what do y’all think of this? It makes some good points and Micheal Hudson is probably not right, but I have one criticism to make. One of his arguments that the richest people are still industrial capitalists (because they started businesses that do stuff), not finance capitalists, but as Cory Doctorow points out, those companies are basically just rentiers at this point. Amazon makes most of its money hosting other businesses on their site, “Meta” makes most of its money hosting being a middleman connecting advertisers and unpaid content creators poorly. Thus, it seems at least the emperial core has increased rentierism. This doesn’t mean it’s not built on peripheral industry and that reindustrializing the west would benefit average people, but it does seem to be good news about the decline of empire. Other thoughts?

  • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    because they started businesses that do stuff

    Well that is fundamentally wrong on its face. The people that own the highest valued companies didn’t make shit. They bought or inherited it. (Obvious example being Elon Musk).

    As for criticizing rentiers without any broader examination of the system the produces and enables rentiers is just trying to reapply Adam Smith to modern economics.

    I’m not very smart but this all sounds very stupid.