Read "What went wrong with capitalism" by Ruchir Sharma.
A mildly interesting description of the major events in world an US economics in the last 50 years. Might
be a fair summary for anyone who didn't live through it or has a poor memory.
In short he thinks what went wrong was government bailing out failure leading to massive debts and increa
sed inequality.
Governments took over all the things instead of letting capitalism sort them out, he reckons, and wheneve
r a big industry or company fails you just get socialism for the rich and a bail-out from new printed money.
Easy cheap money, constant bail-outs, government intervention, leading to zombie companies racking up every larger debt to exist, billionaires who can't fail due to government support, and a stock market that's up-only bringing a flood of inefficiently-allocated capital.
Is he right? I mean, maybe, sort of. But when an industry really can't be allowed to fail, say water supply and waterway management, allowing private capital to extract maximum resources from it isn't the best method to manage it in the first place. No wonder they need bail-outs. Capitalism fails here because capitalism isn't the right solution here. We need publicly owned national services, not robber barons without
bailouts.
So, you know, half right. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why capitalism fails, but also we shouldn't even be trying to apply capitalism to every single thing in the first place.
#reading #capitalism #economics #RuchirSharma
Landbase, whose GPT-4o-based AI tool automates outreach marketing, raised a $30M Series A co-led by Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures and Picus Capital (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/12/how-
Deep Learning Enhanced Multi-Day Turnover Quantitative Trading Algorithm for Chinese A-Share Market
Yimin Du
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06356 https://
Meter, which sells and maintains packages of custom data center networking equipment, raised $170M led by General Catalyst at a $1B valuation (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/business/dealbook/meter-n…
Industrial Flexibility Investment Under Uncertainty: A Multi-Stage Stochastic Framework Considering Energy and Reserve Market Participation
Amund Norland, Lasse Skare, Ole Jakob Viken, Stian Backe
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08638
So look, if you talk to me about the job threat from the things we currently call “AI,” well…
…if where you’re going with that is “The concentration of wealth is an existential crisis! Establish UBI! 99% marginal tax rate! Capital gains tax! Wealth tax! Abolish billionaires!” then yes, I’m •all• ears. My pitchfork is already sharpened.
But if where you’re going is “Get in on it now while you still can! Buy the AI vendors’ products! Drink radium for that youthful glow!” then…kthanksbye. I am not going to be a vector for your marketing propaganda, no matter how agitated you are.
/end
Replication of Reference-Dependent Preferences and the Risk-Return Trade-Off in the Chinese Market
Penggan Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.20608 https://
An Interpretable Machine Learning Approach in Predicting Inflation Using Payments System Data: A Case Study of Indonesia
Wishnu Badrawani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10369
So look, if you talk to me about the job threat from the things we currently call “AI,” well…
…if where you’re going with that is “The concentration of wealth is an existential crisis! Establish UBI! 99% marginal tax rate! Capital gains tax! Wealth tax! Abolish billionaires!” then yes, I’m •all• ears. My pitchfork is already sharpened.
But if where you’re going is “Get in on it now while you still can! Buy the AI vendors’ products! Drink radium for that youthful glow!” then…kthanksbye. I am not going to be a vector for your marketing propaganda, no matter how agitated you are.
/end
The Stablecoin Discount: Evidence of Tether's U.S. Treasury Bill Market Share in Lowering Yields
Lennart Ante, Aman Saggu, Ingo Fiedler
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12413