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Physical production? I don't see why this is a problem if service production rises to compensate (except for e.g. national security reasons which has nothing to do with whether some service jobs are 'fake' or not). Yes the US runs a BoT deficit but the durables deficit is like an order of magnitude bigger than the overall deficit - that is to say service exports wouldn't have to rise that much to eliminate the deficit, which would certainly be easier than trying only to boost physical goods exports in which the US obviously has far less comparative advantage, especially in mass production.
How could this even be true in an inter-country sense? If production is too low, what sustains consumption? Foreign investments in American instruments? But surely these prove that investors are satisfied in the likelihood that future American production, on which they are trading, will be able to make good their investment? Service exports would be the other candidate, but then these, if they are competitive on the open world market, clearly 'deserve' their price.
I don't really understand tbh, and I don't mean that in a rhetorical sense. How do you perceive the supposed 'instability' of the US position unravelling?
A lot of Americans have completely made-up jobs, working in DEI or consulting or HR, compliance (with bizarre laws), educating people with ridiculous nonsense... it's not productive activity. Some of those jobs are useful but much are not.
They're basically sucking wealth away from productive enterprises since they consume wealth but do not produce wealth. The US runs huge trade deficits to support a high level of prosperity, relying on the social construct of 'the US is the greatest country in the world, with the strongest military and the safest currency' so that people maintain confidence in the US dollar.
See this doesn't necessarily any problem with trade as such, as this is an internal dynamic - if regulation produces non-productive workers who piggyback off productive workers in 'real' sectors, it's just shuffling around the fruits of production among Americans.
If this is the explanation for how the US sustains non-productive work, how come other Western economies have observed a similar turn toward services?
I meant to say sucking wealth away from productive enterprises around the world. Suppose Zhang in Chongqing makes an iphone that goes to a product manager who doesn't do any useful work, just sits around in meetings all day. This is an unstable dynamic in my book. It would be unstable even within a country if you have a class of elites who laze around all day and a class of workers who make goods for them. When Onlyfans whores delight in their paid-off houses it incites a lot of resentment amongst people with shit jobs. Elites are supposed to lead wisely, that's why they're supposed to get goods from the workers.
Other Western countries are poorer than the US. Not everyone is cut out for productive work, there are internal status games and politics... But the US is unusually rich and has a high trade deficit, the US is the biggest offender. The rest of the West (with some exceptions, though German industry seems to be declining fast) is relying on prestige, not production. Degree mill universities, immigration ponzi schemes, selling enterprises overseas. Selling assets to pay for consumption is bad, profits and capabilities head overseas.
Ah I see. If this were true though the system would surely have collapsed long ago. In order that an American can buy that phone, the people of Chongqing must be willing to either buy American production (or buy the production of a country which in turn buys the production of America), or invest in America securities, assets etc. But since these are essentially a claim on future American productive capacity, if America didn't have much there would already have been a total crisis of confidence.
In any case the total American BoT deficit is not that large all things considered, about $120 billion - US imports from China are near $500 billion. This would seem to imply that the net size of the American 'fake' economy in relation to foreign countries is $120 billion at the most, because the rest of total imports beyond that figure are directly compensated for by the sale of American production overseas. Given that the size of the US economy is $22.7 trillion, this seems a fairly trivial problem. Again, I'm not necessarily arguing that the total fake economy in the US isn't larger than $120 billion if US productive workers are subsidising the non-productive industries, but this doesn't matter in relation to trade.
This seems like a particularly bad example because they clearly create a product which people are willing to pay for. Their job is no more 'fake' than an independent cobbler or carpenter just because the good they sell isn't durable - indeed the cobblers and carpenters are clearly willing to exchange their shoes and tables for subscriptions. The case of product managers, HR is different but an Onlyfans model seems analogous to other makers of frivolities insofar as their existence is a symptom of prosperity as we have enough productive capacity that people are willing to trade it away for non-essentials. But this isn't 'fake' any more than LVMH is a purely 'fake' company. Value has no meaning except what people are prepared to exchange on an open market.
Hell, if you know how to wrangle certain command-line apps, you can also grab stuff from OF and the like and save it to your hard drive, greatly increasing the durability of said goods.
What, can you normally not save stuff from only fans?
They don't make it easy, that's for sure. On top of that, if you have a lot to grab, it's better to use a bulk downloader/scraper program.
I just looked at coomer.su to see what I've been missing, and apparently... Not much.
What's the deal? Most of these girls are like 7/10, are they just nailing the parasocial relationship to nail simp whales?
Like, top of the popular page is belle Daphne or whatever talking about speed running jigsaw puzzles in between bathtub selfies, which seems like irresistible autist-bait.
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The greatest American asset is being considered the richest and strongest country. You buy US bonds because they're safe and they're safe because people buy them in times of trouble... It's prestige that was once based on a rock-solid base of production but is now a floating castle in the air. Likewise you buy property to a large extent because it'll appreciate and it's appreciating because people buy it. Until it doesn't and the bottom falls out of the market.
No, it is fake and less valuable. People want all kinds of things, many of which they shouldn't have. Many people are perfectly willing to trade in their wealth, health and dignity for fentanyl. But this isn't a proper kind of economic activity, that's why most places ban it. There are many improper economic activities between mutually agreeing parties that most consider to be bad: insider trading, corruption, debt-slavery contracts, child labour...
Markets are not the sole arbiters of value, they're useful tools in some contexts. They need to be regulated to prevent externalities and incentivized to target the right areas. Of course much of the regulation that goes on is stupidly implemented to achieve bad ends. Nevertheless, there is more to value than prices. There's a hierarchy with material production at the top. Louis Vuitton does not have any military value. Steel, food, electronics, transport or AI are more important to an economy. When the chips are down, they're just really expensive handbags. Real value is independent from branding, real value is derived from concrete capabilities.
In mild fairness, there are like a few luxury brands that have had crossover with military procurement in WWII (e.g. Hugo Boss), though some did deal in metallic products to begin with (Rolls-Royce).
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