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nostrademons 11 hours ago

I think it's likely that they'll see justice in a chaotic way, ie not connected to the specific crime. Most likely outcome is that they make huge paper profits that are then absolutely worthless because the dollar collapses and the property rights that enforce the wealth they gained from these transactions disappear as the government is toppled. Another likely outcome is that they get in the habit of doing criminal things that piss people off, piss the wrong person off, and then get offed.

There was an AskHistorians post about the French revolution a few years ago that really stuck with me:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w18qt5/what_...

> Stability had hardly been a hallmark of the Revolution til that point, and really what we have seen is a revolving door of men rising to the summit of power, only to realize that once your head is above the rest it's a prime target for the guillotine. Of the early years of the Revolution, virtually any man who had been considered a leader was either dead or in exile. The King was executed in January of 1793. The Girondin, formerly indistinguishable from the 'left,' went en masse to the guillotine in October 1793. Danton & friends (dubbed by Robespierre 'the indulgents'), the literal authors of the Insurrection of August 10th which overthrew the King and declared the Republic, the 'giant of the Revolution,' had been executed in April 1794. Interspersed with these prominent deaths were hundreds of individuals who had been important players in the Revolution, whether in national or local politics, and who had now paid the price for their notoriety

In times of crisis and scarcity, the usual outcome is that anyone whose ego is big enough to think that he can lead or profit finds that they become a target for elimination. The folks who survive are the ones who focus on, well, surviving. We're headed for one of those times of crisis now, though most people don't want to admit it, and a lot of the people who are profiting off ill-gotten gains now may find that they don't live to enjoy it simply because it gives them a taste for profiteering that eventually makes them take stupid risks.

Windchaser 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Most likely outcome is that they make huge paper profits that are then absolutely worthless because the dollar collapses

Seems like it'd be pretty easy to diversify into inflation-protected assets after taking big profits.

But I also don't see the dollar collapsing any time soon. The dollar's strength is built on the US economy, and the US economy is still one of the strongest in the world, with high productivity per person. We'll see some inflation, sure, but nothing that the rich insider traders can't hedge against.

I do not expect that there will be any real justice here. They're not gutting the average American -- they're bleeding us, extracting a small enough amount of value that they can get away with it. And we don't live in a just world.

eb0la 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the reasons behind the dollar strength is that the US has a huge population.

Even if the central bank might does a bad job and make a mess of the economy, the activity of 350 million people is hard to ignore.

Is it enough to _fully_ sustain the US dollar?

Who knows, but at least there is a floor, even if everybody stopped using US dollars for international trade.

nostrademons 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

U.S. has only 4% of the global population.

I think this is a big part of both the impact of globalization and the U.S's waning power. Back around 1950, right after WW2, the "first world" (the developed west, not including Russia or Warsaw Pact countries) had a total population of just over 500M, and the U.S. was 150M of those, just under 1/3. And the remainder were largely dependent upon U.S. capital, machinery, and technology, having just bombed each other back to pre-industrial times.

Today, the developed world is about 3-4B people, and the U.S. is 350M of them, less than 10%. China alone has lifted about 500M people out of poverty and into the middle class in the last 2 decades, a population larger than the total population of the middle class in the U.S. The population of Asia is around 4.86B, 15x the size of the United States, and an increasingly large number of them are living a lifestyle close to what Americans enjoy.

XorNot 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean sure but... How much do you want to hold the Yuan? China has always had a huge population but nobody considered the Yuan the same way.

Nobody thinks of the Indian rupee this way today.

delusional 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is no "inflation-protected" asset if the economy collapses. You can't hedge societal unrest. The aliens don't want bitcoins.

taurath 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe the dollars strength is built on its unassailability as the petrodollar and foreign reserve currency, which lets the fed set interest rates and print money while creating less inflation than any other currency. The world looks very very different when energy markets aren’t fulfilled in dollars in ways that most citizens won’t understand.

kortilla 11 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s false. The petrodollar is irrelevant because two non-US companies trading using an intermediate currency like the USD create a balanced buy and sell of the intermediary.

philistine 10 hours ago | parent [-]

If the petrodollar is irrelevant, why is Iran insisting that anything transiting the straight of Hormuz be bought using the Chinese Yen?

linhns 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Yuan. Not Yen. Iran shouldn’t be insisting anything.

philistine 6 hours ago | parent [-]

But why is Iran insisting the Chinese Yuan be used? Because they're idiots?

Because Petrodollars make our global economy work, and Iran wants their partner China to be in control! If Americans lose sight of their need to maintain their role as *THE* lingua franca of international trade, then all hell is lost. The US cannot afford its military without massive consequences if it can't raise extraordinarily cheap debt through purchases of oil in US dollars immediately turned around to buy US debt to maintain that money's value.

joe_mamba 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Seems like it'd be pretty easy to diversify into inflation-protected assets after taking big profits.

Assets are yours only as long as there's a government to enforce your ownership rights over those assets for you. In case of government or societal collapse, your physical assets then are free for the taking to the ones with the most men with the most guns, and your paper assets are worthless.

jacquesm 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> and a lot of the people who are profiting off ill-gotten gains now may find that they don't live to enjoy it simply because it gives them a taste for profiteering that eventually makes them take stupid risks

They believe, rightly or not that they can withdraw from the world with their wealth more or less in one piece to some kind of safe zone.

QuantumGood 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hidden profiteering off ill-gotten gains happens continously. In some areas it becomes more known or suspected, but because beheadings and such are very far outside the Overton Window that is mostly controlled by the media, the focus of society moves on as the media directs.

taurath 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“The aristocrats!”

wellthisisgreat 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> because the dollar collapses and the property rights that enforce the wealth they gained from these transactions disappear as the government is toppled.

sorry but this is such a coping mechanism, or doomsday talking. Neither is dollar collapsing nor US government is collapsing, as there has been no evidence whatsoever of any of that even moving towards happening, at least on any meaningfully predictable timescale (i.e. 3-5 years? while even that's rich for predictions). Anything past that is just broken clock being correct.. at some point in time.

What would it take for dollar to "collapse"? What are the exact mechanisms that would be required to start that process?

What is the evidence of US government being "toppled" with layers and layers and layers of diverse (financial, legal, military, political, social, you name it) protections in place? It's the kind of thing preppers like to dream of but it's not happpening in our lifetimes.

When things of that scale happen you see it YEARS in advance in true poverty (as in people starving), in anger (as in people getting increasingly violent) at scale, in mass mobilization of masses actually looking to topple the government. Nobody is working right now to overthrow US government, there were never any organized attempts at that, not even demonstrations of a vector that can once lead there, as in it's simply not happening (sorry you can't in all seriousness put Jan 6 there as that was shocking for US political PR, but shockingly irrelevant for any country that has gone through real upheaval). US is extraordinarily rich even in it's poor version, everyone has everything to lose and nothing meaningful to gain from any "revolution".

postflopclarity 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> What is the evidence of US government being "toppled" with layers and layers and layers of diverse (financial, legal, military, political, social, you name it) protections in place?

I mean.

Do you read the news?

these protections are not working very well these days. the administration is getting away with _so much_ criminality in plain view.

tmountain 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Adjacent question, does the transformation of the U.S. government into a fascist regime quality as a collapse?

franktankbank 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I like how "off them" is the libertarian way like thats some sort of stable procedure.

rigrassm an hour ago | parent [-]

As someone in their mid 30's who followed Ron Paul back in the early 2000's, I have a hard time understanding this sentiment when, at least back then, "Your rights end where mine begin" was their foundation.

Idk, I don't have any loyalty towards any of these political parties so it shouldn't bother me but part of me gets defensive when I hear them described this way today. (Hell, I remember being the weirdo anti-interventionist in my circles and it was always the tea party ass hats that were uncomfortably enthusiastic about offing people they didn't like).