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Everything this guy illustrates in this article as frightening and subversive, I see as positive. Americans confuse control with love; that's why we say things

Everything this guy illustrates in this article as frightening and subversive, I see as positive. Americans confuse control with love; that's why we say things like "you belong to me" and "I only hurt you because I love you". That's why we substitute possessions for relationships. It's a thoroughly poisonous attitude. The most bizarre statement is when he says "The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system." It's pretty obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to flip that relationship around and make it a moral statement is frankly a little scary. People really think like this? Look, what Americans need is to spend more time with their friends, their children, their spouses, their families. Not to spend time collecting fancy cars or other hollow pursuits. This is a lunatic point of view.

metalliqaz 8y ago
> "The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system." It's technically true. It's clear that the original law of the land assumed that only landowners had a stake in running things. I didn't get the impression that the author claimed this was a moral truth. Rather, I thought he was saying that the resulting culture made the country prosperous and productive. As more and more groups started owning things, they became enfranchised into the system.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  It's clear that the original law of the land assumed that only landowners had a stake in running things. The Roman Republic had a rule that to serve in the army you had to be a landowning Roman citizen (with a minimum-value requirement for the property). Largely for this reason: if you owned land, you had a stake, something to fight for. It didn't work out so well, because -- and it's up to you if you see parallels here -- the Roman Republic was also incredibly corrupt, and its wealthy/powerful classes used every trick they could come up with to commandeer productive land, leaving Rome in a situation where there weren't enough eligible citizens to form a useful army. The further, and longer-lasting, consequence was that Gaius Marius reformed the system, creating essentially a standing force of professional soldiers, rather than a landowners' militia that had to be re-recruited and re-trained for every war. This was a big boost to Rome's military capability, but also resulted in soldiers having loyalty to their general (who would pay/reward them) rather than to Rome. And that played a part in the eventual change from Republic to Empire. So do keep in mind that a "rights for property owners" system can in theory expand rights as more people gain property. But can also reduce them and concentrate power as unscrupulous people work the system to accumulate property in their hands instead of others' hands.
_louisr_ 8y ago
> It's pretty obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to flip that relationship around and make it a moral statement is frankly a little scary. Well, it hasn't been a deliberate and intentional effort to exclude those without property or net worth from the decision making process - People like that, who reside at the bottom of the hierarchies they inhabit, have never in history been looked to for guidance or input on any decision. I'm making an evolutionary biology claim: Folks with no clout can only have a say if it is deliberately & intentionally given to them. It's the opposite of your speculation that it's been taken from them. And frankly why _should_ someone who cannot gather value for themselves have a say in economic decisions that will affect others? The reason we have these big evil hierarchies, where the poor are dispossessed and a small group of tycoons at the top make the decisions, is because they have a track record of good decisions. If you suddenly took some progressive initiative to invite some idlers to give input on tax law, they might make a decision that inadvertently lowers your country's GDP by half a percent for five years.
- fallingfrog 8y ago
  First off, a lot of people are born at the bottom, and born at the top, of various hierarchies. I'm certain that the people at the top think they earned it. They didn't. Second, maintaining these kinds of hierarchies does not happen as the result of some kind of natural process. It requires violence.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    I'm working quite hard to ensure that my children will have a far greater head start than I did. Why should I not be able to pass on the fruit of my labor? Yes I know this is going to be a controversial question. I'm genuinely interested in what people's opinions are.
    - wsy 8y ago
      It is good if the society evens this out: it should not completely take away the fruits of your labor, because then your incentive to be productive will be low. But it also should ensure that less lucky children get a good start as well, to ensure that as many children as possible become productive citizens. To do the latter, the wealthy have to give up some of their wealth.
dionidium 8y ago
> Americans confuse control with love Ownership culture has always exhibited this sort of pathological tendency. People who live next to a park with a basketball court insist on an inferior hoop in their driveway. The suburbs are littered with garden sheds full of identical, mostly-idle tools. We insist on a car for every member of the household. Similar examples are readily conjured. To the extent that any of these involve practical advantages, they're far outweighed, it seems to me, by the bizarre psychological impulses that are really driving all this compulsive behavior.
- Someguywhatever 8y ago
  If you want to share tools with your neighbor you have to know them and be on and maintain a good relationship with them. There are numerous downsides to borrowing and sharing, so much so that people would rather not do it. Nobody wants to pester their neighbor over and over to use some tool X. It's annoying for them and annoying for you. Ideally the tools would exist off both of your properties in some neutral place that either of you could just go and get the tools out of without pestering one another but for most people this just isn't practical. It's so much easier to just buy your own tools, or pay a contractor.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    Fine, but that doesn't explain the installation of crappy Wal-Mart-special basketball hoops adjacent to the public park's pristine full-courts. Nor does it explain the U.S.'s intense aversion to public transit, which burns far hotter than any practical consideration could possibly explain. Neither does it shed any light on the sad way in which suburban dads build rickety basement bars, never stopping to consider that the point of the bar is that it is, in fact, located at the bar and not your basement. There's pretty clearly something deeper here.
    - Someguywhatever 8y ago
      >There's pretty clearly something deeper here. IDK why there has to be something deeper. >public park's pristine full-courts I mean there's only so many courts maybe you don't want to play with other people you just want to take shots, and it's convenient. >Neither does it shed any light on the sad way in which suburban dads build rickety basement bars They do it to hang out with their friends. Same way you order a pizza and eat it at home instead of at the restaurant. What are you after the pizza or "being at a restaurant". For most people it's the pizza. The phenomenon of rickety basement bars as you call them is just people hanging out at home drinking cheaper beer at a home built bar. They get some of that "I'm out of the house" vibe while getting all the "hanging out with my friends" that they really want. I don't know what else you are implying could be operating here. So I'll have to assume you just hate improvised home bars.
emodendroket 8y ago
I don't think you've really taken in the article if you think what it says is we need to buy more cars. The point here is that we use things we don't really own, and in fact ownership (particularly home ownership) has traditionally been one of the things that's ensured the stability of the country. People who feel they've got something to lose don't generally seek to burn down the whole system.
- lossolo 8y ago
  > People who feel they've got something to lose don't generally seek to burn down the whole system. This is such an important sentence. People high in the chain need to understand, that exploiting and hoarding every dollar from those at the bottom will only lead to one thing. And as history shows, first victims of rising of the masses are the people highest in the chain of an old system.
- elliottkember 8y ago
  "home ownership" Does this take mortgages into consideration?
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Yes. The thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage was kind of the cornerstone of the whole system and arose because of government intervention to assure stability
Alex3917 8y ago
> It's pretty obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to flip that relationship around and make it a moral statement is frankly a little scary. That's not true. The reason why property ownership was required to vote is because in a democracy, the founders knew that if the majority of voters didn't have property then they would eventually just vote to take away the property of others. But they also knew that if the majority of people didn't own property then the government would also fail. So their solution was to only allow property owners to vote, but to make it easy and basically free for all citizens to become a property owners, and to heavily incentivize them to do so. Early American democracy only worked because there was basically an unlimited amount of free land to give way. And to the extent that it still works, it's because technology and intellectual property have replaced land as the primary sources of capital. American democracy is designed around broad-based capital ownership, not broad-based ownership of stupid shit you don't need. This is why this article doesn't make sense, because it would be far better for democracy if e.g. the average American owned $20,000 worth of Uber stock rather than $20,000 worth of car. Stock is capital, whereas a personal car isn't.
- buck4roo 8y ago
  > the founders knew that if the majority of voters didn't have property then they would eventually just vote to take away the property of others. That argument seems to fly in the face of the 5th Amendment: "... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
  - c22 8y ago
    I don't get it, by my reading that amendment supports the argument.
snowwrestler 8y ago
A lot of comments here are conflating the notions of "property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system" and property requirements for voting. They're not nearly the same thing. To understand the point of the author you need to look back, deeply back, at the history of human society. For most of human history, most people did not own any property. In a feudal society, for example, a few lords owned everything, and everyone else worked for them and owned nothing. The "American experiment" was radical in that it placed the individual at the center of governance. The U.S. system of government is "built up" from citizen consent, not "pushed down" from a divinely-granted right of hereditary rule. In order for this system to work, citizens must own property. Otherwise, they don't have the resources to collectively enact change. The Bill of Rights presumes citizens who have the resources to speak, associate, petition, etc. That's why it is worded to constrain the government's power, not worded to grants things to citizens. The fundamental idea behind American democracy is that Americans have the means to pursue their goals and to influence each other. This is why it was so much easier for early U.S. citizens to found churches and corporations than it was in Europe. European churches and corporations were top-down, and therefore few and conservative. U.S. organizations were bottom-up, and therefore many, diverse, and innovative. So... that's why property ownership is at the heart of American democracy. But what about: > deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system There's actually a lot of evidence against this, for example the entire labor and environmental movements. Collective citizen action has worked a lot of change to the U.S. over the years, and I predict it will continue to do so. All that said, I think it's a pretty far reach to claim that the American experiment is at risk because a few people don't want to buy CD's or cars anymore. People still like money and things! The real estate market is not drying up. There's plenty of property being owned and desired by Americans. I think that lack of money is a bigger issue. Over 40 million people in the U.S. live below the poverty line! I think that's a much bigger problem for American "stake in the game" than whether someone who has disposable income decides to spend it on a Kindle instead of books.

metalliqaz 8y ago

> "The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system." It's technically true. It's clear that the original law of the land assumed that only landowners had a stake in running things. I didn't get the impression that the author claimed this was a moral truth. Rather, I thought he was saying that the resulting culture made the country prosperous and productive. As more and more groups started owning things, they became enfranchised into the system.

ubernostrum 8y ago
It's clear that the original law of the land assumed that only landowners had a stake in running things. The Roman Republic had a rule that to serve in the army you had to be a landowning Roman citizen (with a minimum-value requirement for the property). Largely for this reason: if you owned land, you had a stake, something to fight for. It didn't work out so well, because -- and it's up to you if you see parallels here -- the Roman Republic was also incredibly corrupt, and its wealthy/powerful classes used every trick they could come up with to commandeer productive land, leaving Rome in a situation where there weren't enough eligible citizens to form a useful army. The further, and longer-lasting, consequence was that Gaius Marius reformed the system, creating essentially a standing force of professional soldiers, rather than a landowners' militia that had to be re-recruited and re-trained for every war. This was a big boost to Rome's military capability, but also resulted in soldiers having loyalty to their general (who would pay/reward them) rather than to Rome. And that played a part in the eventual change from Republic to Empire. So do keep in mind that a "rights for property owners" system can in theory expand rights as more people gain property. But can also reduce them and concentrate power as unscrupulous people work the system to accumulate property in their hands instead of others' hands.

_louisr_ 8y ago

> It's pretty obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to flip that relationship around and make it a moral statement is frankly a little scary. Well, it hasn't been a deliberate and intentional effort to exclude those without property or net worth from the decision making process - People like that, who reside at the bottom of the hierarchies they inhabit, have never in history been looked to for guidance or input on any decision. I'm making an evolutionary biology claim: Folks with no clout can only have a say if it is deliberately & intentionally given to them. It's the opposite of your speculation that it's been taken from them. And frankly why _should_ someone who cannot gather value for themselves have a say in economic decisions that will affect others? The reason we have these big evil hierarchies, where the poor are dispossessed and a small group of tycoons at the top make the decisions, is because they have a track record of good decisions. If you suddenly took some progressive initiative to invite some idlers to give input on tax law, they might make a decision that inadvertently lowers your country's GDP by half a percent for five years.

fallingfrog 8y ago
First off, a lot of people are born at the bottom, and born at the top, of various hierarchies. I'm certain that the people at the top think they earned it. They didn't. Second, maintaining these kinds of hierarchies does not happen as the result of some kind of natural process. It requires violence.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  I'm working quite hard to ensure that my children will have a far greater head start than I did. Why should I not be able to pass on the fruit of my labor? Yes I know this is going to be a controversial question. I'm genuinely interested in what people's opinions are.
  - wsy 8y ago
    It is good if the society evens this out: it should not completely take away the fruits of your labor, because then your incentive to be productive will be low. But it also should ensure that less lucky children get a good start as well, to ensure that as many children as possible become productive citizens. To do the latter, the wealthy have to give up some of their wealth.

dionidium 8y ago

> Americans confuse control with love Ownership culture has always exhibited this sort of pathological tendency. People who live next to a park with a basketball court insist on an inferior hoop in their driveway. The suburbs are littered with garden sheds full of identical, mostly-idle tools. We insist on a car for every member of the household. Similar examples are readily conjured. To the extent that any of these involve practical advantages, they're far outweighed, it seems to me, by the bizarre psychological impulses that are really driving all this compulsive behavior.

Someguywhatever 8y ago
If you want to share tools with your neighbor you have to know them and be on and maintain a good relationship with them. There are numerous downsides to borrowing and sharing, so much so that people would rather not do it. Nobody wants to pester their neighbor over and over to use some tool X. It's annoying for them and annoying for you. Ideally the tools would exist off both of your properties in some neutral place that either of you could just go and get the tools out of without pestering one another but for most people this just isn't practical. It's so much easier to just buy your own tools, or pay a contractor.
- dionidium 8y ago
  Fine, but that doesn't explain the installation of crappy Wal-Mart-special basketball hoops adjacent to the public park's pristine full-courts. Nor does it explain the U.S.'s intense aversion to public transit, which burns far hotter than any practical consideration could possibly explain. Neither does it shed any light on the sad way in which suburban dads build rickety basement bars, never stopping to consider that the point of the bar is that it is, in fact, located at the bar and not your basement. There's pretty clearly something deeper here.
  - Someguywhatever 8y ago
    >There's pretty clearly something deeper here. IDK why there has to be something deeper. >public park's pristine full-courts I mean there's only so many courts maybe you don't want to play with other people you just want to take shots, and it's convenient. >Neither does it shed any light on the sad way in which suburban dads build rickety basement bars They do it to hang out with their friends. Same way you order a pizza and eat it at home instead of at the restaurant. What are you after the pizza or "being at a restaurant". For most people it's the pizza. The phenomenon of rickety basement bars as you call them is just people hanging out at home drinking cheaper beer at a home built bar. They get some of that "I'm out of the house" vibe while getting all the "hanging out with my friends" that they really want. I don't know what else you are implying could be operating here. So I'll have to assume you just hate improvised home bars.

emodendroket 8y ago

I don't think you've really taken in the article if you think what it says is we need to buy more cars. The point here is that we use things we don't really own, and in fact ownership (particularly home ownership) has traditionally been one of the things that's ensured the stability of the country. People who feel they've got something to lose don't generally seek to burn down the whole system.

lossolo 8y ago
> People who feel they've got something to lose don't generally seek to burn down the whole system. This is such an important sentence. People high in the chain need to understand, that exploiting and hoarding every dollar from those at the bottom will only lead to one thing. And as history shows, first victims of rising of the masses are the people highest in the chain of an old system.
elliottkember 8y ago
"home ownership" Does this take mortgages into consideration?
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Yes. The thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage was kind of the cornerstone of the whole system and arose because of government intervention to assure stability

Alex3917 8y ago

> It's pretty obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to flip that relationship around and make it a moral statement is frankly a little scary. That's not true. The reason why property ownership was required to vote is because in a democracy, the founders knew that if the majority of voters didn't have property then they would eventually just vote to take away the property of others. But they also knew that if the majority of people didn't own property then the government would also fail. So their solution was to only allow property owners to vote, but to make it easy and basically free for all citizens to become a property owners, and to heavily incentivize them to do so. Early American democracy only worked because there was basically an unlimited amount of free land to give way. And to the extent that it still works, it's because technology and intellectual property have replaced land as the primary sources of capital. American democracy is designed around broad-based capital ownership, not broad-based ownership of stupid shit you don't need. This is why this article doesn't make sense, because it would be far better for democracy if e.g. the average American owned $20,000 worth of Uber stock rather than $20,000 worth of car. Stock is capital, whereas a personal car isn't.

buck4roo 8y ago
> the founders knew that if the majority of voters didn't have property then they would eventually just vote to take away the property of others. That argument seems to fly in the face of the 5th Amendment: "... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
- c22 8y ago
  I don't get it, by my reading that amendment supports the argument.

snowwrestler 8y ago

A lot of comments here are conflating the notions of "property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system" and property requirements for voting. They're not nearly the same thing. To understand the point of the author you need to look back, deeply back, at the history of human society. For most of human history, most people did not own any property. In a feudal society, for example, a few lords owned everything, and everyone else worked for them and owned nothing. The "American experiment" was radical in that it placed the individual at the center of governance. The U.S. system of government is "built up" from citizen consent, not "pushed down" from a divinely-granted right of hereditary rule. In order for this system to work, citizens must own property. Otherwise, they don't have the resources to collectively enact change. The Bill of Rights presumes citizens who have the resources to speak, associate, petition, etc. That's why it is worded to constrain the government's power, not worded to grants things to citizens. The fundamental idea behind American democracy is that Americans have the means to pursue their goals and to influence each other. This is why it was so much easier for early U.S. citizens to found churches and corporations than it was in Europe. European churches and corporations were top-down, and therefore few and conservative. U.S. organizations were bottom-up, and therefore many, diverse, and innovative. So... that's why property ownership is at the heart of American democracy. But what about: > deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system There's actually a lot of evidence against this, for example the entire labor and environmental movements. Collective citizen action has worked a lot of change to the U.S. over the years, and I predict it will continue to do so. All that said, I think it's a pretty far reach to claim that the American experiment is at risk because a few people don't want to buy CD's or cars anymore. People still like money and things! The real estate market is not drying up. There's plenty of property being owned and desired by Americans. I think that lack of money is a bigger issue. Over 40 million people in the U.S. live below the poverty line! I think that's a much bigger problem for American "stake in the game" than whether someone who has disposable income decides to spend it on a Kindle instead of books.