I’m clearly no economist so maybe I’m missing something obvious, but I cannot wrap my head around why so many believe that the market is just some sort of fundamental, unchangeable property of the universe that is and always will be. Why do we assume that the dollar will always be valuable?
I could be incorrect, but it seems like there is no guarantee that there will be a rebound after a crash (see: 2008). It more so just seems like parts of capital crumble and become inaccessible to people who once had access, thus causing complete inaccessibility for all who come after.
So, boom and bust seems like the greatest misnomer of all time.
Every time it dips or crashes it's much more likely that it will rebound than never come back. There's an entire nation working non stop to ensure the highest profits and best returns. Theyll make you a slave before they let the market crash permanently. If you think the dollar is going to tank then invest in tangible assets like gold or ammo.
Edit: and while you sit on the sidelines waiting for a crash its going to double and triple while your ammo pile just sits there waiting
Why the fuck do people call gold a tangible asset. It's just some dumb metal.
The tangible part isnt heat bothers me it sthe 'asset' bit. Gold is only useful ina. Civilization that values shiny shit. If things collapse, shiny shit will not keep its value. Ammo will tho.
Gold's used regularly for electroplating stuff, and is used to solder the ends of wires. It's a good conductor and there's a fair chance that whatever device you used to compose this message has gold circuitry in it.
Not even, aluminum is useful as a structural material for vehicle and building applications. Gold is only ever functionally needed as a thin sheet.
Fun fact: when Napoleon had important guests to dinner, he didn't use his gold silverware. He used aluminum silverware. Because it was more expensive than gold.
Yes but all of those applications require miniscule amounts of the stuff. The reason it's expensive is because shiny.
No argument there. Although I could imagine partial collapse scenarios where gold retains some relevance, ammo will always be better. Funny thing is though, gold is only becoming more important due to increased central bank purchases. This is mostly being driven by central banks trying to diversify away from the dollar.
Because its touchable but hard to get large quantities. Aluminum is just a dumb metal but I could fill my backyard with it in short order.
It also likes to stick around without reacting with stuff. Leave aluminum around too long and it starts to turn into dust.
It is totally nonreactive and is the most tensile and ductile of all metals. It has value outside of its looks.
But it's shiny, and people like shiny. People's feelings are quite real.
It more so just seems like parts of capital crumble and become inaccessible to people who once had access, thus causing complete inaccessibility for all who come after.
Marx wrote about more or less this. One way that capital gets to keep expanding is that sometimes a bunch of value gets destroyed, dispossessing the former owners and concentrating it further into fewer hands. At least that was my read, I’m not as studied as some of the other folks here so take with grain of salt.
Because the alternative is that capitalism is officially pronounced dead as a doornail. Like others have pointed out: we did rebound after 2008. Line kept going up.
The important thing to always keep in mind here is that the line going up and the actual economic circumstances of the average person are completely and totally disconnected at this point (assuming that they ever even were connected at all). The average person has been getting fucking hammered day in day out for the past few years while profits and "greedflation" keep going up. Living conditions for the average person can (and almost certainly will) keep getting worse year after year and as long as line goes up the economy is doing just fucking fine as far as most of the media, political, and capitalist class is concerned.
EDIT: to add further; people assume the rebound will always happen because to them its basically impossible to talk about the alternative for multiple reasons. Straight up: if the rebound doesn't happen then basically you might as well be talking about the end of the world to most of these people in a place to comment on this shit. Literally their entire livelihoods are built on the assumption that the rebound will happen. Capitalism not only assumes but requires perpetual unending growth as part of the premise. Asking them why they assume the rebound will always happen is almost like asking why you assume the sun won't explode tomorrow. Even if you had reason to suspect that it was going to explode tomorrow....its almost pointless to discuss cause what exactly would you even do about it?
Line goes up refers to fictitious capital, which has essentially no connection to the real economy. The rate of profit hasn't recovered from 2008 nevermind the 70s (90s to 00s neoliberalism gave a bit of a boost), profitability is worse than ever.
Is that what "line goes up" means though? I'm assuming it's not exactly a technical phrase but I always thought it referred more to GDP, or immediate profits for the already wealthy (in which case the line has been going up), or even just the health of specific stocks. If it's referring to the rate of profit in general, then the overall trend of the line can't go up, right? Not trying to argue, just understand. My knowledge of this stuff is rudimentary at best.
Line Goes Up is usually specific to the stock market, it's from Wall Street Bets as far as I know. It was a response to the fed unloading infinite cash with low low interest during the 2020 covid crash which was mostly dumped onto the stock market (making everything go up).
You can't usually look at only a specific country to get an idea of the mass/rate of profits because capital is global. But most large western developed economies have undergone a slump in profitability since 2008 and the same with the world as a whole (notable exception being China).
why so many believe that the market is just some sort of fundamental, unchangeable property of the universe that is and always will be
an enormous amount of time, effort, and money has been spent (and still is spent) to make it seem that way
I hate it. And all I can do is vent into a void on an obscure online communist forum
many believe that the market is just some sort of fundamental, unchangeable property of the universe
American default ideology worships The Market as a god
Historically, busts help clear up so-called dead capital. Capital that's tied up in unproductive business or literally just mothballed. Or in a war, some of it is literally just blown up.
A bust helps to concentrate and allow capital to move again, this can lead to a boom again or at least induce a counter tendency to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
But there are inherent contradictions to capitalism that cannot be overcome by the system and a bust can turn into am apocalyptic disruption that can allow revolution. The 30s is the usual one we think of, globalization and Super Imperialism helped that out along with ww2. There was also the long depression in the 1800s that mightve as well and was overcome by imperialism on a mass scale and the looting of Africa.
And you're right to point out 2008 because we never really recovered after it, traditionally capital needs a good war and to allow firms to bankrupt but neoliberalism and nuclear weapons make its traditional solutions untenable (also, the fact that globalization has reached its zenith and there is essentially nowhere for capital to expand to anymore that it already hasn't plugged in to the system). The bourgeoisie will not allow any bankruptcy anymore lol, most large business are zombie businesses (that can only afford interest om debt, not even paying it down) and banks/deposits are now guaranteed by the state no matter what risks they take. Also, climate change and its attendant second order effects like refugee migrations and pandemics are not something capitalism can handle, like, at all.
You can think of the "health" of capitalism (the rate of profit or what have you) like a great big arc, with a little sine wave wobble as it goes from the beginning of capitalism and to its inevitable end where it cannot last. The end is its big final crisis, which probably won't be an orgiastic conflict or revolution but maybe just a whimper as it withdraws to its global cities and nation-states dissolve as they are no longer able to be supported by a capitalist mode of production.
Not to be crass, but this really made me think of refractory period and masturbation. Boom and BUST of capital is just jerking off. The hype gets stronger and stronger until somehow a big mess is made of things, usually before any of the players quite know what is happening. Capital on the edge is just 'irrational exuberance'. Then there is the post-bust clarity. This is when the libs all start wiping away the stickiness of the situation, trying to do apologia for capital.
It wasn't supposed to happen like that! We're sorry, it'll be good for everyone next time.
Which obviously leads into the next phase of lib fluffing of the spongy wreckage.
It's too bad about this bust, but there's all this wonderful potential now. We just need to keep stroking the egos of capital, and this economy will be rock solid in no time again!
paging VolCel vanguard btw
I think you did a great job of putting into words what I cannot. It just seems to get worse and worse with each passing crash/consolidation of everything into a few people’s hands and absolutely dread thinking about what the world will look like in 20 years with climate catastrophe on the horizon
I might have a naive view here, but for me it's equally important to think not just about the quantitative aspects, but also the qualitative aspects. Yeah, stocks might go down, capital might get destroyed. But if there is no reason to believe that the capital relation of production goes away, then capital can rebuild on a newer, more centralized basis in a smaller number of hands.
If the means of production are still held in the hands of a minority of private producers and the majority of us are kept in wage relations to produce surplus value, then capitalism isn't going away. Not unless the destruction is so catastrophic that this capital relation can no longer hold.
I mean line went up higher than it was before 08, so obviously everything is fine and the recession ended in like 2011
because all the nations, companies and clandestine organizations of the world are reliant on it and will bend all earthly resources to ensure that it does bounce back.
The market did rebound after 2008. Line went up; it's higher now than it was then.
If the line didn't ever recover, that would result in the collapse of the entire capitalist economic system. Businesses only exist so long as investors get a positive return on investment. If they don't, they pull their money and the business collapses. We'd likely see even more state subsidization of big business (think quantitative easing), but that would only work for so long if there's no growth.
It will rebound so long as capitalism exists. As long as workers are exploited the market has value.
What would have to happen to cause global stagnation for a whole decade?
People think the dollar ( or any currency ) is valuable because the country that issued it is still using it. The dollar would get less valuable if the US economy shrank while everyone else grew. But you can trade your dollars for other currencies so that's not an issue in the short term
so many believe that the market is just some sort of fundamental, unchangeable property of the universe that is and always will be.
Isn’t this the definition of commodity fetishism? Worshipping capitalism like it’s a god?
I think it's actually something much more boring but I don't understand it either so uh :blob-no-thoughts:
