I think this illustrates another pernicious effect of excessive inequality: where does it lure talent? The best and brightest, lured [to] speculation to ads to blockchain to AI to...
Edit: clearer word choice
Edit: clearer word choice
Or finance. There was a pretty brutal takedown published recently: The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-indust...).
Basically the finance industry is pivoting away from actually investing in real businesses to more and more elaborate paper pushing schemes (that make them money, but actually weaken the economy):
> Unlike Dawes’s Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, a modern investment bank mostly earns its money in a way that not even the bravest lyricist would set to music: providing advisory services, executing complex financial engineering schemes, trading stocks and bonds, managing other people’s money, issuing credit cards and so on. Assets get bought and sold, divided and packaged, and the bank collects fees at each step.
> David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, could not sing to young Michael about the many productive uses to which he might put the tuppence because Goldman Sachs rarely invests in anything at all. Fostering economic progress appears to be beside the point.
> Less than 10 percent of Goldman’s work in 2024, measured by revenue, was helping businesses raise capital. Loans of Goldman’s own funds to operating businesses accounted for less than 2 percent of its assets. At JPMorgan Chase the figures were 4 and 5 percent; at Morgan Stanley, 7 and 2 percent. Even the efforts at helping to raise capital are misleading, because less than a tenth of it goes toward building anything new. The rest funds debt refinancing, balance sheet restructuring and mergers and acquisitions.
> These are symptoms of financialization. That’s the term for making financial markets and transactions ends unto themselves, disconnected from — and often at the expense of — the societal benefits that support human flourishing and are capitalism’s proper purpose. Chief among those benefits are good jobs that support families, and products and services that improve people’s lives.
If debt refinancing became illegal or widely impractical due to an interest rate spike, you’d quickly see how much of the productive economy it’s fueling!
You're missing the point. Read the article.
And no one is saying "don't refinance debt." The passage you're reacting to was making the point "less than a tenth of [the capital banks raise] goes toward building anything new."
> Why do you think large companies refinance debt? So they can invest in productive areas of the business.
The article is talking about banks and the finance industry, not non-financial companies.
Also, if you think they were restructuring debt to invest in productive areas of their businesses, don't you think more than 10% of the capital banks raise would be going to building something new? If you read the article, it spends a lot of time talking about how much money goes into "mergers and acquisitions" and how it's a waste.
AFAIK, manufacturers refinance debt to build more/better factories all the time, for example.
What’s pleasant to see is that the take-down and opinion piece is coming from the conservative side.
There's a potentially civilization-ending disasters looming over us (the climate crisis, increasing escalation between the major powers, rising risk of insurrection due to mismanagement and inequality) and what are the smartest people of our time doing?
Making sure you click that damn ad or create technology that lets you create slop ads more easily.
If you allocated capital to other stuff, the jobs go there with it?
Regulations on micro-targeting, data privacy, algorithm transparency, legal liability for content, etc.. all push back against the externalities of ads/social media.
Regulations on energy and land use can make eg data center build outs more expensive, pressuring back against speculative AI trash.
Taxing big tech companies, subsidizing manufacturing education, and judicious import tariffs.. would all create incentives for investing money and labor in hard capabilities
I have a feeling most folks here will disagree though.
is this possible?
Noam Chomsky is one of the loudest doomsayers and "critics" of the system (war, climate, politics) and yet simultaneously was good buddies with post-conviction Epstein. That ought to stimulate a reassessment of what you've believed about how (American) politics and society works.
Especially in humanities where you don't have hard data, contradiction is the only way to advance, and he forgot that. He became too full of himself and too confident.
I hate ads with passion for past 20 years and (very) actively avoid them at all costs, but I'd take those over what world llms seem to be bringing in soon.
For that to be true, there would have to be a ridiculous amount of money at a massive scale for those, which would imply that consumers are being gouged for it. That's really true of almost any bubble. This is still a negative situation.