#the ones i use i just bought from the market for 10 dollars | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

Text

Amazon’s financial shell game let it create an “impossible” monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.

Pro-monopoly economists embody Ely Devons's famous aphorism that "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Rather than using the way the world actually works as their starting point for how to think about it, they build elaborate models out of abstract principles like "rational actors." The resulting mathematical models are so abstractly elegant that it's easy to forget that they're just imaginative exercises, disconnected from reality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

These models predicted that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power. Even if they became a monopoly – in the sense of dominating sales of various kinds of goods – the company still wouldn't get monopoly power.

For example, if Amazon tried to take over a category by selling goods below cost ("predatory pricing"), then rivals could just wait until the company got tired of losing money and put prices back up, and then those rivals could go back to competing. And if Amazon tried to keep the loss-leader going indefinitely by "cross-subsidizing" the losses with high-margin profits from some other part of its business, rivals could sell those high margin goods at a lower margin, which would lure away Amazon customers and cut the supply lines for the price war it was fighting with its discounted products.

That's what the model predicted, but it's not what happened in the real world. In the real world, Amazon was able use its access to the capital markets to embark on scorched-earth predatory pricing campaigns. When diapers.com refused to sell out to Amazon, the company casually committed $100m to selling diapers below cost. Diapers.com went bust, Amazon bought it for pennies on the dollar and shut it down:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18563379/amazon-predatory-pricing-antitrust-law

Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent.

Now, not everyone shared the antitrust establishment's confidence that Amazon couldn't create a durable monopoly with market power. In 2017, Lina Khan – then a third year law student – published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a landmark paper arguing that Amazon had all the tools it needed to amass monopoly power:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

Today, Khan is chair of the FTC, and has brought a case against Amazon that builds on some of the theories from that paper. One outcome of that suit is an unprecedented look at Amazon's internal operations. But, as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Stacy Mitchell describes in a piece for The Atlantic, key pieces of information have been totally redacted in the court exhibits:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/amazon-profits-antitrust-ftc/677580/

The most important missing datum: how much money Amazon makes from each of its lines of business. Amazon's own story is that it basically breaks even on its retail operation, and keeps the whole business afloat with profits from its AWS cloud computing division. This is an important narrative, because if it's true, then Amazon can't be forcing up retail prices, which is the crux of the FTC's case against the company.

Here's what we know for sure about Amazon's retail business. First: merchants can't live without Amazon. The majority of US households have Prime, and 90% of Prime households start their ecommerce searches on Amazon; if they find what they're looking for, they buy it and stop. Thus, merchants who don't sell on Amazon just don't sell. This is called "monopsony power" and it's a lot easier to maintain than monopoly power. For most manufacturers, a 10% overnight drop in sales is a catastrophe, so a retailer that commands even a 10% market-share can extract huge concessions from its suppliers. Amazon's share of most categories of goods is a lot higher than 10%!

What kind of monopsony power does Amazon wield? Well, for one thing, it is able to levy a huge tax on its sellers. Add up all the junk-fees Amazon charges its platform sellers and it comes out to 45-51%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Competitive businesses just don't have 45% margins! No one can afford to kick that much back to Amazon. What is a merchant to do? Sell on Amazon and you lose money on every sale. Don't sell on Amazon and you don't get any business.

The only answer: raise prices on Amazon. After all, Prime customers – the majority of Amazon's retail business – don't shop for competitive prices. If Amazon wants a 45% vig, you can raise your Amazon prices by a third and just about break even.

But Amazon is wise to that: they have a "most favored nation" rule that punishes suppliers who sell goods more cheaply in rival stores, or even on their own site. The punishments vary, from banishing your products to page ten million of search-results to simply kicking you off the platform. With publishers, Amazon reserves the right to lower the prices they set when listing their books, to match the lowest price on the web, and paying publishers less for each sale.

That means that suppliers who sell on Amazon (which is anyone who wants to stay in business) have to dramatically hike their prices on Amazon, and when they do, they also have to hike their prices everywhere else (no wonder Prime customers don't bother to search elsewhere for a better deal!).

Now, Amazon says this is all wrong. That 45-51% vig they claim from business customers is barely enough to break even. The company's profits – they insist – come from selling AWS cloud service. The retail operation is just a public service they provide to us with cross-subsidy from those fat AWS margins.

This is a hell of a claim. Last year, Amazon raked in $130 billion in seller fees. In other words: they booked more revenue from junk fees than Bank of America made through its whole operation. Amazon's junk fees add up to more than all of Meta's revenues:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/AMZN-Q4-2023-Earnings-Release.pdf

Amazon claims that none of this is profit – it's just covering their operating expenses. According to Amazon, its non-AWS units combined have a one percent profit margin.

Now, this is an eye-popping claim indeed. Amazon is a public company, which means that it has to make thorough quarterly and annual financial disclosures breaking down its profit and loss. You'd think that somewhere in those disclosures, we'd find some details.

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Amazon's disclosures do not break out profits and losses by segment. SEC rules actually require the company to make these per-segment disclosures:

https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3524&context=lawreview#:~:text=If%20a%20company%20has%20more,income%20taxes%20and%20extraordinary%20items.

That rule was enacted in 1966, out of concern that companies could use cross-subsidies to fund predatory pricing and other anticompetitive practices. But over the years, the SEC just…stopped enforcing the rule. Companies have "near total managerial discretion" to lump business units together and group their profits and losses in bloated, undifferentiated balance-sheet items:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2021/dec/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragons

As Mitchell points you, it's not just Amazon that flouts this rule. We don't know how much money Google makes on Youtube, or how much Apple makes from the App Store (Apple told a federal judge that this number doesn't exist). Warren Buffett – with significant interest in hundreds of companies across dozens of markets – only breaks out seven segments of profit-and-loss for Berkshire Hathaway.

Recall that there is one category of data from the FTC's antitrust case against Amazon that has been completely redacted. One guess which category that is! Yup, the profit-and-loss for its retail operation and other lines of business.

These redactions are the judge's fault, but the real fault lies with the SEC. Amazon is a public company. In exchange for access to the capital markets, it owes the public certain disclosures, which are set out in the SEC's rulebook. The SEC lets Amazon – and other gigantic companies – get away with a degree of secrecy that should disqualify it from offering stock to the public. As Mitchell says, SEC chairman Gary Gensler should adopt "new rules that more concretely define what qualifies as a segment and remove the discretion given to executives."

Amazon is the poster-child for monopoly run amok. As Yanis Varoufakis writes in Technofeudalism, Amazon has actually become a post-capitalist enterprise. Amazon doesn't make profits (money derived from selling goods); it makes rents (money charged to people who are seeking to make a profit):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profits are the defining characteristic of a capitalist economy; rents are the defining characteristic of feudalism. Amazon looks like a bazaar where thousands of merchants offer goods for sale to the public, but look harder and you discover that all those stallholders are totally controlled by Amazon. Amazon decides what goods they can sell, how much they cost, and whether a customer ever sees them. And then Amazon takes $0.45-51 out of every dollar. Amazon's "marketplace" isn't like a flea market, it's more like the interconnected shops on Disneyland's Main Street, USA: the sign over the door might say "20th Century Music Company" or "Emporium," but they're all just one store, run by one company.

And because Amazon has so much control over its sellers, it is able to exercise power over its buyers. Amazon's search results push down the best deals on the platform and promote results from more expensive, lower-quality items whose sellers have paid a fortune for an "ad" (not really an ad, but rather the top spot in search listings):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

This is "Amazon's pricing paradox." Amazon can claim that it offers low-priced, high-quality goods on the platform, but it makes $38b/year pushing those good deals way, way down in its search results. The top result for your Amazon search averages 29% more expensive than the best deal Amazon offers. Buy something from those first four spots and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average, you need to pick the seventeenth item on the search results page to get the best deal:

https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3645/

For 40 years, pro-monopoly economists claimed that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power over buyers and sellers. Today, Amazon exercises that power so thoroughly that its junk-fee revenues alone exceed the total revenues of Bank of America. Amazon's story – that these fees barely stretch to covering its costs – assumes a nearly inconceivable level of credulity in its audience. Regrettably – for the human race – there is a cohort of senior, highly respected economists who possess this degree of credulity and more.

Of course, there's an easy way to settle the argument: Amazon could just comply with SEC regs and break out its P&L for its e-commerce operation. I assure you, they're not hiding this data because they think you'll be pleasantly surprised when they do and they don't want to spoil the moment.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Image: Doc Searls (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/4863121221/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

605 notes · View notes

so-i-did-this-thing · 1 month ago

Note

Hello Nicholas!

I hope this isn't a weird question, but I saw in one of your posts that you used to be in a huge amount of debt and now you're living more comfortably- how did you manage to get out of debt? I feel like every time I start even trying to figure out where to start, it's just all too big to ever get out from under. Do you have any advice for me?

Hope you have a great day!

Hey there! Yes, from about 2007-2010 (before I transitioned), I was making less than $10k/year. I defaulted on all my credit cards, exhausted my retirement, and nearly lost my house. It sucked, and in 2024, I'm finally start to feel somewhat secure. What I learned (assuming living in the US, I also did not have student loan debt):

I had to first figure out the sources of my debt. A big chunk of it was because of bad spending habits due to mental illness (hoarding + retail therapy when I was dysphoric/depressed). Another chunk was from being in an abusive friendship. Another, from being unemployed. And the last, was general capitalism (this was during the housing crisis.)

I started working on improving myself to curb behaviors that led to debt. I started working on my hoarding. I started transition to improve my mental health (had to sell some stuff to afford HRT). It took until 2015 to ditch my abuser, alas.

I started working on new job skills. I swallowed my pride and got an office job after a failed 3-year stint at freelancing. It was shitty, but enough to take care of my income emergencies -- keeping my house out of foreclosure. I got a better job 8 months later. It also sucked and I was in it for 7 years, but eventually changed industries and that's when my career took off. Because with each new job, I've gotten better and better pay.

I started using budgeting software. YNAB is my favorite. I try to account for every single dollar I have.

I started spending smarter. Food was the expense I had the most control over. I went to the salvage grocery store (you can find non-expired stuff if you hunt) and bought the "ugly" produce 1 day away from rotting from the local markets. I actually managed to eat well once I found these grocery stores, and my food bill became a fraction of what it'd been at typical grocery stores. I do wish that I had given food pantries a shot, but I was in denial about my poverty at the time.

I sold a ton of useless crap. I got rid of a good chunk of my nerd "collectibles". I only miss a few things over a decade later.

I negotiated with my debt collectors. I managed to set up payment plans with my credit card companies, condo association, and the IRS. I also did a debt consolidation loan once I qualified and was sure I could commit to the monthly payments. It forced me to be super strict about my budget and for about 5 years I didn't buy much for myself. It sucked, but I cleared a bunch of debt that way.

I got help from my family. I was embarrassed to tell my family about my predicament, but it became impossible to hide. I got help cleaning out my hoard and my mother has gracefully given me generous cash gifts every now and then. Never enough to be life-changing, but enough to give me a mental breather.

I played the credit score game. This one seems counter-intuitive, and requires some self-control about not abusing credit cards. Many people recommend the "snowball" method for paying off cards (pay off your lowest debt asap, then go to the next one), but I went with a "credit utilization" method (bring my highest used cards down to the next utilization level, then move to other cards) so I would see immediate changes in my credit score. What is credit card utilization? It's the percentage of how much of your credit card you're using. A card with a $1,000 limit and $100 on it = 10% utilization. Your credit score changes when you cross the following thresholds: 90%, 70%, 50%, 30%, 10%. Once my credit score started going up past 400 (especially as defaults started falling away), I applied for a secured card. As I started using that better, I applied for a few more cards, then for credit line increases every 6 months. My car insurance rates were tied to my credit score, so as soon as that improved, I switched companies and saved money there.

Mistakes I made:

Being in denial that I was poor. I didn't really look for resources on how to live while in poverty. This hurt me a lot because I ended up neglecting myself out of pride, which made my situation even worse.

Payday loans. I got stuck in the payday cycle for about 8 years. I wish I had sold more stuff or asked family for money to have never needed that initial loan. Once you are in the cycle, it becomes very difficult to get out.

Not going to a food bank.

Not asking for help sooner. And not just financial help.

Not getting out of abusive situations sooner. This is hard, and I sympathize with anyone in a similar position. But if you think it's time to move on, trust your gut - don't sacrifice yourself for people who don't care about you.

Ignoring debt collectors, because I was too afraid to negotiate for a plan. The IRS was so patient with me in the end, even after defaulting twice on plans.

Not considering getting a roommate to reduce costs, or not thinking of doing more things like shared meals with my fellow poor friends. Again, denial and pride. Humility is not a bad word and I wished I had learned it sooner.

Not changing jobs sooner. Curbing my hoarding and getting a better job are responsible for about 90% of me being where I am financially today.

Getting out of debt is a marathon. It took over a decade for me, and I am *still* feeling the sting of poverty. I wish you the best of luck. Folks are welcome to tack on specific tricks and strategies -- this is just a general outline of my particular journey.

#chit chat #my most toxic traits at the time were individualism and stoicism and by god they nearly killed me

133 notes · View notes

sgiandubh · 9 months ago

Text

Offer and demand

For comparison purposes, kindly find below what a devoted Ozzie fan will have to be prepared to pay for a pic with one or several of the participants to the Hublander Australia 'A Visit to The Highlands' event, this week-end, in Sydney and Melbourne:

On top of that, there is an extra option I have never seen for European events (and correct me if I am wrong). You can buy signed personal items and autographed pics for somebody who cannot attend (personal items cost a little extra, no idea why). Here is an example, for S:

Just to have an idea, remember (I will always LOL at this word, from now on, and that's really a shame, because I use it a LOT, irl) these are the prices in Australian dollars. A pic with S would cost you around 115 euros or 125 USD and the most expensive group pic would lighten your purse by around 360 USD or 333 euros.

All this, like for the Paris Landcon, are on top of what you pay for access and the rest of the side gigs, depending of your tier of choice. Those can set you anywhere from 200 Australian dollars for the standard entry ticket to 1800 Australian dollars for the Platinum Tier, where I hope S will pour you a dram or something - nope, not really, that was really a cheap joke, forget about it. You do the math, it's easy.

If you take the time to compare with the Paris Landcon, the discrepancies are clear. The Australian Lollapalooza easily costs the double. But before you screech and wail, do remember two things:

Prices in Australia and France are not really the same. Same goes for the disposable wages of the people buying these tickets. Same goes for the logistical costs (venue rent, talent accommodation and fee, insurance - very important!, other administrative expenditures like legal costs: never forget these people also sell licensed merchandise, which comes at an extra cost itself, etc).

Also, event organization is a business in itself. There is a market and a pool of potential clients for this type of business. Demand and offer meet (or should do so) on that market and the result of this encounter of sorts should reasonably reflect what the people are willing to pay for whatever you peddle around, from bagels to Scottish fantasies. Too expensive - nobody will come. Too cheap - the talent you hope to attract would, in all likelihood, not show up, especially if it takes 10 to 20 hours of flight to get there.

Now add to this the need to satisfy just about everyone in the room. The simple need to make sure that the person who paid 200 dollars for the basic ticket would not feel left behind those who paid nine times (yes, nine times, for Australia, land of plenty) more. That is not an easy task and those figures you have seen are not what you may think they do represent, on face value.

Last, but not least, a wee secret: the bulk of the talent's fee comes from those autographed pics you bought extra, the Q&A sessions and the Platinum Meet and Greets - isn't that a strange form of Marxist distribution circuit (but I digress, forgive the scholar). The rest is probably going to cover operational costs.

Nobody robbed you. Nobody forced you or hypnotized you. You will meet the real people, not some denizen of Abuja who pretends he is Mr. Blue Eyes. And S will not get richer after Melbourne, only more tired.

You're welcome.

PS: merci à toi; chérie, pour l'info and also a heartfelt thank you to you, New Friend on the Block. You know who you are! 😘😘😘😘❤️❤️❤️

[Edit]: @joey-baby tells me the Oz fans can buy the recording of both days. That is a local exclusive and I surely hope we'd see some of it in here. Thank you! 🙌

#fandom #shitshow

90 notes · View notes

firesnap · 9 months ago

Text

The Lovejoy resell market is a level of unhinged that needs to be examined.

The AYA/Pebble Brain vinyl from a few years ago sold for $1000 at one point. Even now, it runs for over $500 IF you can find it because it'll be bought up pretty damn quick.

Look at this person. This is just a cd and a cassette tape. I bought bought of those and I think I paid like $12 for the CD and $10 for the cassette tape when they were released JUST THIS PAST MAY? Now it's $60 and $135.

The Anvil Cards sell for crazy amounts. They were free cards you got for buying a piece of merch and some of them are selling for 200 --- and a Pioneertown Wilbur went for almost $400 US dollars! Here's a current auction for one of the uncommons.

We haven't even see an "SuperRare" for resell yet.

Like, yeah, resellers are going to resell but this is absurd.

20 notes · View notes

kivaember · 7 months ago

Text

tosses down some more pre-young jupiter walter. also as a conversation rate between COAM and dollars: 1 COAM = $10.

There were many drawbacks living in the slums of Ganymede: no sunlight, the sticky heat, the polluted air, everything coated in about three layers of rust... but the worst drawback, in Walter's opinion, was the water.

On Rubicon, everything was clean and sterilised. Every surface, gleaming so white it hurt the eyes, the scent of preservatives and bleach constantly burning his nose and tickling the back of his throat. The water, too, always carried a faint chemical aftertaste - nothing harmful, just completely sterilised of any and all Coral contaminants, or so his parents would say when he used to complain about the taste.

On Ganymede it was an entirely different story.

The water always tasted of metal, had a filmy quality to it, and looked cloudy. The locals said that it was just how it had been filtered, that the water was safe to drink - everyone drank it here for hundreds of years, and they're still around, see? - but Walter had always struggled to adjust to it. It was kind of funny, really. The grime and the stink and the lack of sunlight, he had adjusted to with minimal difficulty, but the water? It was difficult to swallow - literally.

He wasn't the only one who felt this way. There was a booming market for bottled water - from topside. Fresh water, melted from the polar ice they cut to feed the massive water demands of the surface colony, and purified. It was the equivalent to fucking tap water on Rubicon, but on Ganymede it may as well have been liquid gold. The smugglers who dealt with it upcharged it massively, and they had limited stock, fleecing the locals without a hint of shame - and the locals knew they were being scammed, but bought the water anyway, because even though they said 'oh the tap water's safe!' they really knew it wasn't. These people threw away their meagre spending money for clean water of all things.

And Walter was one of them.

"Here's your usual, scrapper: one ten-pack of two-litre bottles for 10 COAM."

Walter grunted at the criminally high price, handing over the 10 COAM credit chip to their resident 'water baron' without a fuss.

A smuggler who had found his niche and a steady income because of it, their 'water baron' had a reputation of being both reliable and somewhat reasonable with his prices. While other sector water barons were shameless in charging 10 COAM per bottle, theirs - a man by the name of Mike of all things - generously charged 1 COAM per bottle, understanding the economics of 'keep things affordable so people can actually buy your shit'.

Walter still disliked the whole situation, though - disliked the fact that he was openly engaging in this fucking scam. The water probably was safe down in the slums, it wouldn't do for all of the working class to die of dysentry or some other terrible water-borne disease, but it still tasted foul with a terrible texture.

"Looks good," Mike said cheerfully, stowing the credit chip after checking its authenticity. "You know, I've got another shipment coming in tomorrow. I can set aside another ten-pack for you - as a favour."

Mike's tone was sly, dangling that tempting fish hook. Walter just picked up his purchased water, leaning back slightly to mitigate the weight. Twenty kilos wasn't heavy, but it was a long walk back to his garage and his arms were bound to get tired sooner rather than later.

"No, this'll do," he said. "I'll come by in two weeks for my usual."

"You need to learn how to splurge a little, scrapper," Mike tutted, and even wagged his finger at him. "You've been such a good customer, y'know! I'm even willing to give it to you for a discount."

Walter turned on his heel and walked away.

"Think about it!" Mike called at his retreating back. "I'll be here as usual!"

Walter ignored him. He knew better than to take the bait Mike was dangling in front of him. He wasn't blind to the looks that water baron gave him - or rather, his chest and his partially unzipped mechanics jumpsuit - and didn't want to deal with that pointless drama. He just wanted some damn water that didn't taste like shit, not beating off the ambitious advances of some small-time water smuggler.

He scoffed under his breath, weaving through the crowd that loitered around the water baron's market. Several stalls selling other smuggled goods sprung up around here, and it was one of the few illegalities that the Ganymede Guards actually turned a blind eye to. No one was stupid enough to sell weapons or hard drugs here, after all, and this was the only place to get luxuries that were considered ubiquitous up on the surface colony.

Besides, no Ganymede Guard was going to arrest someone for reselling bottled water or a fucking watermelon.

Walter eventually left the smuggler's market behind, adjusting his water pack every so often as the muscles in his arms burned. Gravel and broken glass crunched underneath his steel-capped boots, and overhead the buzzing of lights and the groan of rusted ventilation fans added to the usual ambience of the metal coffin they were all buried inside. He followed the winding, maze-like alleyways of Sector E's slums until he eventually came upon a much wider street, the flickering sign 'CARLA'S SCRAPPERS' flickering above the open doors of their garage.

Home sweet home... or something.

He walked in, grunting at Chatty's equally subdued greeting, and casting a quick look across the cluttered workspace. A few mechs in various states of dismantlement were strewn across the garage, their hulls more rust than metal, and their servos and circuity pulled and laid out like electronic guts. Out of view he could hear Carla's radio warbling out that classical music called 'metal rock' or something, accommpanied by the buzz of a scrapping saw - or Carla's attempt at singing. It was hard to tell which was which actually.

"I'll tell the Chief you're back, kid," Chatty said.

"Thanks," Walter muttered, continuing on until he reached the rear of the garage, and entered into their adjoining living space to dump his smuggled water into their fridge - though not before extracting a single bottle from the pack.

He could admit that this was a silly indulgence to have. He could save that COAM for something more useful, like their war chest for their eventual expedition to Rubicon, or practical things like new boots (his soles were pretty worn on these) or new clothes (he was still wearing the mechanic suit from when he'd been a teenager, and his chest had grown in since then). Instead he was spending it on overpriced water, just so he could have a taste of something familiar, of something clean.

Walter sighed, cracking the lid open and taking a hearty swig from the bottle. It was lukewarm, and tasted sterile - but it was still the single most refreshing thing Walter had drank all day. He indulged in another large mouthful, before screwing the lid back on and stowing the bottle into the fridge to join the others.

To be honest, he actually wanted enough water to have a shower that didn't make him feel slimy afterwards. He wasn't a vain man, and his relationship with his body could be described as ruthlessly pragmatic. So long as it was fit and healthy, he didn't care if the water made his skin uncomfortably dry sometimes, or left him smelling like a stagnant pond, or caused his hair to be slightly greasy, unless he used more shampoo than usual (which was its own indulgence Walter spent too much COAM on). But after years of showering in this foul water, after knowing that things could be so much better (hot water, showers that actually had pressure, being clean god, he missed being clean), he found a sort of homesickness and frustrated longing he'd thought himself incapable of.

His mind wandered back to Mike's offer: if he "splurged" on another ten pack, that'd mean he'd have 40 litres of water. If he stretched it out, he could clean himself with that water for a solid week... heat up a clean coffee pot, pour it over his head, give himself a good scrub...

...

Walter scowled and shook his head.

This place was getting to him. He couldn't be spending his money on such frivolous luxuries, not when he and Carla needed to save what few credits they got down here for the future expedition and information gathering. Besides, he was a scrapper. He was going to be coated in oils and machine lubricant and god knows what else immediately afterwards anyways.

No. Spending 10 COAM on clean water every two weeks was all he'll allow himself - for drinking. Not for showering. He'd endured this situation for almost seven years now, he can endure it for another seven if he had to.

He nodded to himself. That's right. Walter was above such petty desires. If it wasn't in service to his mission, then he didn't need it. He can live without it.

The next day, after enduring an evening shower where the water had come out of the nozzle brown... Walter went and got that second ten-pack of water, much to the smirking Mike's delight.

#armored core #armored core 6 #fanfic #handler walter #me rattling the bars of my cage #i love writing walter pre-canon #makes me wanna bite through steel #im also half-asleep right now #anyways enjoy

18 notes · View notes

yellowistheraddest · 7 months ago

Note

I have a unbranded random ass dip pen that I bought for less than 5 dollars. Best fucking dip pen I've ever used, like stationary is just awesome like that

ive been using my 50 cent fountain pen religiously for at least 5 years but its been getting bent out of shape really easily recently so im changing over.. and additionally, tested my markers yesterday and the ones from 10 years ago still work fine without ever being refilled or nothing, meanwhile the markers i got for cheap last year have a 66% success rate of drying out. either its because theyre cheap or enshittification has hit the art supply market

#asks

9 notes · View notes

helenarlett-rex · 19 days ago

Text

Reviewing your Game X Change reviews

(From a Game X Change employee)

Overpriced...? What are you looking for? Video games? We literally have a program in our computer that makes sure we offer better prices than our competitors. DVDs? We sell the dame things at $4 a piece with a buy 2 get 1 free deal. How much lower do you think I can go? Trading cards? We sell them at market value rounded down to the closest dollar. If they're too expensive, that's the market, not us. I don't know what you want from me here... But when you say staff is "kinda weird" what do you mean? Do you mean they are a bunch of nerds...? You're in a used game store... What do you expect...? Or do you mean that most of them are some variate of LGBT? Because that sounds like a you problem.

As for the inventory, yeah... We know... It's a total piece of shit. We can't do anything about it. That's what corporate makes us use. We ALL complain about it. Corporate doesn't care.

I'm giving your review 2 stars. The only reason it's not lower is because I agree with you about the inventory system.

Look around you... No one is selling DVDs anymore. They don't even have a DVD section at Wal-Mart anymore. We're not going to keep dedicating half our store to a product no one buys just because a small handful of people refuse to upgrade to bluray and/or streaming. We were taking in something close to 90% more DVDs than we were selling. Excuse us for not wanting to go out of business...

Oh! The toys and snacks are what's overpriced! You must be looking at the anime statues and blind boxes. Yeah... Those are imported directly from Japan so the import fee jacks up the price. That is what you mean, right? You can't be talking about the used collectable section because our company doesn't know what the hell it's doing in that department. I commonly find action figures over there that sell for $50 or more on the used market priced at $10 or less. I literally bought a pair of $40 Predator figures for $3 each. As for snacks... Yeah... Just go to 5 Below.

I'm giving your review 2 stars because you are right about the snacks and your complaint about the DVDs is at least understandable. It's no longer sustainable for us to keep carrying them though, and no one else is either, so it's still a you problem. That's why you're a 2 stars instead of 3.

It's not the best place for new games because we literally do not sell them! We are a USED GAME STORE! Stop calling and asking if we have Call of Duty Black Ops 6! No! And we aren't going to until people get sick of playing it!

But thanks for the otherwise nice review. I'll return the favor and give you 4 stars as well.

First of all... What the fuck is a PS3 wifi guitar? There's no such thing... Do you mean, bluetooth? That's a thing... But the more important question is, who the hell are you emailing?! Of course we aren't replying to emails... We don't have an email address! Why the hell don't you just come into the store or call us on the phone like a normal person?! If you would have done that, we would have been happy to refund you! In fact... you STILL CAN! We have a three month return policy! I'm sorry your guitar wasn't tested first, but if you haven't noticed, there is a run on retro game consoles right now. Take a look at our shelves. It probably didn't get tested because we don't HAVE any PS3s to test it on... That's WHY we have the three month return policy!

Your review gets 0 stars because your problem could literally be fixed by picking up a phone and instead you are sending emails to an email address that doesn't exist!

Uhh... You do realize we aren't some little mom and pop thrift store or whatever, right...? Nor are we a pawn shop... We are a corporate chain, no different than Game Stop, or Wal-Mart, or Electronic Express or what have you... Do you go into Wal-Mart and ask them to negotiate a price? No, of course not... So why the hell do you think you can do that here?

You claim you've never had a nice interaction with an employee? Well... you know the old saying. If you meet one person in your day who is an asshole, that person is likely the problem. But if everyone you meet is an asshole, you're probably the problem. And considering you are in here bitching at us for not negotiating corporate set prices, I think I know which of the two it is...

Your review gets 1 star.

Uhh, no... It is not my job to go through all 500 of your damned Yu-Gi-Oh cards and tell you what they are worth. We buy cards valued at a dollar or more. We do not appraise cards... It's your job to know what you have if you are wanting to sell it to us. If you walk in with a box full of cards, not knowing what any of it is worth, and slap it down on the counter for me, it is store policy for me to tell you to leave and look up the value on your own. Do you think I have time to sit there and look up the value on 500 or more cards that you may not even decide you want to sell to us? There are between 2 to 3 employees in the store at any time and we have a lot of other things we have to do. No one has time for that... The store would be losing money in man hours if I had to spend all day sitting there looking up the value of every single card you were too lazy to look up yourself. And we flipped through most of your rares...? Your... Yu-Gi-Oh rares...? This is the part where I toss my head back and laugh. And I think once you start looking up the value on Yu-Gi-Oh cards, you'll understand why. It's not my fault you picked the world's most worthless card game to try to sell cards from...

But hold on... No where does it say we can only take 30 DVDs a day...? We literally told you ourselves. That's just a story policy. You want every store policy posted in writing or something? I don't have any signs up saying it's against store policy for you to take a shit on the floor either. You want to argue that you should be allowed to do it? And sorry you aren't happy with the price you got, but we only pay $0.10 a piece on DVDs and that's not a secret. We'll tell you up front. The things are worthless... We give half of them away for free. Hell, we've already stopped carrying them.

Your review gets 1 star.

Considering we test all game consoles (including hand-helds) on the spot before buying them, (that's literally what I do all day) allow me to translate this into what you actually meant to say, "They sold me a 3DS and then I broke it and tried to sell it back to them, but they would only give me 10 bucks for it now that it was broken!"

That's a 0 star review if I ever saw one...

Oh yeah, we only play 20% cash and 30% store credit. Our offers are very low ball. We know. We can't do anything about that. It's all set by corporate and they are greedy fucks. I wouldn't sell to us either. But overpriced...? Okay... We literally make sure our sale prices are lower than our competitors. We have a program that scans their prices and updates ours every day as needed to make sure of that. So I can only agree with half of what you're saying. Unless you're talking about snacks... We have movie theater prices on those damn things...

Your 1 star review gets 2 stars, because like, half of what you said is true at least...

You know... I wasn't going to review any of the reviews from Covid because it's just a million people bitching that we required masks, (and I wasn't even there at the time) but this one... uhh... I know the "mixed gentleman" you are talking about, and... he doesn't drink... So... You're just full of shit, aren't you?

0 stars for you, Sir!

I know the prices we offer are low, I've already touched on that... But you came in to do a trade and we told you it was too late? Okay... do you know what that means? That means you came in to trade something in within 30 minutes of closing time. All trade-in stop at 30 minutes to closing. That's story policy. It always has been. Because I have to test whatever game system you brought in before I can buy it. I have to enter every game and or movie you brought me into the computer individually by title so I can make sure I am giving you the right price. I then have to clean all of the items I bought from you then process each of them... Putting price tags on everything, shrink wrapping items that need to be shrink wrapped, removing disks from cases and sleeving them in interlopes.... Sleeved discs have to be sorted into the drawers... Cases have to be put on the shelves... It's a quick in and out for you, but the amount of work I have to do after taking in a trade is more than I have time to finish in 30 minutes. And that's on top of the closing duties I already have around the store... And yet assholes like you keep coming in every night 15 minutes to close... 10 minutes to close... 5 minutes to close... and get mad at me when I won't take your trade? No. Fuck you. If I came into your place of work 5 minutes before you closed and asked you to do something that was going to take you an extra 45 minutes, you'd be mad too, and probably wouldn't do it.

So your review gets 1 star, Sir.

Oh god, who let their child write a review on my store? First of all, kid... We don't sell anything new... We are a USED GAME STORE. Everything we sell is used. Including DVDs. The prices are horrible? You paid 5 bucks for a DVD... 6 years ago, I might add... Going price for a new DVD back then was like, what...? $20? And yeah, you are right. We don't give cash refunds. Only in store credit. Which I admit is kind of shitty... but we do TELL you there are no cash refunds when you buy it, so I don't know what you expect... Just take the store credit and get yourself a different DVD for crying out loud... I was almost going to write this off as you just being a 7 year old who thinks $5 is a big deal, but then you said we only offered your brother $5 of an Xbox? And $2 for $150 worth of games? That's literally impossible... Even a defective Xbox will get you at least $10. And a single copy of the most shit game I have will fetch you at least a dollar... So now you're just making shit up.

Sorry kid, your review gets 0 stars.

Oh, hey... My favorite type of review. This is what I call the "We are not a pawn shop!" review. I'm sorry you need the money, but we don't do pawn... We are not going to give you the value of your item and hold it for you until you come back to pay it off again. I see your name (before I blacked it out). I know who you are... And I've told you before, multiple times, we don't do that here! Go to an actual pawn shop! And no, we don't buy your items for the same price we sell them for either. I know what we offer is very low. (20% in cash) But even if we offered more, it still wouldn't be the same price we sell it for! How do you think we would make any money if I gave you $100 for your Xbox and then sold it for $100?

You get 0 stars because I've explained this to you multiple times...

2 notes · View notes

anonymous-badger-238 · 2 months ago

Text

30 questions

I'm just gonna answer a few questions again. Found this from @nuklearis-sutotok at here.

Ok so here we go

1: What song makes you feel better?

Superhero by Guiano

2: What is your go-to comfort show?

Abbott Elementary probably. It's really funny.

3: Reading or writing? Why?

Huh that's hard I like both

4: What's your favorite feeling?

That feeling when you come home from a long day of school and swim practice, and after you shower you can just flop down on your bed and relax

5: How do you like to take care of yourself?

Idk I like brushing my hair and doing skincare and stuff, but in a "mental" kind of way it'd definitely be making covers and music videos.

6: What’s your favorite candle scent?

That pear one I bought for 20 dollars at a World Market because there was a huge Black Friday sale

7: Who do you feel most like yourself around?

My IRL friend group, and also these people in this one Discord server (there are like 4 of you who know what I'm talking about)

8: What's a fabric/texture that’s nostalgic for you?

Sequins. Reminds me of when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and there was this whole trend where all the girls would show up in "flip shirts".

9: Best childhood moment?

Wow there are so many but it's hard to choose just 1. Probably when I rode Splash Mountain at Disney World for the first time. I was eight and me and my dad had to wait two hours but it was soooo worth it.

10: When was the last time you laughed so hard you cried? (or just felt really good afterwards)

This one time I was crying over something so my sister showed me funny pictures of politicians and then I laughed so hard I cried again.

11: Do you have a comfort item? Tell us about it!

This one infinity cube that I fidget with whenever I'm bored or doing homework.

12: What calms you down?

Just closing my eyes and resting on my bed on a Saturday morning and just not thinking about anything in particular. Of course there are those four months of the year where my relaxation will be interrupted by the sounds of the college football games on TV...

13: Bath or shower to relax?

My house doesn't even have a bathtub so I'm gonna have to go with showers. Particularly cold showers.

14: What's something upcoming that you’re excited for?

I'll be going on vacation soon.

15: Comfort food?

Fettuccine Alfredo with Costco's rotisserie chicken.

16: What's something you want to create soon?

I have a ridiculous amount of music videos I have to create. But I'm looking forward to doing the Alvarez/Mental Chainsaw one.

17: How do you feel best loved?

I don't know honestly.

18: What age in life do you think you’ll feel most yourself at?

Probably when I'm 30 or something.

19: Have you ever written or received a love letter?

LOL nope

20: Tell us about a memory you hold close to your heart.

The Splash Mountain one definitely but also that one time me and my family were going river tubing and then it started pouring so I vlogged it.

21: Tea, Coffee, or hot cocoa?

Coffee probably. My usual is a strawberry creme frappe from Starbucks. (Plus a donut.)

22: Name of your favorite playlist?

The Blaze-List. For reference, that is the one I created a really long time ago and I still update it to include my current favorite songs. No wonder.

23: Have you ever received flowers?

I don't remember.

24: Who is your best friend?

This one person I met in fourth grade, lost touch with, and then got back in touch with again

25: If your soul was a color, what would it be?

Honestly, I'm still trying to figure that out.

26: If you could live anywhere with anyone you want, where would it be and who would you bring?

I'd like to live in downtown Seattle with my sister. DC would be great too.

27: Do you like to garden? Have you ever grown something?

I just don't seem to have a green thumb LOL.

28: What are you proudest of?

This one paper I spent a really long time working on. Or my cover of Amanojaku which I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

29: Are you a kind person?

I don't know. I try to be kind to people whenever I can, though.

30: What do your hobbies look like?

Reading especially about WWII/Cold War history and nuclear chemistry, writing short stories, singing, making music videos, playing Pokemon, etc. etc. etc.

Anyways I guess I should ping someone but whatever

#soft asks #questions

4 notes · View notes

faithintaiwan · 3 months ago

Text

july 31 - me and uber (eats) 🤞

There have been many highs on this trip as well as many lows. Today was by far one of the lowest unfortunately.

It began well enough with class time where I finally was able to upload my posts from previous days without them getting deleted. There is one blog post that I tried to publish three times over and each time the photos would get deleted or it would be reverted to an earlier form and I would have to go back and redo it. On the third try it completely disappeared and that’s when I finally admitted defeat. It was a sign from the universe or something that it was simply not meant to be. Additionally, the amount of times that I have tried to upload photos and it has failed have been countless and with the wifi being bad in the past three hotels I have been unable to post my drafts properly. It’s ok though because this morning I was able to somewhat catch up!!

We then had three hours before we had to meet up again and I was determined to go to a bank and convert my US cash to NTD because my mother was complaining about ATMs being expensive. Before this, however, I had to get food so Fanny and I got Uber eats. I ordered a poke bowl with tons of meat and a cranberry drink! They were delicious and one of the few high points of today. I then got myself up to trek to the bank. The internet had told me that Bank of Taiwan had the best conversion rates so I went there only to be handed a form I had to fill out with all my information and it was written in mostly Mandarin. They had me sit down at a desk and wait for an employee to help me. Unfortunately, the employee was stuck with a client who had about seven packets and was taking her high time on each one. As the minutes counted down to when we were supposed to meet up at the hotel I could feel my stress rising. Twenty minutes later and they had only made it through two packets and I was gonna be late so I got my usd back from the banker and went to an ATM. In the end I had to uber back to make it on time and I wasted 10 dollars USD instead of just the 5 I would’ve if I had gone to an ATM. I am never doing that again and I don’t know why they had me filling out forms when they don’t do that at other currency exchanges!!

As I was complaining to Fanny about this before we left I said something along the lines of “at least this is good for my Tumblr blog, there have been many low points lately” and as I said low points my precious turtle broke off its keychain. I was devastated but had no time to mourn as we had to meet everyone. We first watched a bridge slowly turn. It was next to our hotel so that was good at least but it was exceptionally slow.

After we finished watching it I was feeling exceptionally unwell on the party bus despite taking pain medicine. I made it most of the way through our first stop, a Japanese style building, then had to go back to the hotel using another uber!! It was extremely stressful and I was in a lot of pain but I managed to rest and get some much needed laundry done.

Luckily I am feeling slightly better now. While I was resting everyone else went to the Kaohsiung library and a night market. I was really sad that I was missing out and was craving fried potato balls because I usually get those from there. Guess what I found on Uber eats? Fried sweet potato balls! So for my fourth and final purchase on uber today that’s what I bought and devoured. I was really funding the local Uber economy today…

Academic Reflection

As mentioned earlier, I unfortunately only made it to two activities on our itinerary today but we had our readings!! Our first stop, the Great Harbour Bridge, rotates 180 degrees everyday at 3pm and additionally at 7 pm every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday according to Peter. It is supposed to look like a dolphin or a sailboat from the side and while I didn’t see the former I did see the latter. Before the bridge was built, traveling to the other side of the river took absolutely forever but with the bridge, pedestrians could walk across in just a couple minutes! The city spent approximately 10 million usd on it according to Peter.

The Kaohsiung Main Public Library was completed in 2014 and is a prime example of green architecture. The building combines greenery such as plants and trees to create a soothing atmosphere conducive to study and reading. Being so close to the water it also boasts a hanging garden amidst an open space with a view of the harbor on the top floor according to Kaohsiung Travel. From the photos in our readings, it looks absolutely gorgeous and I am sad that I didn’t get to go!!

2 notes · View notes

justlookatthosesausages · 2 years ago

Text

Absolutely hilarious to me (but also concerning) how every person who purchased the H L game and is defending themselves is running out of arguments.

"We can't prevent everything! The whole world is unethical, imagine if we had to trace everything back to its creator! See, your clothes for example! Fast fashion is made by children in horrible conditions!"

Fast fashion clothes are difficult to find replacement of, especially if you're poor. Now explain to me how that's the same thing than a video game that costs several tens of dollars, which is a purchase you can VERY easily avoid to make

"Yeah but what tells you that J K Rwling gets money from it, there is no exact proof?!"

Logic? Marketing basics? She owns the rights, she can claim a part of every sale if she wants. Even stuff she never ever remotely heard of. She can put her hand on every single piece of merchandise she wants. Of course she got money from you when you bought it. And soon she will be ecstatic when she will learn how many sales the game made, and use that number to say that a lot of people still love her and her work and therefore support her in everything she does, including her transphobia. She will literally use your money to support her beliefs.

"Well it's my money why do you care?"

Because I trusted you to have more respect for trans people than that, and not throw any consideration away just by the sight of a good looking video game. You didn't even question yourself. You didn't even check what the game's story was. You just bought it like that, without wondering why there was boycott about it, or maybe you did, but you purposely ignored JKR's transphobic speech in profit of playing a freaking video game.

"But you're a gamer too! And didn't you use to love the saga?"

I used to love the saga, yes. But I've seen and read analysis of how the books actually aren't that well written, and I've said since 2009 that the movies aren't a very good adaptation. Actually, we joked 10 years ago about how many inconsistencies the saga had, remember? And from a gamer point of view, I can assure you that there are better open world games and magic-focus games out there. Some of them are even cheaper.

"Well don't buy the game then. You're being annoying."

Yeah. And you're supporting transphobia. Guess which one is worse?

#just losing it at how short brained close minded people are #video games #gaming #books #movies #films #cinema #steam #epic games #important #transphobia

43 notes · View notes

horce-divorce · 8 months ago

Text

Another access barrier to testosterone that I have never seen anyone mention online: insurance covers the hormones, but not the needles, and the pharmacy wants to charge you $20 whole fucking dollars for TWO (2) sets of syringes and needles every single time. this has been true for me in both WI and MI. Insurance will almost never cover other types of T in my experience (topical is too expensive and jatenzo (pill) is brand new to the market, ive only heard of one trans guy taking it, and his prescribing doctor was also a trans guy). also, sometimes you get a fucked up needle tip and you have to waste an additional tip to swap to a fresh one. This leaves no room for such errors. I have no idea if the pharmacy would swap those out for free (they can afford to), but even so, that's still a whole extra trip to the store.

Planned Parenthood sends out $10 needle kits here, but even that is kind of steep considering I've bought more than a year's worth of bulk supply needles and BOTH types of tips for about $30 from medical supply cos. Also, they gave us both a subQ kit last time instead of IM so it didn't go as far for us.

anyway my friend is a literal angel and bought us a bulk order of syringes (we got 100 needles and 100 tips -- also you can get a pack of 200 alcohol pads for TWO (2) dollars!!) so that should last us about a year, but my insurance OUGHT to be the ones responsible and it's soooo funny and cute how they just don't have to do that :') yeah here's your injectable hormones. have fun injecting them. with your syringe lol. byeeee.

#me #t stuff

3 notes · View notes

oddbookreport · 2 years ago

Text

Ok this post started as a reply to another post about how numbers were fake and got away from me a bit, strap in.

EDIT: Public Service loan forgiveness is a federal program in the US where if you work in government for 10 years the government will pay off the remainder of your student loans. This is way more important than the rest of this godforsaken screed and I'd appreciate a reblog to get out information on that.

This is a facebook group run by my dad(!) among others with a ton of useful information in case student loans are something you are struggling with and have a public service job or are looking to change careers.

Ok, Autism time.

TLDR: Companies are incentivized to borrow money because they can reliably only pay back a fraction of it while using it to inflate their stock price. You are disincentivized from borrowing money because you will pay back 120-130% of what you borrowed unless (and sometimes even if) you file for bankruptcy. We actually do need a financial sector but it's badly under regulated, and also international finance has no rules and is an imperial power-fest. Also anti-finance is an antisemitic dogwhistle.

Debt is one of the fuckiest things on the planet and I wrote this for my own edification but in case it helps someone make sense of a new concept that'd be pretty cool.

Proof the numbers in the economy are fake:

No debt is repaid in exact numbers. You borrow 10k, and probably you pay back 11-13k over a number of years. The government borrows 1 trillion dollars and pays back 1.1 trillion dollars over a number of years. A company borrows 1 million dollars, they pay back 1.1 million dollars over a number of years. The numbers almost always go up, this is one reason we have inflation. You can pay less than you borrowed, but only under certain conditions. Inflation is one, such that you pay relatively less though absolutely more. Typically the numbers only go down if someone defaults, but that's usually the worst case scenario because it breaks the kind of promise that the whole economy is based on.

If you default, your debt is sold by the bank to someone else. Not for 10k, or whatever is left on the balance, but for probably 1-2k, a fraction of what it's "worth" and then the person who bought it tries to get you to pay the rest of the balance while the bank reports the loss as part of their tax deductible operating expenses.

Then, you're still on the hook for the 11-13k plus whatever fees the debt collector wants to charge. And if you don't pay those, they do it again, selling what they bought for 1-2k for 4-5 hundred, and so on, until you file for chapter 11 bankruptcy and are no longer legally obliged to pay all of the debt. In practice, this means the government negates the lender's right to collect the full balance in exchange for you going on a payment plan based on a new agreement the government brokers between you and the lender.

After this, because you failed to pay back the full balance, you will find it almost impossible to find banks to loan you money, even if in the end you paid way more than the 11-13k you would have paid back if you had made your payments on time.

In general, if you file for bankruptcy, you lose.

This sort of works in reverse with the stock market: You buy stock and the company pays you back with interest because you are loaning them your money. Companies sell stock at an initial price, auctioning it off in lots to find out what people think it's worth, and what it's worth is based on a) its capacity to increase in value and b) the monthly/yearly interest repayment which is based on the IPO price. Higher price means more money raised for the company but only at the IPO rate because once it's on the secondary market the company doesn't actually see any of the money except as good publicity.

The interest payouts are called dividends, although only a few companies actually care about paying them out anymore. Many companies ignore their dividends and instead just try to pump the price of their stock on the secondary market, aka the stock market. The ratio between stock price and dividends gives you an interesting picture of how the company sees its long term strategy: Car companies which don't really grow tend to have low ratios between stock price and dividend. Tech companies, which are looking to blow up and act like they don't know nobody, tend to have very high stock prices and very low dividends.

Crucially, companies tend to see the stock price as a reflection of the company's health, or "consumer confidence" or something, and a lot of executive pay is tied to it because most of them get paid in stock.

But the number doesn't mean anything concrete (to the company) after the IPO.

The upshot of all this is that while you are expected to borrow and pay your balance back with interest, companies are rewarded for borrowing and then artificially increasing the size of their own debt (stock price) because that's how the people making the decisions get paid.

Crucially, and this is also the assumption when an individual takes on debt, the debt is supposed to enable the debtor to make more money than they would have without it. However, unlike the kind of debt most individuals take out, the debt from issuing stock doesn't (usually) pay off the principle. This is why companies can (sometimes) get away with taking on debt without actually paying it off. You could in principle do this too if you registered as an LLC and issued stock for yourself, but this would be weird and paying strangers dividends might be a big financial burden. Or it might work out, go wild. I'd say the odds of this working are fairly comparable to minting yourself as an NFT and trying to sell it, albeit without needing to use the blockchain. Please ask a lawyer first though.

Also, companies can take on way more debt with way less risk because it is significantly less punishing for a company to file for bankruptcy than a person. The LLC in LLC is short for Limited Liability Corporation. If a company files for bankruptcy, it usually gets to keep most of its assets, because the government in general wants it to keep producing whatever it was producing and its debts are restructured accordingly. Sometimes, however, the assets are sold and the creditors just lose out on any debt over and above the selling price of the assets. Companies can try to shed debts by selling their assets for cheap to a new company, filing for bankruptcy, and then leaving creditors with the losses. This is fraud, but sometimes they get away with it and the "limited liability" part means that even if it is fraud it is legally difficult to go after the people responsible. LLCs are why if your company goes bust, you as an employee cannot be sued, which is generally a good thing. However, the structure of LLCs make it very easy for a company to take on more and riskier debt while you, as an individual are expected to pay off everything you borrow.

In general, if a company files for bankruptcy, the creditors lose.

The Government, apart from regulations, mostly cares about finance for two reasons: Economic stability and Retirement savings.

All this shit is made up. It's a game with very complicated rules, but there's no natural reason for it to work in the particular way that it does. In fact, there are countries like Turkey where it works completely differently, mostly because of religious laws about interest collection. Both Christianity and Islam have complicated histories with finance, but I digress. The point it that finance is almost entirely held up by agreements between extremely fickle parties. Like, there are contracts, agreements, balance sheets, and so on but none of this is pegged to any real asset. (This is a good thing, people who tell you that we should go back to the gold standard are morons) What that means is that the government can decide at any time to forgive people's debts. They can just void the contracts, who's going to stop them? (Be careful if you have a banking system powerful enough to go toe to toe with the government. JP Morgan and a bunch of other wall street people actually tried to overthrow the US Government in 1933.) They need to be careful about this because being able to borrow money when you need it is a net positive, and doing it too often disincentivizes people from lending money making borrowing more expensive. But overwhelmingly, rather than forgiving small dollar loans to people, the government forgives giant loans to companies.

This is partially because the stability of the system, ie creditors getting paid in order to keep a steady supply of creditors, matters more than the fate of any particular player within it, and partially because big fish can manipulate the system to insulate themselves from consequence.

For example, in 2008, tons of first time homeowners had gotten "subprime mortgages," meaning they had borrowed more money than they could afford to repay in order to buy a first home. Increased buying meant prices went up, borrowers were unable to afford the increased property taxes from their suddenly valuable homes, and then were forced to sell, producing even more subprime borrowers. These debts were defaulted on, sold, and then bundled into packages where debt buyers could not see the insolvency of the loans. Then, the bubble burst. People suddenly realized that they had taken out a million dollar mortgage, which they could not afford the monthly payments on, on a house that would only sell for 400k. And they were on the hook for the entire million plus interest.

At this point, the government had a choice: they had to do something about the fact that millions of people had borrowed more money than they could afford. They could have bought the debt, and helped the homeowners pay in a situation similar to a chapter 11 bankruptcy where some assets are protected in order to prevent massive foreclosures, or they could have done what they did which was buy out the debt buyers and help the creditors recoup their losses. Instead of virtually slashing housing prices by forgiving mortgage debt in order to help people stay housed, they assumed the debts of the people who had bought subprime mortgage bundles, mostly banks, while refusing to go after the architects of the scheme who had issued the bad mortgages and sold them under false pretenses.

The biggest reason why this stuff really matters is that at least how the US does things right now, almost all retirement securities are tied to stock price. That's your 401ks, your Roth IRAs, etc. With the exception of Social Security and Medicare, almost all the income seniors have is based on the performance of the stock market. This isn't the worst idea, as compared to previous systems like large savings banks or just having parents cared for by their kids this is A) somewhat resistant to inflation and B) does not shackle predominantly young women to permanent unpaid elder care as was the case under past more patriarchal systems. It's good that in general inflation can't wipe out the savings of someone who saved 100,000 1970 dollars only to have that barely cover a week of cancer treatment. Finance makes that happen.

Also, people want to do things that cost more money than they have, like buy houses, start businesses, and go to college. Businesses also want to do things that cost more money than they have, like build factories, conduct research and development, and offer benefits to employees. Finance makes that happen.

We would still need finance even if (like under communism) the government paid for these things, and whether finance should be entirely public (communism) entirely private (anarcho-capitalism) or semi-private (status quo) is a really complicated question. Finance is not this intrinsically evil thing.

Also because of the aforementioned history of Christians making collecting interest illegal most demonization of finance is directly connected to the Jews, who under medieval law were forced into being bankers in order to avoid forcing Christians from committing the sin of usury (interest collection). Much history of antisemitism in Europe is directly connected to these sorts of laws. The stereotype of the greedy jew, for example, comes from the fact that when medieval governments wanted to raise money, such as for a crusade, they would increase taxes but only on the jews. This forced the jews who were legally forbidden from doing any other job to increase interest rates in order to stay financially solvent, demanding higher rates on borrowing and lower interest on savings. This effectively raised taxes on everyone, but looked like the lord was being generous while the jew was being greedy. Anyone who talks about the intrinsic evils of global finance, whether they know it or not, is parroting Nazi talking points. Bear in mind that the Nazis did the same shit as the medieval lords: by raising taxes on Jews and only Jews, as well as seizing the assets of Jewish refugees, expropriating Jewish owned businesses, and using the Jews as slave labor they funded significant social welfare programs and their invasions of neighboring European countries without significantly increasing taxes on anyone but the Jews, at least until ~1940.

But there are still perverse incentives.

Whenever finance (making money by moving money around) overshadows production (making shit people actually need) bad things happen. Enron was a prime example of this: it was a "holding company" (they owned property that other people used for production without being directly involved in that production) that used an asset shell game to boost their stock price to hundreds of times their dividend, then sold out leaving investors with worthless stock they had bought for thousands of dollars.

Crashes can usually be predicted in advance: the problem is that the government is usually lax with enforcing financial crime. Journalists and economists saw 2008, Enron, the Dot Com bubble, the Asian Financial Crisis, and many other financial disasters coming. Karl Marx argued that Capitalism exists in a permanent cycle of boom and bust as a result of its systematic incentives. There is a history of financial crisis going back to the story of Joseph in Genesis. However, even when governments can see it coming, financial prophylaxis, such as regulation, is usually seen as too expensive even when it is cheaper to prevent a disaster than to clean up after one. Worse, the fact that the bankers almost never get prosecuted means that financial mismanagement and crime continue to exacerbate what might be a natural tendency of markets to rise and fall. This is direct consequence of the structure of LLCs. The higher the highs, the lower the lows, but if you're trying to jump out of the market at the top and then buy up everyone else's assets for pennies at the bottom, you want the cycles to be as extreme as possible. That's the position major companies find themselves in, and it's basically only good for them.

I'm not enough of an expert to have specific policy recommendations, except that in the 90s Bill Clinton overturned a law which separated savings banks from investment banks. Savings banks rely on high interest rates, both on loans they issue such as for mortgages, cars, and so on, and on the personal savings you receive from depositing money in them. Once upon a time (the 90s) you could put your money in a normal bank and get 5-6% interest in a savings account. This no longer happens. Investment banks make their money by taking your money, putting it on the stock market, and collecting the difference. Investment banks are more profitable (mostly for the bank) but more risky (mostly for you), like having someone start a casino with your money. House advantage is there, but they can still lose. Before the 90s, it was illegal for your bank to gamble with your savings on the stock market. Now it is not, and this law is something I think we should bring back.

When it comes to governments and the international system things are weirder.

It's really hard to make a government keep a promise, so they get to flaunt these rules. Also, as a rule, Governments only care about their citizens (sometimes defined very narrowly as non-immigrant, non-prisoner, white, etc) and not anybody else. Anything they do on behalf of any other group is only because it also benefits their citizens for some reason. The only real way to make a government keep a promise is by lawsuit, which they can ignore if they don't like, or war, which most people can't really do for fun. This is why The US Debt strategy for its entire history going back to Alexander Hamilton is to run up the credit card like it's Christmas. The plan as far as the USA is concerned is to borrow money and only pay off the interest rather than the principle. The only way someone is going to get the USA to pay off the principle is by beating them in a war. However, those interest payments are the most reliable debt interest payments in the world, unless the republicans in the house are real fucking numbskulls come June. I'm not exactly smart enough to understand the nuance of why all the other countries on earth let us do this but I think it has something to do with beating everyone on the planet in a war in the last century. However, the US always pays its debts in full, even if as a result of inflation what they're paying back is only part of what it was worth when they borrowed it. This is normal, though whether or not it's ethical depends on your views on american empire.

What's important about this is that things like the US debt clock are shameless right wing propaganda. Someone somewhere will tell you that the government has borrowed like three hundred thousand dollars on your behalf and that they expect you to pay it back. This is then used to argue against government spending. I won't get into fiscal policy but this is a lie, and it's better to keep borrowing and paying off debt than to try to achieve fiscal or financial independence internationally.

International finance is also directly used as an oppressive tool for reproducing capitalism in developing countries. The last thing I'll say on the subject is this: countries with less economic power than the G7 are subject to bullying by larger economies. Every country in the world borrows money, and this is generally a good thing. However, Unicef, the World Bank, and other international institutions set terms on the loans that they offer to countries that were robbed under colonialism and refuse to lend money to them unless they comply with various international standards. This sometimes includes things like requiring girls to be able to go to school, and sometimes requires forcing governments to pay license fees for US patents on things like insulin and oh boy if your prescription drug costs are high in the US just imagine how much money you have to pay for drugs with US patents on them after converting non-US money to dollars. Whether or not you agree with these sorts of policy requirements, they are neo-colonialism and do contribute to American domination over these countries. Just because we're loan sharking them for insulin money instead of invading their country for oil doesn't mean that isn't what it is. Intellectual property is one of the most contentious parts of these sorts of fights, where a country would be happy to void a US patent on behalf of its citizens but it can't without losing access to international loans.

There are lots of problems with finance and it's dialed into the entire modern political system so it's extra fucky to understand in greater detail than this, and while it is strictly speaking politically neutral, the more power you have the more you can manipulate it. There unfortunately aren't great tools the average person has to do about the state of the world financially, but I think it's helpful to know and I hope you enjoyed reading this. Maybe you smack a fascist with something from this if they start talking about how globalists run the banks.

#I was inspired by that BDG video about Healthcare #I swear I'm not an econ bro tho #Also this is what I did instead of writing grad school papers #God international relations is fucking depressing it's like a train wreck that started under the fucking mesopotamians and has not stopped #But actually don't worry about the debt though #unless it's your debt in which case vote democrat if you want to see more student loan forgiveness #How the fuck did I black out and write 3500 words about this #That's 10 fucking pages #This is half a journal article

8 notes · View notes

ariaintaiwan · 1 year ago

Text

Day 1: Getting My Bearings

Today was my first full day in Taiwan. I started off by taking a shower because I was far too tired to do it last night, getting ready, then heading out for breakfast. I ate at the hotel, but the breakfast wasn't complimentary, so I first went to 7/11 to use the ATM and get Taiwan Dollars as I hadn't done that yet. I ate with some of the other students, and then we all went to check out the temple by the hotel. After that, it was meeting time for our whole group, so we headed back to the hotel then went to the bus stop to get to class. For the first day, we just did orientation and icebreaker activities. We went over program policies, toured the campus, and played some games to get to know each other. Some students got to meet their languages partners, but mine wasn't here yet. After the language partners were introduced, we went on the campus tour and immediately discovered how humid the weather is in Taipei. It was 30 C/86 F, but the humidity made it feel 10 degrees warmer, and whether you were in the shade or the sun made no real difference. After the tour was over, we took a bus back to the hotel. Before going back in, I stopped to get some fruit and a cake from a couple of small shops along the street by the hotel. The cake was good, but it wasn't as sweet or rich as I would like. This wasn't surprising though as desserts in Asia as a whole tend to be less sweet than those in the US. The fruit, on the other hand, was amazing. I got a mango, a dragon fruit, and some kiwis. I still have the dragon fruit and kiwis, but I ate the mango and it was far and away the best mango I've ever had. Mango was already one of my favorite fruits, if not number one, and this one somehow brought it up a tier. One of the other students who had been to Taiwan before mentioned how good the fruit here is, and they couldn't have been more right.

After I got back to the hotel and had my snack, I relaxed until it was time to go back out and explore the night market. We left to go out at around 6pm and spent 2 hours walking around. I saw a person doing a dance routine with flaming rods, tried some nougat treats, and bought a neck fan and a milk tea. The store where I got the milk tea is definitely my new favorite milk tea place for the simple reason that they had a pet duck in the store. It mostly stayed in the back, but it came out while I was there and was biting at my shoe. It was a very interesting sensation, but it was also super cute to watch.

After I got back to my hotel room, I laid down in bed to relax and watched some YouTube videos while writing this post. This is going to be the last thing I do today. It's been a fun and exciting but long day, and I'm very ready to get some sleep.

4 notes · View notes

pbandjesse · 1 year ago

Text

My chest is still very tight and I have pains under my ribs but I did feel better today. Just kind of over tired. I had a lot of trouble just connecting and having conversations where it normally would have been fine. Like I still had the conversations, but it felt like it took a lot more effort and that I was being weird. I just needed some rest.

It was a nice day though. The air felt normal. The weather was absolutely beautiful. I was looking forward to sitting outside and selling some stuff but mostly just working on my knitting project.

James got us together. I was not my best self but my eyeliner was good and my hair was nice. It would be very windy at the market but it didn't bother me. I had a flannel and would be comfy.

James helped me unload when we got there. I was for sure moving slow but I still only took like 10 minutes to be fully set up. Rosia was the educator inside today and she came out and was my first sale!! She bought my one very very large frog and just absolutely made my day. Thank you Rosia.

And I would have a pretty good sale day. I made $99. My two little friends that come with their change were back and used multiple dollars to try and win stickers. They ended up winning 4 before I had to tell them no more. Going to cost me money because of the printing cost of the stickers. The boys at 5 and 7 and I think they understood in the end.

They are so sweet though. I would give the 5 year old, Santiago, a coloring sheet, and his brother the 7 year old, Sebastian, and him would also try my loom which was super precious. The mom kept asking if they were okay, if they were bothering me, but honestly they are so soft spoken and sweet I didn't mind at all. They gave me a 500 pesos coin from Columbia! Neat!

And I did have other very good conversations. Merril came with her friend and they bought a few things. I also got a big hug which was so sweet. James got us both pies from Ginny. James got key lime and I got banana pudding. I would also buy sour cherries and strawberries to use to make a cheesecake dip tomorrow for the end of the year party tomorrow. I did not eat a million of the strawberries. I would wait until I got home and only had a few.

Stanley came out and hung out with me for a bit. Helen gave me a flower when she saw I was foraging the broken leaves and pedals on the ground to make pressed flowers. Super nice of her. Her and Anne laughed at me when I went to get a paperback book from my car and the pages barely close but I think it works really well. Forms down better then a hardcover. Though I would like to get an actual large flower press someday. I have a palm sized one but I just find it a bit to small for most things I find.

The end of the market really couldn't come fast enough. My ribs still feel swollen and I feel very top-heavy. And I was really looking forward to going home.

Meril told me to come say goodbye to her inside the museum while I was saying bye to James. I didn't have my wagon so it took a few trips to get everything packed away. And then I went inside and took over the desk so James could get us 711 pizza.

I chatted with a few people. Got a few visitors in. Joked with the dog treat vender from the market when she came in and was flabbergasted to see me at the desk. And then I went home.

When I got back to our neighborhood I remembered there was a block party so I had to take sort of a silly way to get back to our street. But it was fine. I got my two big bags inside. My totebag with all my purchases and moneybox, and Jamess laptop bag. And I was very very winded which sucked a lot.

But it was fine. I got things put away. I was getting ready to go take a shower and I remembered I wanted to clean the air conditioner filter and I'm glad I did because it was absolutely caked. From dirt but also the smoke I'm sure. It could not have been helping my chest. So I vacuumed and wiped that down and it's much better now.

I got my shower and then had a few bites of the banana pudding before I went and laid down. I would be out like a rock for almost 2 hours.

When I woke up I felt a little disoriented. James was at a baseball game for a few more hours. Apparently making friends with a baby. And I got up and made a sandwich and decorated another house in animal crossing. It was fun.

I would get back in bed after that. And just watched tiktoks until James got home. Their team won so that's nice. And they would have a little dinner and take a shower and join me in bed to watch more tiktoks.

And that's where we still are. I am getting bleary eyes and breathing deeply isn't comfortable but I know I will fall asleep soon.

Tomorrow I hope to go to the grocery store first thing and then make my things for the party. I don't know who else is going but I am looking forward to it still.

Sleep well everyone. I hope you are feeling good!

3 notes · View notes