Digital Financialization by Secrecy
Financialization Tyranny
In our digital age, in our Digital Financialization [1] age the Information Asymmetry is the core foundation of most tyrannies.
Phrases like "knowledge is power" became "information is power" and now reborn as "Inform is gold" [2]. If information is the measure of modern power and wealth, then the asymmetry of information accessibility provides a tool for expansion of tyranny, old or new.
To correlate the tyranny to financialization, first we need to study the 1980s innovations of Financialized Capitalism [3] which begot the widespread global Digial Financialization.
Once there are digital networks in place to Financialize the capital, then asymmetric information access is a must to accumulate wealth, and the kind of wealth rooted in tyranny and begets only tyrannies and tyrants abound.
What is Financialization?
- Summarised by Lapavitsas [4] as "profiting without producing"
- Financialized Capitalism [3] is being exploitative by supplying income to non-laborers
Rather than focusing on making products or developing new services, many businesses now generate significant profits through financial activities like stock buybacks, complex derivatives, and other monetary instruments. Nothing better shows this long trend, perhaps, than the rise of cryptocurrencies—financial assets whose promise for practical uses is always somehow over the horizon but whose speculative returns can be felt today. [5]
Financialization in the US
Total US Financial Assets as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Since 1960
This chart tells us that for every $1 there is $4-$5 bogus paper money which has no backing by any asset!
This chart depicts the growth of the financial sector relative to the real economy in the U.S. over time, as measured by the ratio of total financial assets held by U.S. households and businesses to GDP. The increasing ratio over time means the financial sector is growing faster than the real economy, implying that a larger proportion of economic activity is related to the trading and holding of financial assets than the production of goods and services.
TODO: Code this chart from actual data source.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization
[2] https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesfinancecouncil/2020/06/18/information-is-the-new-gold/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_capitalism
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13604813.2013.853865
[5] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financialization.asp