• The_Italian_Uncut@beehaw.org
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    1 day ago

    Exactly. Since the end of the gold standard, the economy hasn’t been about production — it’s been about valuation.

    70 years ago, companies were built to make things: cars, fridges, tools. Today, they’re built to inflate stock prices.

    The real product isn’t goods. It’s debt, speculation, planned obsolescence.

    And now, AI isn’t replacing workers to make things better. It’s replacing them to cut costs — while real needs go unmet.

    This isn’t progress. It’s the slow collapse of a system that forgot its purpose.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
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      5 hours ago

      There are two sides to that story.

      There is not enough gold to match the increases in both population and productivity of the last 70 years, and you don’t want just a handful of people holding gold that spikes in value through the roof.

      Smart people invest in companies that pay dividends. Speculators invest in… whatever, tulip bulbs.

    • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      It’s the slow but inevitable achievement of end-state of a system designed to re-frame and re-centralize power in the hands of the elite following the liberalization of political power.

      This is its purpose. It always has been.