#econic

[afloweroutofstone]

Writing summaries of big legislative packages is a really fun way to come into contact with all of those lobbyist and advocacy organizations that you never really think about, the thousands of narrowly-focused pressure groups who quietly make the world go round.

My op-ed criticizing waste in the reconciliation bill included a sentence pointing out the fact that the bill contained "a subsidy for the indoor tanning industry." The next day I got a response on Twitter criticizing this claim and arguing "That reporting is false." I looked the person up only to realize that it was, I kid you not, the President of the American Suntanning Association.

[morganbritton132]

Firm believer that Eddie grew up around guns, knows how to shoot guns. He doesn’t go hunting (not after the first time) but him and Wayne sometimes go out into the woods to shoot pain cans.

Steve, on the other hand, saw a gun for the first time when Nancy shove one in his face.

[abbotjack]

Just passed stats and got A’s everywhere else, so Jack Abbot summer officially begins now. I fear I no longer care about my remaining finals—currently writing the most plot-fueled, emotionally devastating smut of my life as we speak.

[discountskeppy]

#magnushammercuck

[odinsblog]

[kuiperblog]

The tweet being quoted is of course obviously wrong: the fact that the current market price of gold is ~$3,000 per ounce is contingent on gold maintaining its current rarity, and the market price of gold would be considerably lower in a world where gold was more abundant.

But the person who has showed up to dunk on this tweet is wrong in a more subtle (and more annoying) way: gold being abundant would not make it "worthless."

We intuitively understand that many types of mineral are useful for things. For example, iron useful as a construction material (especially if you make steel out of it). And titanium offers a similar strength at less weight, making it useful if you're trying to build spaceships.

If the earth suddenly gained a huge amount of iron, this would not cause iron to become "worthless." Ditto for titanium.

If we had a magic machine that could instantly create more lithium and cobalt, that would not be a "worthless" invention: we would use the machine to create minerals that we could use to make batteries; we could make more of the grid solar, energy would be more abundant, and that would have the effect of making us all richer (in tangible ways, like cutting the price of your energy bill, and in other less-immediately-obvious but still tangible ways).

Adding more resources to the world would make the world richer, not poorer, because we could do things with them! This is true of iron, titanium, and cobalt. It is also true of gold.

Gold is useful! It has a bunch of unique properties that allow you to build useful things out of it!

If you've ever installed a CPU, you're probably familiar with this sight:

Intel did not put a gold top-coat on your CPU pins because they were expecting you to display them to ostentatiously broadcast your wealth. It used gold because that's the best material for the job!

Gold has low electrical resistance, and it doesn't tarnish, which means that properties like resistance won't change over the lifespan of the chip. Palladium-nickel is too porous and prone to cracking; silver tarnishes too easily, platinum is harder to solder.

The Intel chip in your PC has gold because in a counterfactual world where they instead had to use a different material, your CPU would be worse at doing the the things that it's supposed to do.

In fact, there are a lot of applications where gold is just straight-up better than copper, aluminum, tin, and nickel, but we end up using those (worse) materials anyway just because gold is too expensive. If price were no object, you'd really rather wire your house with gold than copper, but we use copper because it's less than 1% the cost. If gold were more abundant, we wouldn't have to settle for second-best!

But there is another way in which the annoying tweet is wrong that people would remain poor even if we accept the false premise that "gold would be worthless": those suffering under the resource curse of gold could be considerably better off!

A world where gold is valuable is a world where dictators who control a limited supply of gold have a major source of wealth that is mostly decoupled from human capital. A country whose main export is gold has considerably less incentive to do things like "build schools" and "ensure that children aren't malnourished" than they would in a world where their main export was microchips or movies or software, because in order to create chips/movies/apps, you need to have a bunch of skilled labor and you can only get that skilled labor by building schools and ensuring that your people's cognitive capacity isn't being diminished by childhood malnourishment. (In case it's not obvious, this point generalizes to many things beyond "just" building schools and getting nutrients into children.)

So, if "gold became worthless," it's quite conceivable that people could be better off: eliminating that specific source of wealth would mostly have the effect of reducing a particular kind of inequality that tends to make a tiny number of people rich at the expense of everyone else.

(That is, of course, accepting the premise that gold would become "worthless," which it wouldn't, because we can do useful things with gold: it can't be worthless because it literally has worth even absent any shared notion of it being a useful "store of value." Gold is like titanium; it's not like a piece of paper with Benjamin Franklin whose usefulness is entirely contingent on constructed factors. If humanity went extinct, aliens would struggle to find useful things to do with $100 bills, but they'd find plenty of useful things to do with all of the gold that they found on earth. This was even the premise of an extremely silly sci-fi movie starring Harrison Ford, Cowboys and Aliens.)

The only time when I really feel comfortable dunking is when it is a "counter-dunk," so I will float the possibility that perhaps this tweeter would benefit from taking his own advice to "take an economics class."

[bayesic-bitch]

It's deeply unfortunate but I'm 99% sure we're going to go straight from "why are people making AI to writing and art? They should make one that does laundry" to "AI is automating physical labor because techbros hate the working class and think they should starve" as soon as robotics/embodied AI actually takes off

[dailyhogz]

374. sunlight

[meowmeow1meow]

rip aster you wouldve loved um……..

[rotzaprachim]

One of the most biting ironies of the “class in America” current discussion is how few people have really wrapped their head around the biting reality of the fact that actually making and growing things in the U.S. makes them much, much more expensive if you are paying your employees a living wage, even when you cut out the middle men, and there’s no easy workaround for this conundrum without fucking over the working class somewhere - the people who make and grow the food, or else the people who can’t afford to buy it. And all that being said, it is fucking insane how conservatives and trumpets hold up an idea of “small business” and “American made” and “small family farms” at the same time many of the most famous national cultural signals of people being “elitest” are when they support exactly that. So many of the most hated signs of “elitism” in America aren’t golf courses, private chefs, private jets, or the mar-a-lago. They’re the exact manners in which liberal and often but far from always middle class people work to support smaller farmers and producers. What is a bigger sign of American elitism than the soccer mom purchasing kale from a farmers’ market with a reusable bag. Than the farmer’s market? What about the urban coop? The Etsy small business seller? The made in America small scale brands that often do cost in the hundreds for a pair of jeans? The urban one off coffee shop that charges $11 the avocado toast with the avocados certifiably not supporting a cartel?

The point is not that these items are accessible - they are point blank, not. The point is that it is fucking insane that the party and people upholding “made in America” and “small family farmers” as the answer to fixing the economy also are so incredibly checked out of actual economics that they support billionaires with no intention of actually doing those things in order to punish the middle class liberals who are actually doing exactly that. And before someone says that the problem is capitalism as a structure - yeah it absolutely is, but that doesn’t stop the guy picking lettuce or running the combine harvester from needing to earn a living wage RIGHT now, or that these are often the lifestyle choices of the most relatively pro-left wing economic voters in the country, for which they have been ruthlessly punished as elitist for.

also like trump voters aren’t exclusively working class there’s plenty of rich people (the issue specifically is that voters for trump versus harris are not divided by class, and that working class people don't systemically chose harris OVER trump when ethnicity and location aren't taken into account, not that trump has disproportionate sway over the working class as a whole) and it says a lot that made in America and small business shit is stuff they make fun of for being the tastes of clueless liberals so let’s see how that works for you!

[dipperdesperado]

Notes Toward Finding Community, Or, How to Find Community When You Feel Isolated

Neoliberalism sucks for a ton of reasons. From the enclosure of every common, to the commodification of every creation, it feels like a muzzle on humanity that gets tighter and tighter. One of the most underexplored aspects of neoliberalism is the way in which it creates and reinforces isolation. People don’t really have communities outside of consumption or compulsion. This is problematic for a ton of reasons, namely that it prevents us from fulfilling our basic needs. Humans are social creatures. People need to have connections with folks. People may not all need the same levels or intensity of connections, but connections are important nonetheless. To lack in the ability to socialize meaningfully is to ensure worse health outcomes, mentally, emotionally, and physically. But, I don’t mean to freak you out. I think that there are steps we can take to star building community, bridging gaps with the people around us.

Think About What You Want

When folks feel very isolated, it can be easy to accept anything. If we’re in a vulnerable state, that could leave us open for ending up in precarious situations. One way to fight against this is to start from the position of imagining what community looks like. Is the type of space we want to occupy based around interests (fandom, hobbies)? Religions, spiritualities, social issues? If we are able to list the things that excite us, we have a good idea of what to look for, and can focus our efforts towards finding those spaces.

Find the Watering Holes

With the spaces we’re interested in on hand, youcan find where folks gather. Every community has virtual and/or in-person spaces. For example, if you’re a film fan, you can look for indie cinemas, folks putting on screenings, or look into film societies where you live. For activism, I’ve written a whole guide on how to get started. Looking for those spaces will allow you to start getting integrated in the space. Really think about how you can occupy the same physical and digital spaces of people who are into what you’re into.

Go Meet Folks

Now, this may be difficult, depending on your disposition. The quickest way to meet folks is to put yourself out there. It’s always vulnerable to put yourself on the line in this way, but it’s super necessary. When you’re in spaces with similar folks, you have talking points built in! You don’t have to worry if the folks around you will like movies at film club. If you are enjoyable to be around, through being nice, interesting, and/or being an active listener, you’ll be making connections in no time. If you’re not willing to talk to folks, it’ll be hard to make connections. Being open is an asset towards the end of getting connected. At the very least, consistently go to events and spaces in your interest area(s). Maybe you’ll bump into an extroverted person that can show you the ropes.

Be the Change You Want to See

As you get out there, think about how you can start catalyzing community. Maybe you host a dinner for neighbors. Maybe you start a book club. Or even a neighborhood garden, or cleanup event. In this way, you’re flipping the issue on its head. You’re creating the space to meet folks yourself. It’s like being a magnet, drawing others to you.

We need community. It’s a necessary thing, you know? So, hopefully, keeping these things in mind helps in that regard.

[sq1nk]

Finished my academic comeback so you guys get a Wei Wuxian revival

I used one of my cosplay Wei Wuxian cosplayers as a reference. mame_sky13 on twitter!

[wh0s-v1nc3nt]

SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF HERE SOMEONE IN MY ECON CLASS JUST ATE ONE OF THE CLASS TADPOLES

[thou-babbling-brook]

Bla bla bla stocks cryptocurrency supply and demand idk I’m not an econ major

Ezio would make a good professor ngl till shit like this happens:

[futurehunt]

Why are avocados at my grocery store $5 each! 🤬

Eris Vanserra would never let this happen

[ciceroprofacto]

we need to collectively start shaming people for talking about anything related to economics a LOT more. if someone starts talking about inflation, ask them to explain what that is. interest rates- who controls that- more importantly, how? to what end? what are tariffs supposed to do? how do labor and wages effect supply and demand? what is a market? a job market??

literally no one actually knows anything they’re talking about AT ALL, and if someone’s telling you they can accurately predict what’s going to happen they’re plain lying. real experts will admit there are major flaws in the data feeding several key models and indicators. even with perfect data collection methods (impossible to achieve), we still wouldn’t be sure of anything. that’s not how economic controls work.

the average person has less than zero economic literacy and I mean less than zero because they’ll insist on talking about it anyway and that shit has a negative impact. when they do it, make them look stupid- ask them to break it down like you’re a child, keep asking for more clarity, go deeper. ask for their sources, ask for their sources sources, ask if they were educated in economics and where and in what focus. Fucking grill them. and when they can’t demonstrate real comprehension, ask them why they’d vote based on something they don’t actually understand.