helluva good psyop

But, but, but all the trillionaires that own the AI companies tell me that superintelligence is 8 months away and we should invest *all teh $$$* with them. They can’t possibly be wrong. You’re just a hater!

In other news, I’m 100% certain that the crypto I bought last month can only go up. Soon, I’ll be living the good life off my crypto proceeds while simultaneously HODLing.

quarter million workers because our society voted for a brutal immigration crackdown. Our unemployment is actually pretty low. So, no, most of those jobs were not taken up by unemployed red-blooded, god-fearing flag--waving Americans, because there just weren't that many unemployed Americans to start with. For the most part, those deportations and self-deportations became job losses because businesses were forced to reduced their headcount.

I can't really blame the current guy for this one. "We the people" voted him in, and he made it pretty clear that he was gonna bring in Stephen Miller to do a brutal immigration crackdown. Nobody should be surprised. He's delivering what the voters wanted. That's the way it is in the US. We get what we want. We basically asked for ICE. Job losses are part of the package.

I agree with you regarding third world countries. When you gotta spend all your money on food and you're still near-starving, capital investment is impossible. Yes, huge numbers of people in that kind of country are caught in a trap that they can't get out of through hard work, unless they manage to emigrate.

In the US, I think that the market economy creates more wealth distribution than you think. Apple is nearly 50 percent small and retail shareholder owned. Another large chunk is owned by pension funds. A big chunk of their profits are being streamed to everyday joes. Musk has accumulated massive individual wealth, but he's now starting to spend it faster than he makes it (his companies are eating each other) and that basically means that he's paying out more than he's taking in.

More generally, if you look at the most wealthy US families, they hardly ever stay wealthy past the third generation. A great deal of the country's wealth transfers to whoever is ascending at the moment. Is it concentrated? Yes. But it's mobile. There's a difference.

Marx had some genius insights for the time, but his proposed solutions doomed billions of people to poverty (socialist countries suck). Pikkety is Marx 2.0. Interesting stuff, but I'll stick with US capitalism, thank you very much.

Oh, I totally get it. Irresponsible talk about annexing other countries should be met with pushback.

On the other hand, the only thing where he's getting major traction is immigration. On most other things, if you ignore his all-caps social media posts about what he *claims* to be doing, and actually look at what's actually happening, it's mostly fairly small stuff. Example: he pulls back intel sharing to Ukraine and talks big in all caps about it on social media. 72 hours later, the info sharing resumes, but it's done quietly. No big news announcements about that second thing, because it's boring. This kind of thing plays out over and over.

Look up "TACO trade". The smart investors are making big money by betting that Trump actions dont match Trump words.

No, Trump doesn't "want" Greenland, or Canada, or whatever mine/harbor/canal that he's blabbing about at the moment. He doesn't really care about immigrants, or tarrifs, or much of anything beyond his own bank account.

He tosses out one idea after another in order to feed the news cycle. Positive news, negative news, it doesn't matter. To him, all news is good. As soon as one idea stops generating media attention, he drops the idea and adds another one. He's averaging about one wackjob statement per day or two, pretty much like clockwork. He also maintains several layers of crazy talk on top of each other. When one drops out, another gets added. The guy is an absolute master at keeping people off balance. It's an interesting riff on the standard populist playbook. Very effective in the short term, not so successful in the long term.

For people who can look beyond their own rage (or worship) of the guy, what he's doing is really transparent. Remember, this guy has a long history of doing reality TV and professional wrestling entertainment.

He doesn't really "want" Greenland. He doesn't care about the place at all, since it has no impact on his personal wealth. As soon as people stop rage-clicking on news about this, he'll drop it.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. People living in a *capitalism* must invest in *capital*. It's literally part of the name.

Let me put it this way . Most people here would probably agree that a person in a modern society needs to have a state ID, a bank account, a mailing address, and probably an email account and maybe a credit card. If I don't have these things, I'm basically operating with handcuffs on. Without these, it's almost impossible to buy anything, or sell anything, or save any money, or hold a job, or find a place to live, or prepare food, or do just about anything else. Getting ahead in life is almost impossible. Without those things, I'm basically living off the grid, and surviving until the end of the day is about all I can hope for.

In a capitalist society, *owning capital* should be part of that list. People will grumble that only the billionaires hold the capital. Untrue. That's why we invented the stockmarket. Nowadays, you can buy a $10 fraction of a share, if that's all you have to spare. Every single person above the poverty line should own an investment account.

I'll only speak about the US. If you're an adult in the US, above the poverty line, and you don't own stocks/equities, you're voluntarily not participating in the greatest economic engine that humanity has ever invented. Is it any surprise that other people seem to be pulling ahead of you?

I totally understand that it's not easy. It can be really frikkin hard. And it's certainly not fast. You need to put as much money as you can into investments, and you need to do it for decades. Literally. Decades. Or maybe even more than generation if you happen to get along with your family members. Oh, you're not willing to wait that long? Well, that's on you, buddy. Who's keeping you down, the *man* or your own impatience? Nowadays, the stock market is basically an app on your phone, and it's returned (a very noisy) 8 percent per year for the last 75 years. What are you waiting for? Buy as much garden variety low-fee equity ETF or mutual fund as you can, keep doing it every month, and don't even look at it until you're near retirement. The recipe for success here is *very* simple.

Downmod in 3,2,1.

I'm not one of these AI true believers that thinks the singularity is right around the corner. But, the sort of work you're describing sounds like something that the current LLM models could be really, really good at automating. That kind of sweatshop work might not be around for much longer.

nuff said.

This is gonna across as snarky, but, if you cant figure out why the country that controls the global reserve currency needs a lot of hard physical military power to keep it, youre incredibly naive. The global reserve currency used to be controlled by Britain. Maybe you also think its a total coincidence that they also had the worlds most powerful navy. Maybe youre a cs type? Hard power still matters. A LOT.

Shut up shut up shut up. If you value this kind of research continuing, would wont mention anything about climb (at) e and this stuff in the same post at all. Some automated malicious algorithm will latchonto it, repost a bunch of rage bait, which will get picked up by actual MAGA people, and itll be on FOX before you know it. Funding cancellation will follow quickly after that. Well, too late.

Dont forget that the USD is backed by a LOT of hard power as well. Many many police and soldiers with many many guns. And planes. And missiles. And nukes. Its not just the US. A LOT of other countries will use hard power to enforce the USD as well. Theres no real alternative and chaos has its own problems.

in China is around $5,000 according to the interwebs. So, apparently there are a bunch of people willing to spend 10 percent of their disposable income watching grainy footage of random schmoes sitting around in a hotel room in their underwear.

Thanks for the dive into Canadian history. I mean it. As a US citizen I don't track that stuff nearly as much and it was an interesting take on parlimentary systems. I still prefer first-past-the-post systems, but it's a legit debate.

I think that your perception of the US executive is a bit off, though. As powerful as Trump is, he doesn't get anywhere close to being a monarch. Congress still controls the laws and the purse. The judiciary still control interpretation of the laws. Trump is getting seriously constrained by the rest of the system, which is holding up just fine. I wish the pushback would be a bit stronger, but it's definitely there. However, the pushback is barely covered in the media because it doesn't generate nearly as many rage-clicks.

Congressional example: Trump called for republicans in congress to abandon the filibuster. Within 24 hours the senior republicans effectively told him to f&*k off, in public, basically right to his face. He and his posse backed down because they knew they weren't going to win that fight. Barely covered in the media because it was boring.

Supreme court example: The supreme court passed Loper-Bright, basically in preparation for an unhinged Trump presidency. Nobody talks about this. Without Loper-Bright, the stuff that Trump is currently doing would be 10 times worse. They're also about to declare most of his tarriffs unconstitutional, and there's a pretty good chance that Trump will lose the constitutional fight over ICE as well.

Trump is getting things done because the executive branch can move so much faster than congress or the courts. He's getting as much done as he can in the 4-6 month time frame, before Congress and the courts can react and eventually stop him. It's kind of a new presidential strategy/loophole/exploit that's taken our society by surprise. We need some more guardrails to stop a president from using reaction-time- limitations to ignore congress and the courts on the 6 month time scale.

DEEZ COLD NUTZ