Ya I kinda winced after writing it. I tend to reason about things divergently and tie together different concepts, but economics has a way of turning into epicycles the more deeply it's analyzed. Most of the time it seems like people almost reach a common understanding, or agree to disagree, then incorporate what they've learned into their mental model for the next debate. It evolves.

What triggers me about this stuff is power imbalance. After I got out of school, I moved furniture for 3 years in the early 2000s around the time of the Dot Bomb, 9/11 and wars in the Middle East. I worked harder physically than some people do over a lifetime. But I had no money. Then I had a job repairing computers for 3 years during the housing bubble pop. I repaired up to 3-8 computers per day, 6 days per week sometimes, and I had no money. I've had countless software projects fail to generate income, and again, I had no money.

Meanwhile I watched my employers throw around vast sums. It costs more to fill a semi truck with fuel than to pay lumpers to load and unload it all day. Heating a warehouse costs a small fortune. My bosses bought the strip mall we worked in while we were coming up short in pay $100 every month. I experienced the endless insults inflicted on labor firsthand.

It wasn't until I was exposed to New Age philosophy in the late 2010s and the pandemic that I started getting over myself. I realize now that my struggles were something that I chose to take on for their experience in this life. I let others dictate my time and didn't communicate my needs or set boundaries, and learned the hard way how personal growth works.

What I'm getting at is that we all let the wealthy be wealthy at our pleasure. We could turn the tables at any time, but we don't. Why is that?

So what I mean about elites alleviating suffering, is that they could do it without doing anything at all, simply through messaging and culture and doing the shadow work to understand why they hoard wealth to such a degree. They could steer us away from subjugation and exploitation towards egalitarianism and self-actualization. But they're ok with skimming 3/4 of productivity from their workers. And it's not even always their fault, because that's just how business works under capitalism. They're every bit as trapped as we are, if we look at metrics like leisure time. In fact, they may be even more trapped, because their material comfort blinds them to the plight of others. Which touches on the religious aspect of all of this, how for whatever reason humans tend to put themselves in The Matrix to live up to external expectation. That's a lot to unpack, so I'll leave it at that.

Good point about trade, I agree that something has always bothered me about people harping on about the trade deficit. Probably what's going on is that we don't have an economic measure for stability. Countries love to do business with the US because it's reliable. They make the products and get paid, so it may be worth doing even at a loss. We forget how difficult it is for them to make money locally. But in fairness, we also forget how our lack of fair trade policies impacts their ability to do business. Again, it evolves.

The fed bothers me too, for what it's worth. I don't think it's right that some people are able to print money arbitrarily, while others are stuck in zero-sum games. Like, why should banks get bailed out while we all have to go bankrupt? That's fundamentally discrimination against the poor, performed under the guise of protecting the poor from economic downturns. We can't stop the banks, and maybe they won't let us have UBI, but maybe we could vote for the government to provide low-interest loans of perhaps $10,000 to create competition. Or maybe that would create its own problems, I don't know. But access to capital is literally the single most important thing under capitalism, and that's being denied to millions of hardworking people in our society right now for.. reasons.

Anyway, I have no real argument to make here. It's been good chatting, and thanks for not jumping all over me about some technicality I overlooked! I like to think of this stuff as breadcrumbs for further thought, not solutions wrapped in a bow.