Comment by jongjong
1 day ago
IMO the real problem is that the monetary system creates asymmetries which create monopolies, which force everyone to participate in 'the economy' through rigid, inefficient, bureaucratic structures. People are literally not allowed to service each other, even through they have the time and capacity to so; simply because they do not have access to a specific currency which they are forced to use... That same currency is not universally scarce though; it's basically handed out to their biggest corporate competitors in large quantities via government contracts and from banks in the form of low interest loans. It creates a kind of fictitious planned economy which becomes increasingly inefficient and bureaucratic by the day; the money is the only quantity which is increasing (and only for some people), almost every other economic metric is decreasing. The real economy is hollowing out.
The financial system has become a giant game of Monopoly, but unlike Monopoly, when all the capital has accumulated with one player, this financial system isn't restarted and the wealth redistributed.
Instead it feels like playing Monopoly, round for round, and all the money goes to the one player with all the hotels and train stations and there is no opportunity for other players to obtain any property or wealth.
If you are lucky enough to be in the circle of that one player with all the wealth, good for you. For the rest of us, it's just rolling the dice and going in circles - round for round.
Yep pretty much. It's just absurd. I wonder if billionaires notice any difference at all going from a net worth of $100 billion to $200 billion. I doubt they feel any difference at all in their lifestyles or happiness levels. Maybe they just get a tiny amount of satisfaction knowing that they're a couple of billions above the next richest person... Well it's basically the same for everyone in this society. The monetary amounts go up but nothing else does.
For most people, it feels like opportunities evaporate and disappear into the void. Nobody gains anything meaningful from the monopolization of opportunities. One regular person's "opportunity of a lifetime" turns into a billionaire's "spam in the inbox".
It's lose-lose but the billionaire may think of this as neutral or "not a problem" from their end. Easily solved by a spam filter, an assistant and a personal security team.