Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

oh i found his posts, dn SA. It wasn't as bad I remember.

_how about if i think the entire underpinnings of the american economic structure are intentionally racist classist and unethical by their very nature? _

after much thought and puzzling over how to personally disentangle myself from the global capitalist economic structure, I came to the conclusion that there were no escape hatches by which I could make myself no longer complicit in its inherent classism and racism. I'd very much appreciate any hints regarding a reasonable way out that is entirely within my own sphere of choice. I have never found one.

NOT COOL

Suicide?
― Boring, Maryland, Thursday, August 20, 2020 1:44 PM

Banned, insta- and perma-.

ty

Boring, you obviously haven't read up on the ILE or 77 Board depression threads, where multiple ilxors describe their long, exhausting struggle with suicidal ideation. Not a joking matter here or elsewhere.

i laughed actually -- i know for some folks it's super sensitive and triggering -- and for me, it is both, but c'mon, really? permaban? that's way too harsh

it seems so inefficient (wrt "having time to do things you like") to have to invest individually for retirement with these "index funds" when you could just have a state apparatus do it for you

which state apparatus? The ideological one or the repressive one? Honestly, the "buy index funds, have shares reinvest, take RMD's when you retire" isn't that far off from having a government pension which is managed by a responsible fund manager.

also - yo, flopson -- are you familiar with this Roger Lowenstein book about the beginnings and history of the Federal Reserve Bank?

And not to be all Captain-Save-An-Investment-Banker -- but these state apparatuses are notoriously bloated in terms of management costs and inefficiency and these costs are retained by the apparatus and not distributed to the investors, er, citizens ... it's kinda like, pick your poison: oligarchs or corrupt politicians and bureaucrats

after much thought and puzzling over how to personally disentangle myself from the global capitalist economic structure, I came to the conclusion that there were no escape hatches by which I could make myself no longer complicit in its inherent classism and racism. I'd very much appreciate any hints regarding a reasonable way out that is entirely within my own sphere of choice. I have never found one.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Thursday, August 20, 2020 12:57 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

It seems to me that, if one can afford it, some enterprise that provides rent-to-own housing to disenfranchised people is one way to go about this (nb, I absolutely cannot afford to do that).

just putting this out there again in case it got lost in the shuffle:

I'm suggesting there's other ways to work the system that are less nakedly toxic than investing in the stock market based solely on greatest ROI

some enterprise that provides rent-to-own housing to disenfranchised people is one way to go about this (nb, I absolutely cannot afford to do that).

Basically it sounds like what you are describing could totally work and not necessarily require every investor to put in a lot of money -- it would be the equivalent of real estate investment company (either trust or partnership) that people could buy shares in, but the enterprise would focus on stable affordable housing for disenfranchised people. This is kind of along the lines of what I was talking about earlier ... maybe I'm misreading idk

And not to be all Captain-Save-An-Investment-Banker -- but these state apparatuses are notoriously bloated in terms of management costs and inefficiency and these costs are retained by the apparatus and not distributed to the investors, er, citizens ... it's kinda like, pick your poison: oligarchs or corrupt politicians and bureaucrats

― sarahell, Thursday, 20 August 2020 19:20 (thirty-eight minutes ago) link

Are they? I don't know that generally to be true -- source?

a source for the inefficiency and bloated costs in government agencies that manage money and benefits? ... Dude, the IRS sent thousands of stimulus payments to dead people!

You know there are other countries that are better run than the US, right?

yeah but I don't live in one!

Like I know you are skeptical of government involvement because US government at all levels is incompetent and corrupt, but it honestly doesn’t have to be that way!

it's like me telling someone who lives in Chicago -- You know there are cities with nice weather for most of the year, right?

We don’t vote on the weather

Like I know you are skeptical of government involvement because US government at all levels is incompetent and corrupt, but it honestly doesn’t have to be that way!

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, August 20, 2020 1:09 PM (three minutes ago)

I don't entirely disagree with you.

Basically it sounds like what you are describing could totally work and not necessarily require every investor to put in a lot of money -- it would be the equivalent of real estate investment company (either trust or partnership) that people could buy shares in, but the enterprise would focus on stable affordable housing for disenfranchised people. This is kind of along the lines of what I was talking about earlier ... maybe I'm misreading idk

― sarahell, Thursday, August 20, 2020 2:57 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yay community land trusts!

yay someone else who knows about and says yay community land trusts!

i really want to start one/participate in one once we are in a position to do that

Haha - I was wondering if my posts would come up as the whole "how is investing in stocks ethical?" debate happened again. One reason I don't post more is I feel pretty inarticulate in the internet message board format and it is cringe-inducing to read my old posts.

Very happy to see community land trusts come up. My spouse (the one wanting me to play the stocks game because her dad and brother-in-law are both super into it), works for a community land trust. Shit is awesome. I didn't know what they were until recently. Things like that give me hope in the face of all the "that's just the way the system is, pal - you gotta look out for #1".

so talk more about that? how does one invest in a community land trust and what's the return?

SA, i think I confused some of chief k.'s sentiments with some of yours. When i went back to find your posts, it wasn't what I had remembered. also,I don't really think that being good at sports betting or fantasy sports? (this thread is too big for me to go back again to find it) is a good reason to start daytrading. Or because your spouse is seeing her other family members do it. It's work and risk/stress and time. But it's not a terrible thing for both of you to learn together to see if it's something you both would want to do after knowing more of the logistics.

Oh good. Yeah the Chief was coming in blasting some aggro stuff at the same time. I agree about the fantasy football correlation - I don't see it at all. Just something my wife mentioned in passing once. I guess it all seems like predicting numbers to her.

My wife is a freelance development/fundraising consultant and most of her current work is for Atlanta Land Trust. She's only been working there for a couple months (this happened after my round of "are stocks ethical?" posts) but we were both super excited about this place. Doesn't seem to have much info on investing but this is it: https://atlantalandtrust.org/get-involved/i-am-an-investor-or-philanthropist/

(And as some of you might remember from last time, I am personally not really in the financial place to look for somewhere to chuck my money - I was only curious about it from an ethical standpoint.)

xxp there is no "investment" or "return" so to speak, you buy it and remove it from the market so that it cannot be sold iirc? it's been a couple decades since I knew people with one

the house I owned with a friend was set up as a revocable living trust for some of the same reasons, but that's a different beast

ah so it's government sponsored, not private

it could be a private non-profit or gov (there are some city-owned)

i know its lol jacobin but this is p good: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/07/community-land-trusts-clts-problems

there is no "investment" or "return" so to speak, you buy it and remove it from the market so that it cannot be sold iirc?

yeah, in general that's correct. There are certain "land trust adjacent" orgs that will pay interest to investors who put up capital to buy, build, or renovate a property that is or will be part of the land trust ... rather than getting a traditional bank loan. Sometimes traditional lenders won't agree to finance these properties. The main concept is the land trust owns the land beneath the building, so an owner can't sell their home to whomever they want because they don't own it outright. It's a model for long-term/permanent affordable housing with the element of ownership as opposed to the residents all being renters. Though, in practice, there will sometimes be a mix of owner-occupied and tenant-occupied units.

yes, on a smaller scale I've seen a bunch of hippie communes in Oregon use it as a purchase model

tried to read that jacobin article but was def beyond me. can someone break it down for this simpleton?

Funding a CLT’s operations then becomes one of the primary motivators of the organization. And as HUD funding dwindles, securing coveted HOME or Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) awards has become a highly competitive process requiring formulaic objectives, exact budgets, and absurdly regimented financial record-keeping practices.

This is basically describing most professional non-profit orgs -- tbh -- except it's housing instead of education or health care or the arts ... basically the author seems to have a problem with the professionalized structure of the work. This is a common problem for grassroots activists, as well as academics, like the author, who somehow want community work to not require paperwork and regimented record-keeping and the bureaucratic processes and hoops that the author undoubtedly has experienced, considering they did a PhD.

*reads further*

oh okay, they are bringing up the non-profit structure in general and how it often leads to chasing grants and pleasing funders and losing sight of "the mission" and "the community" ... again, maybe it's because I've worked in different kinds of non-profits that I was hoping to see something about how land trusts differ from arts institutions or schools in terms of how this structure makes them being problematic. ... more specific details ... but this generally reads like a critique of the common issues re non-profit institutions with land trusts as a "case study" ... it's a decent summary of those issues, actually. I have just, read a lot of similar things already on that topic, so that I, personally, in my esoteric nerdy way, am annoyed and disappointed with this article.

* reads further *

omg -- East Bay PREC hahahahah -- that group spent an absurd amount of time "incubating" with "venture capital" to develop a "business plan" ...or something like that (definitely not an example of grassroots DIY oppositional leftists like the Civil Rights workers from the 60s that are the author's ideal) ... EBPREC look realllllllly good on paper / website.

Because these community investment models require complex legal structures and involve ownership of significant assets, some level of professionalism and sound financial practices are still important to making them work

really? whoaaaaaaaaaaaa

Oakland CLT’s vision for acquiring multiple community-financed sites in partnership with a set of mission-aligned local organizations may indeed light the way for other CLTs struggling with the tensions between grant funding and community control.

yeah, that org is pretty legit. ... I don't want to be a hater of this article tbh ... some of their properties are standard residential housing though, but the one I'm familiar with is kinda an artists' live/work building ... both that building and the Hasta Muerte building the link talks about have structural (lol) problems that need to be fixed that are potentially very expensive and are the sort of thing that traditional funding/financing tends to avoid because of risk. The one the article talks about is Unreinforced Masonry which could entail a major seismic retrofit

*reads to the end*
lol of the two orgs the author cites as models, one is the org they work with.

It's actually a decent article tbh. Sorry.

i mean i DID say "lol jacobin" didnt i

tried to read that jacobin article but was def beyond me. can someone break it down for this simpleton?

The original model for the community land trust were entities set up during the 1960s by Civil Rights workers to make sure that black southerners could legally own and maintain property. These entities gave the black people relative autonomy in terms of how they used the land and how they organized themselves. This was good.

Then land trusts became a trendy model to combat gentrification in hip cities. They became professionalized non-profit organizations that focused on getting grants from government and rich foundations. These grants have a lot of rules and paperwork and require knowledge of law and accounting. Because of this, these land trusts operate more like businesses and care more about the needs and interests of the entities giving them money than the needs and interests of the poor people who live in the properties they own. This is bad.

Other newer land trusts are doing things somewhat differently to give the residents/users of the land trust properties more autonomy and input into the management/use of the property. One of them is the land trust the author works for. Two others are in Oakland, CA. However running a land trust is challenging because it is a complex model that involves large sums of money, so after all, it does require skilled management and knowledge of law and accounting. But, still, it's really important to actually focus on the people/communities your land trust was set up to serve.

appreciate the effort to explain. i'm rather unfamiliar with both land trusts and non-profit bureacracy

non-profit bureaucracy is not that much different from corporate bureaucracy tbh.

Basically, in practice, a lot of land trusts work like a condo HOA except they also regulate the sales of the property and ensure that the prices remain relatively affordable to the new owner.

I don't think it's just a California thing, but it was interesting that the author talked about CDBG and HOME funds and didn't mention stuff like local bond funds ... which are local/regional grants. The community land trusts I know of (and similar orgs that do development) mostly are getting money from those, and not federal stuff like CDBGs.

High-speed traders are now building shortwave radio stations and applying for broadcast licenses for datacasting their trades into NYC

Admittedly it's technically clever, but gruesome in a "so it's come to this" way.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/gofundme-economy-was-never-going-work/615457/

The answer that virtually every other rich country has figured out: The government should act like a government, like its job is to provide these things. It should replace people’s income when a recession hits, and help businesses struggling through no fault of their own. It should guarantee simple, affordable access to medical care. It should provide child care and public education for families. And it should invest in trains and buses and classrooms. Fighting recessions and building public infrastructure, including care, health, and educational infrastructure—this should not be the work of citizens. When it is, let’s acknowledge that’s a tragedy.

well when you put it like that ...

Elvis, what is the benefit of using shortwave radio instead of the traditional methods high-speed traders use? Does it somehow obscure the trade? Wouldn't the exchange still have a record of the trade?

Speed for high frequency trading presumably. Each hop/router introduces milliseconds. A direct radio link is limited by the speed of light

Ah, thanks.

people have been working on this shortwave concept for trading for awhile now...let's just say there have been a lot of complications along the way.

I guess people don't realize the impact of speeds and feeds in trading. But there has been an arms race going on for a decade or more and the stakes are very, very high.

also fwiw direct radio link is also limited by interference (which is not generally trivial in use cases like this) but I guess that's sort of obvious

there's a great episode of the Michael Lewis podcast (Against The Rules) about this stuff - https://atrpodcast.com/episodes/the-magic-shoebox-s1!33643

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/gofundme-economy-was-never-going-work/615457/

The answer that virtually every other rich country has figured out: The government should act like a government, like its job is to provide these things. It should replace people’s income when a recession hits, and help businesses struggling through no fault of their own. It should guarantee simple, affordable access to medical care. It should provide child care and public education for families. And it should invest in trains and buses and classrooms. Fighting recessions and building public infrastructure, including care, health, and educational infrastructure—this should not be the work of citizens. When it is, let’s acknowledge that’s a tragedy.
well when you put it like that ...

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, August 31, 2020 1:09 AM (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

gofundme is a pathetic replacement for a welfare state. and tbh it’s way worse than charity. so many of the successful gofundmes i see are for hot or well-connected people in a mild financial pickle; the model transparently favors people who are in a favorable high-centrality position in a social network rather than who is in most need

otm