A Wrong-popping Bubble and Flower People
I have a recurring nightmare: the bubble introduced by large language models will reach its end-of-life in the near future and instead of popping in an expected form the assets generated by capital expenditures—these now-useless data centres among other things—will be absorbed erroneously and without question by the U.S. government using taxpayer dollars, our loss their gain.
It will only weaken the stock market in a surprisingly small way at first to a tremendous rally but then after the government attempts to absorb the implosion (damaging the dollar permanently) the companies involved will then take a massive hit anyways, annihilating markets, destroying savings and evaporating jobs. Dual totalling damage. It is my great fear as already faltering American liberalism will fully transform to fascism through this catalytic event.
In this way our conglomerates that control society will be temporarily saved at the expense of our government’s (already weak and declining) responsibility to its citizens and by abusing the position globally of the United State’s dollar, and in the end those same companies will fail anyways in a manner that inexplicably cements their control over the U.S. economy—as all small and medium-sized businesses take an insurmountable (for their understandably small capital reserves and collapse in demand that will suppress revenues for many quarters) brunt of the force.
What is a Bubble
“A financial bubble is an economic cycle characterized by rapidly increasing prices of an asset to a point that is unsustainable, causing the asset to burst or contract in value. Financial bubbles follow five stages: displacement, boom, euphoria, profit taking and bust.” – Gartner Financial Dictionary
That is 3 to 8 trillion dollars that could’ve been spent on anything else if this isn’t stopped.
What is a Pop
The bust stage of the bubble. A financial bubble popping is typically characterised by the security (asset, etc) in question dropping in value significantly, depending on the size of the bubble the radius of damage changes, sometimes affecting other industries, labour, anything in the day-to-day of life you can imagine.
Every dollar wasted on this false venture somehow generates enough frenzy for another three dollars to be put into it with no return, an ouroboros, it is simply eating its own tail.
Why the Large Language Model (LLM) is a Bubble
The large language model is an old invention given new life in the past few years. It is a type of machine-learning model that uses something called transformers—itself a statistics and linear algebra comprised neural network that can be trained to predict what the next word in a sequence should be—to create the most ‘correct’ token (can be a word, character etc) according to its training.
Due to expert hucksters who have managed to use capitalism’s natural ability create false value when the real is not enough they’ve convinced the club of delusionoid technologists who themselves have deceived their way to the top that their ‘AI’ tools have the golden stuff to finally reduce labour to the rightful place it belongs, in the dirt, reducing most companies’ largest expense. There is no real return, nothing of value will be generated from this, that is why this is a bubble.
Like a doctor examining obvious cancer nodules this CT scan of the USA is riddled by parasitical centers that create nothing but consume everything. Electricity, short supply; fresh water, drained; effort, wasted; capital, spent, all this to output heat pollution and noise.
Capitalists have found a way to automate wasting energy and capital.
But, demand for goods and services?
The demand for many goods can come from the not-yet declassed middle-class left alive abroad, international bourgeoisie, and monopolisation. The United States can be reduced to a true economic colony for international capital. You won’t stop shopping for groceries, paying rent, paying the ever-increasing electricity costs, water, healthcare, credit cards, or the hydra of expenses that seem to multiply as time goes on.
What to Do (real)
Simply survive for now. Organise among friends and people you care about to try and provide mutual aid to one another as it’s likely many of those same people won’t have a job when this whole debacle topples over.
Think about who you might want to roommate with—if you haven't done so already—if that time comes, living on your own will certainly become a luxury. Rooming with someone is preferable to car-bound homelessness and infinitely preferable to the darkest pit: carless transient tented-homelessness, a place many people do not return from intact or at all.
Get acquainted with the black market when it begins to develop more as things worsen.
What to Do (real real)
If a vanguard party existed to lead the working class out of this mess, organised and righteous we would be able to take steps now to insulate the working class from the worst harm that will undoubtedly be perpetrated by landlords and business owners of all sizes as the pain arrives.
Organising a general strike using that vanguard party and direct action to prevent capital from being misallocated (stopping the bubble from growing limiting the splash-zone of the burst) to give the proletarians some breathing room to further consolidate power would also be the order of the day.
Thoughts on the Flower People
There’s promise in the Democratic Socialists to organise people or become a vanguard in some other form, but they are seemingly uninterested in declaring themselves a real party despite newfound popularity since Bernie and instead find comfort in suckling at the teat of liberalism, using the Democrat's party designation because power is power, any strength is good strength to change decimal points on taxation bills...
In reality usurping Democrats at every turn and differentiating from them at the local level will provide a greater base that will eventually transform them into a real political force outside the current paradigm; it’ll also stymie the loss of people to fascistic false promises in Trumpism. It’s unclear if this ‘laying low’ and un-partied is a strategy to prevent the feds from breaking the organisation up because if so it will happen regardless when SocDems/DemSocs gain enough power or liberalism gets weak enough. It’s easier to organise above-ground so that when you must go under you have a cohesive structure as I suspect only when driven completely underground left elements of the United States will get the gumption to coalesce into a few scattered communistic and anarchistic groups.
There is also an overestimation in left circles of the ability of the internet and social media to do the heavy lifting of creating a better future. The future is understanding the technologies that help hide activity from the powers that be while finding a path away from the now conglomerised internet, not towards it.
The Bolsheviks in the waning years of the 1910s right up until October of 1917 were very popular in the factories and in every little city and town across the (yearlong) Russian Republican but was never at the center of what people today would characterise as ‘true power’ by being at the helm of the impotent Provisional Council led by Kerensky. True power comes from the masses, they can overcome any limp parliament in the blink of an eye; taking the votes too as they come is important but it’s important to recognise the limitations of liberal government, legislation, law. A parallel communistic government needs to grow and prepare as the opposing one (of liberal or whatever composition) wanes.
A widely discussed issue is fetishising elections. Many left-leaning people in the West cannot think past it partly due to not wanting to give up on any amount of material comfort. It’s so simple, safe, and easy to only work within the system. Elect those who show any kind of promise to buck the trend of complete capitulation to the bourgeoisie and when naturally they’re unable to solve the intractable problem of dismantling the master’s house with the master’s tools retreat into comforting self-pity at home on your pleasant couch, scrolling mindlessly surrounded by all your favourite possessions. No one wants flashbangs through the window and criminal charges, but the threshold for those assaults on the opposition lower every passing day. Hopefully the last lights of liberalism in the left dies sometime soon. Time marches on.
Tags: USA, Politics, Technology
