The most obscene state of the world

[Hrothbern]

That wealth is not just cash lying around, you know. I somehow doubt nationalizing Google or Amazon would be particularly smart move.

That's the point often forgotten !

Money has to work.

(and that also applies to money of Google and Amazon)

 

[Ironsided]

Money has to work. We agree on that.

Thorgalaeg can probably answer for himself but let’s just assume that statement was tongue-in-cheek. Like the shitasspetfudgersstore in the video. Or the buying of all baseball teams and make them wear dresses.

I’m not even sure nationalising google or amazon would be such a terrible idea either, at least not for the employees? Certainly not for the unions. And do these two megacorps not have enough collusion with government security to be considered at least somewhat nationalised already?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Iceland and Norway have that biggest of all national virtues, one I've been an advocate of here also: they are small countries!

Is is very hard to become disgustingly right if the system where you play to accumulate wealth and power is small. That by itself limits what the greedy can achieve. It also makes it much easier for members of the community to organize and fight against undue accumulations om power.

The root of all political evil are large polities.

or, to put it another way, anonymity and relatability are incredibly important. screwing some Ghanaian out of his money we don't even think about. giving someone from the neighborhood a bad credit is worthy of consideration. pimping out a friend is only for the most detestable of human beings.

I agree that size is a problem. it very much helps with dehumanizing. "systemizing" and post-rationalization of greed (I am more talented, more successfull, I adapted better to the system..) when really often times people rise up the ranks because of
1) networks that already existed and are interested in sustaining themselves
2) egotism, recklessness, lack of empathy, competitiveness
3) luck. the stars aligned. I once made ~400 bucks (nearly doubled my investment) in two days by buying random cryptocurrencies and thought I was a genius. obviously I wasn't, and the market wasn't very nice to me after that, so I pulled out asap

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You know what’s not fair? Your assessment here. This is not the navel-gazing polo shirts from your local college. OK, I worded it poorly as I often do, I accept that, but that does not absolve you from thinking for yourself. The people attending and/or speaking at Davos are the most powerful people in the world. Here is a list from last year:

Donald Trump, President of the United States of America

Angela Merkel, Federal Chancellor, Germany

Paolo Gentiloni, Prime Minister of Italy

Emmanuel Macron, President of France

Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India

Liu He, People's Republic of China

Mauricio Macri, President of Argentina

Cyril Ramaphosa, Deputy President of South Africa

Michel Temer, President of Brazil

Hailemariam Desalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia

Emmerson Mnangagwa, President of Zimbabwe

Yemi Osinbajo, Vice-President of Nigeria

Saad Al Hariri, President of the Council of Ministers, Lebanon

Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein, King of Jordan

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel

Juan Manuel Santos, President of Colombia

All together over 340 top political leaders.

I’ll go on with some organisation leaders…

Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Roberto Azevêdo, Director-General, World Trade Organization

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization

Angel Gurría, Secretary-General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Zeid Ra'ad Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Jim Yong Kim, President, World Bank

Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour Organization

Add to that about 2000 top industrial leaders

I don't dispute people at Davos are powerful, that was not my contention.

 

[Patine]

"One day, the People will wake up and realize they have been killing, cheating, stealing from, betraying, exploiting, and lying to each other and selling out their dignity, integrity, labour, and goodwill for nothing more than green-printed slips of paper and punched disks of cheap alloys,"
-Former Long-term General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States Gus Hall

 

[Lexicus]

Without them, we might know the rich are screwing everyone but with them we can prove it.

Actually, statisticians are probably more useful for this than economists. To prove the rich are screwing us, all we need are national income data broken down appropriately.

Fact is that mainstream economic theory is totally unequipped to deal with the distribution of wealth as it exists in the US today, because as much as economists like Krugman write columns about how nice it'd be to have 70% top marginal tax rates, neoclassical economic theory largely exists to justify massively unequal distributions of wealth.

 

[metalhead]

That billionaires exist at all is testament to how badly we effed up the fundamental structures of our societies. These aren't strongmen seizing diamond mines or oil wells, they're people for whom specific structures were put in place to enable this kind of wealth accumulation.

 

[Patine]

That billionaires exist at all is testament to how badly we effed up the fundamental structures of our societies. These aren't strongmen seizing diamond mines or oil wells, they're people for whom specific structures were put in place to enable this kind of wealth accumulation.

There's also the fact that if we were still on the gold standard, instead of fiat currency, they'd only be millionaires. The numbers are also misleading because of inflation and monetary base.

 

[Lexicus]

Oh and let's add that the whole "infinite capital mobility thing" is also designed to make it difficult for national governments to even collect accurate statistics about their economies. That is also one reason that the real state of things is probably worse than suggested by the figures in the OP.

 

[Kyriakos]

Indescribably hideous, obviously. I mean where does one begin? Austerity was supposed to work like a charm and yet you still have 20 something billionaires barely equaling the poors

 

[Lexicus]

Indescribably hideous, obviously. I mean where does one begin? Austerity was supposed to work like a charm and yet you still have 20 something billionaires barely equaling the poors

Austerity was supposed to produce this situation, so it did work like a charm.

 

[Kyriakos]

Austerity was supposed to produce this situation, so it did work like a charm.

I was being sarcastic, of course. /1%smileykillallpoors.gif

 

[innonimatu]

I’m short your policy we take us back to the turn of the last century just with better weapons and messaging. IMO.

I don't think it would be the turn of the last century, if you mean the beginning of the 20th. The world was divided among a few empires back then, and "free trade" was in fashion as even the US and Germany were winding down on protectionism having already industrialized. Enlightened people liked to say that war was a thing of the past because of all the trade interdependencies. If that period of time can be compared to a more recent one, it is to the one we're living in. It's just that the British Empire was taken over by the US and gobbled Western Europe also.

I don't thing we ever had a modern world where small states were safe. But after WW1 there were many more states. Even after WW2 for a few decades the US's allies had great latitude to decide on internal policy, provided they didn't try to change to "the other side". The hungarias probably would have had also (market socialism...) if they hadn't looked like they were about to change sides.
The problem was, and remains, the big empires. Joining together to create yet another big empire does not make that problem go away. At the most it changes people from being in the position of somewhat oppressed to that of subjects of the somewhat oppressor. And I deliberately say subjects instead of citizens because of my belief the citizen carries little autonomy within a huge polity.

 

[Estebonrober]

I don't think it would be the turn of the last century, if you mean the beginning of the 20th. The world was divided among a few empires back then, and "free trade" was in fashion as even the US and Germany were winding down on protectionism having already industrialized. Enlightened people liked to say that war was a thing of the past because of all the trade interdependencies. If that period of time can be compared to a more recent one, it is to the one we're living in. It's just that the British Empire was taken over by the US and gobbled Western Europe also.

I don't thing we ever had a modern world where small states were safe. But after WW1 there were many more states. Even after WW2 for a few decades the US's allies had great latitude to decide on internal policy, provided they didn't try to change to "the other side". The hungarias probably would have had also (market socialism...) if they hadn't looked like they were about to change sides.
The problem was, and remains, the big empires. Joining together to create yet another big empire does not make that problem go away. At the most it changes people from being in the position of somewhat oppressed to that of subjects of the somewhat oppressor. And I deliberately say subjects instead of citizens because of my belief the citizen carries little autonomy within a huge polity.

Yea as a citizen of a small state I can tell you that autonomy isn't any better down here except for the (surprise surprise surprise) rich.

I'm not looking for total justice, I'm looking for a system that works to promote everyone as much as possible instead of what has become severely skewed for the top 10?%. I believe your way makes that dramatically worse, and my case in point is the US itself and how its state governments are ran. Also international warfare was the norm for most of human history that has only slowed down recently, I believe fracturing alliances and economic deals will exacerbate that.

We will have to agree to disagree. I could not be more opposed to your ideas on how to fix the EU, the US, or the rest of the world.

 

[Lexicus]

Important to remember in the argument about small polities is that the national governments are actually the machinery by which all this stuff is enforced. The EU is a supranational entity but its real power comes from the fact that for various reasons the national governments of the member states are willing to play ball. It is also easily possible to imagine forms of international cooperation and even governance that do not center the needs of capital over the needs of everyone else.

 

[Hygro]

The point is - it’s simply not good enough for economists to hide behind all the complexities of their models and calculations when they keep missing the target over and over and over again. Why should we still fund and take their advice if they can’t even agree on the very basics? Is it supply-side, trickle down, whatever the next cowbell to flock the herd? Who is the grand wizard of this shamanic sewing circle? Is there any more reason to it than the self-fullfilling prophecy that if we all do the same accounting we get comparable results?

What are you actually talking about?

 

[Ironsided]

The ridiculous lack of actual progress made in the field of economics in general and business administration in particular compared to efforts and trust put into it.

 

[Dekker]

So what do we think is the best way to fix this most obscene state? If the systems in place are the problem, what systems should it be replaced with?

 

[Imaus]

There are probably a myriad of answers; but most require at least huge public awareness and will to do something about to outright restructuring and revolutions at the other end.

The US has long seen Democrats and aligned groups proclaim about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few and how the middle class is shrinking and taxation rates...and as far as I can tell, it's only made 'Neoliberal' and 'Austerity' a bipartisan slur. AOC touts a 70% tax rate on the rich, and she's most definitely being used as a feeler by the older Libprog senators, and 'Medicare for All' isn't automatically shot down anymore, but tangible, real results and proposals are seemingly lacking.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I don't think it would be the turn of the last century, if you mean the beginning of the 20th. The world was divided among a few empires back then, and "free trade" was in fashion as even the US and Germany were winding down on protectionism having already industrialized. Enlightened people liked to say that war was a thing of the past because of all the trade interdependencies. If that period of time can be compared to a more recent one, it is to the one we're living in. It's just that the British Empire was taken over by the US and gobbled Western Europe also.

I don't thing we ever had a modern world where small states were safe. But after WW1 there were many more states. Even after WW2 for a few decades the US's allies had great latitude to decide on internal policy, provided they didn't try to change to "the other side". The hungarias probably would have had also (market socialism...) if they hadn't looked like they were about to change sides.
The problem was, and remains, the big empires. Joining together to create yet another big empire does not make that problem go away. At the most it changes people from being in the position of somewhat oppressed to that of subjects of the somewhat oppressor. And I deliberately say subjects instead of citizens because of my belief the citizen carries little autonomy within a huge polity.

In Spain we have three levels (or even four) of polities, ranging from the biggest one (the state) through the medium (regional autonomies) to the smaller level (municipalities), all fairly independent from the one above. I have worked at some point in the administration of all three, and can say first hand that the smaller the polity, the more ineficient, injust, corrupt and opaque for the average citizen it is.