When it comes to the modern world of #enshittified, terrible businesses, no addition to your vocabulary is more essential than "#bezzle," #JKGalbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter

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@CarlMuckenhoupt Freedom and power to me describe different elements of goal-attainment.

Power refers to the active and instrumental element. That is, power is the specific capacity to initiate change.

Freedom refers to constraints on power, a sort of negative space. Freedom is the ability to act without inhibition, but it isn't the action itself.

So ... closely related, yes. Negative spaces, yes. Synonyms: no, though clearly closely related.

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#Tootstorm #power #freedom #vetocracy #HighSpeedRail #CaliforniaHSR #JKGalbraith #CodignPower #CompensatoryPower #ConditionedPower #AnatomyOfPower #FrancisFukuyama

The J.K Galbraith "bad investments driving out good" dynamic is basically: when investors' portfolios go so poorly that they need to raise cash to cover obligations, they'll sell anything to raise that.

So if some IvanInvestor is 50% in HonestSamsSkeeveyStock and 50% in BlueChipCo, leveraged 50%, then if HSSS crashes, IvanInvestor must sell BlueChipCo to cover margins. (Or other obligations.)

If there are enough IvanIvestors ... the price of BSC starts to move.

With housing it's similar, though the mechanism is often of reserves or assets, particularly for banks. With a sufficient movement, enough sellers become "highly motivated" that the market as a whole moves.

Of course, if you're planning to profit from this, you've got to have lower exposure and cash (or equivalently robust assets, which aren't falling) on hand to be able to buy. That tends to be a wealth ratchet for the already uber-wealthy.

#JKGalbraith #JohnKennethGalbraith #GreshamsLaw #Housing

@pluralistic Another ... interesting ... dynamic of collapsing bubbles is of bad investments driving down good.

J.K. Galbraith notes in The Great Crash: 1929, a book I know you've read and like --- see also "bezzle".

Galbraith:

The great investment trust boom had ended in a unique manifestation of Gresham's Law in which the bad stocks were driving out the good.

#Housing #Bubbles #JKGalbraith #JohnKennethGalbraith #TheGreatCrash1929 #GreshamsLaw