Thread by @PnictogenHorses

let's talk about #investment.

#capitalism and capitalists' fortunes are built on this practice. all the free-flowing #business and #finance propaganda, churned out in huge volumes for the edification of persons who've devoted themselves to #money, talks about _investing_.

(1/x)

https://twitter.com/PnictogenHorses/status/1619793722400727041

the great bulk of money made in #capitalism goes only to the ownership class; the toilers below them get pennies. those unable to toil get *less* than nothing—capitalism wants such people to be liquidated, hence @charlesmurray and @EPoe187 cook up rationales for doing so.

(2/x)

ultimately this is *why* #eugenics and "scientific racism" exists at all: #capitalism needs some pseudointellectual justification for marginalizing and liquidating all human beings who are unable or *unwilling* to toil for capitalism. this is WHY @Quillette is well-funded.

(3/x)

if you're *not* a toiler (or outcast) in #capitalism then you're making your money through what the euphemistic #business and #finance propaganda has learned to call "passive income", i.e. money made on the backs of someone else's work.

the capitalist merely *collects*.

(4/x)

#capitalism makes this possible because it separates the ownership and financing of industries completely from the *operation* of the industries. a corporate steel-mill or grocery store, for example, is owned and financed by people who may never even see it personally.

(5/x)

these people regard the steel-mill and the grocery store—and literally every other entity in the capitalist #economy—merely in terms of monetary flow and #investment. they put #money into these things, and they *demand* that more money flows out, with clockwork regularity.

(6/x)

if they *don't* get the expected "return on #investment" (#ROI) on the dot, the capitalists all panic and speculative investors fall away and the #management starts ordering a lot of people to be fired and all that. they make decisions solely on the basis of #money flow.

(7/x)

viewing *all industry* simply as an elaborate machine that magically always outputs more #money than you put into it—the #finance equivalent of a perpetual motion machine—is a form of *abstraction*. it's turning something real (e.g. the factory) into something virtual.

(8/x)

this is *why* the #computer / #programming / #STEM Lord set, the @pmarca / @ID_AA_Carmack / @fchollet set (not to mention @peterthiel and @elonmusk), are all completely in thrall to #capitalism: they're already used to thinking in terms of abstractions and unrealities.

(9/x)

the corporate #management and #executive people, already almost completely dissociated from the actual operations and working conditions of the industries they run (because they think of everything as mere money flow), find #programming abstractions to be *congenial*.

(10/x)

the #computer simulation gives the illusion of reality to their abstractions about #money and #industry, and there's plenty of starry-eyed nerds around (especially in the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi set) who already are used to pretending that computer simulations are reality.

(11/x)

the superficial and avaricious #computerscience / #programming culture that's flourished in the last couple of decades has inflamed the sicknesses of #capitalism to the point of lethality: #business owners now think that computers are magic, universal problem-solvers.

(12/x)

(needless to say, the @JeffDean / @fchollet #AI crowd has aggravated the disaster.)

but let's get back to the #investment itself, which is a transaction that has *nothing to do* with the average worker. even in high #technology these days, few workers are "vested".

(13/x)

#investment is really a transaction between two persons: someone who owns a business, and someone who hopes to get rich off that business without having any connection to it other than #investing. the #investor wants a magical thing: a pile of money that always grows.

(14/x)

and the *business owner* wants something equally facile: they want to be able to write themselves massive paychecks straight from the flow of venture capital into their bank accounts. the more #investment flows in, the bigger the #executive paychecks can get.

(15/x)

in other words, most #investment money flows straight into rich owners' pockets, through various direct and indirect ways. the #investor doesn't care about whether their investment money truly goes towards operating the business—they don't even care how the business runs.

(16/x)

the #investor sees the success of a #business merely in terms of whether they get money back from it—whether they have a good #ROI. they're not connected to the business itself in any way; they don't even need to know the least thing about it, other than its cash flow.

(17/x)

and yet it's the decisions of these *completely detached and ignorant people*, the #investment crowd who lives only for the collection of "passive income" that they never worked for, that end up controlling #industry and #innovation in #capitalism. it's unhinged.

(18/x)

the people who've made big heaps from this purely *passive* activity of raking in money from businesses they don't know the tiniest thing about—@pmarca, @saylor, @jason, @BillyM2k, even @elonmusk—are shallow, superficial, *stupid* men—and they control the #economy.

~Mona Drafter

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