cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/20980927

When television first started, there were 3 channels and a handful of commercials. After a few decades of more channels and more ads appearing, cable showed up. Now you could pay a subscription to get premium content without ads!

But after a decade, not only were they putting ads on cable you paid a premium to watch, they were speeding up both the shows and the ads to fit more into breaks that kept getting longer.

Younger people are just starting to see the cycle is underway again with streaming services, but over the last 10ish years, I’ve noticed all the various cliques going “why is {our interest} going to shit” as if it were an isolated incident and not happening everywhere.

The first act of capitalism when it was created was the slave trade. Corporations have always been vehicles the ultra rich use to extract wealth.

Revenue is how much money a company brings in selling things. Profit is how much of that remains after paying for materials, leases, power, reinvesting into the business, and paying wages. Basically, CEOs are paid 300x more than employees to defer maintenance and suppress wages.

Economics 101- charge as much as you can, pay as little as possible. Any corporation that makes billions in profit only does so by gouging customers and stiffing workers.

Real wages are stagnant, pensions aren’t a thing, and they’re trying to get rid of social security. There’s a reason we’re told to use things like HSA, 529s, and 401ks: it enriches the already rich.

There is something called a fiduciary duty to shareholders which basically means publicly traded corporations must act in the best interest of investors. It SOUNDS like a good idea, but it’s not really well defined.

The reality of the situation is BlackRock basically owns the stock market and the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by a group of banks- not the US government. Those banks are publicly traded corporations that own chunks of everything and each other. It’s a giant rich guy circle jerk that basically means the recent uniform RTO mandates were probably from Larry Fink himself due to how central commercial real estate is to collateral for things like naked shorting.

Inflation isn’t things costing more; it’s the dollar being worth less as more money exists. The reason the rich buy art, watches, and shit is because they benefit from inflation. If you hold on to $5,000 for a decade you have $5,000 that buys less after a decade of inflation. If you buy a painting, jewelry, or whatever, it appreciates overtime being worth more than $5k.

Federal minimum wage was 7.25 in 2008. Not much, but you could buy 1-3 shares of AMD or 18" of Subway. Today, M2 (a measure of money in the economy) is three times what it was in 2008 and minimum wage is still $7.25 and might get you 6" of sandwich. AMD, on the other hand, currently sits around $120 a share.

Someone that works to eat will always be falling behind while someone that’s not struggling can just load up on wealth that keeps growing. A majority of the country doesn’t have money on hand to deal with a $500 emergency while more than half the wealth of the country is owned by a handful of people that make lifetimes of wealth through passive investments alone.

Unfortunately, it’s all very complicated and basically everyone is stupid most of the time with only brief windows of subject specific competence. Reason and rationality is a best case outcome but people act like it’s the default.

Welcome to the meat grinder. None of us matter.