9 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
    1. when we're investing in the stock market, we're mostly just hoping that the value of those shares will rise. That money is not actually reaching companies and being used in productive ways. And that's true. We can see it with private equity too.
      • for: speculative investing - example

      • example - speculative investing

        • stock market
          • money is not reaching companies and being used in a productive way
          • part of it must be, but whenever shareholders take earnings, then it's extracted out
        • private equity
          • when private equity firms buy companies then layoff staff and cut back spending on services, they pocket all that money for the shareholders. It's a way for the rich to maintain their supremacy position
      • comment

        • In its simplest expression, it is greed in action
        • It is what maintains the 1% / 99% divide
      • epiphany

      • new meme
        • We need to replace WALL street with WELL street!
  2. Jan 2022
    1. Or, in Lallemant’s words: ‘I can say in truth that, asregards intelligence, they are in no wise inferior to Europeans and tothose who dwell in France. I would never have believed that, withoutinstruction, nature could have supplied a most ready and vigorouseloquence, which I have admired in many Hurons; or more clear-sightedness in public affairs, or a more discreet management inthings to which they are accustomed.’25

      How do we go from such varied statements from Jesuits which entered the popular discourse to the complete erasure of this knowledge in subsequent generations. Was the greed for land and power so great?

    1. “Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better.” —https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html.
    1. And protecting life-supporting cooperation requires suppressing certain kinds of selfishness. Biologists, unlike many economists, grasp when the “greed is good” ethos gets deadly.

      At what scale might such cooperative efforts fail?

      Look at the scale of the bitcoin bros using crypto and bitcoin as a completely selfish endeavor. Has this reached a scale for social failure? (Separate from the end date at which the bitcoin/crypto system completely fails and collapses?)

  3. Jan 2021
    1. Many of the deceptive practices mentioned below, have each become larger than any Fortune 500 Business.
      • Human Trafficking
      • Sex Trafficking
      • Drug Trade
      • Blood Diamond Trade
      • Counterfeit Products
      • Abusive Religious Belief Systems

      These are all "MONSTERS" that exist because they haven't been checked. Kinda like radio active waste from a useful energy source. If we don't bring regulation into the system, the system will self-sabotage in order to self-regulate.

      I disagree that these companies purposely prey on people. They passively prey on people by not regulating their practices and thereby leaving room for these loopholes to exist!

  4. Sep 2020
  5. Jan 2020
    1. noBounds or Measures can be prescrib’d to their Desires

      Their insatiable requests are sure to leave them dissatisfied.

  6. Oct 2015
    1. a more insidious and cancerous progression took hold through municipal fiscal discipline, property speculation and the sorting of land-use according to the rate of return for its ‘highest and best use’.

      greed seems to be an apparent theme throughout the development of urbanized areas and "economic growth"... are we really improving if our economy is only getting "better" because we're borrowing the money to make it do that

  7. Sep 2013
    1. neglected all the good things which this study affords, and became nothing more than professors of meddlesomeness and greed