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SamUK96 | 7 years ago

What this is about is the increasing financialisation of the world's economy, in other worsds, consumers don't buy a "fridge" and own a fridge and have dominion over it (classical unfinancialised markets), they instead subscribe to a service that cools their food. This on HN and in other wealthy techno-cratic circles is more-often known as "$something-as-a-service" (or just "XaaS").

It's a trend that is in my honest opinion one of the more increasingly troublesome and negative aspects of modern human civilisation. Xaas has a nasty side-effect of concentrating wealth and power to fewer and fewer individuals, it creates a much deeper power structure, since one finances another who finances another who...and so on, and the more you financialise the more you can financialise - an unstable equilibrium, or "positive feedback loop". With classical unfinancialised markets, it is a more Slack(the app)-like flat structure, where products are exchanged and ownership is transfered. Everyone becomes an owner. Power, wealth, and resources diffuse similar to that of the heat equation.

We can see this nasty effect in the housing markets, for example. The current situation where the law and society in general allows a growing number of ownership-hoarders who buy up many houses in an area and lets them out to their fellow underlings is a rather dangerous and volatile setup, and historically does not end well for anyone, but especially those up top.

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