this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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Your average capitalism enjoyer (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 weeks ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

This is double funny right now as uh... Private Equity more or less just... pulled most of their 'investments' out of about half of US AI datacenter build outs.

Just literally directly because they ran out of other people's money.

They've all been seeing like double the desired outflows, capital flight, that they can handle, and they've just literally been rewriting their own rules on the fly, all while acting like everything is fine.

... this is gonna make 07/08 look like the fucking prologue, the goddamned tutorial level.

[–] mattyroses@lemmy.today 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Where is the capital flying to?

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

A lot of it will get moved into physical assets like property. There's also been a huge investment boom in HK because people are realizing Chinese economy is more stable now. Similar situation with Singapore since Asia is expected to be doing better than the west thanks to China being the stabilizing force there.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

China is making so many moves right now, to set themselves up as a viable alternative to the the USD... they're doing some pretty serious amounts of gold hording (yes literally), and also seem to be setting up a rather extensive and robust system that would facilitate actual physical gold clearing...

The US on the other hand is also ... there are at least rumors of basically gold backed 50 year bonds.

https://talkmarkets.com/article/the-united-states-and-the-50-year-gold-bond-that-could-rewrite-the-rules-of-global-finance-1782459667

... and Europe is at the very least basically pulling all their gold that is physically held in the US, back to their countries, repatriating it.

The fundamental structure and paradigm of the PetroDollar/Euro/Yen is now... basically breaking up, and at least right now, in the uncertain interim... it looks like everybody is taking inventory of their gold, and trying to figure out how to reposition their currency/bond/trade systems around being more directly backed by gold.

How this will actually shake out... what the new equilibrium will be... multipolar world, or new global hegemon... or something in between and more complicated... basically impossible to say, but things are changing dramatically.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 weeks ago

Yup, American empire is collapsing and we're going to be living in a whole different world going forward.

[–] mattyroses@lemmy.today 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

that's also likely a good defense against stagflation, which the USD (and probably the EUR) are likely to see soon

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 weeks ago

Exactly, the rich can see crashes coming early, so they pull out of liquidity to protect their assets. As a bonus, when the crash happens, they can swoop in and buy up the assets others are forced to let go on the cheap. So, each crisis ends up acting as a black Friday for billionaires and a massive wealth transfer to the top.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

If I thoroughly, and reliably knew the answer to that, I would be... lets say 'very well financially positioned'.

Yogthos is certainly at least partially correct, but... where is all this money going?

Its... Private Equity. Private Credit.

The entire point is that via a mechanistic application of loopholes and usage of specific legal carve outs... you don't actually have to tell anyone nearly anything. The entire point is to obfuscate what is going on.

... At least some of the money is getting pulled out basically just to pay off debts that investors have that are now problematic.

This is how a recession or depression actually mechanically happens -> because the entire system is built on loans which are built on loans which are built on loans...well, when some part of that fractal chain/web breaks, when some part of it cant reliable make payments anymore... the breakage spreads, as more and more people now need to cover obligations with actual cash, not promises of future cash.

People call this 'the credit supercycle' or 'the business cycle', depending on the scope and time scale... these patterns play out fairly regularly, but predicting their timimg and extent with high precision is nearly impossible, because the total system is fundamentally chaotic, in the mathematical sense.

However, not everybody is just purely panicking and pulling out to settle their obligations... many are repositioning. Its kinda like water in a box, a box where you can push up or pull down or certain points of its floor... the water, the capital, will tend flow away from risk of massive losses / or poor real* returns, and pool in areas of perceived, actually steady and reliable real* returns.

  • Where 'real' in this context means both adjusted for inflation and also international currency conversion rates.

This entire process is largely opaque and horrendously complex.

But you can look at it from the outside and describe rules that it does at least tend to follow.

As far as I'm aware, at least some proportion of ... theoretically 'smarter' people are throwing their money into things like mining companies for rare earths, uranium, things whose stocks will almost be guaranteed to go up because the raw materials they extract will be a part of basically any technological civilization going forward from here.

What else is almost guaranteed to get more expensive?

Power, Food, Water.

So, the theory would be roughly that 'smarter' money would get as close to the first step.of any process involved in providing or producing those things, as possible.

... such is the logic of capitalism at least as I see it, which also kind of means we are defacto accelerating the 'cyberpunk dystopia-fication' / 'techno-neofeudalism' thing, where any person or entity that more or less owns these kinds of companies... they become sort of like hegemonic guilds that states have to basically negotiate with as either equals or lessers.

Corporate Wars, here we come.

[–] LemmyBruceLeeMarvin@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The problem with Capitalism is eventually the imperial core runs out of third world labour and resources to pillage

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 weeks ago

Well the problem with fascism is you eventually run out of other peoples children so...

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Never mind that money ultimately belongs to the state anyway, and is only worth anything because if you don’t pay the state then it will do Bad Things™ to you.

Not only is it impossible to “run out” of a currency that you control, it’s also not “other people’s”. So the only correct term in the whole phrase is “money”.

[–] lemonwood@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I appreciate the critique, but no, money is not

only worth anything because if you don’t pay the state then it will do Bad Things™ to you.

That's "modern" (from 1905) monetary theory (MMT), which ignores that money is a commodity and can and did historically exist before states.

Michael Roberts writes:

Modern states are clearly crucial to the reproduction of money and the system in which it circulates. But their power over money is quite limited — and as Schumpeter said (and Marx would have said), the limits are clearest in determining the value of money. The mint can print any numbers on its bills and coins, but it cannot decide what those numbers refer to. That is determined by countless price-setting decisions by mainly private firms, reacting strategically to the structure of costs and demand they face, in competition with other firms.

Marx argued that money in capitalism has three main functions: as a measure of value; as a means of exchange; and “money as money” which includes debt payments. Marx’s theorisation of money as a measure of value derives from his labour theory of value; and this is the main difference between Marx and the Chartalists/MMT supporters, who have no theory of value whatsoever.

Money only has value if there is value in production to back it. Government spending cannot create that value — indeed some government spending can destroy value (consider the case of armaments, for example). Productive value is what gives money credibility. A productive private sector generates the domestic product and income that gives government liabilities credibility in the first place. When that credibility is not there, then trust in the state’s currency can disappear fast, as we have seen in Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Argentina.

MMT essentially boils down to good old keynesianism in the end. It's still a thousand times better than neoliberalism of course, but merely reformist, not equipped to handle capitalism's crisis and not willing to transcend it.

[–] mattyroses@lemmy.today 3 points 2 weeks ago

Money can exist without states - but likewise, most states existed without money, at least internally. Graebers Debt is all about this.

[–] 1Malayali@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 weeks ago

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Half of capitalism enjoyers I know complain that "communists" (anyone who complains about capitalism) are hypocrites because they "don't apply communism to their lives" by sharing their salaries and buying iphones and super expensive clothes.

Ask them how one can "apply communism" when they live under a society that is capitalist, where any donation or salary sharing is effectively feeding capitalism and they'll just circle back to the initial complaint.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago

One way to do that, and no joke, is to start up and participate in local barter economies.

A bunch of places I've lived in, especially with a large student population, would have communities where people who have surpluses of something, extra food, old furniture, can give it to people who need them.

Ask yourself the question, what can you do to fulfill a need while preempting consumption, and you have an answer.

[–] Fancy_Gecko@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

if the boss doesn't take your money someone else will

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago

I mean a slaver does work, it's just that job shouldn't exist in the first place.

[–] Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

'+ money is a social construct'

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

our whole society is inherently a social construct

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

And taxpayer subsidies while they are accountable to no laws

[–] Athelstan@persadon.com -2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

@yogthos
Anarchists in Spain also thought that capitalist bosses were useless. They ended up fucking up so bad that even commies panicked and stepped in to handle the things.
That was the only time commies lost the gold medal. They regret it so bad that they haven’t been talking about it for all these decades.