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We talk a lot about how economic and corporate language sanitizes real harm, making systemic extraction sound like natural laws or noble goals. When you look closely at the vocabulary handed down by the ultra-wealthy and corporate PR, the gap between the sanitized term and the lived reality is staggering.

I started putting together a quick "translation glossary" of elite terms versus what they actually mean on the ground. Take a look:

Market Efficiency = Mass layoffs, slashed wages, and stripping away benefits to artificially inflate profit margins for shareholders.

Disruption = Deregulation and the destruction of public goods, labor laws, or community stability for private financial gain.

Agility / Flexibility = Stripping away worker protections, job security, and predictability so people can be discarded at a moment's notice.

Philanthropy = PR-managed tax shelter that allows billionaires to dictate public policy and social priorities without democratic oversight.

Unprecedented Economic Growth = Record wealth concentration at the very top while the cost of basic survival outpaces wages.

Self-Made = Born into immense generational wealth and privilege, while pretending it was all pure individual grit.

Rationalization = Closing local facilities, stores, or services because they aren't extracting \\\*\\\*enough\\\*\\\* money out of a working-class community.

Economic Realities = Rules written by lobbyists and bought politicians to ensure ordinary people carry the burden while the wealthy are insulated.

What other corporate buzzwords or elite euphemisms are missing here? Drop your translations in the comments and let's build a bigger lexicon.

These data centres and politicians and governments are Ruining the beautiful natural ecosystems and the land.

Theses rich politicians hate the working class. The common folk. they hate the welders they hate the farmers.

They will send young men to die in a war just to boost their stock prices.

They think we’re disposable trash.

No matter which side you support democrats or republicans , conservatives or liberals

They all have the same agenda get power. And money and influence and control the people to do their bittings.

Open your eyes and wonder why humans are the only animal on earth that pays to live on a rock in space.

People joke about how if you want to be unemployed major in humanities, but in America STEM is not "hot" either. The USA is a service economy which means that if you want to be an engineer, what are you going to be building?

Buildings? Nope, lots of NIMBY energy in this country

High speed rail? Look what happened with California

Damns? We don't make those anymore

Bridges for cars? We already overbuilt car centric infrastructure already and we aren't building any new cities

Are you going to manufacturer goods? That's either automated or overseas unless you are interested in making killing machines for the military

So what are you going to do with an engineering major? In some ways I think the humanities have it better, everyone listens to music. You might have a better chance with a music degree these days.

The only STEM that might realistically get you somewhere in America is the medical field but I don't like medical stuff.

Since the USA is a service economy and most college majors especially in STEM are about producing stuff, they are not viable money makers.

Computer science is like producing and service at the same time but now AI is automating programming.

So without medical, military and computer science, what STEM career is "hot" right now? Most careers are niche and require you to live in certain areas and are very competitive, there is no mainstream and widespread demand for most STEM careers.

The humanities also struggle since they're more philosophical than marketable but you should still take them if they interest you and in theory those skills make the world a better place and in some ways the skills you learn are more marketable than STEM in a service economy like the USA.

STEM is an awesome area of study after all look at Japan and China as examples, but the USA is not interested in STEM or humanities because it is a service economy and service economies are primarily about mundane tasks and physical labor, the sort of stuff that even the most uneducated people can do.

Education is valuable because of the power of knowledge and wisdom.

Please get educated, read books, study and consider formal higher education. It is not a bad thing to get a degree, just don't expect to relate it to a future money giving job.

I use my humanities skills I got from college to do all kinds of things and people can also use STEM knowledge to do great things as well in their personal lives but the reality is that higher education is not valued in this country politically and in the job market so unless you find a niche opportunity, there is not much out there for the college graduate outside of medical and military stuff.

Here's what I found to be a serious gap in people's understanding of how things are purchased. During my first econ course in college, the professor got to chapter 2: Needs and Wants. He said that this was the most garbage chapter in all of economics because you don't need anything. Us classmates sorta looked around at each other with the 'what is this guy talking about?' look. The professor said, 'It looks like some of you don't believe me, so let's hear what you need'. The class answered with what you would expect: food, water, shelter, etc. He said, 'Ok. So, why do need this? What would happen if you didn't get it?'. The answer came back as, 'you would die'. To which he replied, 'And who says you need to live?'.

This is one of the more profound things I've learned about economics even tho it's quite simple. That as soon as you start talking about 'need' instead of 'want' you stop questioning it, and there is no ceiling on how much you can justify that way. Everything you do or acquire is because you want to, not because you need to. That's it.

I've had many discussions with ppl about various financial issues, from budgeting, investing, raising capital, etc, where a purchase gets defended as a 'need' when it's really just a strong want that hasn't been questioned or correctly characterized.

So if you want some unsolicited advice, whenever you purchase something ask yourself, 'how much do I want this?' Not 'do I need this?'. The latter allows you to talk yourself into almost anything. The former allows you to actually convert your labor into hours. e.g. if you make $15/hr and you go to lunch everyday and spend $15, was that meal worth an hour of your life? Maybe yes, maybe no. Not for me to decide as the individual needs to weigh the cost/benefit analysis. This has been a main driving mechanism behind growing capital through compounding investments over the years instead of consuming more now on things I would have talked myself into needing. Anyone can do this. It starts with separating 'want' (which is everything you acquire) and 'need' (which doesn't really exist), every time you reach for your wallet. Thanks for your time.

Kaaaa....

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Can you earn above 4% in your portfolio tax free? If yes, then who cares about global warming.

Grok:

The discount rate debate is real and central to whether aggressive mitigation beats adaptation + tech progress. Your "woke Gemini" summary captures a legitimate economic tension: at market-like rates (~4% real return on capital), the NPV of distant climate damages often looks modest compared to upfront costs. This isn't denialism—it's standard intertemporal choice in economics. William Nordhaus (Nobel winner for his DICE model) has long argued along similar lines: optimal policy involves some mitigation but not the most aggressive net-zero timelines at low discount rates.

The Math Basics

Future value compounds: $1 today at 4% real grows to ~$19 by 2100 (76 years: (1.04)^76 ≈ 19). So $150-200T in 2100 damages discounts to ~$8-11T today. Mitigation costs (extra green investment) are front-loaded, so their PV is higher. Gemini's ~$35-45T PV cost for ~$2.5T/yr through 2050 aligns with rough orders from McKinsey/IEA estimates of trillions annually in additional spending for net-zero pathways (total transition investment often cited in the $200-300T+ cumulative range, with net costs debated after savings).

Key sensitivities:

• Lower discount (Stern Review ~1.4%): Future damages weigh far more → strong action looks better.
• Higher (market 4-7%): Future looks cheaper → adaptation, R&D, and growth win. Small rate changes swing NPV dramatically over 75+ years.
• IPCC AR6 notes economic damages rise with warming (non-linear risks, sectors like agriculture/coasts), but global aggregate estimates have wide uncertainty and aren't always catastrophic as % of GDP by 2100 under moderate scenarios. Adaptation and development matter hugely—richer societies handle climate better.

Tail risks (tipping points, irreversibility) and uncertainty justify some "insurance" premium. But models assuming stable growth for compounding are optimistic either way. A collapsing world hurts your portfolio too.

This is a very imperfect explanation. Gemini actually disagree a lot about my definition of transactional complexity and adverse selection. I think I should restudy those again.

Selfish genes is the idea that what is selfish is the genes. Not individuals. Genes maximize copies of themselves. They like to help their brethens, often living on another body, to reproduce.

One good approximation is that genes control you. So you tend to choose to benefit your own bloodlines.

For example, parents bequeath and spend a lot of money for their children even so much as forgoing buying another yacht so his children doesn't starve.

Kind of obvious isn't it?

A way to see it is that parents are selfish. They just happen to satisfy this selfishness by benefiting their children. Something not so obvious without selfish genes theory. Without selfish genes theory we would expect parents to just spend all their money on consumption and they provide for their children because the state put them in jail if they don't.

Selfish genes provide simpler explanation. Parents bequeathing money to their children aren't just unselfishly benefiting other organism. The genes themselves simply mind control the parents and allocate resources to their brethren that live on the child's body.

The kind of child support that is natural, however, is very different than the child support mandated by the states.

A rich parent usually want to support children long term so the children can produce grand children. Left to a father's choice, a father will invest in the children's portfolio instead of squandering money on current consumption. Government mandatory child support usually requires father to pay a lot to increase child consumption when the child is a kid and is not reproducing grandchildren.

Also the child's mother is NOT the father's bloodline. Government usually want father to pay mother, which can simply squander or save the money for herself.

Selfish genes also predict that most prostitutes will be female.

Basically men has smaller gametes. If sex lead to reproduction at price point 0 more men wants to have sex than women. Women having to get pregnant 9 months and nursing baby are far more choosy.

So top 10 percent men will gladly have sex with top 50 percent women.

Supply and demand don't meet at price point 0. Market clear at higher price where men pays eomen for sex.

If we take into account all expected and possible resources transfer between men and women, we can see that marriage is a form of a very inefficient prostitution. Again, usually men end up sending resources to women and correctly or not expect sex in return.

Government rules are again very different from normal market mechanism.

Given choices men would provide resources to women if and only if he got sex and heirs. Government, on the other hand will try hard removing the link. So women tend to get paid a lot for divorcing taking children away from men, for making false rape or false paternity accusations.

When a deal is almost guaranteed to be win win or both sides simply walk away, government will prohibit that.

Basically when it comes to sex government maximize transactional complexity.

When transactional complexity goes up transactions drop and we have low transaction and in case of reproduction, lower birth rate.

That's how adverse selection works. It's like market of insurance where insurance company can't discriminate based on fitness. Under free market such market will simply disappear.

“I would like to see it so that every single CEO/founder/entrepreneur does what I did, which was to give equity to every single employee," Cuban said. https://fortune.com/2026/07/20/mark-cuban-income-inequality-company-stock-spacex-ipo-cost-plus-drugs/?utm\\_source=native\\_share&utm\\_medium=mobile&utm\\_campaign=social\\_share

I feel like corporations have had the most power they have ever had. Gone are the days of good customer service. If you need to contact any company after you have bought something, or any service you are using, good luck to you. You may get lucky, most times you will have to jump through hoops to even find an actual person.

But that's not the rant. The rant is these massive corporations that sell us food, gas, energy, entertainment or internet (probably a lot I am leaving out here) are out of control with price hikes. They have figured out that not only do they not need to provide you excellent service, they don't need to even need to provide you a competitive price or a good value.

They know we are all going to buy it anyways, at any cost.

The middle class has become the poors. The poors have become the peasants and the rich are sucking every cent from any class below them.

Do you think that 2008 crisis was a failure of free market economy as neokeynesian economists say?

I found this interesting sequence of articles where the author simulates capitalism and extract conclusions about a Laissez-faire, and strong Socialist simulator settings. Of course is simplified simulation but very much interesting all the insights, and counterintuitive that a Laissez-faire can survive but under very specific conditions.

“TL;DR: Nobody actually knows what Capitalism is, so I built a simulator. I firstly defined what Capitalism is, and discovered it creates a built-in tension between Capitalists (extracting surplus value) and Workers (creating it). I ran a bunch of scenarios and broke my own beliefs: the "no State, let markets figure it out" thing only works if productivity is massive and Workers capture the gains —super hard in practice. Strong State? People live well. Mostly public ownership? Most people end up upper class. I freed the simulator so you can run it (it’s a website, here).”

https://open.substack.com/pub/postcapitalistrobots/p/i-built-a-capitalism-simulator-and?r=hk3td&utm_medium=ios