Capitalism has made its way into absolutely everything. Every piece of modern life is financialised and transactional. It is sad and sickening and weird how few even notice it.
It’s a general political trend too: de-globalization. Everyone sold the idea of globalisation and off-premise ethereal globalized cloud services. Both good when they work, but a total disaster when they don’t.
It’s not the wealthy making LVMH stock rise. Look at the stock max history and you’ll see it 100% coincides with low interest rates - in a low interest rate economy it’s those who can’t afford it and borrow that spend the most. The genuine wealth class are not spending more because they can borrow more, although they are likely making more money because they are an asset class who’s assets are then artificially inflated.
Depending on your definition of very wealthy, a lot of luxury spending over the last decade is not from actual ultra rich, but mostly the middle class trying to signal something.
I’m glad the author pointed out rock bottom interest rates - basically free money has created a nightmare and we are in the adjustment period now - curious to see how the luxury sector goes.
We have communities which can manage their own local issues internally - rather than aerial surveillance tech and AI keeping watch of our every move. We all know this will be used for minor infringements and revenue raising, more paperwork and more red tape. Like I said, by your token, monitor all comms and detect lies and infringements. Ban blinds and curtains too so we can get changed in public view.
Haha, by your reckoning why not monitor all comms for any lies? This is why we can’t have nice things. We are walking into a new Robodebt scenario run by AI - it’s all too much living in a constant state of surveillance and it’s not a world I want to live in.
This aerial stuff now enhanced by AI is a privacy rights nightmare - in Australia, local councils are utilizing high res images shot by plane, which are AI analysed for infractions - ie.
Illegal outbuildings, cut trees, earth works greater than a metre in depth, solar panels placed without auth etc. This kind of tech is going to be abused by both the private and public sector to no end. The images have a resolution to the point where veins on a tree leaf are perceptible.
We are literally going to be monitored from the sky by AI for a lot of things, and from a legal standpoint at this stage there is nothing to stop anyone from doing it.
I still don’t understand how the electricity infrastructure will be maintained if there is mass on premise battery adoption. Large scale infrastructure will still be required for commercial industry and things like ev charging, but loss of the consumer sector to batteries must have a fairly substantial financial effect on on grid maintenance?
I had a 1.5hr personality test for a tech job back in 1998 - the only question I remember was “if you were walking on the beach and saw a dead whale, would you cry?”
We’ve drunk the koolaid that work with one’s hands is not respectable. Meanwhile the trades are mostly killing it and watching white collar workers with their hunched backs and lattes have their work slowly eroded by language models.
Why is this even surprising? Like most trades, they can be lucrative if you work hard and do quality work - none of the side benefits of a professorship though, like retirement, sick leave, holidays, physically easy work, and in many cases probably intellectually easy work too.
Again and again big tech comes in and busts established industries with subsidised products, only to eventually remove the subsidy and virtually revert back to the original industry product and pricing… I swear, technology only speeds things up and very rarely has any actual substance.
When major YouTubers like this stop uploading, I assume they're still getting fairly generous Adsense checks each month, which may decline over time, but, are probably not nothing and would continue ostensibly forever? I wonder what the numbers are if you grind for 5 years to build a multi-million subscriber count, then just stop (but leave everything online)?
Completely anecdotal but my father in law is a stone mason at 75 years old, working since 16 and wears zero PPE. Not even ear muffs on a large cutting machine the size of an SUV. Wears open toe sandals. Incredibly, he is insanely fit, not an ounce of hearing loss, and works full time to this day. I helped him lay a stone wall this year and I dare say he’s possibly stronger than me at almost half his age.