That was a really interesting watch! Thanks for sharing the video
Comment on Profit over people is a failed system
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
I learned a new word recently, Financialization (from Abdul El-Sayed! on YouTube).
It’s a term for things businesses do to make line go up that doesn’t actually produce anything or make things better. It includes processes that should be illegal such as stock buybacks and private equity.
In the aughts, I lived in San Francisco during the rolling blackouts. Enron, you see, got overvalued, and it borrowed a lot of money based on that value. So when the market started wanting to correct, it engaged in shenanigans (which had something to do with turning off California generators and then forcing California to buy power from Texas at inflated prices) because Enron needed the value, but didn’t have it, and was going to crash and its owners were going to get busted for shady dealing.
In the Trump era, we’ve undone all the laws we made from both the dotcom bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis, and the AI bubble is imminently about to collapse.
Anachu@leminal.space 5 days ago
whereitsat@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
I’m tired of having to learn new things/words just to have some function in society.
How about this: smashilization.
It’s for when I hulk out over annoying bullshit that no dog would put up with but humans are supposed to put with just because.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
Whereas, I love new words. They literally delight me.
It’s not about the mere sum of syllables. Rather, someone figured out a new concept, they saw a recurring phenomenon, framed it and gave it a name. And by doing that, shared with the rest of us the means to recognize and identify it.
Naming a demon doesn’t destroy it, but is a solid first step. Once we recognize a problem we can brainstorm for solutions or at least recognize it’s a failing of the larger paradigm.
Financialization and enshitification, for example are symptoms of the late stage and imminent collapse of capitalist societies, something Marx predicted more generally in Das Kapital.
You can hulk out about the leverage misused and abused by the owner class over the working class, but they have armies, so it’s better to lay low unless you’re willing to sacrifice yourself.
The more effective solution is to get organized and leverage the will of the people to force the owner class to capitulate and surrender their ill-gotten gains. But that isn’t easy. We’re struggling in the US to organize the twelve million people necessary to make a general strike effective, or, if we want to be dramatic, marching on the White House to great a risk for an anti-riot response.
We have words for those things too.
But yeah, it sucks to feel alone and helpless in the face of billionaires who can just bribe officials and take things. A lot of us are feeling it.