic. The one thing the leaders of any country on earth will not tolerate is a truly national or global labor union. The Solidarity Union in Poland is an extrodinary example of one that had success.