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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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How much of that labour is consumed exclusively by millionaires and billionaires in the North?
Then it's being consumed in the form of held stocks. This doesn't disprove me.
Buying a hamburger, you are buying all the labor used to produce the feed for the cow, all the labor used to abuse the cow, all the labor used to kill the cow, all the labor used to ship the carcass, all the labor to process the carcass, all the labor to cook the carcass on-demand and serve it to you.
Buying a stock or any other form of fictitious capital, the only thing being 'consumed' is whatever fractional share of the computer chip being transacted on that is expended or depreciated during the transaction.
While both cost money, only the former expends labor-time. The point @shipwreck@hexbear.net is making is that most ultra-wealthy people's consumption is in this second non-labor-consuming category. Although I wonder if that is really an accurate assessment.
That stock is bought with money which is the congealing of past labour from first world workers. First world workers are working harder to create unused stores of value as well as used value in the form of excess consumption.
No labor ever was embedded into the stock, and it's freely exchanged without ever being consumed. It's not an unused store of value because it exists in parallel to the capital it represents (which is amplified by speculation), but independent, which means the actual capital is then expended and generates profit separately. The value is still being generated and consumed in the commodity, the share just allows for capitalists to finance the production of said commodities in a more convenient way, and the price of share tracks the overall growth of the economy on average so no additional value is ever being created.
The stocks need a fractional reserve of commodities or labor to operate. When you have a stock whose price has become decoupled from labor input, we call that a bubble.
There is something to it though. I can't remember where I saw this but in some western country they made an assessment of carbon emissions distributed on income quintiles (I think). The highest quintile emitted something like twice of what the lowest did. It makes sense, they have multiple cars instead of riding bicycles, they live in big houses instead of small apartments, if something breaks they throw it out instead of trying to repair it.
So while the ultra-rich might be too few for their overconsumption to have an impact (besides the moral one which one should also consider), cutting the luxury spending of the well-off and above is a low-hanging fruit that could get us part of the way without causing anyone any hardship.
i thought it was much more extreme than that, with the upper quintile being responsible for something like 50% of all emissions
and then you have to figure how much labor goes into supporting those lifestyles, directly and indirectly. restructuring the economy to not be in service of billionaires would do quite a lot to reduce western "consumption" habits probably while improving most people's actual quality of life, i think.
interesting when every rich person has like 20 personal sycophants, a yacht (100 meter monstrosity feeding like 100 workers during 2-3 years of production), private jet etc. And luxury items are exactly in high labor hours, thats what makes them luxury - you pay global north wages for handcrafted shit, designed appliances, one of a kind systems of all kinds. Its a large industry even if us, being poor, dont interact with it. That's ignoring lawyers on retainers, consultants of all kinds, pr managers.
In other words bill gates probably makes 10000 people do his bidding on his dime, producing something of relative limited value outside of bill gates.
AFAIK the advanced consumption habits of the rich come mainly from energy consumption. Like they have (multiple) giant homes so they have to heat and cool them. They fly their families all around the world whenever all the time. They have big fancy cars that use a lot of gas and drive them as much as they want.
But as for, like, commodities, they don't necessarily consume significantly more. Like they buy pants more often and the ones they buy are more expensive, but consumption of pants doesn't grow geometrically with wealth. Like they do consume more goods but they're roughly on the same order of magnitude as other people.
But I'm not an expert I'm dumb so take this with a grain of salt.