When the economy grows at 3% (if that) and the stock market grows at 15%, yes the stock market is eating everyone else's lunch. A growing pie doesn't matter if all the pieces go to a single person.
Of course the true crisis comes when the stock market becomes an even larger chunk of the economy and can no longer be supported. At that point you get depressions, with the only cure we have ever found being wars. A rather unfortunate one in an age of nuclear weapons.
>It seems so completely unlikely that the universe would require going so far afield from the original question in order to prove something that's relatively simple to state about it!
There is nothing in the universe that is simple to prove rigorously.
The reason why you can't have this conversation in America is because this is the factual basis of Socialism. To put it in terms Marx would understand: explain what material conditions of the antebellum south lead to slaves being 2/3rds of all capital investment in the US.
At which point it isn't a discussion about good or bad, but about class power in relation to the means of production. If the tractor had been invented in 1820 we could have well had a Northern slavery based sweatshop based industrial revolution and a south free yeomanry based agricultural revolution.
Calling the NYT the "left" makes about as much sense as calling the Catholic church the "left". The NYT is capitalist first with a large dose of liberalism second.
It's 2018. It's been 60 years since the memex and the mother of all demos. The ideas in computers aren't new or revolutionary, we know a wheel is round. The next stage is making a wheel that works better.
That might work well for your crud day job, but for your own projects, why not learn from the mistakes of others and not your own? It's much simpler to read why you should do something than figuring out all the ways you shouldn't.
>get to the point where you can write some idiomatic code
What does this even mean? I know C back to front and there is no such thing as idiomatic C. You write one type of C for embedded, one for batch numeric, one for systems, one for real time all are "idiomatic" and all have next to nothing to do with each other. It's even worse in higher level languages.
When the body mass of an apex predator can grow exponentially you might have a point. Nature places limits on growth with physics.
Society does the same with revolutions and genocides. I'd would rather we don't have a WWIII as a way to address inequality, as nice as WWII was for wealth redistribution I'd rather no deal with a nuclear war when we can just use laws to deal with a bit of greed.
The problem in physics is that you hear about the highest high fliers of the discipline and assume most people will be something like them, if less inspired/gifted. Then you get there and find out most people are shitty, territorial and wages put you in the same income bracket as fast food workers.
That's not how a multi party parliamentary democracy works. The Nazi were by far the largest party, it would have not been possible to make a parliament without them.
That's the whole reason why there were two elections in 1932 and rule by decree from von Papen. Germany was headed for a third election in 8 months until the deal with Hitler.
Universities are tools of capital. That their products are the finest specimens of bourgeoisie sensibilities is not a bug, it is a feature. The world view people leave with is designed to destroy worker solidarity in the most efficient way possible.
Which has nothing to do with the fact that the street battles between communists and nazis allowed Hitler to take 30% of the vote in two consecutive elections.
The left wins elections when it is the victim of violence, it loses when it tries to use violence itself.
The Nazi came to power largely because the communists would constantly fight them in the streets and "no-platform" them. You'd think someone would have read a history book.
Downvoting does not change facts. The constant street battles between the Communists and Nazis helped the Nazi far more than the Communists.