@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai

opinionated lurker of the intarwebs.

Used to write code, still do. c/c++, java, php, js, c#, gdscript, gnawed on sql, sparql, unix/windows etc etc billions of years ago.

tech, graphics, anything STEM
anything anthropology, history, linguistics
anything blender, gimp (although i scream using it), audacity
prefers not to be run over by cars

I drink Philz.

I do a (non-monetized) video or so a week on yt.

Tyranny and poverty are everywhere a mainstream economics phenomenon.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works
@dlakelan

#mmt

The Monetary Theory of Production is a hoot in Chap 6 (up to 6.3). Why? because it details the interplay of bank interest, securities interest (return). But also wages don’t effect real income of industry in aggregate and interest rates of banks tend to be inflationary. Higher interest incurs inflation

I come away from these sections thinking interest and banking is mental. interest competition is at interferes with aggregate prosperity

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works
@academicchatter

May 30

10 min

The discipline that made academic life Hell. They're pretty good at destroying everything they touch.

https://youtu.be/BCzUU_pbLaM

jerry , to random
@jerry@infosec.exchange avatar

Tick tock ⌛️

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@jerry

Why do I get the impression you wanna GTFOOT?

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works
@ineteconomics

18 min

https://youtu.be/uq39i84l8MU

rbreich , to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

GE Greed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhCfhMJGdrY&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@rbreich

Remember when the pious condemned sins like greed and avarice

ineteconomics , to random
@ineteconomics@mstdn.social avatar

Episode 1 is streaming now, with new episodes every Wednesday!
👉 economicsofchina.org 👈
In this seven-episode series, Professor Yuen Yuen Ang explains how China became the second largest economy in the world. Ang includes often overlooked insights, painting a more comprehensive picture of the realities of China's rise.

video/mp4

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@ineteconomics

@economics-that-works

yay! It worked! Give them a boost!

:ablobcaramelldansen:

rbreich , to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

It's your turn to be a political strategist.

If Trump is found guilty, should Biden emphasize the guilty verdict or focus on abortion and democracy instead?

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@rbreich the latter.

As a convict, his ability to run is ruined. Also, specifically, it’s important to reflect that by focusing on the relevant.

It will also enrage 45.

kenshirriff , to random
@kenshirriff@oldbytes.space avatar

I received a mysterious aerospace computer from the early 1970s, probably for navigation. It is crammed full of flat-pack integrated circuits surrounding a core memory module. Let's take a look inside... 1/17

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@kenshirriff

I would assume the system also had redundant computers (like the shuttle) with a voting system 2 out of 3 wins as failure tolerance. Space craft electronics need to be radiation hardened, which might explain using core memory.

TatianaIlyina , to random
@TatianaIlyina@mas.to avatar

Desirability and feasibility of perpetual economic growth is a matter of academic debate.

As of now degrwoth is not even considered as a climate change mitigation measure in projections of future #climatechange. Instead, they rely on technological innovation and further growth.

Here is cool new paper on the challenges of implementing the concept of #degrowth in models. 👇

Downscaling down under: towards degrowth in integrated assessment models https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09535314.2023.2301443

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@TatianaIlyina

Nature is currently engage in degrowth, busting dams, shuttering entire regions, which remain damaged for decades, drying up transport rivers, heat waves shutting down production.

Climate change is eroding existing productive capacity and it continue to do so with increasing ferocity, both in frequency and intensity. We can scuttle around with out metal and concrete bits, but ecology and green things have the capacity to mitigate both drought and flood. cheap too.

dlakelan , to economics-that-works group
@dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

#economics @economics-that-works

US large bank credit card debt per capita / CPI

We are at an all time high in credit card debt. This is fine?

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

I’ve never seen it as good. High credit card debt can mean people are bullish or that they are struggling. In all cases that debt is a problem if there’s an economic down turn from supply chain issues. Natural disasters may trigger that sort of thing.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

Yeahhh, it’s like that, isn’t it?

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

refresh my memory, I can run it on each file separately (?) to produce a data set?

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

Already there. Need coffee and a danish though.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

1 hr 43 min

Doug and Ritik Goyal comment on Murphy's critique of MMT. It can largely be treated as a podcast; the video is not terribly relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/live/cpOvpzCAC4E?si=aa6lNu6RcqOADLsz

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#SteveKeen #climatechange #economics

"Though I have been interested in ecological economics ever since I read The Limits to Growth (Meadows, Randers, and Meadows 1972), E.F. Schumacher (Schumacher 1973, 1979) and Hermann Daly (Daly 1974) in the early 1970s, and I have been a critic of Neoclassical economics for just as long, I didn't start critiquing the Neoclassical approach to climate change until 2019."

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/capitalism-with-friends-like-these-797

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#climatechange

@dlakelan

Rage bait warning... ;)

Keen quoting neoclassicals.

"An alternative approach, exemplified in Mendelsohn's work, ... Mendelsohn assumes that the observed variation of economic activity with climate over space holds over time as well; and uses climate models to estimate the future effect of climate change. (Tol 2009, p. 32. Emphasis added)

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

"The empirical assumptions that economists specialising in climate change have made are so—to be blunt—stupid, that, even if their mathematical models perfectly captured the actual structure of the global economy precisely (which of course they don't), their forecasts of economic damages from climate change would still be ludicrously low. "

There's good reason why Steve and Lenton hope to organize a post-hoc peer review of that climate work.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

A few comments after reading.

The point of mass production is to make money through volume. This is, or was, taught in to high school students at some point in US history. On the principal of "make hay while the sun shines", you want to minimize costs at max capacity, because, the time to make the most money is when demand is highest and you also want to minimize resource demand during peak production. It minimizes your exposure to supply chain issues.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

This thinking matches dynamics in most economic sectors.

For most economic sectors, 80% of a company's yearly profits are generated in a small window of time, often over a week or few weeks. This is true of retail, think Christmas, and of some professional sectors, think trade shows.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

The US would have lost the war Milton Friedman had been advising FDR, because he would have asserted or even demanded that wartime factories conform to neoclassical assumptions of marginal cost and productivity.

He would have also demanded that generals never plan for major assaults, based on cost. Nazis would never engage in a massive assault. D-Day would have never happened because it wouldn't work economically.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

that may be a reality we have to face.

rbreich , to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

Trump insists on calling Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg "Soros backed" (posting the phrase at least 3x in the last 24 hours).

George Soros did not endorse or contribute to Bragg. By falsely connecting them, Trump is playing into a range of baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , (edited )
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@rbreich It's ironic that the one billionaire targeted by Koch network billionaires just happens to promote open-society and rational economics.

It's despotic fascist billionaires vs one of their economic strata that doesn't conform to their ideological identity.

If people don't know, Soros is Hungarian, escaped Nazis and Stalin's USSR. He also made his money from the understanding that markets are not rational. One can criticize some of the things he's done, but he's not an an-cap.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#economics
#mmt

Deficits DO matter, just not the way textbook economics says.

Because federal debt, the credit it has created, is the money in our bank accounts.

Deficits and debt does matter.

Please disabuse conservatives that MMT doesn't care about deficits.

GottaLaff , to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

Via Kyle Griffin:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Radcliffe Institute: "There are days that I've come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried. … There have been those days. And there are likely to be more." #SCOTUS

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@GottaLaff :blobsad:

davidgerard , to random
@davidgerard@circumstances.run avatar

good news about all the AI shit they're trying to force us to use:

  • runs at a MASSIVE loss
  • doesn't fucking work
  • can't fucking work
  • not going to work next year either

and best of all:

  • the next thing is going to waste even more money and be even more fucking useless
GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @davidgerard

Oh MBS and Ellison, now what tech company acquisition of note did they help finance?

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 Yup.

Funny how that works out, isn't it?

(no, it's not funny!) :ablobcatknitsweats:

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#SteveKeenAndFriends
#SteveKeen

Sat @9am PST

Ann returns!

https://www.youtube.com/live/MNpVQvgzn30

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#mmt #AppliedMMT

18 min

MMT > mainstream theory.

https://youtu.be/IPVkNrRhFPc

rbreich , to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

I can't believe I even have to say this, but it is not normal that the Supreme Court is taking its sweet time to decide if the president can incite an insurrection to overturn an election and maintain power. This should have been decided already. The answer is no!

GhostOnTheHalfShell , (edited )
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@rbreich

I think it’d be funny to have a demonstration, “Insurrection is an assault on the Constitution” or "Defend the Constitution or resign!"

Something like that

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works
@ineteconomics

#INET

3 min

Baby bond. Not quite the same as #ubi, but much like it. Like having a wealthy uncle who writes you into his will.

https://youtu.be/06zw4ik8e34

breadandcircuses , to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

George Monbiot says...

It is simply wrong to define neoliberalism as ‘free-market economics’. It's nothing of the kind. The ‘freedom’ that neoliberals celebrate – which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms – turns out to be freedom for the rich to exploit the rest.

As for ‘the market’, when used in the neoliberal context this term disguises a host of power relations. It becomes a euphemism for the power of money. When ‘the market’ decides, it means those with the money decide.

In reality, it’s about who dominates whom. Neoliberalism is a tool used by the very rich to accumulate more wealth and power.

Neoliberalism is class war.

That's from his new book ⤵️

The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/455534/the-invisible-doctrine-by-hutchison-george-monbiot-and-peter/9780241635902

#Books #Bookstodon #History #Economics #Politics

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@breadandcircuses neoliberalism is a conman’s ask that a people surrender their sovereignty to totalitarian rule by wealth.

The chief con? Milton Friedman

burritojustice , to random
@burritojustice@mastodon.social avatar

ok this seems bad https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/05/what-you-need-to-know-about-record-breaking-heat-in-the-atlantic/

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @burritojustice

Say. Their. Name.

https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/110148122777590567

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

@ineteconomics

catching up a bit on INET stuff. They aren’t currently active here, but their YT channel is an absolute delight.

https://youtu.be/FQ5dLjq9SHY

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

Let’s try to lure @ineteconomics back into active posting! They do great work!

https://youtu.be/-E--1xRydV0

dlakelan , to economics-that-works group
@dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @economics-that-works

Here's a post I made this morning at Gelman's blog explaining why much of what's published by Economists in the media is gaslighting because it fundamentally fails to address the question of interest by failing to form an appropriate dimensionless ratio to answer the question: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/05/17/how-to-think-about-the-effect-of-the-economy-on-political-attitudes-and-behavior/#comment-2372708

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

:ablobcatbongocry:

"I can’t stress this enough, if a mathematical proof shows that logically your measure is unable to provide useful information about a process and you continue to quote it in the newspaper and use it as fundamental to your “science” then your “science” is not a science."

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

An inflationary spiral based on expectations. It is a very different one from a deflationary one.

In the case of supply chain disruption (think floods and drought) it's a supply shock and at best businesses have to scramble to adapt (invest etc) to get around the problem. But hammering COL demand is perverse.

In all cases, messing around with interest rates is largely an exercise in futility.

https://youtu.be/eX4Sh1sq6HU?si=8NUW_83dz4sfUDtE

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#mmt

I have to wonder if jacking interest rates "fixes" inflation in the sense that improved bank balance sheets allow them to more casually extend business operating credit. In short, it's only through business investment that supply constraints are alleviated.

Interest rates cause inflation from those who can raise prices and austerity from those who cannot.

Banks definitely raise prices.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

And given the interplay of credit and debt to income and wealth inequality, interest rates play a central role in its growth.

Prices WRT to manufacturing don't work the ways the mainstream thinks.

https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/112281799226924794

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@gooba42 @economics-that-works

Technically incorrect. Per MMT, banks don't lend from anything.

Lending creates an asset (bank wealth, but not "money") and deposit at the same time. Credit money (the deposit) is created ex-nihil.

A bank may need the Fed to give it reserves to cover the deposit if its value is to be transferred to another bank.

The lending capacity of a bank is governed by its deposit-market-share, its flows and the ability of borrowers to pay

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@gooba42 @economics-that-works

Paying back the loan destroys the money created, but the bank pockets that interest charge.

Ultimately, that credit money comes straight from the Fed and government deficit.

The federal government's deficit is where banks get their money from. Out. Of. Thin. Air.

breadandcircuses , (edited ) to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

For an historical overview of the "Origins of Optimism," I recommend this erudite piece that takes down Steven Pinker, Bill Gates, Ezra Klein, and Gottfried Leibniz, among others...

Consider the techno-optimistic take of New York Times columnist Ezra Klein on the climate crisis. His op-ed headlined ”Your Kids Are Not Doomed” notes that due to climate change the world’s poor will face “vast expanses of suffering” and we rich-worlders “will have looted the future of billions of people to power a present we preferred.”

But for this nice-guy neoliberal progressive, those mountainous miseries can’t outweigh “political realism.” The unassailable logic of “political realism” mandates that only an awesome “vision of more” is viable for NYT-reading elites. In Klein’s green future of abundance, electric cars thrillingly accelerate faster, induction stoves nix indoor pollution, and life just keeps getting better — first and foremost for his elite audience, and only many generations later for the global poor, assuming they survive the tsunami of suffering headed their way.

Klein’s maneuver helps his readers feel good as they materially (and thrillingly) accelerate away from the quagmire the poor are doomed to be caught in. This kind of optimism has the darkest of underbellies, it is but a thin veil over morally-poisonous pessimism.

Klein, like most of our political class, assumes that we citizens won’t ever do what’s right without incentives or personal gains. Even in a global crisis where billions will suffer, viable policies must be “win win” and profitable, or fun and easy for the powerful. Klein asserts that “A climate movement that embraces sacrifice as its answer or even as its temperament might do more harm than good.” The key question is, more harm for whom?

In this neoliberal market-optimist worldview, looting to provide the elite with their treats is just how the world works, extending the centuries-long trend of genocidal violence and plunder under liberal imperialism. This sort of optimism, twinned with justice-twisting “political realism,” sabotages material and moral progress that should prioritize gains for the less-blessed, least powerful, and most vulnerable.

Life in a biosphere-wide crisis can’t be a feel-good festival, a jolly moral picnic for the privileged. The climate and biosphere emergencies warrant a world-war-footing and fitting courage to face the needed hard work and sacrifice.

Yet Klein and company seem to lack the courage and integrity to even accurately inform audiences that multiple international climate authorities have declared rapid cuts in elite consumption to be essential. Climate analyst Chris Shaw has argued that liberalism lacks the conceptual resources to face such challenges: liberals act as if “free market choice is more important than the maintenance of a viable biosphere.”

FULL ESSAY -- https://sublationmedia.com/the-dark-origins-of-optimism-and-its-current-cheerful-evils/

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@breadandcircuses

The shortest form is they are a reaper culture. One that exists to cull, not build.

We’ve seen images of a bright future since Expos became a thing, always built upon a mountain of death.

ChrisMayLA6 , to random
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

So while you & I might think its necessary to speed up the Green Transition & enhance/accelerate measures to reduce emissions, Shell's shareholders disagree.

The firm has just sought & obtained agreement from investors to slow down its measures to mitigate its environmental impact & reduce progress towards its own (already weak) climate targets.

More reason(s) the fossil fuels sector cannot really be central to climate response(s).

We don't have the time to slow down!

#fossilfuels #climate

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

There is a different level of action to be had. Best of all local, but also necessary to drive large scale changes. Even as the KSA tries to push Africa’s economies into the hydrocarbon and car-centric pathway

https://youtu.be/8vle9VryEd0

what we do to effect car-free and address housing crisis nationally effect large scale changes

https://youtu.be/DShceqqNlQo

At core is financing.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

The US housing crisis is the end stage of a mortgage industry engineered to subsidize suburbia. Banks were fashioned into home loan factories via mortgage structure and secondary lending market, which allowed them to flip loans. That financed another engineered change: top down urban planning of suburbia, where those, work and shopping were separated and compartmentalized to foster industrial construction. It allowed the US economy to transition from a war economy.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

It powered the golden era of the US, but it never was sustainable. Moreover that industrial sized finance is now wholly unfit for purpose, of today’s need.

Now “micro” finance is needed to fund urban greening, integrating cities and ecology and ecological restoration, as well as solving housing crisis. We need a wholly new engineered financial system to do so because the existing is not financially viable with that loan structure.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

Absolutely, despite the fact that Women + POC powered war time manufacturing.

The idea that that experience fostered women's and civil rights a generation on is not lost on me.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@IveyJanette @Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

The problem with that is that women are half the workforce.

Imagine what would happen to unemployment and consumer spending if half of it disappeared.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works
@economics

#economics #uspol

May 21

7 min

https://youtu.be/eknE5NjNMQg

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works @economics

Deprogramming cults

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972970805/experts-in-cult-deprogramming-step-in-to-help-believers-in-conspiracy-theories

figstick , to israel group
@figstick@mas.to avatar

They're rounding up the historians now.

https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1790874217828827473?s=48

@histodons @academicchatter @academiccommunity @academicsunite @israel @palestine

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@maggiejk @figstick @histodons @academicchatter @academiccommunity @academicsunite @israel @palestine

Learning that police are often sent to Israel for training closes the circuit on this horror show. I’d take every cop trained that way and send them to a cult deprogrammer.

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