That’s where we differ.
For a example, a collapse of the financial system would have meant loss of trillions of dollars in wealth, not just for the top 1% but for all of us (pensions plans, money markets, etc…). Those in the developing world would suffer even more.
Lives would be upended.
[/quote]
The financial system is not real. It’s layers of abstractions that dictate and require a certain behavior. If the whole thing spontaneously combusted it would not mean a damn thing to the natural order of things( you know like water and air quality, energy supplies, the ability to move things around with our applied scientific knowledge called technology). You know the things that are empirically tested and quantifiable. The financial system is only in our heads and thus, if it collapsed, does not mean anything unless we choose to act in a detrimental manner.
[quote=briansd1]
You seem pretty rational. So if you are that pessimistic about the world, then why bring a new human in the world?
[/quote]
I’m not pessimistic about the world. It’s this 18th century social organization devised by pre-science enlightenment philosophers and based on abstractions that we are running that I am pessimistic about. It’s past its shelf-life and starting to stink.
Economics, is essentially politics wrapped in complex math to give it the veneer of scientific legitimacy. Economists and politicians are essentially the same thing: Professional sophists, excuse-makers, propagators and scape goats for the status-quo. That use post hoc rationalizations for everything. This happened before that happened, and thus assume, that it must have caused it. Correlation is also called “magical thinking” for the obvious reasons.
With never-ending tautological debates about the interaction between the, inseparable, man-made ” state” and the man-made “market”.
