this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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Each time money moves: one trade happened. Someone bought, someone sold something. It's all activity. Money moving around fast: a lot of activity, people getting what they want. Money sitting still: stagnation, no work done, no production etc.
That's the theory. Of course reality is a bit more complicated. People doing volunteer work is often net positive for humanity but won't show up in economic metrics.
There’s also the fact that a lot of those dollars moving are against people’s will or for stupid, inefficient reasons.
If we each paid each other a thousand bucks an hour not to hit each other then that grows GDP without doing anything useful.
Well shit, here's a thou- wait. To not hit me? I dunno, I'll give you, like, 50 bucks.
But think about how much this could be taxed, this looks like zero-sum if you pay the same to me that I pay to you, but it is negative sum for us, and the government benefits from all the shuffling.
Now it looks like another incentive to create inefficient meddling processes with extra steps.
Every time I trim my head I remind myself Im stealing the gdp increase from the state and chuckles..
Of course, I also chuckle when I burn sticks in the spring because Im burning faschists (from the latin word fasces) so my sense of humour is not very high
Ok, but why should people get what they want?
I'm in Vietnam at the moment, lots of people work simple manual jobs and just get by. They don't have a lot, but they're friendly, welcoming, and generally happy.
Meanwhile, the weekend before last I was in Singapore where loads of money is constantly moving around ... and it did not feel like a good place to be.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I have held the belief that neoclassic theory of economics is bullshit since I studied it 20 years ago. I'm just explaining that bullshit which is still used to measure things like development, progress etc.
Ah ok, gotcha now - thanks for clarifying :-)