Also, a little precursor to this one—I am very aware that I am EXTREMELY lucky that I can exercise. So many people do not have that privilege, and if that is you, I am deeply sorry. This blog is not in any way aimed at those people, and I hope that it does not come across in any harmful way, as this is more of a personal love letter to exercise than anything else.

Exercising is great. It's incredibly good for you, it can be done for free (or at least at a very, very low cost), it's fun, there are endless different ways to do it, and most importantly, it makes you feel better. Oh also—while this may be shallow or whatever—it makes you look good too. Sorry if I'm being vain, but that's a pretty sweet bonus.

I think, personally, the mood boost from exercise is its most valuable element. Whenever I feel a bit low or upset, I know that I need to go out and either go for a run or push a bunch of weights around. Obviously, in that lower moment, you have no desire to go out and exercise, which can easily lead to days or weeks of skipping it—only making that mood worse! But as soon as I've turned my brain off for 30 minutes to an hour and run or lifted, I get nice and comfy after a shower and, even if I'm still down, I feel noticeably better.

It's not like feeling crap and putting on a movie in the hopes that it might cheer you up, or trying to cook yourself a nice meal—which runs the risk of tasting bad. It is a surefire, guaranteed way to lift yourself. Even if the workout itself is awful and uncomfortable, the feeling afterwards is almost always worth it. As far as I have figured out from my brief time alive, exercise is the singular best way to get a quick mood boost.

Now, onto what I was saying about capitalism... again.

At the moment, it often feels like you can't do anything without payment. You can't achieve, and it's much harder to grow without some money—or at least privilege, family wealth, and so on. Alongside this, and the rising costs of building anything (e.g. a family, a business), self-development has become more and more of a focus for a lot of people, especially younger people. But even this often requires a bit of money in the bank. Education, cooking good food and various other hobbies are all costly. To do gardening you actually need a space to do so; to take photos, you need a camera—or at least a decent phone; to play music, you need instruments or software; to learn, you need to pay for classes—you get my point. While I appreciate that many of these can be done cheaply, I stand by the fact that these hobbies have largely become heavily intertwined with capitalism.

Let's say you pick up photography. You start with just your phone, but you get pretty good. After a while, you want to upgrade to take better photos. So, maybe you buy a second-hand camera. You continue to get better—it becomes a real passion—maybe you even enter some competitions or try to exhibit your work in a gallery. You need a better camera for an exhibition though, right? Your personalised ads will certainly tell you so. So now you need to buy a new, expensive gadget—and so that cycle goes on. This is just one example, of course, but to actually feel like you're developing something in life—be that a hobby or something bigger—you will nearly always encounter the consumerist and capitalist world at every stage.

Exercise differs slightly here. Don't get me wrong, nearly every element of it has also been turned into a culture of BUY BUY BUY: clothing, shoes, food, equipment, and much, much more. But the most basic forms of exercise—like running or, say, calisthenics—not only bear little to no startup cost, the development of oneself and the benefits one feels as a result are yet untouched by capitalism (broadly speaking).

If you want to work really hard in your career to earn big and maybe own a home, that dream has become less and less possible in recent years. In many cases, the hard work you put in will not lead to anything close to a proportionate benefit. Exercise, though—you get out exactly what you put in. You do the hard task of going for a run, you get a nice mood boost and sweat out some stress. You do that two or three times a week, you'll start to get fit. If you lift weights consistently, you'll see nice results. I think the point I'm trying to make here is that on the left, I don't see anywhere near enough people shouting about how great exercise is—or sports more generally!

Fight back against the machine, stop consuming and start moving.

Getting into certain sports is fantastic too—team sports particularly. Team sports build community, friendship, teamwork and more. While a lot of sports will start to fall into the issues I was discussing earlier about startup costs and the costs of upgrading to new equipment as your own skills improve, there are still great benefits to be reaped.

Another aspect of how exercise lets you fight back against the machine is in things like your diet. If you stay in healthy shape, your cravings for ultra-processed, unhealthy foods will drop dramatically. I've noticed this myself: lately, my craving for chocolate or sweets every night has gone. Eating less of this kind of stuff is better for your mind, your heart, and your wallet—exercise and physical health feed everything.

Working out also gives me a lot of hope for when I'm older. I hate the thought of being really old and struggling to move well. I know this will happen someday, but the longer I can put that off, the better. One of the number one reasons I run? Because one day I won't be able to anymore.

I appreciate that, for all its great benefits, exercise doesn't solve everything—but when there's a scientifically proven way to improve your life across all aspects, and it only takes 30 minutes to an hour a few times a week—why wouldn't you do it?

Anyway, what a nonsensical ramble that was. Go and exercise—you'll feel better for it, and who knows, maybe it'll give you a break from the constant, mind-numbing, stressful capitalist world!

Although there has been some great environmental progress made in recent years – which is often underreported – the general situation is still very bleak. So why on earth (no pun intended) are we suddenly just scrapping all of the hard (but not nearly hard enough) work that was going into environmental protection legislation?

Simply put, the world wants economic growth and is still too scared to consider trying something new to achieve that. Globally, we are lacking a somewhat powerful jurisdiction that is economically thoughtful. No one is willing to go a different way – again excluding the Trump administration's maniacal descent into fascism. Europe is dominated by pragmatism, which almost sounds rhetorical in itself – how can pragmatism be dominant? But it really is, and this is quickly leading to the rise of the far right across the continent. Orbán in Hungary, the rise of the AfD in Germany and Reform in the UK. It feels as though the existing liberal establishment is not even hanging on to its claimed sanity of centrism anymore, it is instead sleepwalking into its far-right doom while a bunch of people who have never had to worry about money or how the economy might impact their livelihoods argue about how best to create economic growth. But the arguments either consist of "well we need competition" or "we need to cut back spending" or "AI will save us". I'd argue that 2/3 of these are completely stupid, and one is somewhat correct but it is mostly not being enacted properly.

(The good one is competition). While AI has great potential it is far too early to just rely on it. Especially considering the entities which currently own the largest means of AI production – there's no chance they'll let it eradicate poverty, if it even could do that.

But even for competition to be a strong driving force behind some economic growth right now, you need to take pretty big, arguably radical policy steps in order to massively limit the power and wealth of some of the biggest firms in the world such as Apple, Google, Amazon etc. While it does seem as though this is happening in some cases, (the EU's regulation, maybe even the US!) it is ultimately not enough. More radical change needs to happen. In Europe particularly, these big US tech firms need to be taxed like mad, using the revenue to boost the development of European-made tech competitors that are decentralised and ideally even semi-owned and ran by their users – a little bit like Farcaster, where users pay a small fee to join the platform and can in turn build their own mini apps on it, enabling a seamless interoperable online experience that also contributes brilliantly to discourse – so far without too much aimless, shouty and polarised dogma as far as I can see.

Anyway, back to the environment. It is Earth day after all! I saw an interesting comparison earlier this week that I wanted to share.

During the Cold War half-century, the US reportedly spent $13 trillion on defence (University of Warwick). Also – that estimate is at 1996 prices. By one inflation calculator that is now just under $23.5 trillion, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is much higher than that; that fee probably doesn't even take into account all the fun stuff the US were doing in other countries to meddle with leftist regimes. Regardless – this is an INSANE amount of money to be spent on one sector in that time period. Anyone suggesting that kind of concentration of spending on anything today would be ridiculed. "It will cause hyperinflation!", "Our debt/trade deficit won't allow it!". But at the time, those concerns were swept aside. Why? Because of the threat of nuclear war. Kind of fair, to be honest. But. Was the Russian invasion, whether nuclear or not, of the US/West inevitable? Was it 100% likely and guaranteed? Clearly not. Let's say, for the sake of the argument the chance was 50% (which is incredibly generous and a slap in the face to probability and years of Cold War studies – but hey don't forget the Cuban Missile Crisis and those Russian submarine commanders who almost sent a nuclear torpedo based on a misunderstanding!). If that was the case though, you'd say yeah, fair enough. Spend big, bigger than normal. Much bigger than normal. Much bigger than what we even have! So why are we not applying the same to climate change? Something that is almost 100% guaranteed. Something that we are already seeing the devastating impact of around the world. Make it make sense.

Covid was a global crisis, so public spending skyrocketed. The climate crisis is the single biggest threat to humanity ever. Yet it has become a figment of cultural politics that the centre and right have screamed away for years. Channeling the climate GOAT, Greta Thunberg here – how dare they!

To see even the existing lacklustre green policies be dropped for what I can almost guarantee will be ineffective economic policy is infuriating. Maybe the current people in charge have just decided you know what, we won't see the impact of this too badly in our lifetime, so fuck it. We need to fight back against this ridiculous abandonment of green policies.

How about this – green spending be changed and instead be classified as defence spending. This actually isn't a bad idea. It is defence. The defence of the human race. If you're willing to spend money on countless weapons and armies to supposedly defend your people, you should be willing to do the same for climate issues. Imagine a world in which defence spending was not focused on finding out how best to murder countless people with new technology as a means of defence AND was more effective at protecting your people than that. Just imagine.

In the spirit of an inspiration of mine, Paul Krugman, MUSICAL CODA:

How is this going to end? Who knows. But it certainly doesn't fill me with confidence. Can we compare the 2008 crash and sub-prime mortgage loans to paying off our dinners in instalments? Definitely not. Is that what I'm going to do? Yes, sort of. Is it going to make any sense come the end of this exercise? Not a chance! Will my economics and understanding of the 2008 crash be completely wrong and misguided by movies, media and the way in which I see the world today? Absolutely! Let's do it.

Now immediately, it is worth noting that applying for a mortgage (no matter how risky à la sub-primes) is totally different to Klarna-ing your dinner. Sub-prime mortgages were being given to people who would ordinarily not qualify for a mortgage. It is a sure-thing today that in order to get a mortgage, or to even consider buying a home – that you need 1. a big stack of cash. 2. a good credit score. 3. probably a stable job etc. etc. Before 2008 though, these sub-primes were going to anyone who fancied them. Bankers got greedy (more so than usual) and crashed the economy. Anyway, back to financing a pizza.

Essentially getting a loan to buy some food from a delivery service is not really one that can be rejected. Even if those paying off these loans miss their payments, or look set to miss them (bad credit score, bad record of loan repayments etc) – it isn't exactly the biggest loss. But, what if we imagine for a moment that there are shedloads of extremely unreliable customers – maybe they're even colluding together in this scheme – who simply do not pay back their Klarna loans. Say these people buy up as many deliveries as they can, using these loans and not paying them back. If this went on and on for a long while and debts weren't repaid, then MAYBE there could be a mini-crash. But not really. Still, it is crazy and maybe funny that this is now technically more of a possibility. Is it funny? I'm really not sure.

On the whole, this is yet another development of the current economic system which feels quite dystopian. Rapidly increasing wealth inequality is whittling away at the middle class. Moving towards models where we have to pay for everything in instalments or subscriptions is going to lead to lots of people actually OWNING less and less.

This is why I agree with a lot of theories that argue this is a new economic system and is not the capitalism we have become accustomed to. If no one other than the elite classes can own things, that is not capitalism. Private property as a concept is at the heart of the capitalist ideology, so to strip that from most people, is a direct change in system. This is a new beast altogether.

New labels have been floated around, like Varoufakis' 'techno-feudalism' which I do quite like. Maybe some sort of capital-feudalism is broader and easier to understand? I can certainly see the feudalism side of this. Going back to a system where there is GENUINELY none or very little potential for social mobility – not that this is rife at the moment. They own the land, the property, all major businesses which are crucial to our livelihoods and NOW, they own cloud capital. We are simply living on land, food and services owned by an increasingly small group of very very wealthy people and organisations – akin to that of monarchs. Maybe we should name it Capitalism+, as if it is a subscription service in itself.

I should explain that cloud capital refers to (and I'm likely somewhat butchering this) the digital capital owned by big tech firms who are expanding into every possible digital realm, owning all of our data, and being involved in nearly every digital action, purchase or discussion that goes on. They're buying up undersea cables, the AI-sphere, satellite connectivity, social media and more.

This is how these actors become the top of this new feudal system. Everything we do, everything any smaller, non-tech business does, will at some point rely on these big tech firms. I try to imagine this as them taking a form of rent from us all, for just existing, personal data being the main example of this. I think this is another reason the feudalism comparison arises, we will become the peasants and knights living on their land. The knights may feel they have some more autonomy, likely because of their wealth or education, but in reality, they are also completely subject to the whims of this ruling class.

But yeah, this new system doesn't feel great. Not so inspired by it personally. Yet our Governments are falling straight in line with it because at the end of the day, money talks for most of these self-proclaimed public servants. Brutal times.

But we have to fight back where we can. Despite this being a bit of a gloomy end to the post, let's try to have hope. We can change things.

While some people might respond by saying, "Well, Trump is 78—look at what he's doing"—sure, whatever. Fine. Knock yourself out. Trump is not a proper politician in the way Sanders is. At any stage of his political career, has Trump given rallying stump speeches from the back of a pickup truck to thousands of supporters? Of course not. The guy is a phoney businessman—he isn't even in the conversation.

I think this is why Bernie is so good at garnering support—he simply isn't like other politicians, whether they be Democrats or Republicans. He is able to communicate exactly what is wrong with the US for so many people, and he does so in such an endearing way. In times like these, people look to figures like Bernie for guidance and leadership—they look for a light at the end of the tunnel, or at least someone who can lead them to it. I can't understand why the Democrats don't see how effective a party-wide application of Bernie-style politics would be.

Electorally, it would be superb. Quite clearly, the messaging the Democrats have been using has disengaged people. Look at how Trump communicates—yes, it's horrible, but it works. MAGA found a communication strategy that completely overwhelms the Democrats and speaks to a lot of disenfranchised people who want to hear someone tell them things are going to get better. The Harris campaign (albeit started at extremely short notice) felt like it was trying to communicate with middle, upper-middle, and upper-class folk who are well-educated and often think they're a bit above others as a result. For those familiar with the term, it targeted centrist dads and their social groups. These are not the people the Democrats need to win over! By and large, these people would have always voted blue, so why attribute an entire campaign to them?!

For all its flaws, the Biden administration did a great job with infrastructure investment initiatives—this is what should have been campaigned on! This, along with the economy, which grew significantly under Biden.

Now is the time to mobilise the Democratic Party around Bernie-style leadership and policy. It would be so much more effective if it didn't have the DNC working against it the whole time. With Bernie Sanders' campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, running for DNC Chair, this is a real possibility. The time for sweeping change is now—it is far more achievable during a period of political and economic instability like the one we are currently experiencing.

Regardless of Trump's longer-term goals with these tariffs, it is also important to highlight the problems it looks to be causing in the short-term for consumers. The general economic motivation behind tariffs is to generate tax revenue from imports and to promote the consumption of domestically-produced goods and services as opposed to foreign ones in order to boost the domestic economy. In the case of the US and much of the Western world, imported goods are often cheaper due to their lower production costs e.g. much lower wages paid to employees in the global south in manufacturing. Large corporations utilise the cheap labour of developing countries to offer goods and services at much lower prices than domestic products. As wages and other production costs are higher in the US, so are consumer prices – so consumers, acting rationally, go for the cheaper, foreign products.

By raising tariffs though, the costs to importers are usually just passed onto consumers through price increases. So will this encourage people to buy American? Not really... The prices of domestically-produced goods are already high, so consumers are just going to have less affordable options. Due to the existing significant wealth inequalities in the US and globally, especially since Covid, consumers are already in a tough spot when it comes to affordability. So, the continuing rise in prices is not exactly welcome.

Also, as prices rise, real-terms wages are supposed to as well, matching the inflation in prices and growing the economy steadily. Whether this works in practice or not (hasn't in recent years), the price shock caused by the tariffs would not give real-terms wages the time to rise alongside inflation ANYWAY. As a result, we are likely to see a sharp rise in prices in the US, and globally, as a result of these tariffs, worsening consumer conditions. Ultimately, Trump is not worried about those in society who are struggling to put food on the table and so is happy to use these tariffs to further his own economic interests, which I'll get into now.

Right so what's Trump's actual move here? As far as I can see, the tariffs are only the first phase of a wider plan to reduce the US' trade deficit.

Around the world, the central banks of different countries and regions hold significant amounts of US dollars (USD) because of its value and strength. For example, the global exchange of crude oil uses USD (or petrodollars). By having one currency pinned to such a valuable commodity, many central banks will wish to hold it in reserve. For example, China holds approximately $3 trillion in reserve and Japan holds approximately $1 trillion. By having significant amounts of USD in reserve then, other central banks are able to make their currency stronger, because it is backed by USD, hence its value to foreign countries. This is a unique privilege enjoyed by the US – so inevitably, Trump loves it. Because of this, USD remains strong despite the US' colossal trade deficit.

However, while Trump enjoys this value of the dollar, he perceives other central banks owning it to strengthen their currencies as an exploitation of USD, disadvantaging US exporters and advantaging foreign importers into the US by reducing their costs. So how does Trump intend to change this?

While prices will see a shock rise due to the initial implementation of tariffs, USD will also eventually appreciate in value and after some time consumer prices will become slightly more affordable. In order to deal with the inflation and recessionary effects of the tariffs though, foreign central banks are likely to cut interest rates, encouraging consumer spending and the borrowing of money, in turn, boosting the economy. In fact, the European Central Bank has already done this, cutting its central interest rate from 2.75% to 2.5% on 6th March 2025. As a result, foreign currencies such as the Euro are likely to weaken, increasing the costs of US tariffs to foreign countries and regions like the EU.

Not only does this (in Trump's view) stop foreign countries from exploiting USD, it also generates more treasury revenue for the US through tariffs. This treasury revenue is crucial for Trump, as he can spend it more freely than regular Government funds which are overseen by Congress. With a slim majority and at times flagging support from the Senate and the House, Trump will relish any funding vehicle he can access that does not require Congressional approval. So there's one clear win for Trump from the tariffs already.

From here, I expect that Trump will give his tariff victims some form of ultimatum – akin to Reagan's tariff approach to Japan. The theory goes that Trump will force foreign central banks to either sell off a chunk of their dollars, further devaluing their own currencies – further raising the costs of US tariffs for them, or to swap debts – giving cheaper debts to the US and reducing the cost of its existing trade deficit. If foreign governments refuse, Trump will simply persist with tariffs on them, weakening their currencies and economies.

This is a very aggressive economic strategy, and one that only the US could really pull off. This is of course all speculative and heavily inspired by the video I referenced at the start of this piece, but I think it's a pretty viable prediction.

On here, I plan to write about policy, economics, tech and crypto regulation – oh and maybe a bit about competition too. I'm not going to shoehorn myself into one niche here though. I did choose the name of this blog, Technocrap, because I imagine a lot of what I chat about will be tech-related in some aspect. Anyway, please do subscribe, follow me on Farcaster (and Twitter, although I'm pretty inactive there) and yeah, please get involved in comments/DMs etc!

More and more, governments around the world are shifting towards operating like businesses. This follows the mass privatisation of key industries we have seen over the last few decades too. But is this actually helping? Frankly, no. It's not. Since the privatisation-heavy neoliberal agendas of Reagan in the US and Thatcher in Britain, things haven't really got any better. In fact, I would argue that the quality-of-living (relative to time-periods) for most people, globally, has been on the decline since then.

In Britain, we have seen our public services DECIMATED by these economic choices. I'm not sure there is any successful example of the privatisation of essential industries, which actually makes a lot of sense. Industries which provide goods and services necessary to the health of people and their work across the economy such as water, energy and transport should not be expected to pursue profits to survive. Of course, these need to break even to continue, but this can be managed by governments – the costs of train tickets, for example, could be based on an estimate of journeys taken on any given route per year – how should those journeys be priced to pay to maintain and gradually improve that route? That is all that needs to be worked out.

These essential services facilitate the rest of the economy significantly, and so should be treated as the building blocks to a successful economy, rather than another privately managed part of it.

Another space that this feels relevant to is universities (colleges for any American readers). Tuition fees have gone up and up, more so in the US, and are totally unaffordable for most people. I know that I won't ever pay off my student loan, it will be written off after 30 years and won't be near fully paid off. But most people, especially those in the US will have to deal with far worse consequences than me due to repayments and crazy interest rates. All the while, the actual quality of university education seems to be declining (at least in relation to what we pay). I paid just under £10k a year for my 3-year degree. Not one of those years was worth that. A year of it was online thanks to Covid-19 and in both other years, the amount of teaching and support available was nothing short of lacklustre. But this shouldn't come as any surprise to the politicians and economists who have caused this. If you force universities to act like businesses to survive, they will act like businesses – cutting costs, raising prices and accepting more high-fee paying international students at lower entry requirements. The goal of most universities has become profit rather than education.

With Trump back in the White House, I fear that the US Government is going to be ran increasingly like a business. We are already seeing this through Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE). The DoGE has begun to ruthlessly cut civil service jobs, aiming to streamline the government's work and improve its efficiency, bearing quite a resemblance to the billionaire's approach to managing Twitter (now X) when he bought it. And again, has this worked? X has become mostly boring and hard to use for the average person. I used to find myself checking Twitter hundreds of times a day, my feed curated perfectly, but now – it's just boring. My feed is a mish-mash of crypto ads, far-right nonsense and then the occasional post about football which I'm actually there for. Is this approach what we want for our governments and essential services?

Running the government or private corporations in this way sets them up for those who agree with their owners. It creates a sandbox for a certain group of people. I hesitate to even call this an echo chamber, because there are no echoes. It's just a locked room to which only one group has the keys. While this has been bad for Twitter/X, that's the decision of its owners, but for governments this kind of change should be the decision of the people.

After I got sick of X, I could just leave. If governments ruin economies and industries through cost-cutting and profit chasing, I can't quite do that – most people definitely can't because unlike X, we can't just opt-out of the worlds our governments create for us. Let's rethink how we want governments and essential services to facilitate the economy, not force them to partake in it at the cost of our living standards.