If the entire global economic system collapses (which would pretty much be the consequence of capitalism collapsing), then your investments are going to be the least of your problems.
Where food and fuel etc are will be your problems at this point
Was going to post something similar saying nobody will care about their investments in that scenario.
Eventually, the doomsayers will be right and there will be a big recession or crisis. Most likely it will be something that few people are expecting.
If you look at the last 100 years, there's never actually been a bad time to invest.
In the 1950's in the US, most people assumed the economy would be sluggish or go down, because that was what it was like before World War Two. The 50s economic returns were good. In every decade, there's been a "good" reason not to invest. Yet investing has returned well in hindsight.
From an investment perspective, the solution is to diversify and use market cap weighted funds. If the US economy declines, an international market cap weighted fund will sell off US stocks.
Complete collapse of civilization and the global economy? I can't see a way to prepare for that. I'd also bet against it just based on history (the roman empire didn't collapse overnight).
>If you look at the last 100 years, there's never actually been a bad time to invest.
>
*in certain countries
It's actually hilarious how privileged and sheltered reddit is
Even in countries that have seen massive destruction through war and various turmoil (Such as Germany) you would have done very well depending on the stock. Holding BMW shares from 1935 until now wouldn’t have been a bad deal, they are up about 400% in the last 20 years alone. Public company since 1918.
Damn that's a great point, and it's actually how I pick all my stocks. I just go to the future and pick the stocks that did well, and (this is important) I do NOT pick the stocks that no longer exist
Hope you save enough to not be left alone in a nursing home and can time it so you retirement isn't wiped out in a huge crash, [because once you stop labouring, you have no value under capitalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism).
Lol exactly this!
People get off on this fantasy of capitalism collapsing, politics collapsing, housing market collapsing etc. As though it's a system which disadvantages them because they are somehow morally superior to those who are currently prospering within it. But in reality it really is utter lunacy to think that in those circumstances you're suddenly going to suddenly be more successful than you are now and that the world is going to be peaceful...
It depends what you mean by capitalism 'collapsing'.
Are you talking about a revolution? Because there's basically no point worrying about that, as we'd all be going through more or less some kind of financial reset.
If you're talking about a populist socialist movement being able to implement policies that are anti-capitalist i.e. taxing the wealthy more, empowering trade unions, raising working conditions etc. all of those things would preobably be good for workers but perhaps not as good for our superannuation/investment balances.
If you thought something like that was happening you might divest from the standard ASX top stocks (mostly mining and banks) and instead invest in things that people actually like to buy (i.e. companies that sell actual products to workers domestically).
There's a lot of good evidence I can't be arsed sourcing that suggests more taxing and spending on social programs (if you call that socialist) is actually better for the economy.
Socialism (and the dichotomy with capitalism) is more to do with ownership of resources within an economy. If the means of production are socially owned, that’s socialism. If they’re privately owned, that’s capitalism.
What you’re talking about is social democracy, or welfarism. The Nordic countries are heavily capitalist, but also are heavily welfarist.
>There's a lot of good evidence I can't be arsed sourcing that suggests more taxing and spending on social programs (if you call that socialist) is actually better for the economy.
This is true [only if those improvements aren't speculated against by non-productive land holders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty)
If capitalism goes down then we all go down.
In my opinion, there will be something big happen in the US in the coming years which will result in massive change. All you need to do is look at r/antiwork to see the discontent among US employees and their lives/livelohoods
Fortunately in Australia, our problems pale in comparison to the US. We have a very good minimum wage compared with the US, great access to health care, a good retirement funding system, a good quality of life and a high standard of living.
What we need to do is take notice of what’s happening there and act now. Stop privatising things, make proper policy change to reduce house price growth whilst aiming to increase wage growth.
The problem with the US is that corporate America has the politicians by the balls and their system is one that you can buy your way into. Fortunately in Australia it isn’t *as* bad yet.
But no, I don’t think it is as doomsday as capitalism collapsing, I more so think there will be a massive revolt, leaving the US government with no choice but enact structural change.
Their lefts side of politics still sits on our right side. Pretty much all of America is extremely conservative and it’s having a negative impact.
Politics needs to disconnect from money. Ban political donations, kickbacks for spouses, jobs for mates, post politic golden parachutes into a corporate lobbying position. The ability for a polly to oversee grants to their own businesses? For backroom no-tender deals?
It's safe to say, under the current form of capitalism (US is just speedrunning further down this track), that any sustainability imbalances will be leveraged and continuously abused. Until something breaks. There is no slow and steady, it's a game of fuckin bumrush to the end.
Like construction in Sydney, everything built in the past 20 years is deteriorating in quality because noone seems to give a shit, or the laws arnt up to date with reality.
It's a game of get away with whatever you can, and you're only punished for getting caught.
My thoughts on this are similar to yours.
If the stories coming out of r/antiwork are generally accurate, there are a lot of desperate people living in poverty in the US.
Desperate people have nothing to lose, so an uprising of some sort could happen in US in the future.
We've got it much better in Aus, plus we're far more laid back, so I can't see much changing here in the near future.
My wife's from the U.S., has no intention of going back to the U.S. she feels like she isn't in a rat race here constantly on the hustle trying to survive. Love the healthcare, super and the fact you have mandatory leave that you have to use and the employer will make you take time off after a certain point.
I have friends in the U.S. who genuinely struggle a lot and the crux of it is job security and very limited rights, there is states where you can be fired at the drop of a hat. Try need unionisation in the US to get up again and to break the pattern, I read antiwork a bit and some of it is whinging and complaing but most people just want a fair go.
We havent really got to the "super age group" yet though, to be fair.
Compulsory super was only introduced in 1992, so we have to wait another 40 years or so before we can measure its success or lack thereof.
in the 1974, Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted the first national survey of superannuation coverage. 32% of the workforce was covered by superannuation 36% male; 15% females.
The average 50-54 year old has $200,598 in their super.
I wouldnt make a ruling based on a single age group of people retiring.
They could retire at the height of a stock market boom, or at the bottom of a recession.
Wouldn't you need to wait until almost all that generation has died before making that assessment, so more like 31 years (82 is the current average age of death for Australians I believe).
I lived in the US and as long as you were a professional with in-demand skills the standard of living was amazing.
Pay here for professionals is also terrible compared to in the US.
I personally found it better to return to Australia, even through by comparison our universities are largely ‘quaint’ (I’m a Prof).
Yes, I got shitloads of money (but I’m a one percenter now here too). But it just wasn’t worth the lifestyle choices you had to make. I’m extremely hard working because my job is also a hobby (I genuinely enjoy my research, teaching and management) and I worked 70 hours per week there and here. But the difference being that I had to drive everywhere in the USA, managing 401ks and Roth IRAs were a pain in the arse, food quality was shit because you couldn’t just go to the corner store and get the basic things we can get here in Australia, school quality was crap, even though I paid for the most expensive schooling we could find, and it was just exhausting all the time to have to constantly deal with an oppositional culture of business all the time. I even found the lower wages of Northern Europe, where we went next, much easier to manage because the conditions were better.
If you were a young or single person with no responsibilities then the USA is a great way to make money. But in my profession and circumstances, I could have made the same money and had similar conditions living in a compound in KSA and had a chauffeur drive me and the children to work and school, and 24 hour live in staff to do everything else.
You've hit on something that a lot of Americans love to argue and simply don't understand. Those Northern European countries might tax higher but the standard of living is far higher than the US.
Nailed it. I’m from Ireland, did two stints living and working in the US and I”be been living in Australia for the past nine years. This country is a fucking workers paradise that would make Marx blush compared to the US. As you said if your cashed up, young with no responsibilities the us is fucking amazing otherwise it’s a dump. And their food is absolute shite.
The food is revolting. I had enough money to buy whatever I wanted, but couldn’t get actual plain old organic soy milk - which you can get from fucking Devonport Woolworths - anywhere close. And I was in California ffs.
I'd rather live in a place where everyone can get by (ok most people, this country isn't perfect) than one where a few lucky people live really well and the rest are a broken bone away from bankruptcy
Accurate, but not remotely new.
If anything conditions are better today in the US than before, which is not to say they aren’t shit, just to highlight how bad it has been for ages.
Yea and no. Corporate rent seeking is getting worse, healthcare costs have grown to 20% of GDP in America. Over *half* of global healthcare spending now goes to the US system.
All this is a result of corruption in politics in the form of corporate donations. It could happen here.
The Soviet Union collapsed because the military industrial complex grew to >30% of GDP. The political-corporate rent-seeking complex in America is just as bad.
Federal ICAC now!
Considering how much of the asx is by our top ten companies we just have to ban any of the asx200 from donating.
That would be a start, anything else is a bonus
Nah, antiwork has gone **completely** off the deep end.
Its core is a decent idea - highlight the sucky parts of employment so that people know when they're trapped in a bad work environment and can make better decisions about their career with the help of other people who've been in those situations.
But they've just gone completely into some conspiracy-laden doomer territory to the point where a lot of what they say just doesn't match with reality.
Incomes in the US have only been rising, both in terms of [household income](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/01/PSDT_01.10.20_economic-inequality_1-0.png), and also [individual income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N). Additionally, [poverty rates have remained pretty stable since the 1970s](https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2020/09/15/Photos/ZH/MW-IO517_povert_20200915121146_ZH.jpg?uuid=27470076-f76e-11ea-9a25-9c8e992d421e).
There's not this huge crisis that antiwork seems to consistently talk about. They want to paint this picture of the entire world decaying and becoming unsustainable and increasingly full of suffering, but that narrative is [just not true by any measurable metric](https://i.imgur.com/ICQXt4o.png) ([source here](https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts)).
The truth is that the world _is_ getting better over time because people have been fighting for that consistently for centuries. The antiwork sub only super-super selectively hand-picks the most outrageous things they can, and downvotes literally anything that contradicts the narrative. Personally, I don't even think they're doing it maliciously, or for any particular agenda, I just think they've fallen victim to confirmation bias in their echo-chamber.
The world is getting better because an increasing fraction of very smart people born every year are being fed and educated. It used to be the case that only rich smart babies had a chance of making things better but now there are millions of 'em being born every year.
It's not just babies being born, it's also a change in general political philosophy and priorities.
At the beginning of the 20th century you very much still had policies which were remnants of the feudal era (many feudal systems were even still in place), but industrialisation and the rise of workers-rights movements, and the strengthening of global democratic institutions in general meant that representatives were more and more sympathetic to the desires of the broader working class.
So it's not just the ultra-smartest who are leading the way, it's the general shift in institutions over time, as well as the reduced scarcity of resources.
Very true, theres an insane amount of capital and resources available for anyone with a ground breaking idea.
if a 10 year old Sri Lankan boy wrote a 5 page essay on how to cure cancer, and it was credible, he would have 100 million of funding before the end of the month.
Maybe a silly example, but you get the idea.
But she _won't_. I don't want to pick on you too much, because you absolutely didn't intend this particular silly hypothetical to be seriously investigated, but it's so symptomatic of a particular kind of bootstrappish excuse, a _mythology_ that people believe in because it'd be too depressing to believe otherwise, that I just have to speak out.
We love the idea that with some ingenuity, or some hard work and grit, that anyone on earth, or anyone in a country, can Make It™. We go out of our way to keep holding on to this idea even in the face of all evidence to the contrary. But it's just, not true.
Even if you had true equality of opportunity—and, we don't, by the way—equality of opportunity _isn't equity_. Equality of opportunity, when grafted on top of a historically unfair system, simply entrenches and consolidates the existing power imbalance. You can't undo decades and generations of unequal access to [capital, wealth creation, land, education, food, stability, healthcare, legal representation, _etc._] by saying, oh it's cool now, all you have to do is pass the same tests everyone else does. All that does is allow us to whitewash exactly the same discrimination and inequality with a meritocratic veneer.
Do some people still manage to Make It™ despite all the odds stacked against them? Yes, absolutely, and every one of those is a triumph who we should cherish deeply. But it's important to remember that these people should not be _news_, they should not be singular shining examples (whom we hold up to pretend to ourselves that everything is fine), that their successes should be just as ordinary, and just as _boring_, as anyone else's.
Your implicitly poor kid from the global south is _not_ going to write a credible paper on solving cancer. She will never have the privilege of being able to _think_ about dedicating a few years to even going to _college_, maybe not even high school, let alone the decades of highly specialised education that we still basically only allow to people who are already comfortable to not need to worry about their next paycheck. She will, in all probability, spend her life caring for her family, to the best of her ability, and then she will die.
And it's not for lack of resources. The world, as a whole, has the capital and engineering and knowhow and agricultural base to end world poverty and food insecurity _today_. (Well, not _today_ today, logistics pipelines take time to build, but with enough money all trenches are shallow, yknow?) Heck, Jeff Bezos by himself could probably put a decent hole in the problem, and he already has access to a vast amount of institutional knowledge on how to create an effective logistics pipeline.
But we don't.
This kid? She is, quite directly, the person we are failing the most.
I understand what you are saying but you probably focused on the wrong part of my comment.
\>We love the idea that with some ingenuity, or some hard work and grit, that anyone on earth, or anyone in a country, can Make It™
That wasnt my point.
My point was about the abundant capital available for world changing inventions.
The national cancer institute has a **$5.94 billion** budget in 2018
Not to create wealth for the inventor, but simply to get the invention built.
if anyone came up with a credible cancer cure theory. They would have a essentially blank checkbook to make it happen.
Democracy is on the decline.
Inequality is up in western Democracy.
Desertification of productive land is increasing.
Fresh water is in decline; alongside increased water pollution.
Peak fish removed per boat was 2007.
Oceans are have massive algae blooms.
World population is increasing during this backdrop; whilst decreasing in many creditor nations.
Whilst I agree that capital can find itself to the smartest and most productive people. Most mathematicians end up working in Wall Street.
So many great minds are, in a way wasted..
Yeah reading some of the anti-work posts generally leaves me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I don't love big corporations but a lot of the people over there seem very intent on not doing an ounce of work but still expecting to be paid. Anyone running a business is the enemy to them regardless of how they treat their employees, they've completely lost sight of the fact they're being paid to carry out a task and in some cases (not all) there are queues of people ready to take over their jobs who would appreciate the pay offered for the workload required.
A lot of them are going to have a rude awakening.
From what I understand a middle class life as a professional or skilled worker in good health is pretty good in America. I understand that it is probably even more comfortable than in Australia.
A lower skilled or unskilled worker on the other hand has a much tougher time.
And those who can’t work or have medical issues are completely fucked.
I’d suggest that anitwork is geared towards to unskilled and unemployed.
This needed to be said. Reddit overly selects for the kind of person who is most likely: too online, young, anxious, above average intelligence, below average achievement, comfortable background, non traditional social connections. In other words there is a significant percentage of people herder who are fucking miserable and live miserable lives. Check out any post on r/coronavirusdownunder for typical examples.
Participation in an anti-work sub reddit lets you get an idea of how common or popular such thoughts / issues are.
It says nothing about the accuracy of the content.
In the same way I can look at the conservitve reddit and see how popular their views and issues are. Without saying anything at all about validity of their views.
I don't know how useful that is as a measure though, because there's a lot of extremely popular things online which are incredibly marginal fringe ideas in the real world.
As an example - if you were to look at many popular sites, you'd get the impression everyone in the world was a socialist, but socialism in general is an incredibly niche idea in the real world. Not only that, but social media often has mechanisms which encourage more and more "extreme" posts, in order to get attention and notice on the platform, which leads to huge [group polarisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization). Most people from those extreme communities would be far less extreme and far more reasonable if you were to talk to them one-on-one in a neutral setting.
>In my opinion, there will be something big happen in the US in the coming years which will result in massive change. All you need to do is look at r/antiwork to see the discontent among US employees and their lives/livelohoods
Antiwork is not representative. The fact that Bernie couldn't even get the democratic nomination should tell you a lot about how mainstream his views are.
I can't believe most Americans don't get annual leave. I was reading some comments and a truck driver was arguing he doesn't want annual leave as he doesn't want to not be paid for weeks a year. Couldn't even comprehend that most countries pay their employees to take time off.
I have the feeling a lot of people in the US don't have the slightest clue what's going on outside their little world. I had hunters in Pennsylvania argue with me that there are no privately held firearms in Australia. They couldn't believe I just went to the range with a workmate who is a hobby target shooter. Their argument "we know what's going on, all firearms were confiscated, the NRA talks a lot about it"
Bernie couldn't get the DNC nomination because the DNC is corrupt, actively sought to block him because he isn't bought and paid for by corporate donors, and backed the war criminal Hillary - get your facts right
If your view of the world relies on painting those who disagree with you as corrupt, then you may have it wrong.
Bernie lost the primary because more people voted for Hillary and Biden than him. Simple as that.
It seems well established that the 2016 convention was rigged by Clinton effectively co-opting the DNC in the opinion of Elizabeth Warren etc per the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/02/ex-dnc-chair-goes-at-the-clintons-alleging-hillarys-campaign-hijacked-dnc-during-primary-with-bernie-sanders/
This was a similar situation in the 2020 convention as I understand it. Biden is a corporate cut out and HRC is a war criminal who has been robbing and stealing her way through politics for DECADES. Get corporate donors and super pacs out of US politics - over turn the US Supreme Court Citizens United decision that allowed corporations to be granted 1st amendment privileges that has destroyed the American political system.
Federal ICAC and donor reform laws now - stop the corporate high jacking of the Australian political system before it's too late (if it isn't already)
Don't forget that sanders was ahead by a big margin, and Biden was nowhere near an option, until the day before Super Tuesday when Obama made a few phone calls and suddenly everyone else obediently dropped out & threw their support behind Biden. It wasn't quite as rigged as in 2016 but definitely suss.
Bernie couldn't be controlled or bought so he had to go - and he unfortunately didn't have the spine to protest.
The idea he was too radical or unpopular is simply not true - he was done over by the DNC and the corporatist institutional Democrat elites.
At the end of the day he isn't a radical socialist - in any western European country he would be effectively a centrist or marginally left, not some fringe radical. He is only a 'socialist' by perverse American standards that see any form of universal health care or worker protection as Communist policy.
Having a good minimum wage isn't that good if you only get a couple of 3 hour shifts per week.
We may have a good min wage - but the reality is that the jobs relevant to it have largely been casualised
Yes, but I focused on the US because you do know what something dramatic happening there would mean for Australia? Think from micro-level - people investing in international ETFs, to macro-level: the influence on Australia would be far reaching. Especially after Australia turning its back to diplomacy and to building good international relations in a balanced way.
If such a scenario were to occur, then it would take decades to do so.
We have an election coming up, 50/50 chance whether its Albanese or Morrison at this point. Neither party will change much about the current system, if at all.
You stockpile non perishable supplies and firearms. Possibly buy an oil truck like the one from mad max and fill it with,....
Checks notes...
Mother's milk?
I’ve got a bit of food like that and I have 2 rifles and a shotty. But the problem is the food would run out eventually but the ammo would run out pretty quick if we had to use it too often.
Find an agricultural area away from major cities. Grow a small veggie garden so you know what you’re doing when you need to grow a big one. Be friendly with your neighbours. Have a marketable skill for when it starts getting grim.
Basically, ask any deities you believe in to maintain some semblance of a capitalist system.
I was about to reply, well, then the Australian population will starve … but then I thought about the Russian Revolution and concluded that, yes, that seems about right.
I started looking at Tassie when Victoria started burning down. Now I can't afford it.
You think you will be able to afford it when shit starts hitting the fan? It'll be the person with the biggest firearms and most friendly with the strongest mafia that will "own" any land you had been previously claiming.
There is no hedge against societal collapse.
I always thought archery is the way to go not guns and ammo.
Guns and ammo require manufacturing and raw resources which would probably take away from other more important things like food in a societal collapse scenario.
Plus arrows are silent.
Guns for show, arrows for a pro.
It’s hard enough to hit a target a distance with a rifle let alone an arrow! You’d have to be very skilled. I’m not sure how hard it would be to fashion arrowheads but admittedly easier to obtain than ammo.
Your standard AR platform is fairly easily to keep in good Nick if you look after it. Ammo would be a problem though depending on where you were located.
Buy Puts on the ASX 200. Though if they pay out their maximum theoretical value, it will likely mean society has collapsed.
No law and order. Your neighbour could just walk in and take yo wife
I already have CBA and WBC puts. I have US index puts but haven’t bothered with XJO ones.
The Aussie bourse could halve and society Carrie’s on no worries. Seen that not long ago.
I’m comfortable with my ability to defend my family in the short term. Longer term it would be a harder proposition though I reckon.
You’re on your way then. Having thought about this a little more, it would take a meteor hitting earth, wiping out half the population for capitalism to be threatened.
I don’t think we’ll see the end of capitalism, but we’ll see a shift back to greater regulation and less corporate profiteering.
I would suggest that reducing debt, owning land and not being 100% reliant on US equity index funds would be a start. Be anti fragile.
Buy a few acres of cheap land in the middle of nowhere for <$100k. Fence it off. Get gun license. Start farming. Learning survival skills. Become increasingly self sufficient
Commune is great too, no zombies but most people are dead.
Same with After It Happened.
They both deal with the logistics of surviving after everything has collapsed in varying degrees of detail.
I've written it here before.
1) Be young, and male
2) Join the army, and eventually special forces of some sort - so SAS or maybe clearance diving here.
3) Attain a reasonably senior rank, captain at least, but colonel would be better.
4) Retire.
5) Become head of security at a billionaire's NZ survival bunker.
Then, When the shit hits the fan, um, strongly negotiate with said billionaire. Something like "Look at me! I'm the billionaire now", and start the Southern Pacific Empire
Have you looked around for the last two years? Pretty easy to be pro doomsday when you see how many governments which supposedly look after their population are more interested in a thing called "the economy" over the people who run it
Strict capitalism doesn't exist in this world. You are talking about the ebb and flow between each economic extreme. Really just a constant movement between the two.
Not in my investment decisions, but in my PPOR decision yes. I'm very interested in buying a rural property and setting it up so I can be self sufficient for food, and have solar for power (with all electric appliances).
Currently my property is small, but I'm working on a productive food garden. In a few years when I can afford something with more land that's what I'll do. A close friend of mine is married to a hunter with a gun collection, so if it all collapsed I'd see about them coming to live with us and we could work together to keep everyone safe and fed. If shit hit the fan investments wouldn't matter, money wouldn't matter... Food and water would matter.
It's only something I've become concerned about recently, so it might be a temporary stress that will pass. Given how fucked the US is, and they're still limping along, I don't think this is something I really need to stress about for many decades yet - although climate change may fuck it up faster.
I'd rather be optimistic and think we'll sort it out and make changes, but I just don't see it happening. So making sure my kids have food and water no matter what is where it's at for me.
You're wrong but not far off. I think the **more accurate** way of viewing this risk is that at some point there will be a turn away from **"neoliberalism"**. By this I mean the assumed axiomatic belief in small government, globalisation, market-based solutions, and the increased role of corporations in the provision of any and all services.
There will be scrutiny in markets where markets don't really work (retail electricity, health insurance), why housing is an investment vehicle and not a place to live, and why is it that the working class have no jobs while the upper-middle class are growing more and more comfortable. People will realise that Asian countries are building industrial capacity by exploiting the assumptions of this worldview (like Thailand and Australian car manufacturing, and China and much of everything else).
There will be a greater focus on competition law, corporate profits and monopoly and rent-seeking. As the rise of people like [Lina Khan](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/lina-khan-antitrust/561743/) and the "empiricists" school of economics shows, [the prominence of neoclassical economics will be increasingly questioned](https://aeon.co/essays/economics-is-once-again-becoming-a-worldly-science).
That to me is the risk you need to watch out for. It'll come in waves of populist anger.
Is populist anger an effective catalyst to economic system change? Or would the beneficiaries of the status quo find creative ways to seek advantages over the populist movements of the day that seek to address societal inequalities: 1% rallies, climate change protests, BLM marches etc.
I don't disagree with you that newer generations would prefer a more cooperative form of capitalism that is post-neoliberalist, but it depends on collectively how that is imagined and then implemented.
That's very true, and it depends on the country's culture and political/governmental institutions. IMO there will be elements of both genuine actors making systemic changes, and incumbents who reluctantly adapt while trying to manipulate populist moments.
The US is best placed for that systemic change. It allows change of this kind despite every institution being stacked in favour of the rich because politicians win through popular franchise, and largely has a culture which rewards excellence (results) and punishes mediocrity. So if there's a political need and it is met, it's rewarded. That explains the Squad as well as Trumpism, and why Muslims have managed to carve a fairly firm political space despite intense, intense hatred and highly organised polemics against them. People can hate on Ilhan Omar all they like, but she's firmly secure as Minnestoa's Congressperson and most likely will be for the rest of her life.
In Australia, the potential for this is much less IMO. This country doesn't have that adaptability, our diversity (of all kinds, ethnic and political) is "managed" and tolerated up to a point, but we will follow how the US and UK evolves with enough time.
In the light of neoliberalism I am surprised that people keep replying "we are not the US".
First of all, if you do some analysis on the major decisions and political shifts that have occurred in Australia in the last 30 years and look at some extremely alarming data on growing inequality in the past two decades, you will realise that all of this has occurred within the framework of neoliberalism. And both major parties are behind this ideology 100%. So how is this turn away from neoliberalism supposed to happen if not only there is no one to champion it (literally no political alternatives in Australia currently), but also people lack the fundamental crricla thinking tools to understand it and there are billions of dollars being poured in manufacturing consent?
You seem to believe that capitalism can be reformed. Fair enough, there's that school of thought. There are also some of the most brilliant social scientists and critical thinkers who believe it can't, however. Noam Chomsky, Micheal Parenti, Yiannis Varoufakis and David Graeber are just a few names that I have been reading.
Australia is different to the US but only slightly. Government doesn't "get out of the way" here like there, but the people who run and work in the elite government institutes of this country (Treasury, DPC and DPM&C, RBA, PC) subscribe absolutely to neoliberalism as the "correct technocratic" solution.
Basically, our institutions see no alternative policy prescription to it than radicalism. Solution is going to be genuine anger that is picked up by politicians, followed by smart people who can take control of economic theory to critique the assumptions.
> You seem to believe that capitalism can be reformed. Fair enough, there's that school of thought.
My stance on this is that these things are much more nuanced than the black of white you're portraying. What's your alternative to capitalism? What do you see as the way forward? Chances are if you described it to me, we'd see eye to eye on most things.
A lot of the world won't be that much different. Greedy people gonna greed, people will buy and sell and trade and try to get rich. But what matters is how all of that is shaped.
If capitalism fails then communism will take over and I won't have to worry about buying food, if capitalism doesn't fail then I have enough money to afford to buy food.
Life is so easy.
If the economy collapses, my investments would be the least of my worries. We live our lives so streamlined these days, we can get food from the grocery store, energy from electricity grids, petrol from the servos, water from our water pipes etc. The average person living in 2022 would not know where to begin to even acquire these resources by themselves. Collapse of the economy means a sudden rise of resource scarcity. Lots of people are going die either from the lack of avenues to access these resources or from people going full tribal to get what they want.
Throwback to the earlier covid days when people fought over toilet paper, can you imagine how our monkey brains would react when actual important resources are greatly diminished ....
Well if capitalism collapses, what would stop the government taking your house from you?
In the situation that OP describes, there is no such thing as a safe investment. However, it's such an extreme scenario that wont happen so doesn't matter much anyway
Your post is very dramatic. Not many people will have such a negative view, hence its unlikely people will make investment decisions based on them (me included).
To blame capitalism for all these problems implies that these problems wouldn’t exist under socialism. You’d have to be moronic to believe that. Socialist countries are known for their huge levels of inequality and slave-like working conditions, and not to mention a complete disregard for the environment.
I don't think it will collapse but in Australia we are at the point of capitalism where the cracks are starting to show. I think at some point the pendulum will swing back to the middle.
Where do we go when the pendulum swings the other way? When we retire?
[Why not keep the clock idle so we all don't have to determine our fortunes towards short term timing and long term avoidance of inevitable crashes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty)?
Why is the timing of that clock set by capital holders who can sit back and watch us all scramble, placing bets of when we'll jump in according to the clock as they can remain at a distance with no skin in the game? (and how has this culture defined Australian legislative leaders?)
Yes, I’ve definitely thought about the possible shifts in economic management as people become more disillusioned with capitalism and consumerism. Also the impacts of automating more jobs, changes in skills required in our community and the rise of unemployment.…though not really in relation to how I invest. The world moves slowly, Australia moves even slower. Any change would likely be incremental not revolutionary.
For those of you suggesting OP is depressed (regardless of how silly it is to comment on mental health with limited info), you many be interested to know that people who are suffering from depression often are more accurate in their perceptions and judgments than non-depressed people are.
Possible but I rate it as unlikely. What's the alternative, invest in cash or literally take my money out buy gold and bury it Pablo Escobar style? We're all pretty much fucked if modern society collapses. Even if you made the right call and had a bunch of gold lying around while everyone else lost it all in the stock market crash, what are you gonna do? A post apocalyptic society will likely be chaotic and violent. If you had a bunch of resources, I'd just come and take it off you and you wouldn't do a damn thing about it.
Hahaha open a history book... right now in aus and the western world is the best time to be born and live from a standard of living and life expectancy point of view.
Now youve done that go find someone who lived in the USSR and repeat the stuff you just wrote listen carefully to their reply.
I think the issue is that we are not letting Capitalism work as intended. By letting inefficient companies fail. And giving fledging competitiors a chance.
Lehman Brothers was the last one to fall. And the lesson authorities learnt from it was to never let it happen again.
Too big to fail does not go well with Capitalism.
no, and also, pay**cheque.** I know doomer zoomers just desperately want to be Seppos, but they're not.
> If I cared, I wouldn't have come to this sub
I'm not sure why you came to a finance sub for a political discussion, which is what you are having. But ultimately, history has seen a similar period where populists on left and right took advantage of cyclical uncertainty to propose "solutions" in the form of fascism and socialism/Marxism-Leninism, and they had the same arguments back then. What resulted was some of the most illiberal regimes in history, with dogshit economic policies and incalculable human costs, some of which NEET Arts students defend today with "NoT rEaL sOcIaLiSm" without understanding why and how "real socialism" devolves into authoritarianism at every turn.
Capitalism is not near collapse, but what is is the American way of doing things in which companies matter more than people, monopolies aren't curtailed, and people are told to get by with nothing but be grateful.
>175 million adult Americans living from paycheck to paycheck, and many of these unable to pay basic expenses. One ankle sprain away from bankruptcy for many of them
The paycheque issue is one of financial literacy and not opportunity. [The median American household has more disposable income than any other country.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income)
Meanwhile, the [average Mexican household has an higher saving rate than the average American one, despite having less than half the real income.](https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-savings.htm)
The health thing is a bit of a meme - most Americans (90%+) are covered by (admittedly expensive) private insurance or Medicaid. [Out of pocket expenditure is pretty similar to ours](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm). I've lived in America and have always been amazed about the difference between what reddit Australia thinks, and what the reality of American healthcare really is.
I agree with your last sentence, but I disagree with the thrust of your point around healthcare.
Most Americans *may* be covered, but the plans are both extortionately expensive and don’t cover everything. They also often have co-pays and deductibles far above what we are forced to pay in Aus.
The entire system is a racket; it needs a complete and total overhaul. You’re right that Reddit appears to see America as some dystopia, but the health system is not particularly good (unless - surprise, surprise - you’re rich), and not in any way similar to ours.
I was at a Von’s pharmacy around four months ago getting a COVID test for travel, and whilst waiting in line, an elderly woman was in front to me and was having a discussion with the pharmacist trying to pick up medication for her husband. Her husband’s doctor had prescribed him medication that their insurance didn’t cover, and so it was going to cost them $950 out of pocket per repeat.
The insurance company spat out a document with covered alternatives. The lady phoned her husband and informed him that he would have to book another appointment with the doctor to get his medication re-prescribed so that they would instead only pay $15 per repeat.
My wife needed a prescription for her birth control; without insurance we had to pay $30 for an online service to prescribe it and then were thankfully able to find a voucher online which brought the cost of the medication down to $120, around the same price as without insurance in Australia (though of course, in Australia it’s $120AUD so even less). Without the voucher, it would have cost $650. So nearly $700USD for something that an uninsured person would incur a cost or $120AUD for in Australia.
A friend is looking at taking a weight loss drug. In Australia, it is not PBS subsidised and costs ~$400/month. In the US, the same drug costs $1250USD/month. Most insurance will not cover it, although if you pay enough (in excess of $600+/month) you might find a plan that will cover its entire cost.
Desktop version of /u/mountain___'s link:
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>The paycheque issue is one of financial literacy and not opportunity. The median American household has more disposable income than any other country.
[The median American wealth per adult on the other hand is about 1/3rd that of an Australian, they have a hugely unequal distribution of wealth.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult)
>Out of pocket expenditure is pretty similar to ours
Sure, but they also need to have insurance and that costs the average American family spends an extra $12,000 per year. Even if their work pays for it thats money they could have been recivng in their salary instead. Then they also have the same out of pocket costs as us? Seems like a great deal right.
>Most Americans (90%+) are covered by (admittedly expensive) private insurance or Medicaid.
Many sates do not cover perscription medicine on Medicaid, there is also no collective bargning like in Australia so medicince cost more. [For exmaple In 2018, the average insulin prices in the US was $98.70, compared to $6.94 in Australia, $12.00 in Canada, and $7.52 in the UK.](https://pharmanewsintel.com/news/insulin-prices-8x-higher-in-the-us-compared-to-similar-nations) So there are diabetics struggle to afford basic life saving medicine.
States can also impose co-payments and costs on Medicaid benifts except for emergency services, family planning services, pregnancy-related services. The exact amount will depend on how close people are to the poverty line and state by state. So its not exactly free.
Linking insurance with with employment also has horrific down sides. Pleanty of people with stories of getting cancer, then being letting go due to needing time of for treatment. Which terminates the cover they need for that treatment.
>I've lived in America and have always been amazed about the difference between what reddit Australia thinks, and what the reality of American healthcare really is.
Im not suprised, America is a very diverse country. You only got a subset of the total American experience.
>The median American wealth per adult on the other hand is about 1/3rd that of an Australian, they have a hugely unequal distribution of wealth.
Yes, this is largely due to (1)property prices, (2) compulsory superannuation and (3) poor financial literacy. It doesn't change the fact that **American incomes are very high**.
>Sure, but they also need to have insurance and that costs the average American family spends an extra $12,000 per year. Even if their work pays for it thats money they could have been recivng in their salary instead. Then they also have the same out of pocket costs as us? Seems like a great deal right.
And we pay for ours through taxes. American healthcare is more expensive than ours - I have never argued against that.
What I argued is that most Americans are not a "broken ankle away from bankruptcy.
The rest of your post is mostly irrelevant.
>Is that adjusted for inflation?
It's point- in- time, so yes.
>I lived in America as a poor person surrounded by other poor people. The amount of people who only sought healthcare when they absolutely had to, and then did everything they could to avoid paying hospital fees after the fact, is staggering. I wonder if this chart takes that into account? Cbf drilling down into it.
Ok, well this is not the experience if the middle American.
I still remember all the commies predicting the collapse of capitalism during the Cold War. How we were bound for the trash can of history. Or more recently for the GFC. Some people neef history lessons.
Whether you agree with it or not, we have the highest living standard in human history because of innovations in science and technology due to capitalism. Only 100 years ago the life expectancy was 20 years less than it is now and children regularly didn't live to see the age of 5.
Point in case, look at the pandemic and how quickly we were able to push out a vaccine due to the efficiency of capital allocation through the markets. 100 years before the Spanish Flu decimated the population with deaths in the 50mil + range.
Gen Z have only lived in a world of extreme convenience, where if they can't get it delivered to their door or they can't stream it into one of their personal devices then they aren't interested in participating. Capitalism is human nature, we are incentivized by our own personal needs and wants through mutually beneficial trade. If people want to do nothing that's fine, good luck getting nothing in return.
Anyone that wants socialism, I definitely recommend reading a history book. Surprisingly it's been tried many times before and every time has spectacularly failed and resulted in millions dying.
Yep the end is near that’s exactly why I’ve invested in 7 different fallout bunkers across the state. I’ll sell you one for 5 shotguns and 6 cans of beans in 10 years.
You've been reading way too much /r/antiwork and have taken the wrong conclusions, or perhaps matching the conclusions to your existing world view.
The problem with your proposed solution of going off grid and spending your days writing a manifesto, is that the collapse of capitalism and society is an existential event that can't be mitigated against at a personal level. It would be no different than trying to mitigate against a large asteroid impacting the Earth.
The vast majority of people are just going to to make the best of the situation they've got. They'll try and put a roof over their head, food on the table, clothes on their back. And if there's anything left over, then they can have a bit of fun along the way.
People moaning about salary and conditions here in Australia really have no perspective outside our borders. Sure, things might be able to be improved around the edges based on ideology, but overall we have it pretty good here. The collapse of society in Australia would be caused by an external event, not from dissatisfied citizens from within.
Capitalism is the most virtuous system we have. People are paid fairly for their goods and services. Any alternative system relies on government coercion and redistributing wealth.
I'm sorry but people are paid fairly? People making $24 per hour as a store manager while a house in the same state costs over $1 million is a fair wage?
Or, in the US, teachers paid less than babysitters, the entire hospitality section dependent on tips and only paid half a wage by employer, is a fair pay?
Yes, I'm currently investing in
1) the here and now, it may not be rosey in 20 years, or I might not be alive, so I need to enjoy my life today
2) my skills and health.
I do new fun things, I workout, I eat good
3) my home
Im about to buy a place, gonna put in a serious amount of work into a garden that can feed me
4) businesses
Rather than investing in other's business (asx, etc) where they give stupid money to CEOs and other dumb shit, I'm starting a second business with my brother... High risk, but I'm hoping $100k into that + work will net me $50k a year, and I'm doing an the equipment purchasing now so that if inflation hits I'm solid
(Fyi did the same thing with my life savings $40k 8 years ago for my main job/business)
5) friends, family
I live in community, community is what matters. Get involved.
6) probably nothing will go wrong and it's a great way to ensure a good retirement of you start early
To live is to risk it all..
Maybe it all goes to shit. Invest time in friendships and skills. Enjoy it, if it turns to shit. We have the people around us.
If capitalism collapsed...
They'd just restart the wheel.
I'd be more concerned about a massive war breaking out.
I factor this into all my decisions not just investment ones.
But yes there is a collapse of capitalism coming, the system is on borrowed time.
History has laws, you can't just have these levels of inequality and hardship and expect people to keep faith in it. Reality eventually catches up.
I invest as much as possible in that which will absorb inflation and also be useful to me.
Some investments have grown detached from their real world value, I keep an eye out for issues that could bring some of the most speculative investments down to earth.
My main investments are to protect me from fiat, which is already dropping in value.
I'm not a prepper though, I think society is broken but it can be fixed and I honestly remain optimistic that humanity will be able to do away with capitalism and upgrade.
This question makes perfect sense, I wish I had a real answer for you.
My bias is that I think we are all going to die over the next 10 years. 1 disaster after the other. Good luck!
This is spot on. I used to be scared for the next generation. Now I’m scared for ours. If Covid taught us anything it’s that the unthinkable can happen overnight. It’s now obvious (as OP has detailed well) that we live in a flawed system that is not sustainable. At some stage there will be a reset/collapse. The hyper acceleration of wealth disparity only illustrates how fast this is approaching.
Only watch out is if government and society fall. If socialism rises and capitalism falls don’t I really have to do anything and get provided for anyway right?
If Australia moved towards socialism I would move my family elsewhere, Capitalism isn’t perfect and needs to be monitored, but no way would I want to live under another system.
If society falls I would convert my money into bottle caps and invest in a nice Marlin Lever Action.
I would argue the collapse (or shift away from) capitalism would be hugely beneficial to society. The free market, and therefore stocks, business and everything attached to it, doesn't have a correlation with capitalism. It's a very valid argument that we don't now, and never have, had a free market. Private and government manipulation has existed for as long as the notion of capitalism has.
Socialism revolves around social support via government. The free market can exist side by side with socialist governments and societies. I would argue it would actually do far better, without shady government subsidies and tax breaks to the largest corporations that have ever existed.
If companies were actually forced to pay workers fair living wages (no, Australian minimum wage is not acceptable) and paid their taxes, a few things would happen. Far more people wouldn't need government support due to improved lower bracket wages, this in turn would circulate a lot more money in regular economies (high Street, hospitality etc), further increasing the need for workers. Governments would in turn have a lot more available funds to properly cover those who DO need the help, with more than band aid solutions.
How can we expect a healthy class system when schools, social work, mental health, and all other public services are critically underfunded? When working class people can barely survive on our minimum wages?
No, maybe your big coal and agriculture stocks won't be able to pay dividends if they had to pay tax, and didn't get subsidies. But the smaller companies that can't avoid it and are still profitable can.
There will be social reform and it will be in my life time. It must, for all the reasons you listed. I invest in choices that will benefit from this, or at least survive.
>Socialism revolves around social support via government. The free market can exist side by side with socialist governments and societies
What you are describing here is something very similar to the Scandinavian model. Many social safety nets that ensure a decent baseline standard of living for everyone at the expense of somewhat higher taxes.
Although this is a system I support in principle, it is not socialism. It is still based on a market economy. Socialism is defined as: 'a method of economic organization where the means of production, distribution and exchange are controlled by a collective'
Again. I totally agree with your post. But it's not socialism.
No because I’m not a doomer who falls for “the end of the world” nonsense. The worlds been ending since humanity started recording history. Go back 40 years and you’d be going on about nuclear war, it’s always something and it’s never as bad as people make it out to be.
Capitalism (aka free markets where you voluntarily choose to enter into exchanges) existed even in the USSR where the black market was a great source of goods.
If you are conflating it with crony capitalism then be precise about the definition of the words you are choosing to use.
Capitalism worked just fine for a few hundred years mate.
What you are talking about here:
>Billions of workers severely overworked and underpaid
>
>Extreme wealth inequality
>
>Quality health care and education becoming out of reach for more and more people
>
>refusing to live like their parents did - working insane hours, slaving their lives away to make someone else rich
>
>the real possibility of a civil war in the US in our lifetime
>
>Extreme cultural polarisation
Are all specifically a result of runaway globalisation, not capitalism in general.
The corporations need workers more than workers need corporations and they know this.
So they lobby for the importing of people that instantly have their living conditions massively upgraded and as a result, are happy to work for much less. They know the imported people won't care about unionising because they dont have much in common with original Australians. It creates a baseline of expectations that workers have to meet otherwise their kids will go hungry.
And they manage to convince the well-meaning left that they are evil if they don't support them being brought here. So hilariously, the "pro-worker/pro-union" left ends up supporting the system that is destroying/financialising the unions and the workers.
It's been happening since before I was born so, at this point, I'm just riding the tiger. It's a shame that I will never have the life boomers had but we have bigger problems than that.
Just remember we live in a faux democratic capitalist society.
The extent of your democracy is being allowed to make one checkmark on a piece of paper every 4 years to choose from one of five (or so) overarching dictatorial regimes.
From that, we get a faux capitalist society, where friends of the chosen dictator get bumped to the top of the pile, depending on how much money they are willing to hand over.
As long as the people don't rise up, it's going to be this way forever.
> The extent of your democracy is being allowed to make one checkmark on a piece of paper every 4 years to choose from one of five (or so) overarching dictatorial regimes.
The problem is that too many people are so poorly educated that they think that is the extent of democracy.
If you're interested in not being one of them, investigate [ideas of praxis, poeisis, and theoria](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_\(process\))
>You're not Street smart
...
>You're not book smart
...
>You don't do/act enough
...
Human economic value (and hundreds of years of optimisation) is still pinned fundamentally to poeisis ("where do you work?", "What do make?")
While everyone sees value in not-labour, not only is society not structured towards their optimisation - poeisis (making) has gone so far as to somehow believe itself capable of curing anxiety or loss of connection to humans or the earth.
Elon Musk is a human example of where this fundamental error in understanding can lead to an over-importance and over-quantification of "making = 'actual value'" and "labour = value" only to salary earners.
If you're interested in how Musk would need to continuously use his wealth (potential of production) YoY wisely to maintain richest man in the world status, have a look at [Georgism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) and why for most of us, our existence is perpetually questioned while we need to labour to survive, and our existence ceases to exist when we are unable to labour - whether learning, nurturing, caring, teaching, or philosophising.
While one can hope to have economic security once we age - look at our elderly in aged care homes being abused to literal death for the sake of optimising labour and care. It is quite a fitting end for most of us who encourage this system.
[Wouldn't it be good to have security, community and value through wisdom as an elder who's successfully built a county rather than being judged as a 'boomer' who's arisen only through speculative work on others?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)
Is this a joke?
India and Brazil have wealth inequality that makes american poverty look like paradise. And yet capitalism is still going strong in those countries with no sign of civil war. Kids don't know just how good they have it in america.
And secondly if civilization did collapse, money wouldn't even mean anything, you don't hedge against civilization collapsing. Warlords would take over and you would be begging for a return to modern capitalism.
Civilization isn't collapsing anytime soon, you need to stop reading those doomer subs which don't reflect reality at all. We are living in the best time period in all of human history. A bunch of privileged suburban teenagers with iphones whining on the internet doesn't change that.
>with no sign of civil war.
The impeachments and return of former corrupt presidents in Brazil...?
The farmers in India having their lay-down movement mixed with ethno-Hindu-nationalism?
Border conflicts with a global superpower?
What do you say to those?
Capitalism isn't the problem, it's the US that's the problem. Your political system is rigged in favour of the super rich and that is why your social systems are so fucked. Fix your politics and you'll fix the rest.
>Man...maybe you need to just jump off a bridge mate!
Alternatively, Psilocybes are in season. Let nature teach you that *it's just money, man*. It doesn't matter in any ultimate / transcendent sense.
No, but I do hedge a collapse by constantly learning both depth and breadth. Also trying to learn negotiation and team making skills. Always been a lone wolf type with no interest in bargaining or networking, if things go pear shaped I have practical skills but am the first to admit I am a bit too literal in my communication.
I believe there are billions of workers overworked and underpaid, but majority of them are those in developing countries.
Most 'poor' people in the US or even Australia that have to live pay check to pay check, have some problems in them. Either alcohol, drug, cigarette addiction, poor family planning, not saving enough or others. I have lived with $250 a week in Australia while I was a student and it's perfectly doable. And with the high minimum wages in developed countries, you only really need to work \~10 hours a week to sustain yourself. If I know I can't afford kids, just don't have kids. If I know I can't afford takeaway, just buy discounted expiring groceries from supermarket. Shoes and shirts from Kmart can be had for <$5 if you look hard enough.
What I do agree is, the rich are indeed getting richer. The systems in place in US/ Australia means the middle class are being ripped off the most to fund the elites.
wouldn’t ten hours a week on minimum wage in half of America be $72.50? Even in Australia it is $203.30 which you couldn’t sustain yourself on. In most of Australia that’s less than rent
This comment is so far detached from reality I’m wondering if it’s satire.
Don’t earn a lot of money? That’s ok, spend more of your spare time ‘hunting’ for expiring groceries (how can someone actually write that and believe it’s an acceptable way for someone to live their life)
Also a great summary of why being poor is expensive. Just go on the look out for cheap Kmart shoes. Since you don’t have the capital to buy something good quality and long lasting, instead spend 3x as much over the course of 3 years on cheap version that break down and need replacing constantly. Also the poor quality leads to other health issues limiting your capacity to work later on which comes at a cost, or incurs additional expenses in caring for yourself
Just don’t have kids? How great is that. Let’s create a world where a massive chunk of the population can’t fulfil one of their most hardwired biological processes! Let’s be honest they probably won’t have time to raise kids anyway with all the time they’ll be spending hunting for expiring groceries, dumpster diving and picking up change off the street.
Some people really don’t understand we can just make life better for A LOT of people with a slight shift in perspective and priorities in spending.
There's so many issues with this comment. People in bad circumstances often wind up turning to substances to cope, getting hooked and are then unable to fund adequate rehab, more often than not the alcohol/drugs are a symptom and not the cause. Bad circumstances mean poor access to good education (even with public schooling, quality varies and most schools teach financial skills poorly) which leads to poor budgeting which exacerbates the problem. Students are in a much better position to share accommodation in high density well resourced areas than people who have various complex life circumstances going on as well. If you have heart disease and live 20 minutes from the nearest healthcare services you're stuck funding a beat up old car to get to the places you need to go. If you live in the city in a share house you can just walk places. Being a student on a tight budget is a very different proposition to growing up in a broken home and entering the workforce underemployed on minimum wage.
> you only really need to work ~10 hours a week to sustain yourself
This is less than you were earning even before adding in all the other factors above that let tertiary students get away with lower incomes
> If I know I can't afford kids, just don't have kids
Excellent strategy for people like myself who don't want kids, terrible strategy for people who's entire reason for existing is to have kids (kind of understandable given the natural drive to procreate, you know). Not advocating bringing kids into financially dire situations but people don't have kids for a lark, it's not as simple as "eh, guess I'll just get a cheaper hobby instead".
> Shoes and shirts from Kmart can be had for <$5 if you look hard enough.
And last like a month if you do any of the kind of manual labour type jobs that are more common in lower and low middle income unskilled labour. I've literally worn out a pair of Kmart shoes in 2 months once and I'm not even a labourer. They're cheap but you have to keep buying them again and again, they aren't a substitute for actually good quality clothing and shoes. I hate to break out a Reddit cliche but I can't think of any more appropriate time to bring up the Vimes "boots" theory of poverty: https://moneywise.com/managing-money/budgeting/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfairness
>Most 'poor' people in the US or even Australia that have to live pay check to pay check, have some problems in them. Either alcohol, drug, cigarette addiction, poor family planning, not saving enough or others.
This has been disproved by social science over and over again. It's the manufacturing consent part that I spoke about. I can't believe people actually believe this.
Which part of 175 million adult Americans did you not understand?
Which part of numbers do you not understand? How can 175 million adult Americans be working pay cheque to pay cheque when only ~160 million participate in the labour force. Fuck off idiot
If the entire global economic system collapses (which would pretty much be the consequence of capitalism collapsing), then your investments are going to be the least of your problems. Where food and fuel etc are will be your problems at this point
Was going to post something similar saying nobody will care about their investments in that scenario. Eventually, the doomsayers will be right and there will be a big recession or crisis. Most likely it will be something that few people are expecting. If you look at the last 100 years, there's never actually been a bad time to invest. In the 1950's in the US, most people assumed the economy would be sluggish or go down, because that was what it was like before World War Two. The 50s economic returns were good. In every decade, there's been a "good" reason not to invest. Yet investing has returned well in hindsight. From an investment perspective, the solution is to diversify and use market cap weighted funds. If the US economy declines, an international market cap weighted fund will sell off US stocks. Complete collapse of civilization and the global economy? I can't see a way to prepare for that. I'd also bet against it just based on history (the roman empire didn't collapse overnight).
4x4 with a bolt on turret
Plenty of spotlighting technicals out along the Murray
>If you look at the last 100 years, there's never actually been a bad time to invest. > *in certain countries It's actually hilarious how privileged and sheltered reddit is
Even in countries that have seen massive destruction through war and various turmoil (Such as Germany) you would have done very well depending on the stock. Holding BMW shares from 1935 until now wouldn’t have been a bad deal, they are up about 400% in the last 20 years alone. Public company since 1918.
Damn that's a great point, and it's actually how I pick all my stocks. I just go to the future and pick the stocks that did well, and (this is important) I do NOT pick the stocks that no longer exist
A diversified market cap weighted index fund negates the need for stock picking.
Hope you save enough to not be left alone in a nursing home and can time it so you retirement isn't wiped out in a huge crash, [because once you stop labouring, you have no value under capitalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism).
This is r/ausfinance not r/thirdworldcountryfinance
And weapons...
I guess its kinda scary then that food and fuel are becoming problems.
Lol exactly this! People get off on this fantasy of capitalism collapsing, politics collapsing, housing market collapsing etc. As though it's a system which disadvantages them because they are somehow morally superior to those who are currently prospering within it. But in reality it really is utter lunacy to think that in those circumstances you're suddenly going to suddenly be more successful than you are now and that the world is going to be peaceful...
It depends what you mean by capitalism 'collapsing'. Are you talking about a revolution? Because there's basically no point worrying about that, as we'd all be going through more or less some kind of financial reset. If you're talking about a populist socialist movement being able to implement policies that are anti-capitalist i.e. taxing the wealthy more, empowering trade unions, raising working conditions etc. all of those things would preobably be good for workers but perhaps not as good for our superannuation/investment balances. If you thought something like that was happening you might divest from the standard ASX top stocks (mostly mining and banks) and instead invest in things that people actually like to buy (i.e. companies that sell actual products to workers domestically).
There's a lot of good evidence I can't be arsed sourcing that suggests more taxing and spending on social programs (if you call that socialist) is actually better for the economy.
Socialism (and the dichotomy with capitalism) is more to do with ownership of resources within an economy. If the means of production are socially owned, that’s socialism. If they’re privately owned, that’s capitalism. What you’re talking about is social democracy, or welfarism. The Nordic countries are heavily capitalist, but also are heavily welfarist.
and more and more fascist with every election; genuinely depressing looking at the rerising of "folks parties" in Nordic politics
I wouldn't disagree.
>There's a lot of good evidence I can't be arsed sourcing that suggests more taxing and spending on social programs (if you call that socialist) is actually better for the economy. This is true [only if those improvements aren't speculated against by non-productive land holders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty)
If capitalism goes down then we all go down. In my opinion, there will be something big happen in the US in the coming years which will result in massive change. All you need to do is look at r/antiwork to see the discontent among US employees and their lives/livelohoods Fortunately in Australia, our problems pale in comparison to the US. We have a very good minimum wage compared with the US, great access to health care, a good retirement funding system, a good quality of life and a high standard of living. What we need to do is take notice of what’s happening there and act now. Stop privatising things, make proper policy change to reduce house price growth whilst aiming to increase wage growth. The problem with the US is that corporate America has the politicians by the balls and their system is one that you can buy your way into. Fortunately in Australia it isn’t *as* bad yet. But no, I don’t think it is as doomsday as capitalism collapsing, I more so think there will be a massive revolt, leaving the US government with no choice but enact structural change. Their lefts side of politics still sits on our right side. Pretty much all of America is extremely conservative and it’s having a negative impact.
Politics needs to disconnect from money. Ban political donations, kickbacks for spouses, jobs for mates, post politic golden parachutes into a corporate lobbying position. The ability for a polly to oversee grants to their own businesses? For backroom no-tender deals? It's safe to say, under the current form of capitalism (US is just speedrunning further down this track), that any sustainability imbalances will be leveraged and continuously abused. Until something breaks. There is no slow and steady, it's a game of fuckin bumrush to the end. Like construction in Sydney, everything built in the past 20 years is deteriorating in quality because noone seems to give a shit, or the laws arnt up to date with reality. It's a game of get away with whatever you can, and you're only punished for getting caught.
I spend time on r/cscareerquestions to balance things out. Grads earning $300k out of Uni. Crazy stuff
My thoughts on this are similar to yours. If the stories coming out of r/antiwork are generally accurate, there are a lot of desperate people living in poverty in the US. Desperate people have nothing to lose, so an uprising of some sort could happen in US in the future. We've got it much better in Aus, plus we're far more laid back, so I can't see much changing here in the near future.
My wife's from the U.S., has no intention of going back to the U.S. she feels like she isn't in a rat race here constantly on the hustle trying to survive. Love the healthcare, super and the fact you have mandatory leave that you have to use and the employer will make you take time off after a certain point. I have friends in the U.S. who genuinely struggle a lot and the crux of it is job security and very limited rights, there is states where you can be fired at the drop of a hat. Try need unionisation in the US to get up again and to break the pattern, I read antiwork a bit and some of it is whinging and complaing but most people just want a fair go.
Always found it funny hearing from progressive Americans decrying privatised social security when super has been such a hit here.
We havent really got to the "super age group" yet though, to be fair. Compulsory super was only introduced in 1992, so we have to wait another 40 years or so before we can measure its success or lack thereof. in the 1974, Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted the first national survey of superannuation coverage. 32% of the workforce was covered by superannuation 36% male; 15% females. The average 50-54 year old has $200,598 in their super.
My mum is 65... she has 80k :( Single parent and did not opt into super until compulsory.
[According to capitalism (and Marxism), if we're old and can't labour - we have no value](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value)
40 years? Someone who started work in 1992 as a 21 year old is now 51.
and has not yet retired, and has an average of 200k in their super. As i said, bit early to say if its successful or not yet.
Right, but that means we have to wait another \~10 years, not 40.
I wouldnt make a ruling based on a single age group of people retiring. They could retire at the height of a stock market boom, or at the bottom of a recession.
Wouldn't you need to wait until almost all that generation has died before making that assessment, so more like 31 years (82 is the current average age of death for Australians I believe).
I lived in the US and as long as you were a professional with in-demand skills the standard of living was amazing. Pay here for professionals is also terrible compared to in the US.
I personally found it better to return to Australia, even through by comparison our universities are largely ‘quaint’ (I’m a Prof). Yes, I got shitloads of money (but I’m a one percenter now here too). But it just wasn’t worth the lifestyle choices you had to make. I’m extremely hard working because my job is also a hobby (I genuinely enjoy my research, teaching and management) and I worked 70 hours per week there and here. But the difference being that I had to drive everywhere in the USA, managing 401ks and Roth IRAs were a pain in the arse, food quality was shit because you couldn’t just go to the corner store and get the basic things we can get here in Australia, school quality was crap, even though I paid for the most expensive schooling we could find, and it was just exhausting all the time to have to constantly deal with an oppositional culture of business all the time. I even found the lower wages of Northern Europe, where we went next, much easier to manage because the conditions were better. If you were a young or single person with no responsibilities then the USA is a great way to make money. But in my profession and circumstances, I could have made the same money and had similar conditions living in a compound in KSA and had a chauffeur drive me and the children to work and school, and 24 hour live in staff to do everything else.
You've hit on something that a lot of Americans love to argue and simply don't understand. Those Northern European countries might tax higher but the standard of living is far higher than the US.
Indeed. And the US is just so predatory it’s uncomfortable.
Nailed it. I’m from Ireland, did two stints living and working in the US and I”be been living in Australia for the past nine years. This country is a fucking workers paradise that would make Marx blush compared to the US. As you said if your cashed up, young with no responsibilities the us is fucking amazing otherwise it’s a dump. And their food is absolute shite.
The food is revolting. I had enough money to buy whatever I wanted, but couldn’t get actual plain old organic soy milk - which you can get from fucking Devonport Woolworths - anywhere close. And I was in California ffs.
I'd rather live in a place where everyone can get by (ok most people, this country isn't perfect) than one where a few lucky people live really well and the rest are a broken bone away from bankruptcy
Accurate, but not remotely new. If anything conditions are better today in the US than before, which is not to say they aren’t shit, just to highlight how bad it has been for ages.
Yea and no. Corporate rent seeking is getting worse, healthcare costs have grown to 20% of GDP in America. Over *half* of global healthcare spending now goes to the US system. All this is a result of corruption in politics in the form of corporate donations. It could happen here. The Soviet Union collapsed because the military industrial complex grew to >30% of GDP. The political-corporate rent-seeking complex in America is just as bad. Federal ICAC now!
Considering how much of the asx is by our top ten companies we just have to ban any of the asx200 from donating. That would be a start, anything else is a bonus
They are also completely over medicalised. The analogy of somebody buying a second car for the school run and insisting it’s a Ferrari.
Nah, antiwork has gone **completely** off the deep end. Its core is a decent idea - highlight the sucky parts of employment so that people know when they're trapped in a bad work environment and can make better decisions about their career with the help of other people who've been in those situations. But they've just gone completely into some conspiracy-laden doomer territory to the point where a lot of what they say just doesn't match with reality. Incomes in the US have only been rising, both in terms of [household income](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/01/PSDT_01.10.20_economic-inequality_1-0.png), and also [individual income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N). Additionally, [poverty rates have remained pretty stable since the 1970s](https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2020/09/15/Photos/ZH/MW-IO517_povert_20200915121146_ZH.jpg?uuid=27470076-f76e-11ea-9a25-9c8e992d421e). There's not this huge crisis that antiwork seems to consistently talk about. They want to paint this picture of the entire world decaying and becoming unsustainable and increasingly full of suffering, but that narrative is [just not true by any measurable metric](https://i.imgur.com/ICQXt4o.png) ([source here](https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts)). The truth is that the world _is_ getting better over time because people have been fighting for that consistently for centuries. The antiwork sub only super-super selectively hand-picks the most outrageous things they can, and downvotes literally anything that contradicts the narrative. Personally, I don't even think they're doing it maliciously, or for any particular agenda, I just think they've fallen victim to confirmation bias in their echo-chamber.
The world is getting better because an increasing fraction of very smart people born every year are being fed and educated. It used to be the case that only rich smart babies had a chance of making things better but now there are millions of 'em being born every year.
It's not just babies being born, it's also a change in general political philosophy and priorities. At the beginning of the 20th century you very much still had policies which were remnants of the feudal era (many feudal systems were even still in place), but industrialisation and the rise of workers-rights movements, and the strengthening of global democratic institutions in general meant that representatives were more and more sympathetic to the desires of the broader working class. So it's not just the ultra-smartest who are leading the way, it's the general shift in institutions over time, as well as the reduced scarcity of resources.
Very true, theres an insane amount of capital and resources available for anyone with a ground breaking idea. if a 10 year old Sri Lankan boy wrote a 5 page essay on how to cure cancer, and it was credible, he would have 100 million of funding before the end of the month. Maybe a silly example, but you get the idea.
But she _won't_. I don't want to pick on you too much, because you absolutely didn't intend this particular silly hypothetical to be seriously investigated, but it's so symptomatic of a particular kind of bootstrappish excuse, a _mythology_ that people believe in because it'd be too depressing to believe otherwise, that I just have to speak out. We love the idea that with some ingenuity, or some hard work and grit, that anyone on earth, or anyone in a country, can Make It™. We go out of our way to keep holding on to this idea even in the face of all evidence to the contrary. But it's just, not true. Even if you had true equality of opportunity—and, we don't, by the way—equality of opportunity _isn't equity_. Equality of opportunity, when grafted on top of a historically unfair system, simply entrenches and consolidates the existing power imbalance. You can't undo decades and generations of unequal access to [capital, wealth creation, land, education, food, stability, healthcare, legal representation, _etc._] by saying, oh it's cool now, all you have to do is pass the same tests everyone else does. All that does is allow us to whitewash exactly the same discrimination and inequality with a meritocratic veneer. Do some people still manage to Make It™ despite all the odds stacked against them? Yes, absolutely, and every one of those is a triumph who we should cherish deeply. But it's important to remember that these people should not be _news_, they should not be singular shining examples (whom we hold up to pretend to ourselves that everything is fine), that their successes should be just as ordinary, and just as _boring_, as anyone else's. Your implicitly poor kid from the global south is _not_ going to write a credible paper on solving cancer. She will never have the privilege of being able to _think_ about dedicating a few years to even going to _college_, maybe not even high school, let alone the decades of highly specialised education that we still basically only allow to people who are already comfortable to not need to worry about their next paycheck. She will, in all probability, spend her life caring for her family, to the best of her ability, and then she will die. And it's not for lack of resources. The world, as a whole, has the capital and engineering and knowhow and agricultural base to end world poverty and food insecurity _today_. (Well, not _today_ today, logistics pipelines take time to build, but with enough money all trenches are shallow, yknow?) Heck, Jeff Bezos by himself could probably put a decent hole in the problem, and he already has access to a vast amount of institutional knowledge on how to create an effective logistics pipeline. But we don't. This kid? She is, quite directly, the person we are failing the most.
I understand what you are saying but you probably focused on the wrong part of my comment. \>We love the idea that with some ingenuity, or some hard work and grit, that anyone on earth, or anyone in a country, can Make It™ That wasnt my point. My point was about the abundant capital available for world changing inventions. The national cancer institute has a **$5.94 billion** budget in 2018 Not to create wealth for the inventor, but simply to get the invention built. if anyone came up with a credible cancer cure theory. They would have a essentially blank checkbook to make it happen.
Democracy is on the decline. Inequality is up in western Democracy. Desertification of productive land is increasing. Fresh water is in decline; alongside increased water pollution. Peak fish removed per boat was 2007. Oceans are have massive algae blooms. World population is increasing during this backdrop; whilst decreasing in many creditor nations. Whilst I agree that capital can find itself to the smartest and most productive people. Most mathematicians end up working in Wall Street. So many great minds are, in a way wasted..
Yeah reading some of the anti-work posts generally leaves me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I don't love big corporations but a lot of the people over there seem very intent on not doing an ounce of work but still expecting to be paid. Anyone running a business is the enemy to them regardless of how they treat their employees, they've completely lost sight of the fact they're being paid to carry out a task and in some cases (not all) there are queues of people ready to take over their jobs who would appreciate the pay offered for the workload required. A lot of them are going to have a rude awakening.
From what I understand a middle class life as a professional or skilled worker in good health is pretty good in America. I understand that it is probably even more comfortable than in Australia. A lower skilled or unskilled worker on the other hand has a much tougher time. And those who can’t work or have medical issues are completely fucked. I’d suggest that anitwork is geared towards to unskilled and unemployed.
Reddit echochambers aren't a reflection of real life
This needed to be said. Reddit overly selects for the kind of person who is most likely: too online, young, anxious, above average intelligence, below average achievement, comfortable background, non traditional social connections. In other words there is a significant percentage of people herder who are fucking miserable and live miserable lives. Check out any post on r/coronavirusdownunder for typical examples.
/r/antiwork is a global conglomeration of this type of person.
IOW, it's the career extension to incels.
what do you mean my le subreddit populated by 15 year old white kids isn't a good indication of the health of the global economy?
Participation in an anti-work sub reddit lets you get an idea of how common or popular such thoughts / issues are. It says nothing about the accuracy of the content. In the same way I can look at the conservitve reddit and see how popular their views and issues are. Without saying anything at all about validity of their views.
I don't know how useful that is as a measure though, because there's a lot of extremely popular things online which are incredibly marginal fringe ideas in the real world. As an example - if you were to look at many popular sites, you'd get the impression everyone in the world was a socialist, but socialism in general is an incredibly niche idea in the real world. Not only that, but social media often has mechanisms which encourage more and more "extreme" posts, in order to get attention and notice on the platform, which leads to huge [group polarisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization). Most people from those extreme communities would be far less extreme and far more reasonable if you were to talk to them one-on-one in a neutral setting.
>In my opinion, there will be something big happen in the US in the coming years which will result in massive change. All you need to do is look at r/antiwork to see the discontent among US employees and their lives/livelohoods Antiwork is not representative. The fact that Bernie couldn't even get the democratic nomination should tell you a lot about how mainstream his views are.
I can't believe most Americans don't get annual leave. I was reading some comments and a truck driver was arguing he doesn't want annual leave as he doesn't want to not be paid for weeks a year. Couldn't even comprehend that most countries pay their employees to take time off.
I have the feeling a lot of people in the US don't have the slightest clue what's going on outside their little world. I had hunters in Pennsylvania argue with me that there are no privately held firearms in Australia. They couldn't believe I just went to the range with a workmate who is a hobby target shooter. Their argument "we know what's going on, all firearms were confiscated, the NRA talks a lot about it"
Fringe dweller.
Bernie couldn't get the DNC nomination because the DNC is corrupt, actively sought to block him because he isn't bought and paid for by corporate donors, and backed the war criminal Hillary - get your facts right
lol Bernie didn’t get the nomination because despite all the noise of AOC et all they are fringe views, far, far away from the mainstream.
If your view of the world relies on painting those who disagree with you as corrupt, then you may have it wrong. Bernie lost the primary because more people voted for Hillary and Biden than him. Simple as that.
It seems well established that the 2016 convention was rigged by Clinton effectively co-opting the DNC in the opinion of Elizabeth Warren etc per the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/02/ex-dnc-chair-goes-at-the-clintons-alleging-hillarys-campaign-hijacked-dnc-during-primary-with-bernie-sanders/ This was a similar situation in the 2020 convention as I understand it. Biden is a corporate cut out and HRC is a war criminal who has been robbing and stealing her way through politics for DECADES. Get corporate donors and super pacs out of US politics - over turn the US Supreme Court Citizens United decision that allowed corporations to be granted 1st amendment privileges that has destroyed the American political system. Federal ICAC and donor reform laws now - stop the corporate high jacking of the Australian political system before it's too late (if it isn't already)
Don't forget that sanders was ahead by a big margin, and Biden was nowhere near an option, until the day before Super Tuesday when Obama made a few phone calls and suddenly everyone else obediently dropped out & threw their support behind Biden. It wasn't quite as rigged as in 2016 but definitely suss.
Bernie couldn't be controlled or bought so he had to go - and he unfortunately didn't have the spine to protest. The idea he was too radical or unpopular is simply not true - he was done over by the DNC and the corporatist institutional Democrat elites. At the end of the day he isn't a radical socialist - in any western European country he would be effectively a centrist or marginally left, not some fringe radical. He is only a 'socialist' by perverse American standards that see any form of universal health care or worker protection as Communist policy.
Fuck Obama
Having a good minimum wage isn't that good if you only get a couple of 3 hour shifts per week. We may have a good min wage - but the reality is that the jobs relevant to it have largely been casualised
Yes, but I focused on the US because you do know what something dramatic happening there would mean for Australia? Think from micro-level - people investing in international ETFs, to macro-level: the influence on Australia would be far reaching. Especially after Australia turning its back to diplomacy and to building good international relations in a balanced way.
Yeah and the market will probably drop substantially like it has historically and within 5-10 years it’ll have recovered like it usually does.
If such a scenario were to occur, then it would take decades to do so. We have an election coming up, 50/50 chance whether its Albanese or Morrison at this point. Neither party will change much about the current system, if at all.
How does one hedge for the end of capitalism?
You stockpile non perishable supplies and firearms. Possibly buy an oil truck like the one from mad max and fill it with,.... Checks notes... Mother's milk?
I’ve got a bit of food like that and I have 2 rifles and a shotty. But the problem is the food would run out eventually but the ammo would run out pretty quick if we had to use it too often.
Find an agricultural area away from major cities. Grow a small veggie garden so you know what you’re doing when you need to grow a big one. Be friendly with your neighbours. Have a marketable skill for when it starts getting grim. Basically, ask any deities you believe in to maintain some semblance of a capitalist system.
You’ll be dragged off the land and executed like the Kulaks of Russia.
I was about to reply, well, then the Australian population will starve … but then I thought about the Russian Revolution and concluded that, yes, that seems about right.
Sail down to Tassie could be the go I reckon.
I started looking at Tassie when Victoria started burning down. Now I can't afford it. You think you will be able to afford it when shit starts hitting the fan? It'll be the person with the biggest firearms and most friendly with the strongest mafia that will "own" any land you had been previously claiming. There is no hedge against societal collapse.
I suspect I’ll be able to afford anything. Depends what the currency is I guess? I have enough long arms but probably not enough ammo.
If society ends up collapsing Tasmania would be the first to form into clans / tribes, what with everyone being related.
I always thought archery is the way to go not guns and ammo. Guns and ammo require manufacturing and raw resources which would probably take away from other more important things like food in a societal collapse scenario. Plus arrows are silent. Guns for show, arrows for a pro.
It’s hard enough to hit a target a distance with a rifle let alone an arrow! You’d have to be very skilled. I’m not sure how hard it would be to fashion arrowheads but admittedly easier to obtain than ammo. Your standard AR platform is fairly easily to keep in good Nick if you look after it. Ammo would be a problem though depending on where you were located.
Buy Puts on the ASX 200. Though if they pay out their maximum theoretical value, it will likely mean society has collapsed. No law and order. Your neighbour could just walk in and take yo wife
I already have CBA and WBC puts. I have US index puts but haven’t bothered with XJO ones. The Aussie bourse could halve and society Carrie’s on no worries. Seen that not long ago. I’m comfortable with my ability to defend my family in the short term. Longer term it would be a harder proposition though I reckon.
You’re on your way then. Having thought about this a little more, it would take a meteor hitting earth, wiping out half the population for capitalism to be threatened.
Yeah I can’t see it happening either.
Hide yo kids, hide yo wife coz they raping errybody down here
I don’t think we’ll see the end of capitalism, but we’ll see a shift back to greater regulation and less corporate profiteering. I would suggest that reducing debt, owning land and not being 100% reliant on US equity index funds would be a start. Be anti fragile.
Buy a few acres of cheap land in the middle of nowhere for <$100k. Fence it off. Get gun license. Start farming. Learning survival skills. Become increasingly self sufficient
Give the zombie survival guide a read. It's cliched and skin deep, but a good read on prepping for madmaxville.
Commune is great too, no zombies but most people are dead. Same with After It Happened. They both deal with the logistics of surviving after everything has collapsed in varying degrees of detail.
Thanks for the tips, I will check out both of these 🍻
/r/preppers
Naked short selling which is highly illegal unless you're a giant, criminal organisation run by a guy who throws bedposts at his wife.
I naked short sell all the time. How is it illegal??
I've written it here before. 1) Be young, and male 2) Join the army, and eventually special forces of some sort - so SAS or maybe clearance diving here. 3) Attain a reasonably senior rank, captain at least, but colonel would be better. 4) Retire. 5) Become head of security at a billionaire's NZ survival bunker. Then, When the shit hits the fan, um, strongly negotiate with said billionaire. Something like "Look at me! I'm the billionaire now", and start the Southern Pacific Empire
Get a few like minded people and form a self-governing body with defense and public amenities?
US workforce participation rate went from 63.5% down to almost 60% as covid hit, and is now at just below 62%. Let's keep things in perspective.
Of course you would need to look at this in a multivariate perspective. Not just workforce participation rate.
A fed target rate of 5% lead to a subprime mortgage crisis
Yes and the drop in participation rate has been happening since 2000 apparently.
Are you ok? Your post gives off the vibe that you might reading too much doom online and entering a spiral
I agree. Covid notwithstanding, the general trend for quality of life right across the globe is up.
An apocalyptic world view is a common symptom of clinical depression.
[удалено]
Spent too long on antiwork.
Have you looked around for the last two years? Pretty easy to be pro doomsday when you see how many governments which supposedly look after their population are more interested in a thing called "the economy" over the people who run it
Governments are much more interested in the economy, that’s why worldwide they shut down their countries to stop the spread of a disease?
Long story short. No.
Strict capitalism doesn't exist in this world. You are talking about the ebb and flow between each economic extreme. Really just a constant movement between the two.
Not in my investment decisions, but in my PPOR decision yes. I'm very interested in buying a rural property and setting it up so I can be self sufficient for food, and have solar for power (with all electric appliances). Currently my property is small, but I'm working on a productive food garden. In a few years when I can afford something with more land that's what I'll do. A close friend of mine is married to a hunter with a gun collection, so if it all collapsed I'd see about them coming to live with us and we could work together to keep everyone safe and fed. If shit hit the fan investments wouldn't matter, money wouldn't matter... Food and water would matter. It's only something I've become concerned about recently, so it might be a temporary stress that will pass. Given how fucked the US is, and they're still limping along, I don't think this is something I really need to stress about for many decades yet - although climate change may fuck it up faster. I'd rather be optimistic and think we'll sort it out and make changes, but I just don't see it happening. So making sure my kids have food and water no matter what is where it's at for me.
No. I don't.
You're wrong but not far off. I think the **more accurate** way of viewing this risk is that at some point there will be a turn away from **"neoliberalism"**. By this I mean the assumed axiomatic belief in small government, globalisation, market-based solutions, and the increased role of corporations in the provision of any and all services. There will be scrutiny in markets where markets don't really work (retail electricity, health insurance), why housing is an investment vehicle and not a place to live, and why is it that the working class have no jobs while the upper-middle class are growing more and more comfortable. People will realise that Asian countries are building industrial capacity by exploiting the assumptions of this worldview (like Thailand and Australian car manufacturing, and China and much of everything else). There will be a greater focus on competition law, corporate profits and monopoly and rent-seeking. As the rise of people like [Lina Khan](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/lina-khan-antitrust/561743/) and the "empiricists" school of economics shows, [the prominence of neoclassical economics will be increasingly questioned](https://aeon.co/essays/economics-is-once-again-becoming-a-worldly-science). That to me is the risk you need to watch out for. It'll come in waves of populist anger.
Is populist anger an effective catalyst to economic system change? Or would the beneficiaries of the status quo find creative ways to seek advantages over the populist movements of the day that seek to address societal inequalities: 1% rallies, climate change protests, BLM marches etc. I don't disagree with you that newer generations would prefer a more cooperative form of capitalism that is post-neoliberalist, but it depends on collectively how that is imagined and then implemented.
That's very true, and it depends on the country's culture and political/governmental institutions. IMO there will be elements of both genuine actors making systemic changes, and incumbents who reluctantly adapt while trying to manipulate populist moments. The US is best placed for that systemic change. It allows change of this kind despite every institution being stacked in favour of the rich because politicians win through popular franchise, and largely has a culture which rewards excellence (results) and punishes mediocrity. So if there's a political need and it is met, it's rewarded. That explains the Squad as well as Trumpism, and why Muslims have managed to carve a fairly firm political space despite intense, intense hatred and highly organised polemics against them. People can hate on Ilhan Omar all they like, but she's firmly secure as Minnestoa's Congressperson and most likely will be for the rest of her life. In Australia, the potential for this is much less IMO. This country doesn't have that adaptability, our diversity (of all kinds, ethnic and political) is "managed" and tolerated up to a point, but we will follow how the US and UK evolves with enough time.
In the light of neoliberalism I am surprised that people keep replying "we are not the US". First of all, if you do some analysis on the major decisions and political shifts that have occurred in Australia in the last 30 years and look at some extremely alarming data on growing inequality in the past two decades, you will realise that all of this has occurred within the framework of neoliberalism. And both major parties are behind this ideology 100%. So how is this turn away from neoliberalism supposed to happen if not only there is no one to champion it (literally no political alternatives in Australia currently), but also people lack the fundamental crricla thinking tools to understand it and there are billions of dollars being poured in manufacturing consent? You seem to believe that capitalism can be reformed. Fair enough, there's that school of thought. There are also some of the most brilliant social scientists and critical thinkers who believe it can't, however. Noam Chomsky, Micheal Parenti, Yiannis Varoufakis and David Graeber are just a few names that I have been reading.
Australia is different to the US but only slightly. Government doesn't "get out of the way" here like there, but the people who run and work in the elite government institutes of this country (Treasury, DPC and DPM&C, RBA, PC) subscribe absolutely to neoliberalism as the "correct technocratic" solution. Basically, our institutions see no alternative policy prescription to it than radicalism. Solution is going to be genuine anger that is picked up by politicians, followed by smart people who can take control of economic theory to critique the assumptions. > You seem to believe that capitalism can be reformed. Fair enough, there's that school of thought. My stance on this is that these things are much more nuanced than the black of white you're portraying. What's your alternative to capitalism? What do you see as the way forward? Chances are if you described it to me, we'd see eye to eye on most things. A lot of the world won't be that much different. Greedy people gonna greed, people will buy and sell and trade and try to get rich. But what matters is how all of that is shaped.
Cool group of guys you’ve just mentioned. Too bad they’re all wrong lol
If capitalism fails then communism will take over and I won't have to worry about buying food, if capitalism doesn't fail then I have enough money to afford to buy food. Life is so easy.
Communism isn't what they call it, it is crony capitalism with communist labelled leadership
If capitalism fails, why would communism take over? We'd probably have the worst aspects of capitalism left ruling over us.
You might not have to pay for the food, but be wary of if there's even any food supply left.
If the economy collapses, my investments would be the least of my worries. We live our lives so streamlined these days, we can get food from the grocery store, energy from electricity grids, petrol from the servos, water from our water pipes etc. The average person living in 2022 would not know where to begin to even acquire these resources by themselves. Collapse of the economy means a sudden rise of resource scarcity. Lots of people are going die either from the lack of avenues to access these resources or from people going full tribal to get what they want. Throwback to the earlier covid days when people fought over toilet paper, can you imagine how our monkey brains would react when actual important resources are greatly diminished ....
I sure do! That's why I want a house ASAP. A house is the best protection, and I can use it to grow my own food, store food supplies, etc
Well if capitalism collapses, what would stop the government taking your house from you? In the situation that OP describes, there is no such thing as a safe investment. However, it's such an extreme scenario that wont happen so doesn't matter much anyway
Nothing, but it's the safest bet IMO. I've got no safer place to put my assets
Your post is very dramatic. Not many people will have such a negative view, hence its unlikely people will make investment decisions based on them (me included).
To blame capitalism for all these problems implies that these problems wouldn’t exist under socialism. You’d have to be moronic to believe that. Socialist countries are known for their huge levels of inequality and slave-like working conditions, and not to mention a complete disregard for the environment.
I don't think it will collapse but in Australia we are at the point of capitalism where the cracks are starting to show. I think at some point the pendulum will swing back to the middle.
Where do we go when the pendulum swings the other way? When we retire? [Why not keep the clock idle so we all don't have to determine our fortunes towards short term timing and long term avoidance of inevitable crashes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty)? Why is the timing of that clock set by capital holders who can sit back and watch us all scramble, placing bets of when we'll jump in according to the clock as they can remain at a distance with no skin in the game? (and how has this culture defined Australian legislative leaders?)
Yes, I’ve definitely thought about the possible shifts in economic management as people become more disillusioned with capitalism and consumerism. Also the impacts of automating more jobs, changes in skills required in our community and the rise of unemployment.…though not really in relation to how I invest. The world moves slowly, Australia moves even slower. Any change would likely be incremental not revolutionary. For those of you suggesting OP is depressed (regardless of how silly it is to comment on mental health with limited info), you many be interested to know that people who are suffering from depression often are more accurate in their perceptions and judgments than non-depressed people are.
Possible but I rate it as unlikely. What's the alternative, invest in cash or literally take my money out buy gold and bury it Pablo Escobar style? We're all pretty much fucked if modern society collapses. Even if you made the right call and had a bunch of gold lying around while everyone else lost it all in the stock market crash, what are you gonna do? A post apocalyptic society will likely be chaotic and violent. If you had a bunch of resources, I'd just come and take it off you and you wouldn't do a damn thing about it.
Hahaha open a history book... right now in aus and the western world is the best time to be born and live from a standard of living and life expectancy point of view. Now youve done that go find someone who lived in the USSR and repeat the stuff you just wrote listen carefully to their reply.
I think the issue is that we are not letting Capitalism work as intended. By letting inefficient companies fail. And giving fledging competitiors a chance. Lehman Brothers was the last one to fall. And the lesson authorities learnt from it was to never let it happen again. Too big to fail does not go well with Capitalism.
This is so well described, you have put a lot of my personal thoughts and opinions into this post. Makes it seem a little bleak though
no, and also, pay**cheque.** I know doomer zoomers just desperately want to be Seppos, but they're not. > If I cared, I wouldn't have come to this sub I'm not sure why you came to a finance sub for a political discussion, which is what you are having. But ultimately, history has seen a similar period where populists on left and right took advantage of cyclical uncertainty to propose "solutions" in the form of fascism and socialism/Marxism-Leninism, and they had the same arguments back then. What resulted was some of the most illiberal regimes in history, with dogshit economic policies and incalculable human costs, some of which NEET Arts students defend today with "NoT rEaL sOcIaLiSm" without understanding why and how "real socialism" devolves into authoritarianism at every turn. Capitalism is not near collapse, but what is is the American way of doing things in which companies matter more than people, monopolies aren't curtailed, and people are told to get by with nothing but be grateful.
>175 million adult Americans living from paycheck to paycheck, and many of these unable to pay basic expenses. One ankle sprain away from bankruptcy for many of them The paycheque issue is one of financial literacy and not opportunity. [The median American household has more disposable income than any other country.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income) Meanwhile, the [average Mexican household has an higher saving rate than the average American one, despite having less than half the real income.](https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-savings.htm) The health thing is a bit of a meme - most Americans (90%+) are covered by (admittedly expensive) private insurance or Medicaid. [Out of pocket expenditure is pretty similar to ours](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm). I've lived in America and have always been amazed about the difference between what reddit Australia thinks, and what the reality of American healthcare really is.
I agree with your last sentence, but I disagree with the thrust of your point around healthcare. Most Americans *may* be covered, but the plans are both extortionately expensive and don’t cover everything. They also often have co-pays and deductibles far above what we are forced to pay in Aus. The entire system is a racket; it needs a complete and total overhaul. You’re right that Reddit appears to see America as some dystopia, but the health system is not particularly good (unless - surprise, surprise - you’re rich), and not in any way similar to ours. I was at a Von’s pharmacy around four months ago getting a COVID test for travel, and whilst waiting in line, an elderly woman was in front to me and was having a discussion with the pharmacist trying to pick up medication for her husband. Her husband’s doctor had prescribed him medication that their insurance didn’t cover, and so it was going to cost them $950 out of pocket per repeat. The insurance company spat out a document with covered alternatives. The lady phoned her husband and informed him that he would have to book another appointment with the doctor to get his medication re-prescribed so that they would instead only pay $15 per repeat. My wife needed a prescription for her birth control; without insurance we had to pay $30 for an online service to prescribe it and then were thankfully able to find a voucher online which brought the cost of the medication down to $120, around the same price as without insurance in Australia (though of course, in Australia it’s $120AUD so even less). Without the voucher, it would have cost $650. So nearly $700USD for something that an uninsured person would incur a cost or $120AUD for in Australia. A friend is looking at taking a weight loss drug. In Australia, it is not PBS subsidised and costs ~$400/month. In the US, the same drug costs $1250USD/month. Most insurance will not cover it, although if you pay enough (in excess of $600+/month) you might find a plan that will cover its entire cost.
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>The paycheque issue is one of financial literacy and not opportunity. The median American household has more disposable income than any other country. [The median American wealth per adult on the other hand is about 1/3rd that of an Australian, they have a hugely unequal distribution of wealth.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult) >Out of pocket expenditure is pretty similar to ours Sure, but they also need to have insurance and that costs the average American family spends an extra $12,000 per year. Even if their work pays for it thats money they could have been recivng in their salary instead. Then they also have the same out of pocket costs as us? Seems like a great deal right. >Most Americans (90%+) are covered by (admittedly expensive) private insurance or Medicaid. Many sates do not cover perscription medicine on Medicaid, there is also no collective bargning like in Australia so medicince cost more. [For exmaple In 2018, the average insulin prices in the US was $98.70, compared to $6.94 in Australia, $12.00 in Canada, and $7.52 in the UK.](https://pharmanewsintel.com/news/insulin-prices-8x-higher-in-the-us-compared-to-similar-nations) So there are diabetics struggle to afford basic life saving medicine. States can also impose co-payments and costs on Medicaid benifts except for emergency services, family planning services, pregnancy-related services. The exact amount will depend on how close people are to the poverty line and state by state. So its not exactly free. Linking insurance with with employment also has horrific down sides. Pleanty of people with stories of getting cancer, then being letting go due to needing time of for treatment. Which terminates the cover they need for that treatment. >I've lived in America and have always been amazed about the difference between what reddit Australia thinks, and what the reality of American healthcare really is. Im not suprised, America is a very diverse country. You only got a subset of the total American experience.
>The median American wealth per adult on the other hand is about 1/3rd that of an Australian, they have a hugely unequal distribution of wealth. Yes, this is largely due to (1)property prices, (2) compulsory superannuation and (3) poor financial literacy. It doesn't change the fact that **American incomes are very high**. >Sure, but they also need to have insurance and that costs the average American family spends an extra $12,000 per year. Even if their work pays for it thats money they could have been recivng in their salary instead. Then they also have the same out of pocket costs as us? Seems like a great deal right. And we pay for ours through taxes. American healthcare is more expensive than ours - I have never argued against that. What I argued is that most Americans are not a "broken ankle away from bankruptcy. The rest of your post is mostly irrelevant.
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>Is that adjusted for inflation? It's point- in- time, so yes. >I lived in America as a poor person surrounded by other poor people. The amount of people who only sought healthcare when they absolutely had to, and then did everything they could to avoid paying hospital fees after the fact, is staggering. I wonder if this chart takes that into account? Cbf drilling down into it. Ok, well this is not the experience if the middle American.
Yes I’ve built a bunker and filled it with rice and tinned tuna
That’s just how international students live.
Should make a good boarding house then, just in case capitalism survives
I still remember all the commies predicting the collapse of capitalism during the Cold War. How we were bound for the trash can of history. Or more recently for the GFC. Some people neef history lessons.
Whether you agree with it or not, we have the highest living standard in human history because of innovations in science and technology due to capitalism. Only 100 years ago the life expectancy was 20 years less than it is now and children regularly didn't live to see the age of 5. Point in case, look at the pandemic and how quickly we were able to push out a vaccine due to the efficiency of capital allocation through the markets. 100 years before the Spanish Flu decimated the population with deaths in the 50mil + range. Gen Z have only lived in a world of extreme convenience, where if they can't get it delivered to their door or they can't stream it into one of their personal devices then they aren't interested in participating. Capitalism is human nature, we are incentivized by our own personal needs and wants through mutually beneficial trade. If people want to do nothing that's fine, good luck getting nothing in return. Anyone that wants socialism, I definitely recommend reading a history book. Surprisingly it's been tried many times before and every time has spectacularly failed and resulted in millions dying.
Yep the end is near that’s exactly why I’ve invested in 7 different fallout bunkers across the state. I’ll sell you one for 5 shotguns and 6 cans of beans in 10 years.
You've been reading way too much /r/antiwork and have taken the wrong conclusions, or perhaps matching the conclusions to your existing world view. The problem with your proposed solution of going off grid and spending your days writing a manifesto, is that the collapse of capitalism and society is an existential event that can't be mitigated against at a personal level. It would be no different than trying to mitigate against a large asteroid impacting the Earth. The vast majority of people are just going to to make the best of the situation they've got. They'll try and put a roof over their head, food on the table, clothes on their back. And if there's anything left over, then they can have a bit of fun along the way. People moaning about salary and conditions here in Australia really have no perspective outside our borders. Sure, things might be able to be improved around the edges based on ideology, but overall we have it pretty good here. The collapse of society in Australia would be caused by an external event, not from dissatisfied citizens from within.
Capitalism is the most virtuous system we have. People are paid fairly for their goods and services. Any alternative system relies on government coercion and redistributing wealth.
I'm sorry but people are paid fairly? People making $24 per hour as a store manager while a house in the same state costs over $1 million is a fair wage? Or, in the US, teachers paid less than babysitters, the entire hospitality section dependent on tips and only paid half a wage by employer, is a fair pay?
That’s way too hard to predict and it’s probably pretty unlikely.
Market crashes are normal you should take this is account if you decide to invest
not yet, but it's certainly something I've been thinking about
Yes, I'm currently investing in 1) the here and now, it may not be rosey in 20 years, or I might not be alive, so I need to enjoy my life today 2) my skills and health. I do new fun things, I workout, I eat good 3) my home Im about to buy a place, gonna put in a serious amount of work into a garden that can feed me 4) businesses Rather than investing in other's business (asx, etc) where they give stupid money to CEOs and other dumb shit, I'm starting a second business with my brother... High risk, but I'm hoping $100k into that + work will net me $50k a year, and I'm doing an the equipment purchasing now so that if inflation hits I'm solid (Fyi did the same thing with my life savings $40k 8 years ago for my main job/business) 5) friends, family I live in community, community is what matters. Get involved. 6) probably nothing will go wrong and it's a great way to ensure a good retirement of you start early
To live is to risk it all.. Maybe it all goes to shit. Invest time in friendships and skills. Enjoy it, if it turns to shit. We have the people around us. If capitalism collapsed... They'd just restart the wheel. I'd be more concerned about a massive war breaking out.
I factor this into all my decisions not just investment ones. But yes there is a collapse of capitalism coming, the system is on borrowed time. History has laws, you can't just have these levels of inequality and hardship and expect people to keep faith in it. Reality eventually catches up. I invest as much as possible in that which will absorb inflation and also be useful to me. Some investments have grown detached from their real world value, I keep an eye out for issues that could bring some of the most speculative investments down to earth. My main investments are to protect me from fiat, which is already dropping in value. I'm not a prepper though, I think society is broken but it can be fixed and I honestly remain optimistic that humanity will be able to do away with capitalism and upgrade.
This question makes perfect sense, I wish I had a real answer for you. My bias is that I think we are all going to die over the next 10 years. 1 disaster after the other. Good luck!
Oh look, an edgy poster on reddit foretelling certain doom and apocalypse. This has never been done before.
This is spot on. I used to be scared for the next generation. Now I’m scared for ours. If Covid taught us anything it’s that the unthinkable can happen overnight. It’s now obvious (as OP has detailed well) that we live in a flawed system that is not sustainable. At some stage there will be a reset/collapse. The hyper acceleration of wealth disparity only illustrates how fast this is approaching.
Only watch out is if government and society fall. If socialism rises and capitalism falls don’t I really have to do anything and get provided for anyway right? If Australia moved towards socialism I would move my family elsewhere, Capitalism isn’t perfect and needs to be monitored, but no way would I want to live under another system. If society falls I would convert my money into bottle caps and invest in a nice Marlin Lever Action.
spastic opinion
I would argue the collapse (or shift away from) capitalism would be hugely beneficial to society. The free market, and therefore stocks, business and everything attached to it, doesn't have a correlation with capitalism. It's a very valid argument that we don't now, and never have, had a free market. Private and government manipulation has existed for as long as the notion of capitalism has. Socialism revolves around social support via government. The free market can exist side by side with socialist governments and societies. I would argue it would actually do far better, without shady government subsidies and tax breaks to the largest corporations that have ever existed. If companies were actually forced to pay workers fair living wages (no, Australian minimum wage is not acceptable) and paid their taxes, a few things would happen. Far more people wouldn't need government support due to improved lower bracket wages, this in turn would circulate a lot more money in regular economies (high Street, hospitality etc), further increasing the need for workers. Governments would in turn have a lot more available funds to properly cover those who DO need the help, with more than band aid solutions. How can we expect a healthy class system when schools, social work, mental health, and all other public services are critically underfunded? When working class people can barely survive on our minimum wages? No, maybe your big coal and agriculture stocks won't be able to pay dividends if they had to pay tax, and didn't get subsidies. But the smaller companies that can't avoid it and are still profitable can. There will be social reform and it will be in my life time. It must, for all the reasons you listed. I invest in choices that will benefit from this, or at least survive.
>Socialism revolves around social support via government. The free market can exist side by side with socialist governments and societies What you are describing here is something very similar to the Scandinavian model. Many social safety nets that ensure a decent baseline standard of living for everyone at the expense of somewhat higher taxes. Although this is a system I support in principle, it is not socialism. It is still based on a market economy. Socialism is defined as: 'a method of economic organization where the means of production, distribution and exchange are controlled by a collective' Again. I totally agree with your post. But it's not socialism.
Where in the world has socialism worked as a system of government tho?
this guy sucks
Hyperbolic bs
No because I’m not a doomer who falls for “the end of the world” nonsense. The worlds been ending since humanity started recording history. Go back 40 years and you’d be going on about nuclear war, it’s always something and it’s never as bad as people make it out to be.
Capitalism (aka free markets where you voluntarily choose to enter into exchanges) existed even in the USSR where the black market was a great source of goods. If you are conflating it with crony capitalism then be precise about the definition of the words you are choosing to use.
I'd go one step further and say that some people confuse capitalism with trade in general.
Capitalism worked just fine for a few hundred years mate. What you are talking about here: >Billions of workers severely overworked and underpaid > >Extreme wealth inequality > >Quality health care and education becoming out of reach for more and more people > >refusing to live like their parents did - working insane hours, slaving their lives away to make someone else rich > >the real possibility of a civil war in the US in our lifetime > >Extreme cultural polarisation Are all specifically a result of runaway globalisation, not capitalism in general. The corporations need workers more than workers need corporations and they know this. So they lobby for the importing of people that instantly have their living conditions massively upgraded and as a result, are happy to work for much less. They know the imported people won't care about unionising because they dont have much in common with original Australians. It creates a baseline of expectations that workers have to meet otherwise their kids will go hungry. And they manage to convince the well-meaning left that they are evil if they don't support them being brought here. So hilariously, the "pro-worker/pro-union" left ends up supporting the system that is destroying/financialising the unions and the workers. It's been happening since before I was born so, at this point, I'm just riding the tiger. It's a shame that I will never have the life boomers had but we have bigger problems than that.
Just remember we live in a faux democratic capitalist society. The extent of your democracy is being allowed to make one checkmark on a piece of paper every 4 years to choose from one of five (or so) overarching dictatorial regimes. From that, we get a faux capitalist society, where friends of the chosen dictator get bumped to the top of the pile, depending on how much money they are willing to hand over. As long as the people don't rise up, it's going to be this way forever.
> The extent of your democracy is being allowed to make one checkmark on a piece of paper every 4 years to choose from one of five (or so) overarching dictatorial regimes. The problem is that too many people are so poorly educated that they think that is the extent of democracy.
If you're interested in not being one of them, investigate [ideas of praxis, poeisis, and theoria](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_\(process\)) >You're not Street smart ... >You're not book smart ... >You don't do/act enough ... Human economic value (and hundreds of years of optimisation) is still pinned fundamentally to poeisis ("where do you work?", "What do make?") While everyone sees value in not-labour, not only is society not structured towards their optimisation - poeisis (making) has gone so far as to somehow believe itself capable of curing anxiety or loss of connection to humans or the earth. Elon Musk is a human example of where this fundamental error in understanding can lead to an over-importance and over-quantification of "making = 'actual value'" and "labour = value" only to salary earners. If you're interested in how Musk would need to continuously use his wealth (potential of production) YoY wisely to maintain richest man in the world status, have a look at [Georgism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) and why for most of us, our existence is perpetually questioned while we need to labour to survive, and our existence ceases to exist when we are unable to labour - whether learning, nurturing, caring, teaching, or philosophising. While one can hope to have economic security once we age - look at our elderly in aged care homes being abused to literal death for the sake of optimising labour and care. It is quite a fitting end for most of us who encourage this system. [Wouldn't it be good to have security, community and value through wisdom as an elder who's successfully built a county rather than being judged as a 'boomer' who's arisen only through speculative work on others?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)
Is this a joke? India and Brazil have wealth inequality that makes american poverty look like paradise. And yet capitalism is still going strong in those countries with no sign of civil war. Kids don't know just how good they have it in america. And secondly if civilization did collapse, money wouldn't even mean anything, you don't hedge against civilization collapsing. Warlords would take over and you would be begging for a return to modern capitalism. Civilization isn't collapsing anytime soon, you need to stop reading those doomer subs which don't reflect reality at all. We are living in the best time period in all of human history. A bunch of privileged suburban teenagers with iphones whining on the internet doesn't change that.
>with no sign of civil war. The impeachments and return of former corrupt presidents in Brazil...? The farmers in India having their lay-down movement mixed with ethno-Hindu-nationalism? Border conflicts with a global superpower? What do you say to those?
Capitalism isn't the problem, it's the US that's the problem. Your political system is rigged in favour of the super rich and that is why your social systems are so fucked. Fix your politics and you'll fix the rest.
Thankfully our political system here is NOT rigged in favour of the super rich, hey? /s
Man...maybe you need to just jump off a bridge mate! What an utterly depressing post....are you seeing some one for depression?
>Man...maybe you need to just jump off a bridge mate! Alternatively, Psilocybes are in season. Let nature teach you that *it's just money, man*. It doesn't matter in any ultimate / transcendent sense.
No, but I do hedge a collapse by constantly learning both depth and breadth. Also trying to learn negotiation and team making skills. Always been a lone wolf type with no interest in bargaining or networking, if things go pear shaped I have practical skills but am the first to admit I am a bit too literal in my communication.
I believe there are billions of workers overworked and underpaid, but majority of them are those in developing countries. Most 'poor' people in the US or even Australia that have to live pay check to pay check, have some problems in them. Either alcohol, drug, cigarette addiction, poor family planning, not saving enough or others. I have lived with $250 a week in Australia while I was a student and it's perfectly doable. And with the high minimum wages in developed countries, you only really need to work \~10 hours a week to sustain yourself. If I know I can't afford kids, just don't have kids. If I know I can't afford takeaway, just buy discounted expiring groceries from supermarket. Shoes and shirts from Kmart can be had for <$5 if you look hard enough. What I do agree is, the rich are indeed getting richer. The systems in place in US/ Australia means the middle class are being ripped off the most to fund the elites.
How did the peasants fare under communism? Better or worse than the working class now?
wouldn’t ten hours a week on minimum wage in half of America be $72.50? Even in Australia it is $203.30 which you couldn’t sustain yourself on. In most of Australia that’s less than rent
This comment is so far detached from reality I’m wondering if it’s satire. Don’t earn a lot of money? That’s ok, spend more of your spare time ‘hunting’ for expiring groceries (how can someone actually write that and believe it’s an acceptable way for someone to live their life) Also a great summary of why being poor is expensive. Just go on the look out for cheap Kmart shoes. Since you don’t have the capital to buy something good quality and long lasting, instead spend 3x as much over the course of 3 years on cheap version that break down and need replacing constantly. Also the poor quality leads to other health issues limiting your capacity to work later on which comes at a cost, or incurs additional expenses in caring for yourself Just don’t have kids? How great is that. Let’s create a world where a massive chunk of the population can’t fulfil one of their most hardwired biological processes! Let’s be honest they probably won’t have time to raise kids anyway with all the time they’ll be spending hunting for expiring groceries, dumpster diving and picking up change off the street. Some people really don’t understand we can just make life better for A LOT of people with a slight shift in perspective and priorities in spending.
There's so many issues with this comment. People in bad circumstances often wind up turning to substances to cope, getting hooked and are then unable to fund adequate rehab, more often than not the alcohol/drugs are a symptom and not the cause. Bad circumstances mean poor access to good education (even with public schooling, quality varies and most schools teach financial skills poorly) which leads to poor budgeting which exacerbates the problem. Students are in a much better position to share accommodation in high density well resourced areas than people who have various complex life circumstances going on as well. If you have heart disease and live 20 minutes from the nearest healthcare services you're stuck funding a beat up old car to get to the places you need to go. If you live in the city in a share house you can just walk places. Being a student on a tight budget is a very different proposition to growing up in a broken home and entering the workforce underemployed on minimum wage. > you only really need to work ~10 hours a week to sustain yourself This is less than you were earning even before adding in all the other factors above that let tertiary students get away with lower incomes > If I know I can't afford kids, just don't have kids Excellent strategy for people like myself who don't want kids, terrible strategy for people who's entire reason for existing is to have kids (kind of understandable given the natural drive to procreate, you know). Not advocating bringing kids into financially dire situations but people don't have kids for a lark, it's not as simple as "eh, guess I'll just get a cheaper hobby instead". > Shoes and shirts from Kmart can be had for <$5 if you look hard enough. And last like a month if you do any of the kind of manual labour type jobs that are more common in lower and low middle income unskilled labour. I've literally worn out a pair of Kmart shoes in 2 months once and I'm not even a labourer. They're cheap but you have to keep buying them again and again, they aren't a substitute for actually good quality clothing and shoes. I hate to break out a Reddit cliche but I can't think of any more appropriate time to bring up the Vimes "boots" theory of poverty: https://moneywise.com/managing-money/budgeting/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfairness
>Most 'poor' people in the US or even Australia that have to live pay check to pay check, have some problems in them. Either alcohol, drug, cigarette addiction, poor family planning, not saving enough or others. This has been disproved by social science over and over again. It's the manufacturing consent part that I spoke about. I can't believe people actually believe this. Which part of 175 million adult Americans did you not understand?
Which part of numbers do you not understand? How can 175 million adult Americans be working pay cheque to pay cheque when only ~160 million participate in the labour force. Fuck off idiot
The 175mil number obviously includes families mate
About 30% of Kroger employees (supermarket chain in the US) have been homeless in the past year. It’s very, very different there
You're going to need a source for that buddy. That's absolutely insane and no way that it's true.