Just yesterday I listened to an news segment with a guest who went on and on about how the "housing crisis" = there aren't enough homes, because we haven't been building enough homes, so what we need to do is build more homes.
"18.4 million empty homes."
It would seem we don't have a "housing crisis." We have an everything-else-crisis. The fact that people can't afford one of the existing 18.4 million empty homes is just one effect of that.
"By The People..., and For The People" where "People" is defined as those with a net worth of >$5M and actively contributing to their politicians reelection campaigns.
I want to point out here that for important rhetorical and analytical reasons we should treat our sad circumstances as un capitalism. This is not to save it per se, but to recover all the elements it’s defined by. Conservatives have destroyed agency, choice, competition and markets, for oligarchy.
Oligarchic hegemony is not a market based system. It’s far more like capitalism’s antecedent, feudalism - authoritarian, totalitarian exploitation.
But it’s not even itself. It can’t be. There is nothing to redeem. It’s a post capitalist world. Like Marx and so many others have pointed out, it destroys itself but what rules on the ashes is closer to feudalism. Now global. The giant cartels, tech giants, hydrocarbon companies, finance, etc are a problem because they are centralized command and control totalitarian entities
When its champions clamor it’s the best system. the reply is mockery #WhatCapitalism
Nope. By way of argument, Milton Friedman’s free market fundamentalism justified the Bork doctrine. It ended anti-trust. That legal precedent has destroyed entire systems of markets as companies (vertically) consolidated their sectors. To riff on Arthur C Clarke, “any sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from totalitarian rule”.
The interests of such corporate giants, their scale in the economy, has all the negative consequences they assign to government.
The essential point is that the free market capitalism espoused by conservatives reconstructs tyranny. Every legal policy they’ve touched recreates despotism. They neither understand the role of credit nor energy in a market. EG Nordhaus claimed if the energy sector fell apart, it would only marginally effect GDP. Ditto for the food supply.
And for that exact reason, they are utterly disreputable. A joke. We’ve had 40 years of their influence and it’s been a total disaster.
yes; what I am saying is distinct. Capitalism will never quite be itself (again by its own defining criteria).
What I am (trying to) bash apart is the delusion around our economy. That it’s not even the thing big corporations and conservatives assert it is, and why they are not even competent to speak on the matter.
Moderates embrace the very same debunked economics conservatives do. They should be given no quarter in this area.
I think one other way to highlight what I am driving at, is if you understand the criminal negligence of Nordhaus’ influence on the economic impacts of climate, understand his theoretical models also influence economic policy supporting “capitalism”.
One of the other things to try to get a grip on is to understand that mainstream economics has us flying blind. And when moderates open their mouth on policy, that orthodoxy can be challenged.
Wealth concentration is an inherent property of a capitalistic system.
The wealthier participant in a transaction has an inherent advantage in risk-tolerance and greater ability to hold out for a better deal. That advantage leads to a positive feedback loop of wealth accumulation and concentration.
The only way to make capitalism sustainable is to couple it with downward wealth redistribution (e.g. progressive taxation and UBI).
Don't all hierarchical societies have similar wealth concentration problems?
Isn't the core social dilemma that leaders inevitably defect and renege on their contract with their followers/citizens? We agree to let an elite take over certain matters, to help coordinate things, and then they abuse their power, because no one is watching.
Is not capitalism primarily an optimization and refinement—through legal means—of pre-existing models?
I think the reason has as much, if not more, to do with the available energy resources. Capitalism was an essential method for deploying the incredible quantity of surplus energy that fossil energy provided. The goal was always—has always been—to leverage that energy, mostly to the benefit of an elite. Exponentially more energy led to exponentially faster wealth production and concentration. Capitalism was a means to an end.
@breadandcircuses it was really shocking to me to find out that Florida doesn’t get the same federal benefits that people in other states get. Like when we had the extra pandemic snap benefits, people in Florida didn’t get that. People in FL don’t get real medicaid. As a disabled person living in Florida before I qualified for Medicare, they gave me medically vulnerable Medicaid, which means it only kicked in after I paid $1000 out of pocket per month. Yep, I had a $1000 a month #deductible with #Florida#Medicaid. At the time my #disability payment was only a couple hundred dollars more than that, so I didn’t have $1000 after I paid rent. So basically I didn’t have insurance unless I ended up in the hospital with a huge bill. So it makes sense there would be more people living in poverty in places like that.
@breadandcircuses so this means there’s 146 million people that will qualify immediately for the #WorkCamps as soon as #Amerikkka builds them? Terrifying.
If the Supreme Court rules next month that being homeless is a crime they will start building them. Bet. They’ll make one for kids too, for all the unwanted babies they forced women to grow and birth, once they get to be about 10 they can go work and meet packing plants.
@breadandcircuses no more campaigns. no more parties. either sortition or else every candidate puts their platform online, next to their voting record if any, on a website designed for that. it's free. each also gets one free 10 minutes on tv and on radio to briefly give their platform and give the website's address. political bribery gets you barred for life from politics. your salary equals monthly SSI. your healthcare is medicare.