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Relevant Churchill quote: >Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side

Relevant Churchill quote: >Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public con-science, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted! My inner cynical hardline communist says that this just gives rentiers more juice to squeeze from poor folks. If getting more stuff helps poor people, they'd have been helped by the mechanization of agriculture rather than continuing to get worked to the bone to barely survive. IMO what they need is negotiating power and better outside options to the exploitative traps they're in.

mindslight 10y ago
If your inner communist wants to see reforms, it should think economically. One can't ignore incentives. The core intuition is that rents will go up, but not by the full six pence - perhaps only five. The landlords will be unable to extract the entire surplus. The people will have slightly more money, which they can save to gain that negotiating power you're talking about. However, the monetary policy of USD directly destroys this natural rising. Instead of accepting that slight deflation is natural [0], deflation has been cast as a bogeyman [1] and banished at all costs. The result is massive monetary base inflation to keep the CPI rising, which precisely affects the areas where new money is injected into the consumer economy - anything which can function as collateral and thus be financialized. So cheaper life necessities that should be a boon (eg Walmart) simply cause rents (landlord or bank) to rise fully in compensation as a matter of policy. [0] In the steady state, both technological progress and general market competition should lead to continually lower prices - a lower price is generally how one wins out in a market. [1] In the days when communication was slow, price signals were a comparatively large portion of all market coordination. A slowing down of purchasing meant also a slowing down of communication, causing a positive feedback loop as people doubled down on their expectations. Contrast with computing devices which have developed rapidly enough to even outpace the forced inflation - we've all delayed purchases of new devices for a year or two until new tech came out, but despite the promise of an even better deal, eventually our present utility function overrides future savings and we upgrade.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  My inner communist does not want to see reforms. It wants to convince me that going all smashy-smashy is better than the current state of affairs. It's not particularly successful, but it's fun to let it try.

mindslight 10y ago

If your inner communist wants to see reforms, it should think economically. One can't ignore incentives. The core intuition is that rents will go up, but not by the full six pence - perhaps only five. The landlords will be unable to extract the entire surplus. The people will have slightly more money, which they can save to gain that negotiating power you're talking about. However, the monetary policy of USD directly destroys this natural rising. Instead of accepting that slight deflation is natural [0], deflation has been cast as a bogeyman [1] and banished at all costs. The result is massive monetary base inflation to keep the CPI rising, which precisely affects the areas where new money is injected into the consumer economy - anything which can function as collateral and thus be financialized. So cheaper life necessities that should be a boon (eg Walmart) simply cause rents (landlord or bank) to rise fully in compensation as a matter of policy. [0] In the steady state, both technological progress and general market competition should lead to continually lower prices - a lower price is generally how one wins out in a market. [1] In the days when communication was slow, price signals were a comparatively large portion of all market coordination. A slowing down of purchasing meant also a slowing down of communication, causing a positive feedback loop as people doubled down on their expectations. Contrast with computing devices which have developed rapidly enough to even outpace the forced inflation - we've all delayed purchases of new devices for a year or two until new tech came out, but despite the promise of an even better deal, eventually our present utility function overrides future savings and we upgrade.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
My inner communist does not want to see reforms. It wants to convince me that going all smashy-smashy is better than the current state of affairs. It's not particularly successful, but it's fun to let it try.