The stock market has more or less monopolized the global fiat monetary system. Politicians can decide what the returns will be in any given year because they control the currency.
The returns are only meaningful in the short term while everyone is in a trance thinking that fiat currency is worth the same as it was before... The longer everyone can stay in this trance, the more 'real' the numbers are.
However, it's my opinion that the real value creators of our economy (the backbone of all economic value) don't have much incentive to believe in the fiat numbers anymore. That's why they're moving towards Bitcoin and crypto.
The next decade is going to be interesting; we're going to find out if all the hype about 'automation' and 'big data' was genuine or if it was just moral cover for the elite to justify their monopolization of everything.
If the corporate elite have managed to automate the economy to a degree that people and non-corporate entities cannot compete with their machines, then fiat will continue to thrive. If it turns out that non-corporate entities still have the competitive upper hand, then fiat will deteriorate and Bitcoin will take over.
My PoV as a developer who has worked for many big tech companies is that the corporate sphere has been deteriorating for years and most advancements have been vaporware. I believe that apparent growth in profits and market cap are a trick of the money printers and the numbers are not grounded in real economic value; they are extremely fragile and the only reason that the stock market doesn't collapse along with fiat is because of extreme herd mentality among investors who have been primed to believe in the supremacy of fiat currencies for their entire lives.
The narrative about automation is used to justify Big Tech monopolies. I.e. there are huge tech monopolies nowadays because big tech is automating everything and driving all local brick-and-mortar shops out of business and people are going out of work because of automation.
The narrative about big data is used to justify Big Tech's (e.g. Facebook) high profits. I.e. Advertising wasn't lucrative before but now thanks to big data (targeted advertising), it's very lucrative.
What if an alternative explanation to the first narrative is not that Big Tech is automating everything, but instead, that their monopolies are simply a result of them having preferential access to large amounts of newly created capital (e.g. at lower interest rates or via shell company revenue laundering schemes); their access to the money printers creates an asymmetric playing field which allows them to beat all the competition in spite of their inefficiencies.
What if an alternative explanation to the second narrative is that the real reason why advertising has become so profitable is not because of Big Data, but simply because businesses are desperate to protect their wealth from inflation and for lack of a better alternative, they decide that consumer mindshare is the most valuable asset... So companies which monopolize consumer attention/mindshare (social media companies) end up flooded with money from all sectors of the economy.
If most of the Big Tech growth we've seen is artificial, then what will happen to inflation when large numbers of investors start selling shares and spending their money to buy real productive businesses instead (I.e. if they all give up on the false automation and big data narratives)?
The returns are only meaningful in the short term while everyone is in a trance thinking that fiat currency is worth the same as it was before... The longer everyone can stay in this trance, the more 'real' the numbers are.
However, it's my opinion that the real value creators of our economy (the backbone of all economic value) don't have much incentive to believe in the fiat numbers anymore. That's why they're moving towards Bitcoin and crypto.
The next decade is going to be interesting; we're going to find out if all the hype about 'automation' and 'big data' was genuine or if it was just moral cover for the elite to justify their monopolization of everything.
If the corporate elite have managed to automate the economy to a degree that people and non-corporate entities cannot compete with their machines, then fiat will continue to thrive. If it turns out that non-corporate entities still have the competitive upper hand, then fiat will deteriorate and Bitcoin will take over.
My PoV as a developer who has worked for many big tech companies is that the corporate sphere has been deteriorating for years and most advancements have been vaporware. I believe that apparent growth in profits and market cap are a trick of the money printers and the numbers are not grounded in real economic value; they are extremely fragile and the only reason that the stock market doesn't collapse along with fiat is because of extreme herd mentality among investors who have been primed to believe in the supremacy of fiat currencies for their entire lives.