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I still have a belief that capitalism and free markets are superior, but not the way we're doing it now. I'm not trying to no true scotsman here, but a man born
by maerF0x0 3y ago
I still have a belief that capitalism and free markets are superior, but not the way we're doing it now. I'm not trying to no true scotsman here, but a man born in germany to 2 austrian parents and dressed in a kilt is no true scotsman.
as i see things there are some major issues are
- Removing money from gold standard, allowing power to accrue to those who can control the supply. Instead of competing for what consumer wants, they just change the rules, or tax the future to line their own pockets today.
- People have bought the lie that the government can do net good things for the economy, not just move the peas around the plate. I think it started with income tax and the social safety net (whereas prior we had charitable works that largely worked by proximity -- you knew the person you were helping or being helped by, meaning you had a spiritual need to treat them humanely, vs a money printer government which seems like it can go on forever, but see my point above about real money.
- An image based society, we no longer appreciate and compete on enduring values like long marriages, objects that last a life time (or longer), making a hard choice that denies ourselves the appearance of gain etc. For example our clothes only need to last long enough to make that IG/TikTok post, then they can be discarded. A BMW when photographed appears identical to the one which has its $120 a month options rented or not.
- Sex (porn/hookups) and attention(likes, foodie calls, onlyfans) have become huge traps to men, and women, respectively. Meaning people feel like why would I work years/decades to get what others print money for, or why would I preserve something my partner might want when I can get what I want in exchange. These tools have made every boy/man a john, and every girl/woman a prostitute exchanging artificial attention for sex, and artificial sex for attention ...
We cannot make real progress while we continue to applaud fake things. A millionaire isnt what it used to be, and neither is anything we see on social media.
also see my pseudo rant here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34560255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34560255
How would I fix things?
- Return to gold standard and constitutionalize that governments cannot take on debt (they can only work with current cash reserves, not even projected taxes).
- A better education system (likely not a state run monopoly) will help people think smarter about everything.
- Social media influencers need to be held liable for inaccuracies and sued into oblivion for what amounts to false advertising and fraud
- Pornography needs to be age gated (and enforced) like alcohol, lottery, and voting. Sellers need to be held accountable just as selling alcohol to an underage person is the seller's fault. So should be providing pornography. Also it should be an Opt in system at the ISP level meaning the biggest names are not accessible.
I know this will get downvoted into oblivion because there's so much content people are likely to disagree with at least one point. But this is my best working model rn for how to get back to the stability that will allow us to make real progress again as a society.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoYou are getting downvoted, but the article makes a similar observation. The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it. Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due
- w4termelon 3y ago[flagged]
- bamfly 3y ago> The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it. Locke's argument for private property ownership of land beyond space to live in not being obviously-unjust was built entirely on this: improvement of productivity of land through work and investment. Holding private land to sit on or to wildly under-use wasn't compatible with his ethical justification for private land ownership. (not that the Second Treatise isn't full of weak reasoning—natural rights as anything "real" rather than arbitrary, LOL—but it's considering one of the top influences on the founders of the US, the founding of which was a major step in the rise of capitalism to global dominance)
- w4termelon 3y agoStraight to GULAG for wrong opinion.
- maerF0x0 3y agohaha, whelp. I sometimes can tell what posts are going to be outside the Overton window, but my nature compels me to say them anyways because I believe they're true.