iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

At @brokenwindpod.bsky.social we’re always chasing our tails at the end of the month waiting to release a backlog of news updates on all of your favorite free streaming services. Quit pacing, we’ve got more free content coming in May, and you can always subscribe to the Patreon for early access!

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Reposted by BrokenWindVane

J.D. Underpants @butlersghost.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Podcasts are all bad and you should stop listening to all of them except for mine. I think we had a very good episode this week and people have been saying we’re reshaping the whole podcasting landscape. www.patreon.com/posts/dark-w...

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Dark Woke Weester, News Update, April 20, 2025 | Broken Wind Podcast

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Due to our hosting limitations on streaming services, the newest episode of @brokenwindpod.bsky.social was cut in half and there will be no more free news updates until 5/1. Subscribe now to our Patreon for all the full episodes, but dont get “sucked in”. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

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Sucked in-Gate, News Update, April 6, 2025 (short version)

Podcast Episode · Broken Wind Podcast · 04/14/2025 · 29m

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

It’s funny that some financial publications are selling the tariffs as potentially good, because past spikes in volatility have lead to periods of 30% annual growth. This denies the reality that growth last year was already around 24%, and that in the long run, annual growth converges around 12%. 🎰🤞

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Released another new (old) episode tonight on our Patreon for subscribers of either tier. This one includes our final election predictions which were sadly so wrong! If only we had been right about our Hail Mary bet that Dark Horse Brandon could come back to save us! www.patreon.com/posts/dark-h...

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Dark Horse Brandon, News Update, November 3, 2024 | Broken Wind Podcast

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

What we’re learning from the tariffs is that the entire class of capitalists is no longer sufficiently exclusive enough for those in power. They have to start cutting millions of soon to be former capitalists out of the deal, including many Republicans who thought that they were part of the club.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

While the president was peddling his favorite one-pedal cars, he described “enshitification”. Well, he said “everything’s computer” but we all knew what he meant. Our newest episode of @brokenwindpod.bsky.social is available now on Patreon, or stream it free next week www.patreon.com/posts/elon-g...

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Elon, Go To Mars! News Update, March 16, 2025 | Broken Wind Podcast

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Subscribe to either of the Patreon tiers if you want to get early access to our news updates. The $5 monthly tier unlocks all of our content. Due to our hosting limitations, we currently have 4x more content on the Patreon compared to the free streaming services. patreon.com/BrokenWind?u...

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Just a bunch of hot air

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

How did a handful of lonely nerds negotiate the terms for the American century of humiliation? This is the subject of our most recent free episode of @brokenwindpod.bsky.social, out now on all major streaming services. As usual, Patreon subscribers had early access podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

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Revenge of the Nerds, News Update, March 2, 2025

Podcast Episode · Broken Wind Podcast · 04/01/2025 · 1h 24m

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

If you enjoyed the first few news episodes on free podcast services but want more, you have 2 options: 1) wait 4 more days and they’ll be on a regular but delayed schedule or 2) you can subscribe to the Patreon with much more content already available and there’s no delay patreon.com/BrokenWind?u...

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Just a bunch of hot air

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Like a teenager on a family plan, we’re all out of minutes! Not to worry @brokenwindpod.bsky.social will be releasing weekly news updates to free streaming services in April. With finite hosting time at this stage, we are airing way behind, but catching up. 3/2 episode airs free on 4/1. 3/16 on 4/7.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

At long last, there’s a new free episode of @brokenwindpod.bsky.social on major streaming services! This short news update is just a segment of our full interview with Orion. That’s all our hosting time this month. Subscribe to the Patreon for the most up to date content! patreon.com/BrokenWind?u...

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Just a bunch of hot air

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

bsky.app/profile/schu... BIG: I think you’re gonna like this a lot more than you like Elissa Slotkin. I’m announcing @brokenwindpod.bsky.social will deliver a new Patreon tier where you can access all of our news updates for $3 per month. Help support independent media! patreon.com/BrokenWind?u...

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Just a bunch of hot air

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Turns out that “the end of history” wasn’t. Turns out that possessing some sort of alternative vision for the future and planning for it wouldn’t always be considered a political third rail. The Cold War made it “cool” to reject the notion of planning and Dems have been too insecure to reclaim cool.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

All our movies and culture tell us that those who do the planning are always the bad guys. While it was the Dems who fully internalized this Cold War culture, Reps decided to create new arguments and popularize them with repetition, and it worked. Turns out that Cold War propaganda wasn’t permanent.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

And I feel I must add the qualifier. “Freedom” means (barely) redistributing this year’s GDP according to democratic influence. “Barely redistributing this year’s GDP” describes the system of liberalism when its operating at its most ideal

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

This is why, in the richest country in human history, “freedom” also means “embracing scarcity”, because for the state to use any of the existing wealth without getting permission from the owners would be a violation of “freedom”. “Freedom” dictates that only GDP from this year may be redistributed.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

There is a perverse, yet brutally transparent logic behind this ancient Roman notion of “freedom”. Everybody is “free”, because it means everybody has the potential to fall victim to the fate of “the market”. It is a game where everybody could win or lose, and that’s why we celebrate our lucky ones.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

This is one of the ancient ideas which culminated behind the European (re)discovery of the “free market”, during the scientific enlightenment. They rediscovered the legal system of the Roman economy, which we now call the “slave mode of production”, and they called it “freedom”.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

This is because in the West the only linguistic, legal and moral framework that we engage with derives from the Roman concept of “freedom”, which exists exclusively for the privilege of “private interests”. In an owner’s private domain they have the “freedom” to impose their will onto the powerless.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Liberalism leads inextricably to a society of tangible scarcity, even when such a thing does not actually exist, because liberalism is when you conflate the universal right to “private property” with “freedom”, to the exclusion of both. The richest and freest of all countries have “nothing to spare”

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Elon admitted that X recently had an unexpected outage, and then he said it was likely due to “foreign intervention”. I think it’s worth reminding people that this South African billionaire’s purchase of Twitter and the resulting tragedy of the commons could also be called “foreign intervention”

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

As I feared, they already “flooded our zone”. As small independent media, we have finite time to upload to Apple/Spotify for free listeners. @brokenwindpod.bsky.social is already out of time this month but we have much more unreleased content on Patreon. Help us grow! patreon.com/BrokenWind?u...

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Just a bunch of hot air

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

So if you are wondering why the economy is collapsing, it’s because Trump has pointed to the indisputable evidence of our trade victory (trade deficits), and enough people believed him. He called the evidence of our “winning” a “loss”, and enough people believed him, despite being objectively wrong.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

So does Trump intend to complain about the other half of the trade deficit, the fact that we have the most powerful dollar, or does he just want to complain that since we have the most powerful dollar nobody wants to give us all their goods and services for free? It seems he complains about the 2nd.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The only ways to lower the trade deficit without weakening the demand for the dollar is to stop trading altogether, or to demand the same goods and services for free. Since nobody will agree to give us all the same stuff for free, the only realistic option is to trade less, leading to higher prices.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

In other words, the trade deficit is a secondary result of the dollar exchange rate. Complaining about the trade deficit is also complaining about the dollar’s relatively high exchange rate. One cannot be changed without the other. If you want a lower trade deficit, you also want a weaker dollar.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

This is all Orwellian “double-think”. They enjoy all the benefits of the strongest dollar, but this isn’t enough for them because half is still always less than the whole. They demand the strongest dollar for themselves, but they also demand that there isn’t any surplus left over for anyone else!

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

There are no Americans who are gullible enough to consider themselves “losers”. Some of them might be willing to repeat Trump’s lies if it leads to cheaper vacations for them, but there’s nobody who actually believes that we are being “taken advantage of” by the countries that we regularly exploit.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Since the plan is to reduce our buying power as Americans, there will be a decline in sales, and since there will be fewer sales, the price of goods and services will rise to offset the cost of additional storage, hence the result will be inflation. “Winning” will never feel more like losing.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

So let me know, do think most Americans have this in mind when Trump says we’re going to start “winning” at trade again? Do you think most of his supporters believe this means going on more vacations, or less? Trump is making it clear that his idea of “winning” means having a lower exchange rate.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Trump can pretend that this is suddenly a “bad deal” but it’s the reason why so many Americans can afford to vacation in other countries with weak exchange rates. If these trade deficits were to end, it would be because the exchange rate is even, which means that both sides are vacationing equally.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

So we do end up paying the most for imported products, but that’s because we have the most powerful currency, which means that we can afford to. The result of this deal is that rest of the world ends up with our dollars, but we get all the international goods and services we could ever possibly want

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

When you receive the world’s most desirable currency for the least amount of effort, you are the most willing to bid prices up, but this is not because you are “losing”, it’s because you already won. Complaining about our trade deficits is just another way of complaining that Americans are over-paid

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The reason that countries which have weaker currencies than the US end up with US trade surpluses is a direct result of the fact that the American dollar is stronger, and therefore, Americans are better compensated relative to the rest of the world.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

In other words, trade deficits are a direct consequence of having the most powerful dollar. Promising to end these trade deficits is not really “winning”, because this is also promising to have a weaker dollar. These are inversely related, so lowering deficits will be the result of a weaker dollar.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

If the US dollar is no longer the most desirable currency, we no longer have to worry about other countries ending up with a surplus of our dollars, because they won’t want them. This is how he intends to “solve” a problem which doesn’t exist because our trade deficits are the opposite of a problem.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

So when Trump says we’re going to start “winning” at trade, he isn’t telling you how he intends to win. He intends to deflate the US dollar so that it is no longer the currency with the most global demand, that way we no longer have to worry about other countries having a trade surplus of dollars.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

A small, unexpected decline in sales will result first in inflation, because there will be an unexpected rise in storage costs for goods. As prices rise, sales will continue to decline, causing the price to rise even more. Deflation results once investors sell goods for less than they were produced.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The neoliberal economic order has been predicated on the mantra that more sales lead to lower prices, and vice versa, and hence, there is no way to raise the prices of goods without also causing fewer sales. Trump’s tariffs will shock the global economy because it depends on maximizing sales volume.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Initially there will be inflation as the cost of the additional storage is factored into the end price, but then there will be a sudden deflation as the price of these goods are lowered beneath the original cost of production. This will result in trillions in capital seemingly vanishing overnight.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Since the price of the tariff is ultimately passed along to the end consumer, this will effectively raise the price for the consumer, which will result in fewer sales. When the volume of sales declines below the original expectation, there are unexpected storage costs added to the supply chain.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

From the perspective of our trade partners, a “trade surplus” of US dollars means you are losing goods and services in exchange for a fiat US dollar which is always expected to be a depreciating asset. Negotiating an end to these trade deficits means that we will have more expensive goods.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

So while Trump has been saying that we are “losing” because of our trade deficits, this is actually the key to our economic success. When your dollar is the world’s most desirable currency, you will inevitably have a trade deficit, and that is actually a sign of your economic victory over them.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The neoliberal order is predicated on the fact that “if you build it, they will come”. If you produce the goods for cheap enough, there will be demand for them. Storage always has a cost, so the lowest prices are dependent upon goods sitting in warehouses and on shelves for least time possible.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Once a sufficient amount of state investment (printing) has occurred, the rate of profit effectively falls to zero, which necessitates competition, not for a greater share of the business, but for a greater share of feudal rent. Under monopolistic competition, the share of business is assumed static

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Toyota may have been one of the first, but it is by no means the only company doing this. Part of the 2008 financial crisis was due to similar practices at American auto companies like GM. The competition for profit is a race to the bottom which devolves into a feudal battle over unproductive rents.

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BrokenWindVane @brokenwindvane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

With Toyota leading the industry in competitive pricing, they went on to dominate in global sales but the marginal profit for each new sale approached zero, necessitating a new business model. Toyota drove auto profits to zero, then went on to lead the industry in financing plans to secure monopoly.

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