This (and the surrounding paragraphs) seem quite reasonable to me, but “how are we going to pay for it” is a straw man rebuttal. On the other hand questions like, “how are we going to stop the already wealthy and corrupt bureaucracy from continuing to capture government spending”, seem quite reasonable and unaddressed.

Indeed UBI does seem to avoid that problem, but I haven’t seen explanations of how other MMT based ideas do.

I agree with almost everything in this paragraph except for this concept of ‘hoarding money’. I’d like to see it explained. For example Bezos doesn’t appear to have hoarded any money - Amazon runs at barely profitable most of the time.

He is rich because he owns Amazon which controls a large part of the economy, not because he has ‘hoarded’ anything.

(I’m aware he has a few hundred million dollars worth of real estate, but it’s not relevant to the hoarding concept since it’s a tiny percentage of his wealth)

Elon Musk recently sold all his real estate and possessions. He is literally hoarding nothing, and yet is still a billionaire.

I think Amazon is one of the most harmful corporations, and Bezos represents a rapacious use of power and much of what is wrong with capitalism, so this is not meant to be a defense.

I’m simply pointing out that the concept of hoarding doesn’t seem to describe what is going on.

I like this, but it seems to contradict the ‘no consciousness’ assertion.

This seems like a bold metaphysical claim. Panpsychists may disagree, as would many new agers. It also could be seen as smuggling in a dualism which you have previously worked hard to erase. Do these things really exist outside our collective imaginary or not? If they do, it’s worth explaining how. If they do not, then the claim that there is no consciousness seems week. Disavowed or denied or unexplored, perhaps.

These paragraphs in general seem good, but this is a weirdly reductionist statement, that I think has to be grappled with in some way.

The trivial case example, is that people who are too old to continue working are able to continue to survive as a result of accumulated wealth. Another is that speculative projects whose ‘value’ can only be determined by their outcome are generally supported by accumulated wealth.

Of course by saying these things I sound like a blithe capitalist. I’m not justifying the current system - merely pointing out that the need for people to be able be supported while they do seemingly unproductive things is real and wealth is the currently part of the mechanism by which this occurs.

As such, saying it does no “work” isn’t easy for me to get behind. Of course I think this mechanism is an arbitrary and unjust one, but that is a different critique.

Is it obscure? It seems like the drive to monopolization of wealth has been with us forever or at least since before the pyramids were built.

It also seems like the notions of ‘top heavy’ and the inevitability of collapse need explanation. We certainly have historical evidence that wealth inequality has previously only been versed by disaster, but it’s not clear to me without further explanation that the inequality was the ‘cause’ of the disasters.

I agree that the pandemic illustrates the general incompetence and negligence of ideologies and bureaucracies.

But I don’t agree that we can disambiguate specifics. Some of the countries with the highest death rates have universal healthcare, for example.

More to the point, it’s not over yet, and I think it’s too complicated to use as an ‘I told you so’ for any particular policy.

This paragraph is very ambiguous - I’m not sure what you are trying to communicate.

To reduce my own view - I think hierarchy is unavoidable, and is likely wired into our genes - a la Peterson’s lobsters.

On the other hand, the idea that we must be trapped in the have super deep hierarchies of current capitalism, or that these are reflective of ‘competence’ seems to be clearly absurd to me, and not a necessary outcome.

I would agree that we are currently currently reproducing pathological hierarchies, but I don’t think that goes away automatically if capitalism goes away, so I want to know more about how we manage this, and this paragraph doesn’t answer any questions for me.

Why is this astonishing? I agree that it highlights a problem, but it seems like a relatively obvious outcome to me.

We’ve talked about this before. I think it’s likely to be very counterproductive.

Firstly, is there ever an instance of this kind of prediction being accurate? I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m simply saying that anyone who makes 12 year predictions like this is asking to be distrusted. Poor leadership move #1.

Secondly, it’s unfalsifiable. If things get worse, we can say it’s because we didn’t act enough during the 12 year window. If they don’t get obviously worse and we didn’t act, people will say the prediction was bullshit, etc. etc. No outcome can be meaningfully attributed either positive or negatively to the prediction because there is no counterfactual.

Furthermore, urgency like this generally leads to recrimination, blame, and hasty actions - not the careful consideration of any golden path.

I just think it was an unwise move.

Is this true? Was there a time when abstract labor was monetized more than today?

What counts as abstract labor? Isn’t the creation of intellectual property generally abstract?

I’d argue that the devaluing is largely because the supply has increased dramatically as a result of technology.

I strongly agree that this is a problem, but I don’t attribute it to neoliberal imaginary.

It’s harder for me today to make a living by writing iPhone apps. But that is just because it’s easier to do and there are far more of them to choose from - I.e. because more people are able to create and not just consume.

This whole paragraph is generally good, but these two words seem to imply a relative unhealthiness of corporations vs government and academia.

I don’t see it. All three seem unhealthy, and all three seem to ‘fetishize’ and ‘exploit’ in this way. Different governments, corporations, and institutions do so in different ways.

Again you could be right in some way I’m not seeing, but how do we make this claim? Academia seems to have become corporatized in the US, at least. Hanzi and others talk about the seeds of developmental politics in certain governments, e.g. the UK, but these seem just a cynical and fetishistic as the corporate versions.

Here again the distinction between growth and cooperation is not made clear. Capitalists would say that growth is simply another word for productive cooperation.

This, I agree with. I just think the earlier premises may undermine the point.

Are we not trending away from passive consumption anyway, especially mediated by social technology? Again, perhaps there is a way you mean this that isn’t obvious, but I don’t think it’s clear.

I’m not arguing that the way we are engaging with culture is at all healthy. Just that it’s not obviously “passive”, and it seems to be trending away from passive.

Hmm. Also, can you be more specific about he ‘infinite’ in this case? I hear this kind of statement from capitalists, who say the capacity for growth is infinite, and new agers. I’m not arguing whether there is a way in which it is true or not, just that by not specifying what it means and leaving it as a naked assertion I’m left feeling more suspicion rather than more trust.

Exactly what do you mean by this? Are you talking about concentration of media ownership?

It seems to me that despite how shitty things are, access to media continues to be democratized - i.e, there is less control over the collective imaginary than there has ever been and that is the trendline.

Am I missing something?