• Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Most billionaires aren’t billionaires in cash. If the market crashes, so do they. Now they might be reduced to “only” a hundred million or so but that can be catastrophic when your personal finances depend on billions in stock backing up a series of long term rotating loans.

    They wanted to use the market to exploit the people. But that makes them vulnerable in a way rich people didn’t used to be vulnerable.

    • Gerula@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Yeah, but that “catastrophe” you and I won’t see it. We would have died already out of hunger or disease. You cannot survive only on hate itself.

      Edit: typo

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Eh, when food gets scarce there’s a few ways things can go. Usually the people in charge try to stop those kind of extreme events by handing out food. It’s when there’s a dust bowl at the same time that things get nasty.

        • Gerula@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Yeah, go ahead and think you can live on handouts from the rich and powerful, whose economy you’re trying to wreck.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            That’s uhh not how real life works. It ain’t a story where morality (yours or mine) matters. Hungry humans get very desperate and has been the cause of more than one period of extreme violence. That’s why people get fed when governments can do it. Not because of any sense of charity.

            • Gerula@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              In a wrecked economy the government can’t do it. Because the government is not a magical entity. Then what?

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                The government is more real than the economy. It’s made of actual people doing actual things. In a total economic collapse but with a good food supply government ration stamps become the new form of pay. Again. This has happened before. They can’t wave a magic wand but they can physically work together in their pre-existing hierarchy.

                • Gerula@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  You have no ideea what are you talking about!

                  A good food supply means a working economy, for gods sake!

                  You need seeds, water for irrigation, fertilizers, tractors, various attachments to them, trucks, fuel, silos, for storin, dedicated plants and educated people to build and maintain everything. And I haven’t reached animal husbandry or food processing!

                  Or you would argue that we all do subsistence agriculture because then I have a very bad news for you. Where to many for ineficient low yield agriculture and even if this wasn’t a problem,many, like you, don’t know how to do it.

                  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                    10 months ago

                    Well no because subsistence farming is the exact opposite of government distribution.

                    You are aware that none of that stuff magically disappears right? It might disappear from an accounts book but it still physically exists. I really don’t know how else to put this to you but the labor, equipment, and human experience don’t just poof when the economy crashes. It’s all still there waiting to be used. If it wasn’t then we’d have died out a long time ago. The economy is an ephemeral concept thought up by humans. The stock market doesn’t make the grain grow.