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It's odd to me that the wrong take has risen to the top of the comments, but not surprising. HN isn't what it used to be, demonstrated by how long threads domin

It's odd to me that the wrong take has risen to the top of the comments, but not surprising. HN isn't what it used to be, demonstrated by how long threads dominate the front page while the actual answers fall below the fold. Regulation isn't the problem, or even part of the problem. Wealth inequality is. Which is counterbalanced by progressive taxation. But none of you want the rich to pay taxes, so here we are. Quite literally, this Silent Depression is your fault - the titans of the tech industry. Since we can't rely on our last best hope for breaking this generational trauma we're trapped in to bring actual solutions like UBI, then tech and the financial system it metastasizes may be the enemy. I've had this feeling for a long time, at least since the Housing Bubble popped, 9/11 and the Dot Bomb, but probably as far back as the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s, and even before that with the disingenuous messaging coming out of the Reagan administration before I was old enough to understand politics. I remember the news being filled with imagery of tanks rolling through the Middle East and starving children, asking myself why the world would even have wars or hunger when we have nuclear weapons and billions of dollars that could help people. Until I learned that financial elites stoke those fires to further US hegemony to prevent the owner class from being toppled. I dunno, I just have this feeling that it's probably over. Young people are looking around and asking why they should take that third job to make rent and feed their kids this month, when that money just goes to paying Boomers' retirements in Vanguard and BlackRock. Maybe they can just take this year off instead, by taking this month's income and camping indefinitely, pulling the plug on the rat race and just living. Eventually forming small communal city states that provide for their citizens while the business world consumes itself since it doesn't produce anything like workers do. So it's looking like the working world will probably go communist in some fashion for survival. Not just in the US, but in Asia and the Global South. That's what I see in the red state I live in, with the influx of financial refugees, flying the libertarian flag in the frontier towns they've constructed without understanding their own communist tendencies. While with even the slightest central planning, continuing FDR's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, we could have been living like the Jetsons in 2023. Instead of selling out for trickle down economics and colonizing our own country with the poors propping up the service industry so that billionaires can richsplain to us how if we just worked harder we could be rich someday too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

pcthrowaway 3y ago
Not the person who posted the comment you're responding to, but I'm trying to make sense of what you're saying > Regulation isn't the problem, or even part of the problem. Wealth inequality is. Which is counterbalanced by progressive taxation. > But none of you want the rich to pay taxes, so here we are Where did the above poster say that wealth inequality wasn't part of the problem. Restrictive regulation is likely a cause of the consolidation of wealth (scarce, essential assets tend to go up in value, and when the supply is restricted and demand unbounded, even more so). If access to drinkable water was privatized and regulatory bottlenecks restricted new entrants from producing and distributing it, you can imagine how that would lead to more dramatic wealth inequality also (and poor people dying of dehydration). GP said: > > I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Housing is one of the tools (and by no means the only one) that the plutocrats are using to widen the wealth gap. > But none of you want the rich to pay taxes, so here we are I don't know why you're assuming this, but I agree with GP and, of course, also want the rich to pay more taxes. Based on everything they've said, I can't imagine they feel differently. > Maybe they can just take this year off instead, by taking this month's income and camping indefinitely, pulling the plug on the rat race and just living. Eventually forming small communal city states that provide for their citizens while the business world consumes itself since it doesn't produce anything like workers do. > > At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. Instead, they resort to their own financial schemes, illegal activity, freeloading government benefits; they've checked out from the system. Sounds almost like the two of you are saying the same thing here, though GP is using words which lean more negative in connotation
sacnoradhq 3y ago
The problem is the wrong kinds of regulation by regulatory capture by the NIMBYs and the very rich. The mainstream is a Ponzi scheme where most of the value created by workers goes to feed a tiny, vampiric rent-seeking class in exchange for crumbs.

pcthrowaway 3y ago

Not the person who posted the comment you're responding to, but I'm trying to make sense of what you're saying > Regulation isn't the problem, or even part of the problem. Wealth inequality is. Which is counterbalanced by progressive taxation. > But none of you want the rich to pay taxes, so here we are Where did the above poster say that wealth inequality wasn't part of the problem. Restrictive regulation is likely a cause of the consolidation of wealth (scarce, essential assets tend to go up in value, and when the supply is restricted and demand unbounded, even more so). If access to drinkable water was privatized and regulatory bottlenecks restricted new entrants from producing and distributing it, you can imagine how that would lead to more dramatic wealth inequality also (and poor people dying of dehydration). GP said: > > I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Housing is one of the tools (and by no means the only one) that the plutocrats are using to widen the wealth gap. > But none of you want the rich to pay taxes, so here we are I don't know why you're assuming this, but I agree with GP and, of course, also want the rich to pay more taxes. Based on everything they've said, I can't imagine they feel differently. > Maybe they can just take this year off instead, by taking this month's income and camping indefinitely, pulling the plug on the rat race and just living. Eventually forming small communal city states that provide for their citizens while the business world consumes itself since it doesn't produce anything like workers do. > > At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. Instead, they resort to their own financial schemes, illegal activity, freeloading government benefits; they've checked out from the system. Sounds almost like the two of you are saying the same thing here, though GP is using words which lean more negative in connotation

sacnoradhq 3y ago

The problem is the wrong kinds of regulation by regulatory capture by the NIMBYs and the very rich. The mainstream is a Ponzi scheme where most of the value created by workers goes to feed a tiny, vampiric rent-seeking class in exchange for crumbs.