X Posts on Capitalism

This is a collection of my X posts on the topic of capitalism.

Capitalism is beyond broken

Capatalism is beyond broken. We're already living in a distopia, and it's getting worse every single day. You may not be aware of it if you're living in a bubble, but this is the reality we live in. Ask yourself what kind of world you want to live in. A world that prioritises building yachts, sportscars, and mansions for people whose annual expenditures are in the tens or hundreds of millions or a world that prioritises people who lack fundamentals such as food and healthcare? WE LIVE IN THE FORMER. Capitalism is how resources are managed in this world. Materials and labor go in, and consumables come out. How is this managed? Via money, and every person has some say in how it is managed via their spending choices. This system prioritises the people who spend the most, which are people who vote that the economy should produce yachts, sportscars, luxury goods, and the like. And it deprioritises people who have the least spending power, which are people in need. CAPITALISM LEAST PRIORITISES PEOPLE IN NEED, AND MOST PROIRITISES PEOPLE WHO DON'T NEED ANYTHING (material). Thanks to capitalism, the world is literally opposite of how I hope most people would like it to be. I'm not saying there can't be room for the people who put in more to get more, but the foundation cannot be that people in need are put at the bottom. I have no doubt that the people at the bottom feel that the world doesn't give a shit about them, because if the world = capitalism then it doesn't only not care about them, it straight up hates them. This creates further unrests, tensions, and the like. This HAS TO change.

Incorrect assumptions in the economic supply & demand model

The economic supply & demand model is based on some seriously flawed assumptions such as lower price => higher demand and higher supply => lower price. Take the smartphone market for example. Not everyone is willing to/able to pay $1,000 for a top-end phone, but a lot of people simply buy a top end phone up to around that price. Similarly, another large group of people is willing to/able to pay ~$500 for a mid-end phone, whatever a mid-end phone is every time they are in the market to buy a phone. And there is also a large group of people that is willing to/able to pay $100-200 just to have some sort of smartphone. Are some people going to jump in between segments depending on features and exact price? Probably. However, by far and large there are a set # of people who buy high-end phones, a set # of people who buy mid-end phones, and a set # of people who buy low-end phones. Are smartphone makers incentivized to compete, drive down prices, and supply us cheaper phones? Hell no! Smartphone makers simply put out high-end phones, mid-end phones, and low-end phones each year and do their best to attract customers for the most part via marketing and branding, and to some small extent via feature differentiation. More supply in the smartphone market does not equal lower prices if all market participants are incentivized to maximize profit and profit is maximized by simply putting a range of phones at more-or-less the same price point each year, and convincing people to buy their phones via marketing/branding. Many markets like the smartphone market essentially try to squeeze the most money out of people, and companies within markets attempt to gain as large a share as they can within their market via marketing/advertising/branding. Smart phone companies are better off all playing nice with eachother and not upsetting the market and just trying to maintain or slightly increase their share of it, rather than attempting to outcompete eachother and thereby disrupting and ruining a healthy market. It might be great for people if there was an abundance of low-end $10 smartphones and high-end $100 smartphones, it’d be terrible for the market and the companies. GDP would take a hit too, which is considered to be a bad thing. This also shows why the economic model itself is broken. The world is so obsessed with GDP growth that the economy and individual markets are trying to milk more money out of people rather than providing more value for less resources. Higher GDP just means more money exchanged hands, not more value provided for less effort, which would be a better goal to set for the economy.

How AI impacts people at the bottom

AI is currently increasing net global suffering, not reducing it. How is AI currently impacting the people at the bottom? 1) It’s encroaching upon their need to think for themselves by giving them all the answers from one source straight via chatbots and AI answers in search engines. 2) It’s putting significant pressure upon their ability to take care of themselves and carve out a living within society by automating many of their jobs away. But Frank, there’s so much promise in AI and we’re having so much fun pushing this new frontier! Yes, I don’t disagree that AI offers a lot of positive possibilities. However, it’s currently being used by people at the top to (perhaps without them being aware of it) squeeze more resources out of people at the bottom, who are the ones that should be considered first, because they have it the worst. Leaders in AI profit by automating jobs away from people who need them the most. How is no one speaking up about this issue? The fact that people allow this to happen is insane. In my opinion, people who have it the worst should come first. However, because they are poor and have the least economic voting power, they actually come last in the economic system. These are SERIOUS, DEEP-ROOTED issues within capitalism and therefore human society.

Comparing companies to runaway AIs

You think runaway AIs could be dangerous to humanity if they prioritise their programmed goal over human happiness? I present to you current-day companies, whose sole focus is profit and already prioritise that over human happiness. And sure, people within companies care about more things than the profit of the company they work at, but their power is extremely limited, because companies are ultimately owned by shareholders, and most shareholders care about very little other than profits. Certainly there are some investors (especially retail ones) who care about the impact the companies they own have on the world, but sadly most shareholders of companies are other companies, who are also owned by companies. Radical idea, but might it make sense to ban companies from being shareholders in other companies? That way we know that companies are owned by real people some of which hopefully care about things beyond profit. According to Google, only 14% of shares in all companies are owned by retail investors/individuals. As such, 86% of all companies are owned by companies who are also 86% owned by companies, who are essentially not going to care about anything other than profit. If you're an investment manager at an investment firm or a large conglomerate like Tencent, good luck convincing your boss not to fire you because you decided to invest in the less profitable Company B over Company A because Company B in your opinion will be better for society. Another major issue in the world is that most assets in the world are owned by companies, which only care about hoarding more assets. It's literally the opposite of power to the people. It's power to the companies, that may be led by people, but that are unfortunately neither people nor owned by people.