Inflation, Investing, and Consumerism
The Psychology of This Market
Inflation is high, the stock market is high, and the dollar is high. I think the reason for this is simple: rampant consumerism. People think that buying comics, trading cards, LEGOs, or other “collectibles” is “an investment.” To a limited degree, that can be an investment in yourself, but that’s really a gamble. It’s not at all investing in the same way as investing in companies, or even as putting money in the bank. When you invest in a company, that money goes into R&D, acquisitions, paying employees, and otherwise growing the company. In other words, investing in companies is at least supposed to go into production, provided the company doesn’t immediately go out of business or squander your investing funds. Even putting money in the bank helps the operation of banks, since they can use it to give out loans and such, though banks can famously engage in illegitimate practices as well.
On the other hand, “investing” in slabbed comic books, trading cards, LEGO sets, and whatever other sort of “collectible” is basically just a gamble that someone else will want to buy it in the future. At this point in time, basically everyone is doing that. I think this is why the inflation is super high despite the stock market and dollar value both being high. The inflation being high isn’t necessarily a sign of the economy being weak in any way, the inflation is just the price of goods. Since everyone has decided to so-called “invest” in hoarding goods on the premise someone will want to buy them when everyone is doing this and that can’t possibly be true, the inflation is high despite the dollar and stock market both being at record highs. The inflation is high because people want their goods to be worth a lot, and if you don’t want the inflation to be high, sell your so-called “investment” goods (which aren’t really) and also try to get the government to stop subsidizing consumerism.
The reason the cost of living is extremely high in the US, Canada, and Europe is just because the government subsidizes consumerism and then puts the cost on other things like healthcare, education, taxes, property, etc. In Canada, the cost seems to have been moved to absolutely everything since in Canada everything is prioritized equally. Everyone used to be able to afford everything in Canada, but now no one can afford anything and it looks like 1984 by George Orwell in YouTube videos of Canada (I don’t live in Canada, but Canada has become the exemplar of consumerism gone wrong to me, since Canadians consume even 7% more than the US does.) Europe is also consumerist.
There’s probably a little consumerism in a lot of places due to global culture, however, I wouldn’t say Australia looks particularly consumerist, and that seems to be why they’re faring a lot better than most places. There’s not a resource curse, there’s a being-colonized curse, dummies. Australia wasn’t really colonized in the same way, the white people of Australia were mostly, ironically, people who couldn’t pay debts, and this poetic turn of justice has been duly noted by me. So, even though culture-wars-addled people will probably think of Canada as a woke society that’s suffering for being woke, they probably also think of New Zealand and maybe even Australia as a bunch of woke societies, but they aren’t suffering like that. Likewise, Argentina famously has its (right-wing) libertarian president Javier Milei, but it isn’t suffering like America is, because consumerism is killing most Western as well as Asian societies, not anything to do with culture wars and historical or cultural ideas of left vs. right. That should’ve become clear whenever Justin Trudeau became hated by even left-wing Canadians, but people still seem too blinded by incorrect culture wars dichotomies to see what’s really going on.
If you’ve invested in consumerism, pull out now-ish or you’ll face the consequences, which I personally see as ultimately culminating in nuclear war, since the Russians threatened it in 2022 but were stopped by the People’s Republic of China, which is collapsing as the ability to put consumer societies into debt is being stretched to the limit. As it turns out, running many of the world’s economies on an endlessly-growing amount of debt forever isn’t sustainable and money isn’t something you can just magically print more of because people do tie it to the value of goods even without something like a gold or silver standard being used, who woulda thunk.
I always read “the countries that would survive a nuclear war include: Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Haiti, Argentina, and probably most of the Southern Hemisphere, as well as Iceland, Greenland, Switzerland and Bhutan.” So, the countries which would survive are the ones that produce things, don’t engage in rampant debt-based consumerism, and don’t like getting involved in international conflicts, and as always, it has nothing to do with culture wars and whatever? How shocking.
