4 ms·

Jesus, no wonder kids today hate capitalism and are flirting with political ideologies on the extremes of the spectrum.

alexb_ 2y ago
Capitalism has nothing to do with this, because land is not capital. Land, as a non-fungible asset, is monopolistic by nature. There is no free market involved because competition cannot exist. Furthermore, because you must occupy some piece of land, it commands a monopoly price that ends up taking absolutely everything that the poorest can possibly pay, ensuring the continued existence of poverty no matter how much we progress as a nation. Land ownership should not be confused with capitalism because it is not a free market, and the advantages of location are not capital.
- phone8675309 2y ago
  Capitalism has _everything_ to do with this as while the _amount_ of land may not be growing, the economic system does _nothing_ to cap the price of this essential commodity. The only cap on the price of land is the amount someone is willing to pay for it. To say that the advantages of location are not capital (or equivalent to capital) is just ignorant. There are plenty of pieces of land that act just like capital - access to natural resources, access to a coastline, fertile for farming, or in a location where a toll road or similar could be employed. It becomes very difficult for someone to build and own a sapphire mine if they don't have the capital to buy the land that has the sapphires in it!
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Also capitalism provides plenty of capital to bid up house prices. There wouldn't be many $1 million ranch houses if there wasn't a bank that would give you a mortgage on a $1 million ranch house.
  - trgn 2y ago
    I think point of gp is that land is _not_ a commodity. It thus cannot be treated as capital, the way it is more traditionally understood. Supply/demand dynamics in a market does not make something capitalism.
    - alexb_ 2y ago
      That's exactly right. Land is not a commodity, in fact it is the absolute furthest thing from a commodity. Plots of land are different, and command different valuations based on location. It is not produced by anyone and has an unchanging supply. To call it a commodity is so completely backwards. There are supply and demand dynamics in the land market. However much excess value you get from occupying a certain location on Earth, is how much people will be willing to pay for that. The demand will always be high as long as the value from the location is higher than the cost to occupy. This cost will soak up any advancements in society, which is why despite everything we have done to progress the state of man there is still a class of renters giving everything extra they make due to societal advancements to landowners.
- tyho 2y ago
  Tell that to the Dutch.
- TimTheTinker 2y ago
  It's not quite that extreme. There are plots of land in random, remote places that continuously go up for sale for extremely cheap prices. You won't find these on NMLS listing services :-) Also, modern local regulation (not capitalism) is largely to blame for housing prices. NIMBYism and similar attitudes are usually behind it, although distrust of potentially corrupt officials can also factor in. Smart city planning can help here. There are good developers out there with money to invest. Finally, there are vast swaths of undeveloped, unused land, and not all of it is owned by the BLM. This represents an open opportunity for developing housing and townships. All of the above are not easy to take advantage of -- there are significant hurdles involved. But having multiple clear paths forward does imply we're not under some thumb of tyranny with regard to housing and real estate. (Edit: removed comment about homesteading; thanks for the correction!)
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#End_of_homesteading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#End_of_homestea... > The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading; by that time, federal government policy had shifted to retaining control of western public lands. The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986. > The last claim under this Act was made by Ken Deardorff for 80 acres (32 ha) of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. He fulfilled all requirements of the homestead act in 1979 but did not receive his deed until May 1988. He is the last person to receive a title to land claimed under the Homestead Acts.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    If we were like the Soviet Union we might address the problem of coastal overpopulation by setting up a Gulag in Idaho or Wyoming.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Weirdly confident and passionate rant here about nonsense. Capital is not defined by non fungibility. Land is not “monopolistic” by nature. Competition can exist for land. Monopolies don’t define free markets. Land is not capital but not being capital does not mean it’s unrelated to capitalism. You’ve described land as having inelastic demand but that’s not correct, it’s actually inelastic supply. Demand for land is definitely elastic even if you “must occupy some land”. This is like a puzzle to spot as many factually incorrect claims as you can.
  - alexb_ 2y ago
    > Capital is not defined by non fungibility. Correct. It's defined as wealth in the course of exchange, coming from labor. Whose labor created land? Nobody's. > Land is not "monopolistic" by nature Completely false. By definition, if you own a plot of land, you have a complete monopoly on that location. Nobody else can compete with the price you put on that slice of the Earth. LAND is defined by its non fungibility. A plot of land in the middle of San Francisco is not the same as a plot of land in the middle of Arizona. > You’ve described land as having inelastic demand but that’s not correct, it’s actually inelastic supply. You can clearly see how land has an inelastic supply, yet you continue to think of it as capital which can be produced. The demand to exist in a piece of land has everything to do with the rents of the land. If you can make $30,000 more a year in valuable land than worthless land, using the same labor/capital expenditures, the land rents become $30,000 a year. Land values have nothing to do with the cost of production, but with that value of location.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      > Completely false. By definition, if you own a plot of land, you have a complete monopoly on that location. Nobody else can compete with the price you put on that slice of the Earth. LAND is defined by its non fungibility. A plot of land in the middle of San Francisco is not the same as a plot of land in the middle of Arizona. A plot of land in the middle of San Francisco is very similar to another plot of land in the middle of San Francisco. People don’t describe ownership as a “monopoly over a specific object”. That’s just silly. Monopoly is a descriptor of a market. Not specific assets. > You can clearly see how land has an inelastic supply, yet you continue to think of it as capital which can be produced. … no I was pretty explicit that land is not capital in those exact words > The demand to exist in a piece of land has everything to do with the rents of the land. No, rents (prices) are a function of demand. > If you can make $30,000 more a year in valuable land than worthless land, using the same labor/capital expenditures, the land rents become $30,000 a year. Idk how to parse this sentence. You have a very weird grasp on economic concepts
- bell-cot 2y ago
  Capitalism, as commonly understood today, by non-Economists, has everything to do with this. (Which, yes, is a major social problem.) Vs. (IIR) Classical (Adam Smith era) Economics viewed rent as Feudalism - not Capitalism - and took a very dim view of all such "as much gold as you can squeeze out of others, without doing any real work yourself" schemes.
cassianoleal 2y ago
Capitalism is not centrist. It's not like the extreme right is not composed mainly of capitalists.
tdb7893 2y ago
The amount of people I know with full time jobs (often very skilled ones, one person I know runs research projects studying cats) struggling to get by is pretty crazy. Working in software we can be really insulated from it. It's no surprise people don't feel like the current system is working when it isn't working for them.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Did you compare average jobs across time and place? Ie, does your statement apply to everyone in the country? Some places have much lower cost of living but similar earning power. Similarly, did you compare to the past? Average people used to be much worse off 20, 40, 60, etcetera years ago. Also, should running research projects that matter little to the average person get large financial rewards?
  - tdb7893 2y ago
    I was just saying what's happening with my friends and why they feel disaffected. You're the one making a lot of claims with no sources. For specifically about the research project (which is the only question really relevant enough to answer): no, I don't think someone running fully funded research projects at a top university in her field should necessarily be living luxuriously but I do think they shouldn't have to worry about making rent in the city the university is in. Edit: to put it in perspective my dad was able to pay for college working part time on the docks. Nowadays it would struggle to pay food/rent, let alone get close to paying tuition.
snowpid 2y ago
"kids" => your bubble?
tome 2y ago
Then they were sadly misinformed. The need to prevent cartels and monopolies has been known since the notion of capitalism was conceived.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  The issue isn't the need, it's the willingness/capacity to do so that's a problem.
  - tome 2y ago
    Yes indeed, regulatory capture is a problem.
aidenn0 2y ago
The US abandoned enforcing many of its antitrust laws starting in the late '70s, and is now reaping the long-term consequences of doing so.
VancouverMan 2y ago
It's odd to blame capitalism for these sorts of problems. Real estate, property development, and property renting/leasing are typically some of the least-capitalist and least-free-market sectors around. They all tend to involve extensive and very invasive government intervention that controls or even prevents when and how capital can be used. That's the opposite of capitalism. That's the opposite of a free market. Government-imposed zoning regulations, onerous development planning and approval processes, rent controls, licensing requirements, and other forms of interference severely inhibit the ability of the market to function properly. As government involvement in such sectors has increased over time, the situation has gotten worse and worse. Of course, inefficiency and problems are exactly what we should expect to arise due to government interference with the market. Competition becomes limited, which causes supply to become artificially constrained. This distorts the pricing, which may include collusion becoming possible. Incentives that would help drive down costs, while simultaneously increasing quality and availability, no long exist. Those calling for even more government intervention than there already is are only making the situation even worse for themselves and others.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  If I remember right, the very beginning of "capitalism" was in companies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company which was granted a monopoly in the Asia trade by the state. In general "capitalists" like "free" markets when it means they can do what they hell they want, but they very much like regulation when it is in their favor.
  - sickofparadox 2y ago
    Capitalism as it was initial proposed was an explicit rejection of mercantilism, the guiding light for how colonial companies worked. You are mistaking the beginning of shareholder based ownership, which is not an intrinsic part of Capitalism, with the core concept of Capitalism.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago

Capitalism has nothing to do with this, because land is not capital. Land, as a non-fungible asset, is monopolistic by nature. There is no free market involved because competition cannot exist. Furthermore, because you must occupy some piece of land, it commands a monopoly price that ends up taking absolutely everything that the poorest can possibly pay, ensuring the continued existence of poverty no matter how much we progress as a nation. Land ownership should not be confused with capitalism because it is not a free market, and the advantages of location are not capital.

phone8675309 2y ago
Capitalism has _everything_ to do with this as while the _amount_ of land may not be growing, the economic system does _nothing_ to cap the price of this essential commodity. The only cap on the price of land is the amount someone is willing to pay for it. To say that the advantages of location are not capital (or equivalent to capital) is just ignorant. There are plenty of pieces of land that act just like capital - access to natural resources, access to a coastline, fertile for farming, or in a location where a toll road or similar could be employed. It becomes very difficult for someone to build and own a sapphire mine if they don't have the capital to buy the land that has the sapphires in it!
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Also capitalism provides plenty of capital to bid up house prices. There wouldn't be many $1 million ranch houses if there wasn't a bank that would give you a mortgage on a $1 million ranch house.
- trgn 2y ago
  I think point of gp is that land is _not_ a commodity. It thus cannot be treated as capital, the way it is more traditionally understood. Supply/demand dynamics in a market does not make something capitalism.
  - alexb_ 2y ago
    That's exactly right. Land is not a commodity, in fact it is the absolute furthest thing from a commodity. Plots of land are different, and command different valuations based on location. It is not produced by anyone and has an unchanging supply. To call it a commodity is so completely backwards. There are supply and demand dynamics in the land market. However much excess value you get from occupying a certain location on Earth, is how much people will be willing to pay for that. The demand will always be high as long as the value from the location is higher than the cost to occupy. This cost will soak up any advancements in society, which is why despite everything we have done to progress the state of man there is still a class of renters giving everything extra they make due to societal advancements to landowners.
tyho 2y ago
Tell that to the Dutch.
TimTheTinker 2y ago
It's not quite that extreme. There are plots of land in random, remote places that continuously go up for sale for extremely cheap prices. You won't find these on NMLS listing services :-) Also, modern local regulation (not capitalism) is largely to blame for housing prices. NIMBYism and similar attitudes are usually behind it, although distrust of potentially corrupt officials can also factor in. Smart city planning can help here. There are good developers out there with money to invest. Finally, there are vast swaths of undeveloped, unused land, and not all of it is owned by the BLM. This represents an open opportunity for developing housing and townships. All of the above are not easy to take advantage of -- there are significant hurdles involved. But having multiple clear paths forward does imply we're not under some thumb of tyranny with regard to housing and real estate. (Edit: removed comment about homesteading; thanks for the correction!)
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#End_of_homesteading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#End_of_homestea... > The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading; by that time, federal government policy had shifted to retaining control of western public lands. The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986. > The last claim under this Act was made by Ken Deardorff for 80 acres (32 ha) of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. He fulfilled all requirements of the homestead act in 1979 but did not receive his deed until May 1988. He is the last person to receive a title to land claimed under the Homestead Acts.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  If we were like the Soviet Union we might address the problem of coastal overpopulation by setting up a Gulag in Idaho or Wyoming.
jncfhnb 2y ago
Weirdly confident and passionate rant here about nonsense. Capital is not defined by non fungibility. Land is not “monopolistic” by nature. Competition can exist for land. Monopolies don’t define free markets. Land is not capital but not being capital does not mean it’s unrelated to capitalism. You’ve described land as having inelastic demand but that’s not correct, it’s actually inelastic supply. Demand for land is definitely elastic even if you “must occupy some land”. This is like a puzzle to spot as many factually incorrect claims as you can.
- alexb_ 2y ago
  > Capital is not defined by non fungibility. Correct. It's defined as wealth in the course of exchange, coming from labor. Whose labor created land? Nobody's. > Land is not "monopolistic" by nature Completely false. By definition, if you own a plot of land, you have a complete monopoly on that location. Nobody else can compete with the price you put on that slice of the Earth. LAND is defined by its non fungibility. A plot of land in the middle of San Francisco is not the same as a plot of land in the middle of Arizona. > You’ve described land as having inelastic demand but that’s not correct, it’s actually inelastic supply. You can clearly see how land has an inelastic supply, yet you continue to think of it as capital which can be produced. The demand to exist in a piece of land has everything to do with the rents of the land. If you can make $30,000 more a year in valuable land than worthless land, using the same labor/capital expenditures, the land rents become $30,000 a year. Land values have nothing to do with the cost of production, but with that value of location.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    > Completely false. By definition, if you own a plot of land, you have a complete monopoly on that location. Nobody else can compete with the price you put on that slice of the Earth. LAND is defined by its non fungibility. A plot of land in the middle of San Francisco is not the same as a plot of land in the middle of Arizona. A plot of land in the middle of San Francisco is very similar to another plot of land in the middle of San Francisco. People don’t describe ownership as a “monopoly over a specific object”. That’s just silly. Monopoly is a descriptor of a market. Not specific assets. > You can clearly see how land has an inelastic supply, yet you continue to think of it as capital which can be produced. … no I was pretty explicit that land is not capital in those exact words > The demand to exist in a piece of land has everything to do with the rents of the land. No, rents (prices) are a function of demand. > If you can make $30,000 more a year in valuable land than worthless land, using the same labor/capital expenditures, the land rents become $30,000 a year. Idk how to parse this sentence. You have a very weird grasp on economic concepts
bell-cot 2y ago
Capitalism, as commonly understood today, by non-Economists, has everything to do with this. (Which, yes, is a major social problem.) Vs. (IIR) Classical (Adam Smith era) Economics viewed rent as Feudalism - not Capitalism - and took a very dim view of all such "as much gold as you can squeeze out of others, without doing any real work yourself" schemes.

cassianoleal 2y ago

Capitalism is not centrist. It's not like the extreme right is not composed mainly of capitalists.

tdb7893 2y ago

The amount of people I know with full time jobs (often very skilled ones, one person I know runs research projects studying cats) struggling to get by is pretty crazy. Working in software we can be really insulated from it. It's no surprise people don't feel like the current system is working when it isn't working for them.

FredPret 2y ago
Did you compare average jobs across time and place? Ie, does your statement apply to everyone in the country? Some places have much lower cost of living but similar earning power. Similarly, did you compare to the past? Average people used to be much worse off 20, 40, 60, etcetera years ago. Also, should running research projects that matter little to the average person get large financial rewards?
- tdb7893 2y ago
  I was just saying what's happening with my friends and why they feel disaffected. You're the one making a lot of claims with no sources. For specifically about the research project (which is the only question really relevant enough to answer): no, I don't think someone running fully funded research projects at a top university in her field should necessarily be living luxuriously but I do think they shouldn't have to worry about making rent in the city the university is in. Edit: to put it in perspective my dad was able to pay for college working part time on the docks. Nowadays it would struggle to pay food/rent, let alone get close to paying tuition.

snowpid 2y ago

"kids" => your bubble?

tome 2y ago

Then they were sadly misinformed. The need to prevent cartels and monopolies has been known since the notion of capitalism was conceived.

ceejayoz 2y ago
The issue isn't the need, it's the willingness/capacity to do so that's a problem.
- tome 2y ago
  Yes indeed, regulatory capture is a problem.

aidenn0 2y ago

The US abandoned enforcing many of its antitrust laws starting in the late '70s, and is now reaping the long-term consequences of doing so.

VancouverMan 2y ago

It's odd to blame capitalism for these sorts of problems. Real estate, property development, and property renting/leasing are typically some of the least-capitalist and least-free-market sectors around. They all tend to involve extensive and very invasive government intervention that controls or even prevents when and how capital can be used. That's the opposite of capitalism. That's the opposite of a free market. Government-imposed zoning regulations, onerous development planning and approval processes, rent controls, licensing requirements, and other forms of interference severely inhibit the ability of the market to function properly. As government involvement in such sectors has increased over time, the situation has gotten worse and worse. Of course, inefficiency and problems are exactly what we should expect to arise due to government interference with the market. Competition becomes limited, which causes supply to become artificially constrained. This distorts the pricing, which may include collusion becoming possible. Incentives that would help drive down costs, while simultaneously increasing quality and availability, no long exist. Those calling for even more government intervention than there already is are only making the situation even worse for themselves and others.

PaulHoule 2y ago
If I remember right, the very beginning of "capitalism" was in companies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company which was granted a monopoly in the Asia trade by the state. In general "capitalists" like "free" markets when it means they can do what they hell they want, but they very much like regulation when it is in their favor.
- sickofparadox 2y ago
  Capitalism as it was initial proposed was an explicit rejection of mercantilism, the guiding light for how colonial companies worked. You are mistaking the beginning of shareholder based ownership, which is not an intrinsic part of Capitalism, with the core concept of Capitalism.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago