Xiisadaddy comments on The US and EU came to a "deal" where the US will tax EU products at 15%, while the EU agreed to zero on US goods.

[–] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why do you think capitalists in the west, which has been actively de-industrializing for decades, have a materialist view of wealth? So long as the numbers in their bank accounts go up they will be happy. This is exactly the method the CPC has been using to undermine them, and i see no signs of it stopping. The only reason you see any push for domestic manufacturing is because of the national security interests who see it as a defence liability. There is absoultely 0 push back in western society on the rampant financialization of their economies.

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[–] Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Capitalists are not a monolith. Some of them like the donald and crypto bros don't have materialist perspectives on wealth but they are not industrial capitalists. They are finance capitalists and they only deal in theoretical economics never in the physical reality. That is why every move made under this administration has made their situation worse.

There are a good number of capitalists who deal in real things like agriculture and manufacturing and they have no choice but to have a materialist understanding of wealth because they deal with materialist conditions every day. Just because you don't see these people pushing back against financialization doesn't mean they aren't aware of the repercussions and aren't preparing to use the inevitable collapse to their advantage.

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[–] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

I disagree with that analysis. Even manufacturing and agriculture are now owned by financial capitalists a lot of the time. And even when that isn't the case much of the manufacturing that is done is still using the same logic. Take for example an appliance. All of them have more and more bloat added on. Touch screens, software subscriptions, non-optional markups. This basically turns material products into a vehicle for more financialization. If someone owns a refridgerator company, and makes 50 million off of unit sales, 100 million off subscriptions for fridge++, and 250 million from selling ad space on the fridge screens are they really an industrialist at that point? The vast majority of the US GDP comes from extractive financial money moving. Rent seeking, etc. It's entire economy is entirely non-materialist, and is only propped up by the existence of the US Dollar as the global reserve currency, and a military domination of the world.

I mean look at the top US companies.

Google - Mostly made money from advertising/info sales. Has some material products, but they are a vehicle for their software, and subcriptions/ads

Apple - Perhaps one of the more industrial companies. Still makes a significant amount of money from financialization. Markups on products. Features nobody asked for. Software/ad sales. App store fees. etc.

Berkshire Hathaway - About as Financial as they come.

Microsoft - Similar situation to google.

NVIDIA - While they sell material goods they are pivoting hard into AI which is heavily financialized and produces very little of actual value compared to what is invested.

Which of these is likely to be controlled by people who hold an actual materialist understanding of value? Maybe the most likely being Nvidia, or Apple? I doubt even them though.

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[–] Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

We aren't talking about american companies. We are talking about European Capital. The owners of which can surely see that being friends with usa is hurting their profits. Only a fool would doubt that there are some of european capitalists who can see what is right in front of their face and are working to change the situation in their benefit.

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