this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
378 points (95.0% liked)

Asklemmy

42603 readers
1124 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Was just trying to explain to someone why everything is going to shit, specifically companies, and realized, I don't fully get it either.

I've got the following explanation. The sentences marked with "???" are were I'm lost. Anyone mind telling me, if they're correct and if so, why?

The past few years, central banks were giving out interest rates of 0% or even negative percentages. Regular banks would not quite pass this on, but you could still loan money and give it back later with no real interest payments.

This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn't have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???

This has stopped being the case, as central banks are hiking interest rates again, to combat inflation???

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Alright, Thats all bullshit.

The planet can easily support our population. Hell, the planet could support double our population.

The only reason why everything has gone to shit is the Rich and their greed. They've bought off governments to continue destroying the planet in their draconic lust for larger piles of gold to sit on, and adamantly refuse to change course for fear of it taking even a single, meaningless coin from their horde to do it.

We have more than enough food to feed the whole planet, but capitalism has decided its more "cost effective" to burn half of it to maintain shareholder prices.

There would be more than enough water available for everyone, but cleaning its to costly so lets just find another aquifer to drain and pollute.

The climate would have been fine, if corporations and their dumping of terratons of pollution into the air wasnt handwaved away as "Well, its consumers fault, if they just skipped meals and stopped using paper, none of this would have happened".

More time and money and research has been spent on how to let the rich and corporations escape blame, than has been spent on trying to prevent these problems that scientists have been warning about for over 100 years.