3 ms·

Personally, I think we should have all rent-extracting industries nationalized. Land, like in China, should be available only under a 99-year lease (perhaps wi

by blagie 1y ago

Personally, I think we should have all rent-extracting industries nationalized. Land, like in China, should be available only under a 99-year lease (perhaps with a modest homestead exemption). The government should own radio airwaves, natural resources, and banking. This doesn't mean that it couldn't hire private contractors to do the work (e.g. bidding on oil extraction), but Chevron and Exxon shouldn't own the oil field. And I think the government should provide very basic, minimal, Soviet-grade housing free to everyone. If you'd like your kids to have their own bedrooms, you pay. If you're happy with a 2-bedroom for a family of four (kids room, adults room), or dorm-style housing for adults, you can live there for free. Having a free option would, in fact, drive costs down for everyone. More broadly, we should rationalize what's nationalized. For example, a lot of parts of education make sense with a lot more open competition.

monero-xmr 1y ago
I am so so happy we live in a democracy. Because if your ilk managed to take power, it would only have been possible through violent authoritarian revolution
- const_cast 1y ago
  No you can definitely vote this stuff in, especially if you let capitalists extract money from vulnerable populations for long enough. People have a misunderstand of protections or government spending. The New Deal isn't socialism, it's the perfect capitalist policy. If we never had the New Deal, there's a good chance we would be a socialist democracy today. We got really, really close. When things get bad you have to throw people a bone in order to maintain the current systems. Our newest generations of the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful don't seem to understand that. Ultimately we, the working class, hold everything together. We're the majority and it's not even close. If we wanted to change things for our own selfish benefit, we could.
- sweeter 1y ago
  [flagged]
- platevoltage 1y ago
  Just think. If the capitalist soul sucking robber barons weren't hoarding every morsel of wealth they possibly could, policies like this wouldn't cross anyone's mind in the first place.
  - poincaredisk 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - hgomersall 1y ago
    Part of the trick is to foist on us the economic priests that tell us of the fire and brimstone that will fall on us if governments ever use their currency issuing power for social improvements.
    - blagie 1y ago
      I'm not so sure. I can describe some of the paradoxes in our social systems in-depth, but it's often the poorest people saying we can't afford social improvements.
      - hgomersall 1y ago
        In this case, many low information Turkeys have been convinced of the benefit of Christmas.
        monero-xmr 1y ago
        The USA has the global reserve currency and we have monetized our social welfare through advanced mechanisms of currency debasement. To say we aren’t printing currency to finance our lifestyle is absurd - we have been doing that through various mechanisms since WWI
  - blagie 1y ago
    A major goal of policy is to set incentives to which people optimize. The "capitalist soul sucking robber barons" are doing exactly what the incentives we set up push for. If they didn't, boards of directors / shareholders would vote them out. And if those didn't, competing businesses would crush them. No one has any real choice; it's the free hand of the market. There are nice books about this (Dictator's Handbook comes to mind). Many would prefer to be less exploitative personally, but need legal frameworks to be able to do so. And indeed, in history, you often saw the "capitalist soul sucking robber barons" see the harms they were causing and push for that regulation. Most people would prefer to provide safe food, safe medicine, etc. than sell poison and snakeoil. But you can't really resist market forces. So you need to work to set up socially-constructive market forces. And it's all better than serfdom and 1500-era systems regardless.
cryptonector 1y ago
The U.S. has done something like this, which in the 80s was called "the projects".
- blagie 1y ago
  It's a little bit different. "The projects" were only available to the very poor, and often by lottery. They often turned into a ghetto. I'd like a baseline option open to everyone. If you just finished Stanford, and want to bootstrap a startup, teach kids, or do a non-profit, you should be able to move into a "project" too while getting things off the ground. If you're a student and want to save a bit of money, you can move in too. If you want to upgrade at some point, great. If not, you've got a safe bed to sleep, and a roof overhead. Part of the difference, too, is if open to everyone, voters can push for improvements. A lot of what went wrong with the projects wasn't due to a lack of resources, but due to mismanagement of resources. For nationalized goods to be well-managed, voters need a stake. A more extreme example of this is prisons. But the critical thing is at that point, for-profit housing has competition. I might gladly spend $500/month to have better housing, but I might not be willing to spend $5000/month (insert your own numbers for single/family/income/etc.). That prevents some of the most exploitative practices.
  - cryptonector 1y ago
    > But the critical thing is at that point, for-profit housing has competition. So that's your premise, that private housing has no competition. But clearly it does: itself. It's not one monolythic actor but many. Your premise is simply wrong, but let's say you could be right: can you back that up with data or the like?
    - blagie 1y ago
      You misunderstand both my premise and basic economics. I would recommend reading the original Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, which forms the basis of modern capitalism. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300 It's clear, analytical, and mostly correct. Chapter XI, The Rent of Land, is pretty quaint at this point, but gives a compelling counterpoint to your argument. It begins: "Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself, without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more." The basic analysis of the chapter can be translated from 1780-era industries into 2025-era industries, and explains much of how housing markets work. If you would like contemporary data, I would recommend looking at the impact on the price of housing of European cities which offered nationalized below-market housing. A central fallacy in most of the libertarian space stems from the difference between industries which are not zero-sum (e.g. manufacturing, software, writing, etc.), and rent-collecting ones (e.g. literal rent, much of finance, mining, etc.). Here, I use "rent" as economics jargon, not common meaning. You can look it up. Being used to operating in domains like software -- which has literally zero marginal cost -- there is a natural tendency to want to extrapolate the same dynamics to other industries. However, economics works out differently in industries like that. For the most part, if there is a finite amount of stuff, it makes sense to divide it fairly to avoid dynamics like that. If you're producing stuff, it makes sense to divide it according to how much you contribute.

by blagie 1y ago

monero-xmr 1y ago

I am so so happy we live in a democracy. Because if your ilk managed to take power, it would only have been possible through violent authoritarian revolution

const_cast 1y ago
No you can definitely vote this stuff in, especially if you let capitalists extract money from vulnerable populations for long enough. People have a misunderstand of protections or government spending. The New Deal isn't socialism, it's the perfect capitalist policy. If we never had the New Deal, there's a good chance we would be a socialist democracy today. We got really, really close. When things get bad you have to throw people a bone in order to maintain the current systems. Our newest generations of the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful don't seem to understand that. Ultimately we, the working class, hold everything together. We're the majority and it's not even close. If we wanted to change things for our own selfish benefit, we could.
sweeter 1y ago
[flagged]
platevoltage 1y ago
Just think. If the capitalist soul sucking robber barons weren't hoarding every morsel of wealth they possibly could, policies like this wouldn't cross anyone's mind in the first place.
- poincaredisk 1y ago
  [flagged]
- hgomersall 1y ago
  Part of the trick is to foist on us the economic priests that tell us of the fire and brimstone that will fall on us if governments ever use their currency issuing power for social improvements.
  - blagie 1y ago
    I'm not so sure. I can describe some of the paradoxes in our social systems in-depth, but it's often the poorest people saying we can't afford social improvements.
    - hgomersall 1y ago
      In this case, many low information Turkeys have been convinced of the benefit of Christmas.
      - monero-xmr 1y ago
        The USA has the global reserve currency and we have monetized our social welfare through advanced mechanisms of currency debasement. To say we aren’t printing currency to finance our lifestyle is absurd - we have been doing that through various mechanisms since WWI
- blagie 1y ago
  A major goal of policy is to set incentives to which people optimize. The "capitalist soul sucking robber barons" are doing exactly what the incentives we set up push for. If they didn't, boards of directors / shareholders would vote them out. And if those didn't, competing businesses would crush them. No one has any real choice; it's the free hand of the market. There are nice books about this (Dictator's Handbook comes to mind). Many would prefer to be less exploitative personally, but need legal frameworks to be able to do so. And indeed, in history, you often saw the "capitalist soul sucking robber barons" see the harms they were causing and push for that regulation. Most people would prefer to provide safe food, safe medicine, etc. than sell poison and snakeoil. But you can't really resist market forces. So you need to work to set up socially-constructive market forces. And it's all better than serfdom and 1500-era systems regardless.

cryptonector 1y ago

The U.S. has done something like this, which in the 80s was called "the projects".

blagie 1y ago
It's a little bit different. "The projects" were only available to the very poor, and often by lottery. They often turned into a ghetto. I'd like a baseline option open to everyone. If you just finished Stanford, and want to bootstrap a startup, teach kids, or do a non-profit, you should be able to move into a "project" too while getting things off the ground. If you're a student and want to save a bit of money, you can move in too. If you want to upgrade at some point, great. If not, you've got a safe bed to sleep, and a roof overhead. Part of the difference, too, is if open to everyone, voters can push for improvements. A lot of what went wrong with the projects wasn't due to a lack of resources, but due to mismanagement of resources. For nationalized goods to be well-managed, voters need a stake. A more extreme example of this is prisons. But the critical thing is at that point, for-profit housing has competition. I might gladly spend $500/month to have better housing, but I might not be willing to spend $5000/month (insert your own numbers for single/family/income/etc.). That prevents some of the most exploitative practices.
- cryptonector 1y ago
  > But the critical thing is at that point, for-profit housing has competition. So that's your premise, that private housing has no competition. But clearly it does: itself. It's not one monolythic actor but many. Your premise is simply wrong, but let's say you could be right: can you back that up with data or the like?
  - blagie 1y ago
    You misunderstand both my premise and basic economics. I would recommend reading the original Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, which forms the basis of modern capitalism. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300 It's clear, analytical, and mostly correct. Chapter XI, The Rent of Land, is pretty quaint at this point, but gives a compelling counterpoint to your argument. It begins: "Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself, without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more." The basic analysis of the chapter can be translated from 1780-era industries into 2025-era industries, and explains much of how housing markets work. If you would like contemporary data, I would recommend looking at the impact on the price of housing of European cities which offered nationalized below-market housing. A central fallacy in most of the libertarian space stems from the difference between industries which are not zero-sum (e.g. manufacturing, software, writing, etc.), and rent-collecting ones (e.g. literal rent, much of finance, mining, etc.). Here, I use "rent" as economics jargon, not common meaning. You can look it up. Being used to operating in domains like software -- which has literally zero marginal cost -- there is a natural tendency to want to extrapolate the same dynamics to other industries. However, economics works out differently in industries like that. For the most part, if there is a finite amount of stuff, it makes sense to divide it fairly to avoid dynamics like that. If you're producing stuff, it makes sense to divide it according to how much you contribute.