But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?

@jenniferplusplus I think this is why my criticism has mainly centered around sure it might be useful (citation needed) but I'm not sure it's worth the billions put into it

Incidentally, if you divert a trillion dollars to something and get "basically zero" economic activity around it, that's not an investment. It's sabotage. It's become the chief manifestation of the capital strike we've all been enduring since, roughly, the first half of 2022.

What's a capital strike? That tends to be the question I get in response to this rant.

You know what a labor strike is, right? It's wielding labor as power, by witholding it, as a bargaining tactic.

A capital strike is the same thing, except with capital.

What's a capital strike? That tends to be the question I get in response to this rant.

You know what a labor strike is, right? It's wielding labor as power, by witholding it, as a bargaining tactic.

A capital strike is the same thing, except with capital.

But, you have to understand what capital actual is. It's not money. Money is a loose proxy for capital, but that's all. Really, capital is control over economic resources. Raw resources, sure. Big industrial machinery, sure. Networks of transportation and communication, yes. And labor.

Money is kind of the exchange medium for all of that. But capital isn't the money, and it's not the resources. It's the power to distort how those resources are used and applied to suit your own interests, at the expense of the other people involved.

That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.

So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.

And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.

But, you have to understand what capital actual is. It's not money. Money is a loose proxy for capital, but that's all. Really, capital is control over economic resources. Raw resources, sure. Big industrial machinery, sure. Networks of transportation and communication, yes. And labor.

Money is kind of the exchange medium for all of that. But capital isn't the money, and it's not the resources. It's the power to distort how those resources are used and applied to suit your own interests, at the expense of the other people involved.

@jenniferplusplus we can imagine the people you're telling this to instinctively going "but theyre right to do that and the workers would be wrong to do that"

Incidentally, if you divert a trillion dollars to something and get "basically zero" economic activity around it, that's not an investment. It's sabotage. It's become the chief manifestation of the capital strike we've all been enduring since, roughly, the first half of 2022.

That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.

So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.

And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.

That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.

So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.

And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.

Incidentally, if you divert a trillion dollars to something and get "basically zero" economic activity around it, that's not an investment. It's sabotage. It's become the chief manifestation of the capital strike we've all been enduring since, roughly, the first half of 2022.

@jenniferplusplus isn’t it that for instance the ancient Egyptian pyramids can be seen as similar efforts? Maybe a way to funnel excess wealth into sth that has zero value and is of no real world use.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116126552546349967

But at least we only spent a trillion dollars on it, right?

@jenniferplusplus I've been thinking a little lately about the universal push to recategorize everything as Operational Expenses instead of CapEx and it occurred to me that CapEx is where you put the money to buy loyalty from execs at a new acquisition. It's turned into a slush fund for execs to bribe other execs.

@gooba42 uhhhhh, sort of. It's not really that they're bribing each other. Rather, it's that they're keeping that power concentrated in the capital sphere. Other capitalists like that, for obvious reasons, and reward each other for doing it.

Whatever arguments there are about capex vs opex will mainly boil down to whether they generally think that some use of money is a closed loop within the capital economy, or if it escapes into the real economy.

@jenniferplusplus isn’t it that for instance the ancient Egyptian pyramids can be seen as similar efforts? Maybe a way to funnel excess wealth into sth that has zero value and is of no real world use.

@zeank I don't know enough about ancient egypt to say with any confidence. But it does seem like a reasonable lens to view them through

That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.

So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.

And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.

But, you have to understand what capital actual is. It's not money. Money is a loose proxy for capital, but that's all. Really, capital is control over economic resources. Raw resources, sure. Big industrial machinery, sure. Networks of transportation and communication, yes. And labor.

Money is kind of the exchange medium for all of that. But capital isn't the money, and it's not the resources. It's the power to distort how those resources are used and applied to suit your own interests, at the expense of the other people involved.