And Softbank were willing to try this insane strategy because they know as well as everyone else that anything exposed to the stock market is being buoyed up by high debt levels. Uber IPO-ed. People are valuing it with a large positive value.
If you entertain the idea that a big bubble (3-5 years long) could ever happen, Uber being allowed to continue operations is an eyebrow raiser. There are risks that much of the effort that should be going in to securing a prosperous future is being misdirected.
> If we want to talk long-term prudence...
I would like, in my old age, to have twice as much electricity available as when I was young. I don't really care how. But it isn't going to happen because I wished hard. We need to invest in physical changes to the world that will make life better for people. Particularly in things that aren't oil.
Look at the amount of construction that is going on in China. That is what is physically possible. That sort of activity could be usefully replicated in the West.
> Look at the amount of construction that is going on in China. That is what is physically possible. That sort of activity could be usefully replicated in the West.
OK: how?
The private sector isn't going to be doing it because it's not profitable enough. The public sector won't do it because people complain about the public debt.
> The public sector won't do it because people complain about the public debt.
This isn't true, though. The US consistently elects republican administrations that jack up deficits to cover tax cuts for billionaires and nobody bats an eye. The military can blow 700bn a year with barely a peep of outrage. And unlike with infrastructure investment that money is effectively a 700bn jobs program for 3 million people that produce nothing of value.
Complaining about debt is usually a cover for bigotry. People don't want social equity or fairness because leveling the playing field is deconstructing hierarchies people were born into and base their personality on. Its why attacking institutional racism in the police is taken as an attack on the culture, personhood, and lifestyles of cops and white suburbia.
> That produce nothing of value.
What an amazingly naive point of view.
> Complaining about debt is usually a cover for bigotry. People don't want social equity or fairness because leveling the playing field...
This could be a paragraph out of the millenial reactionaries handbook..not only are the concepts of social equity and fairness highly subjective and controversial but debasing majority cultural bias to construct a level playing field is so historically unsuccessful as to make it a philosophical curiosity (aside from with a singularly unsuccessful foray into the real world which ended in despotism and pogroms for all).
If you entertain the idea that a big bubble (3-5 years long) could ever happen, Uber being allowed to continue operations is an eyebrow raiser. There are risks that much of the effort that should be going in to securing a prosperous future is being misdirected.
> If we want to talk long-term prudence...
I would like, in my old age, to have twice as much electricity available as when I was young. I don't really care how. But it isn't going to happen because I wished hard. We need to invest in physical changes to the world that will make life better for people. Particularly in things that aren't oil.
Look at the amount of construction that is going on in China. That is what is physically possible. That sort of activity could be usefully replicated in the West.