Looking at the markets, that might be more feeling red.
Warning, Danger, Anger, Rage.
Trillions wiped from markets around the world, but I am pretty sure that some people are making some gains, based on the designed volatility that is being traded upon. All you need to know is when things are going to happen, a little before they do, and then those trillions change hands. Generally, from the poor to the rich.
We aren't very good at processing big numbers, are we?
How much is a trillion really?
For another example, I was just reading about how the Australian Show "Bluey" (which is great by the way), was the most streamed series in the US, with a combined total of 45.2 billion minutes streamed. Which sounds like a lot. But for a little bit of context to visualize what that means, is that the US watched Bluey for 47,945 years straight. Counting backwards, the global population is estimated to have been about 2 million in total then.
But, the estimation for just the streaming minutes in the US comes in at 16.7 trillion. So, how many years is that? While most will know it is a lot more than the billions, it is hard to really fathom, especially without using maths.
31,773,211 years
And even when you now no the number, can you really visualise what 31 million years is? At least counting backwards, there were no humans at all - not even close, as we wouldn't appear for another 30 million years.
Of course, these are collective minutes consumed by approximately 350 million Americans, but it averages out to around 6 weeks of constant viewing for every man woman and child, just on the streaming services. That is 1008 hours, or 128 full-time, 5-days a week, work days - On average - for every man, woman and child.
The same 350 million men, women and children, also average $108,571 in national debt.
Every trillion borrowed by the government, adds $2857 debt to each person in the US. And my point of highlighting this, is that when governments are talking, they are talking in numbers that we don't understand, so we largely ignore what is going on.
For instance, those 16.7 trillion streaming minutes could be visualised as our attention. As an individual, it might not mean that much, but if you consider that the majority of that attention was paid to a handful of streaming companies, you might then consider how much a streamer like Netflix sucks from our attention bank. And if you apply a similar logic to the trillions in government spending of tax payer money, it is a bit the same, with the majority of our monetary attention being attracted to a very few, very large players.
The rich get richer.
The centralisation of decision making doesn't just create risks for those it governs, but it also enriches a small minority by nature, because the authority only has so much attention to give also. In the end, most resources get spent in the same small subset of the economy. But like the minutes spent streaming, it doesn't seem to hurt individuals that much, until gathered collectively. These trillions spent seem to go to a lot of different areas, but it is a bit like watching Bluey or Star Wars on Disney, or Squid Game or Stranger Things on Netflix, ultimately, it all goes to the head.
And the more that goes back to the top, the more centralised it all becomes, because the top is able to develop more gateways, more APIs, more channels to extract from us. And while we are constantly getting cut to have our resources harvested, collectively the pool of resources they can draw upon just keeps getting larger and larger, while we keep shrivelling, as we bleed out from 1000 cuts.
We aren't made to visualise or even consider numbers as large as we are being presented with, as we aren't even really made to consider numbers at all. We seem conceptually and our brain will break them into something real we can understand, like oranges and bananas, or slices of pizza. But, what does a trillion pizzas look like?
This is where AI is useful:
A trillion pizzas, assuming standard 14-inch pies, would blanket approximately 700,000 square miles—an area larger than Alaska. They would weigh roughly 100 million tons, exceeding the weight of all humans on Earth combined, and cover the entire surface area of the U.S. state of Alaska.
See, Alaska is good for something.
Still hard to visualise what that might really look like though, eh?
I think that rather than dismissing large numbers presented to us, we should take the time to slow down our thinking and try to visualise what it actually means, and what that flow of money might look like. Where is the trillion going, and more importantly, where is it all ending up? Because that final destination is important, since it is largely ending up in the pockets of a few thousand people, who will use it to manipulate systems to garner further control and more wealth.
When we hear big numbers, we should be very wary.
And when we hear small numbers spread out as averages we should be wary too, because we again should slow down and consider the impact collectively and at scale. The death from a thousand cuts is a constant, because there are a few people carrying many small knives.
Collectively in the US alone, that is 350 billion cuts.
Got enough bandaids?
And bandaids are all that are offered to stop the bleeding in a very, very broken economy.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Be part of the Hive discussion.
- Comment on the topics of the article, and add your perspectives and experiences.
- Read and discuss with others who comment and build your personal network
- Engage well with me and others and put in effort
And you may be rewarded.
I like the money stacks visualizations :) I totally agree with you on where that money is going, most of it is lining the pockets of ultra rich. Take Trump for example, it is estimated that he made 1.5 Billion dollars during last year thanks to being elected president again. This time he went all out for the money grab. BTW 1.5 Billion is more than he inherited from his father plus made during his lifetime including his most successful venture, which was playing a businessmen on TV...
We disagree on US national debt... From the American perspective national debt is fuel for our economy. We borrow cheap to invest into our economy at the expense of the rest of the world. The move off of the gold standard by America last century was the genius move that allowed us to grow into the super power we are now. When your currency is the reserve currency of the world you can do things that no other country can do. Eventually the party may come to the end, but that would most likely cause the upheaval around the world that have not been seen for centuries, so I wouldn't cheer for it even if you are outside of the USA...
No, we agree. Where we disagree is that the rest of the world keeps playing this retarded game so the US can discount its terrible economy. I say, fuck that, and the dollar as the reserve :)
Kind of the same way you should not take statistics at face value without knowing what the sample size of a particular survey is. 50% of people surveyed are millionaires sounds pretty good until you realize only two people were interviewed! Even that jump from 1 million to 100 million in the graphic is pretty staggering. The manipulation right now is somewhat beyond belief.
Or a couple billionaires in a group of 10,000 makes a decent average wealth for all.
I reckon a lot of politicians are doing inside trading, like when Trump tweets something and markets pump or dump, i don't belive it that he or someone else close enough isn't earning anything... Selling at right time, buying at right time...
It's true governments use that huge numbers that you can't even see in your mind, they just flow, people don't even stop to realize... Like bilons for weapons, bilions for Ukraine, bilions for covid vaccines... Bilions and bilions, with all that money you could build so many school, hospitals, train personnel, like one hospital per inhabitant... do so much research on deadly diseases... But no, let's just use bilions to make politicians pocket more fat
For sure. There has been reports for ages on it with his family, and that is tip of the iceberg stuff.
This is the game we keep supoorting.
When we begin to think this way, we begin to understand how precious out time and attention are. But it's much more convenient for people to trade their time and attention for easy entertainment, than spending it fixing the faulty areas of their lives. I myself, I'm guilty of this sometimes.
But spending our time and attention wisely is the only thing that's going to change our lives. You can't solve the problems by running from them and taking solace in readily available entertainment, but by tackling the problems head-on. The moment one realises this, their lives are set to change.
We are all guilty, and we are all being convicted. We are paying the price at individual and global levels.
It feels like the death by a thousand cuts is getting faster because the knives are getting sharper with AI and big data.As you said, when we lose the ability to visualize the flow, we lose the ability to see who is actually catching it at the bottom. Great post!
Knives are getting sharper, and we are getting stupider, lazier, more gullible - it is like we have been given psychological blood thinners.
You have to follow the trends. While Bitcoin and altcoins have been falling for months, the top stocks on the stock markets are rising. I started buying NVIDIA and GOOGLE instead of Solana. The cryptocurrency I have is enough for me.
And if the well-overpriced AI bubble bursts?
In that case, I hope I'll have time to sell the shares. I'm tired of watching AI and banking stocks constantly rise while cryptocurrencies steadily decline.
Seeing the market bearish is not new but it is becoming frequent these days and we didn't really see much of bullish last year especially for the Altcoins as only a few moved a bit which I can say is as a result of BTC surging. I don't know what is happening to the crypto market, but I'm sure that there are too many eyes on it. Should we say it is the Trump effect and government policies all over the world where cryptocurrency is adopted and used?
The rich are getting by the day as they have enough resources at their disposal to influence the market in their own way. Imagine, trading against a whale in the market sphere. We can only hope and work towards investing and leverage on the bearish market.
The world is such a mess at the moment, that everything is volatile, people panicking and pushing money all over the place - and a few skimming massive gains.
How easily relate the fact with the figure. This is what I like most about your content. Every drops matter, like wise every minutes counts and so does every penny matters but seems people are not bothering about it much.
Hopefully the few minutes reading here each day can bring more value than 33 million years of netflix ;D
streaming companies may have invested in the introduction and spread of COVID in the world. I know I'm being very conspiratorial with this comment, but those trillions of minutes and hours began to be strenghed in those moments of isolation. For some it was devastating but for these companies it was the gold prize.
I don't think it is much of a conspiracy. All US based too ;)
This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.
Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens.
Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.
100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.
I think it is important for us to see these ideas more clearly so we can make sure those in charge are responsible for how our resources are being used.