2025 is a Trash and Cash

[FrodoSwaggins]

You've heard of the Pump and Dump: 

Pump-and-dump is a manipulative scheme to boost the price of a security through fake recommendations based on false, misleading, or exaggerated statements.

But have you heard of the trash and cash? In the trash and cash, someone drives down the value of a security through disparaging statements and such, then buys it up while its cheap, and reaps the benefits when it recovers its value.
Melon Husk has done this most notably in his purchase of Twitter. He absolutely worked to devalue that company prior to cutting a check for controlling interest. I've begun to suspect that exactly the same thing is being done to the United States as a whole: the bourgeoisie is attacking established systems in an attempt to not simply seize the means of production from the people, but to devalue it heavily to a point where they can buy it up for increased profit.
I suspect a few of us could make arguments in either direction about this conjecture, but I still think there's a lot of truth to it. You can't help but wish you had the means to benefit from these devalued assets while they're "trashed." 
What could that mean? Maybe buying DHL, UPS, Fedex stocks, knowing that the USPS is going to get trashed. Or maybe it means buying up shitty offshore wind stocks, knowing that Trump can't live forever and that NJ, NY, and Delaware will eventually resume their massive, government funded investments in the technology (or, invest in the engineering firms that help pull off the installations, you'd have to do your research).
I'm not trying to diminish the horror of migrant children stacked in mass graves in the desert, which we strongly suspect is coming, if not already occurring. What I am trying to do is preemptively apply the lens of history to the current moment based upon lessons learned from China's cultural revolution, the constant churn of sub-Saharan Africa, and a very short modern history of Poland, Ukraine, and Italy, just to name a few. 
I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

[gorzek]

I think they are very foolish if that's their game, because a lot of what's being cut are things that will cause decades of damage. Do these fuckers really think they will be alive in 30 years to reap the benefits? Lot of them are quite old already.
I think their real goal is to pick the corpse clean and move on. Rich people are mobile. Some of them care about the US, as a project, and actually like this country and want it to continue prospering (and running a global empire, let's be real, lol.) But clearly some of them couldn't give a fuck, and only see this country (and any other country) as a heart pumping fresh blood they can suck until there's none left.
Gutting research and education and public health, setting up a vast eugenics regime, kicking out immigrants... these are all dead-end policies that foreclose any kind of positive future.
I was introduced to the term "necrosecurity" recently, per this paper: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/1...-0104/html
There is definitely an element to the right-wing movement that believes strength can be achieved by purging the weak. In reality it doesn't work out this way, because an ideology that depends on eternally finding and purging enemies must continue doing that forever, and it will invent enemies as necessary. It is a self-destructive ideology to the core, but it can take a long time to catch up with its architects.
So, I don't think there is really any eye toward long-term profit in any of this. This is a raid. They will take what they can take and fuck off somewhere. I'm sure at least some will stick around to rule the ashes, but the US as a global force will be done, and domestically it's hard to guess just how bad things will get, but... probably bad. We can't even grow our own food without imports, and if you don't have basic food security, you don't have anything. I do think guys like Trump literally don't understand that and think there's some magic wand we can wave to make things happen as we wish. But there's not. There's only so far threatening and posturing will get you, and as the US' stature diminishes, those threats will be less and less effective. How things turn out with Ukraine will tell us a bit about how things are going. I'm not convinced the US will get the mineral deal that's being touted--it's just so absurd. But if it works, then we will be emboldened to do this elsewhere, and essentially shore up the fraying empire through outright belligerence (rather than economic pressure, propaganda, and strategic funding of coups/rebellions, as has been our usual practice.)
Bullies throwing their weight around like this usually fall victim to picking a fight with the wrong person (country.) That's not gonna be good.

[Aloria]

what I don't understand is how destroying the government and US as a whole will benefit the uber-rich? They're devaluing the dollar. If their money is tied up in USD, or their property is in the US, then it's not worth anything after they finish trashing it. -THEY- are not worth as much after they finish trashing it. 
It's like a house. If you smear shit on the walls and bust holes through the ceiling during your drug-fueled frat party, then decide you wanna sell the place after because you don't wanna clean up the mess, you're not going to get any money for it. Fixing it will take too much money and effort.

[gorzek]

what I don't understand is how destroying the government and US as a whole will benefit the uber-rich? They're devaluing the dollar. If their money is tied up in USD, or their property is in the US, then it's not worth anything after they finish trashing it. -THEY- are not worth as much after they finish trashing it. 
It's like a house. If you smear shit on the walls and bust holes through the ceiling during your drug-fueled frat party, then decide you wanna sell the place after because you don't wanna clean up the mess, you're not going to get any money for it. Fixing it will take too much money and effort.

You have to remember that the tech guys involved in this don't care about the US dollar. They are all-in on cryptocurrency. A form of money not under any government control, but whose availability depends on pure computing power, is a tech bro's wet dream. It's no surprise that's the direction they're going.
Trump even did a cryptocurrency rugpull right after he won the election.

[Aloria]

but if no one can afford the internet, then they can't mine crypto off their computers...?

[FrodoSwaggins]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses! I read and enjoyed them all. Great questions too!
I can't really dispute much of what anyone else has said, no arguments there. To revisit my original post, I'm making an effort to apply other lenses to the current socio-economic disaster unfolding in real-time in the United States, informed by my limited knowledge of historic coups elsewhere. I don't posit that 100% of the people involved in planning and carrying out the coup view any of it through the same lens.
The coup is absolutely made up of party politicians who think they're carrying out decades awaited revenge, idealogues, oligarchs, and drank-the-koolaid-death-cult-freedom-fighters. Some folks are a combination of several of these! Not to leave out the "just following orders" Nazi-stans shuffling around the perimeter either. 
I do think that when history looks back, in whatever becomes of the United States, it will be from a modernized America that has stabilized to the point that the average person has food, housing, work, and school most months out of the year. We may be talking about the 2050s though. And I believe that in 20/20 hindsight, there will have been opportunities that arose out of the coup. I'm interested in highlighting those opportunities as much as I'm able, for the audience here, in case someone does decide to stay the course and stay put here, rather than going ex-pat or refugee in Canada or Southeast Asia.
I have no idea when it will hit, but I do believe that DHL, UPS, and Fedex will benefit from the demise of the United States Postal Service. I'm currently trying to figure out the dynamics that are currently causing those securities to drop and what the timing is. Seems to be related to Amazon doing more of its own shipping and ending some big contracts, which in my opinion can't last forever.
If public schools are defunded to the point they become unsustainable, then charter schools will rise, but my experience says that none of that will be publicly traded and most of it won't be profitable directly (only for companies that have lucrative cleaning, technology, food, and other service contracts).
One excellent question is, what the hell is going to happen to all of the old folks? Most so-called national chains of senior facilities are ebb and flow real estate holding companies with a little skilled nursing sideline and so unless you're an insider getting stock on a schedule at a discount, or you have impeccable timing, they are often not worth investors' time. It will be interesting to see if the coming chaos and privatization boom changes that.

[gorzek]

but if no one can afford the internet, then they can't mine crypto off their computers...?

That doesn't matter, because they will force you to use it anyway.

One excellent question is, what the hell is going to happen to all of the old folks? Most so-called national chains of senior facilities are ebb and flow real estate holding companies with a little skilled nursing sideline and so unless you're an insider getting stock on a schedule at a discount, or you have impeccable timing, they are often not worth investors' time. It will be interesting to see if the coming chaos and privatization boom changes that.

I think life expectancy will decline (it already has, some) so the overall need for senior facilities may decrease or at least flatline.
If Medicare and Social Security are cut, expect that to devastate a large share of seniors. Not all of them, since many are wealthy. But the bottom 1/3 or so? This will put them in an early grave. Once again, fully intentional.
They can't be allowed to do this shit.