3 ms·

This is capitalism working as intended. Despite common misconceptions, capitalism has nothing to do with markets (let alone "free markets", which are a myth an

by jmyeet 3y ago

This is capitalism working as intended. Despite common misconceptions, capitalism has nothing to do with markets (let alone "free markets", which are a myth anyway). Markets existed thousands of years before capitalism did and exist in other economic systems. No, capitalism is simply wealth extraction from workers to the capital owning class. Now we are saddled with all kinds of debt: mortgage, student loans, medical, credit card, car loan. Less than a century ago, houses were bought for cash, education was cheap or free and there was no such thing as health insurance. We got all those things to keep us complaint worker bees and to squeeze every last dollar from our labor. We've gone through 2-3 years of rapid inflation. A lot of things didn't get intrinsically more expensive. It was opportunistic ie greedflation. How did we tackle this? By raising interest rates. Again, that extract more wealth from labor. We could've dampened the economy with windfall profit corporate taxes instead. Unfortunately this also completely rules US foreign policy too. Look at all the wars the US has started since WW2 and coups the US has backed. Look at how often that happens after said country actually (or even just threatened to) nationalized some industry. Cuba, Guaratamala, Venezuela to name a few. It honestly boggles the mind how intentionally blind people are to this reality. Some see themselves as ultimately benefitting form this system by being capital owners. Very few will be. But others will never be yet defend this system instinctively anyway. Oh for some class consciousness in the US.

brocklobsta 3y ago
I feel like class status trends with age in the US. The younger folks have had less time to acquire assets. The older folk who worked hard and invested wisely are benefiting from said decisions. I think the income and wealth inequality is a type of motivation, I can see what I can attain with an opportunistic and hard working mindset. This kind of economic mobility is the beauty of the US system.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  yes, there are also disruptions that the culture does not have time to adapt too or doesn't notice older people live longer, a lot longer for the wealthier and healthier. their assets are not distributed to the state or offspring until that child is almost at retirement age too young people are not marrying outside of their class anymore-ish as there are big enough populations in the higher earning classes for the first time in history. This has disrupted upwards mobility for women that had an expectation or a fallback expectation of this being an option. this is exacerbating inequality extremely quickly and is a bit of a sleeper because the perceptions of appeal have not changed
- RGamma 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite... https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
devjab 3y ago
It’s unregulated capitalism at least, or perhaps capitalism regulated by the capitalists. We’re entering uncharted ground in terms of not only wealth distribution but also corporate ownership. We’ve never had a period in time where massive corporations owned basically every part of everything the way companies like Amazon does for physical goods and more, or the way Microsoft does for digital goods and more, or the way Google does for advertising and more, or the way Disney does for entertainment and more. I know there are other major corporations than those, but it’s not like you can really do a small scale business and compete with these massive corporations without either being bought up or having your product “copy-pasted” and sold at a low enough price until you go bankrupt. Regulations are meant to prevent monopolies, but that has simply failed. Legislation is meant to distribute wealth, at least to some degree, but in the past 50 years the top earners have gone from paying almost 80% taxes to almost 0% taxes. So while you’re right that this is what capitalism looks like, capitalism was just never maintainable without regulations and that part isn’t exactly new. It eventually leads to civil war and break downs of society, every time, except this time we’re fast approaching a world where the aristocracy will not really need a massive work force because AI and machinery will be capable of performing most tasks. In many ways it’s basically the worst version of the cyberpunk we all read back in the 80/90ies come true. But the catch is that no other system works either and unless we manage to steer things back to regulated capitalism then the nationstate as we’ve known it for around 400 years is basically going to be replaced by something else. At least here in the west, China probably has it covered by their extreme version of regulated capitalism, but even they have massive economical issues because they cheated capitalism by making up things like house ownership. There is a fairly clear path out of it of course. Especially housing. We simply need to get our governments to take ownership over all housing that is owned by equity fonds and give zero fucks about the massive economic impact that will have on the aristocracy. Our society and our economies as such can survive it, and it’ll be better than the crash that eventually happens when nobody can afford these houses. Which is sort of a weird thing for me to say, considering part of the investment bank I work for is into bricks, but even now we’re operating at an intended loss with 10.000 homes (which is a lot in my country) being empty because it’s too hard to increase rent once a home is rented out and our business prefers to keep them empty and hope for a better economy to rent them out at higher markups. Partly because the entire projects were financed with the assumption that the rent would never be below a certain rate, and it will be more expensive to actually earn money than to lose them, at least in the short time, but the short term is 7 years.
uoaei 3y ago
See: casino capitalism, the takeover of speculative activities as dominant in the dynamics of money and wealth. Hard work and dedication is replaced by luck potentiated by diversification of investment portfolios. The analogy isn't perfect, since the system as a whole literally creates money so that you're actually playing on the house's side. But it gets at how the social, economic, and political forces drove us to where we are now. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1986-12-01/casino-capitalism https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1986-1...
oezi 3y ago
I would argue that the only way out is for the people to seize those institutions which extract their income. This is housing, medical services and college education.
yieldcrv 3y ago
pre capitalistic society markets were crap, lacked liquidity the game of making everything fungible isnt done yet and is a fun, and lucrative, problem to help solve Mansa Musa was sitting on a notional trillions, in an environment with a gini coefficient of basically 1 and no counterparties to trade with. Pointless

by jmyeet 3y ago

brocklobsta 3y ago

I feel like class status trends with age in the US. The younger folks have had less time to acquire assets. The older folk who worked hard and invested wisely are benefiting from said decisions. I think the income and wealth inequality is a type of motivation, I can see what I can attain with an opportunistic and hard working mindset. This kind of economic mobility is the beauty of the US system.

yieldcrv 3y ago
yes, there are also disruptions that the culture does not have time to adapt too or doesn't notice older people live longer, a lot longer for the wealthier and healthier. their assets are not distributed to the state or offspring until that child is almost at retirement age too young people are not marrying outside of their class anymore-ish as there are big enough populations in the higher earning classes for the first time in history. This has disrupted upwards mobility for women that had an expectation or a fallback expectation of this being an option. this is exacerbating inequality extremely quickly and is a bit of a sleeper because the perceptions of appeal have not changed
RGamma 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite... https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

devjab 3y ago

It’s unregulated capitalism at least, or perhaps capitalism regulated by the capitalists. We’re entering uncharted ground in terms of not only wealth distribution but also corporate ownership. We’ve never had a period in time where massive corporations owned basically every part of everything the way companies like Amazon does for physical goods and more, or the way Microsoft does for digital goods and more, or the way Google does for advertising and more, or the way Disney does for entertainment and more. I know there are other major corporations than those, but it’s not like you can really do a small scale business and compete with these massive corporations without either being bought up or having your product “copy-pasted” and sold at a low enough price until you go bankrupt. Regulations are meant to prevent monopolies, but that has simply failed. Legislation is meant to distribute wealth, at least to some degree, but in the past 50 years the top earners have gone from paying almost 80% taxes to almost 0% taxes. So while you’re right that this is what capitalism looks like, capitalism was just never maintainable without regulations and that part isn’t exactly new. It eventually leads to civil war and break downs of society, every time, except this time we’re fast approaching a world where the aristocracy will not really need a massive work force because AI and machinery will be capable of performing most tasks. In many ways it’s basically the worst version of the cyberpunk we all read back in the 80/90ies come true. But the catch is that no other system works either and unless we manage to steer things back to regulated capitalism then the nationstate as we’ve known it for around 400 years is basically going to be replaced by something else. At least here in the west, China probably has it covered by their extreme version of regulated capitalism, but even they have massive economical issues because they cheated capitalism by making up things like house ownership. There is a fairly clear path out of it of course. Especially housing. We simply need to get our governments to take ownership over all housing that is owned by equity fonds and give zero fucks about the massive economic impact that will have on the aristocracy. Our society and our economies as such can survive it, and it’ll be better than the crash that eventually happens when nobody can afford these houses. Which is sort of a weird thing for me to say, considering part of the investment bank I work for is into bricks, but even now we’re operating at an intended loss with 10.000 homes (which is a lot in my country) being empty because it’s too hard to increase rent once a home is rented out and our business prefers to keep them empty and hope for a better economy to rent them out at higher markups. Partly because the entire projects were financed with the assumption that the rent would never be below a certain rate, and it will be more expensive to actually earn money than to lose them, at least in the short time, but the short term is 7 years.

uoaei 3y ago

See: casino capitalism, the takeover of speculative activities as dominant in the dynamics of money and wealth. Hard work and dedication is replaced by luck potentiated by diversification of investment portfolios. The analogy isn't perfect, since the system as a whole literally creates money so that you're actually playing on the house's side. But it gets at how the social, economic, and political forces drove us to where we are now. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1986-12-01/casino-capitalism https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1986-1...

oezi 3y ago

I would argue that the only way out is for the people to seize those institutions which extract their income. This is housing, medical services and college education.

yieldcrv 3y ago

pre capitalistic society markets were crap, lacked liquidity the game of making everything fungible isnt done yet and is a fun, and lucrative, problem to help solve Mansa Musa was sitting on a notional trillions, in an environment with a gini coefficient of basically 1 and no counterparties to trade with. Pointless