5 ms·

Look around you and see we are not living in mud and huts anymore

by cm2012 4mo ago

saghm 4mo ago
Housing prices certainly can get high, but they aren't anywhere close to a billion dollars, which is the actual number under discussion
- margalabargala 4mo ago
  The thing being discussed is that wealth can be created, not merely stolen. The existence of housing is an example of something vlauable being created. The price of housing is not relevant to the example.
  - oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
    Always the same straw man argument. Nobody here is arguing that wealth can't be created.
    - margalabargala 4mo ago
      Did you not read the comment chain above? That's precisely the point that was being discussed, then misunderstood.
      - oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
        I read the comment chain above. I just went back and read it again. I question whether you've done the same.
        margalabargala 4mo ago
        I can't understand the writing for you. But I can present it. TheTayTay said "wealth can be created". Avicebron asked for an example of wealth creation. cm2012 provided one, housing. saghm misunderstood the intent of the example. I pointed out the error, and then you came in and have apparently repeatedly failed to understand again multiple comments, both the people who literally are saying that some quantity of wealth cannot be created, and myself. If you didn't get that after a reread, all I can suggest is that you seek out a literacy class at a local community college. It will improve your life, because this certainly won't be the first or only time you misunderstand written words.
        oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
        I'm sorry to say that you don't seem to have read either the thread or my comment. What you bring to the discussion is the straw-man argument that "wealth can be created, not only stolen." Nobody was disputing that. Nobody is disputing it now. It's common ground. Saghm tried to return to the actual topic, but you don't seem to have understood (or you aren't willing to acknowledge) what that topic actually was. People were talking about how to fairly divide wealth, not about whether it can be created or not.
        margalabargala 4mo ago
        No, I don't believe that you are sorry. And discussions can diverge; making a comment that follows only the original discussion but is a non-sequiter to the comment it actually replies to, makes the comment nonsensical, not "a return to the original discussion". The thing you say was not claimed, was claimed by multiple commenters. Considering you are neither truthful nor literate, I won't be replying again. Feel free to get the last word in if you like.
        oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
        If anyone else is unlucky enough to be reading this, please just scroll up to see what everyone actually said.
        saghm 4mo ago
        The argument that you seem to have had trouble parsing isn't that it's impossible to create wealth, but that the rewards are not distributed according to the role that people played in creating it. If a company sells for a billion dollars, there isn't a single "correct" way to decide how much each person in the company deserves to get. Some people (likely including yourself) believe that the way it's currently done is the best way, but other people (like myself) disagree and think that the current system gives rewards that are not proportionate to the amount of work each member does in reaching that point. There are plenty of coherent counterarguments you could make against my viewpoint, but asserting that it's equivalent to claiming that wealth "can't be created" is not one of them; I'm arguing that how much each person contributed towards that wealth creation is different than you are, not that it's literally not happening.
  - hnav 4mo ago
    But it's extractive, i.e. the housing costs what you can pay if you sacrifice. Those who got housing first need to get paid by latecomers. If the cost of building magically went to 0, the soft costs would inflate.
    - margalabargala 4mo ago
      Sure. The extractiveness of housing costs can exist alongside the fact that constructing a building on land creates value.
crawfordcomeaux 4mo ago
It's racism that fuels this comparison with value. I'm living in a yurt and would gladly trade it for a mud hut. Humans are currently threatening most life (including our own species) on the surface with extinction in multiple ways. That's not value and it is an inevitable conclusion to any form of binary thinking at scale. That includes the thinking that says "this way of life has more value than that way of life." We're living in the curse of the Greeks, whereby we've grown away from connection with our environments in the same ways they did by pedestaling their ways, including a form of logic that's too constrained to model reality. Here's a paper on uncertainty logic to expand from. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03123 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03123
- AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
  Thank you for saying it. The racism is so embedded into western society it’s intractable
  - sieabahlpark 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - crawfordcomeaux 4mo ago
    And saying so will get you downvoted on here most times. To anyone downvoting, show us the depth of your reasoning for it?
    - cm2012 4mo ago
      The fact that while racism exists, Western society is certainly not at the forefront of it? If anything the collective "West" is the most sensitive about race and racial issues.
      - crawfordcomeaux 4mo ago
        It's performative because resolving it would require the end of the governments within the "West" and replacing with reindigenizing governance. Supremacy is at the foundation of the whole "West" and racism will always exist while that's in play. The racism is systemic and cultural. Sensitivity isn't sufficient; there needs to be actual systemic shifts that help drive cultural shifts and vice-versa. Not simply language changes, either. Rooting out binary thinking is key to it all. Nondual animist views are more aligned with how things work in the cosmos than dualism/nonanimism.
BurningFrog 4mo ago
Also note that we're 8 billion people living on a much higher average material living standard than when we were 2 billion 100 years ago.
- atwrk 4mo ago
  No one is arguing that such a thing as wealth creation doesn't exist. The question is about who or what creates it. Which is a topic of intense discussion in economics over the last few hundred years, BTW, and the discussion here so far has shockingly few references to those.
inigyou 4mo ago
Actually I'd rather start from a mud hut and then upgrade it myself than live in the current rental system, but I don't have that option because landlords own most of the land.

Look around you and see we are not living in mud and huts anymore

by cm2012 4mo ago

Look around you and see we are not living in mud and huts anymore

saghm 4mo ago

Housing prices certainly can get high, but they aren't anywhere close to a billion dollars, which is the actual number under discussion

margalabargala 4mo ago
The thing being discussed is that wealth can be created, not merely stolen. The existence of housing is an example of something vlauable being created. The price of housing is not relevant to the example.
- oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
  Always the same straw man argument. Nobody here is arguing that wealth can't be created.
  - margalabargala 4mo ago
    Did you not read the comment chain above? That's precisely the point that was being discussed, then misunderstood.
    - oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
      I read the comment chain above. I just went back and read it again. I question whether you've done the same.
      - margalabargala 4mo ago
        I can't understand the writing for you. But I can present it. TheTayTay said "wealth can be created". Avicebron asked for an example of wealth creation. cm2012 provided one, housing. saghm misunderstood the intent of the example. I pointed out the error, and then you came in and have apparently repeatedly failed to understand again multiple comments, both the people who literally are saying that some quantity of wealth cannot be created, and myself. If you didn't get that after a reread, all I can suggest is that you seek out a literacy class at a local community college. It will improve your life, because this certainly won't be the first or only time you misunderstand written words.
        oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
        I'm sorry to say that you don't seem to have read either the thread or my comment. What you bring to the discussion is the straw-man argument that "wealth can be created, not only stolen." Nobody was disputing that. Nobody is disputing it now. It's common ground. Saghm tried to return to the actual topic, but you don't seem to have understood (or you aren't willing to acknowledge) what that topic actually was. People were talking about how to fairly divide wealth, not about whether it can be created or not.
        margalabargala 4mo ago
        No, I don't believe that you are sorry. And discussions can diverge; making a comment that follows only the original discussion but is a non-sequiter to the comment it actually replies to, makes the comment nonsensical, not "a return to the original discussion". The thing you say was not claimed, was claimed by multiple commenters. Considering you are neither truthful nor literate, I won't be replying again. Feel free to get the last word in if you like.
        oh_my_goodness 4mo ago
        If anyone else is unlucky enough to be reading this, please just scroll up to see what everyone actually said.
        saghm 4mo ago
        The argument that you seem to have had trouble parsing isn't that it's impossible to create wealth, but that the rewards are not distributed according to the role that people played in creating it. If a company sells for a billion dollars, there isn't a single "correct" way to decide how much each person in the company deserves to get. Some people (likely including yourself) believe that the way it's currently done is the best way, but other people (like myself) disagree and think that the current system gives rewards that are not proportionate to the amount of work each member does in reaching that point. There are plenty of coherent counterarguments you could make against my viewpoint, but asserting that it's equivalent to claiming that wealth "can't be created" is not one of them; I'm arguing that how much each person contributed towards that wealth creation is different than you are, not that it's literally not happening.
- hnav 4mo ago
  But it's extractive, i.e. the housing costs what you can pay if you sacrifice. Those who got housing first need to get paid by latecomers. If the cost of building magically went to 0, the soft costs would inflate.
  - margalabargala 4mo ago
    Sure. The extractiveness of housing costs can exist alongside the fact that constructing a building on land creates value.

crawfordcomeaux 4mo ago

It's racism that fuels this comparison with value. I'm living in a yurt and would gladly trade it for a mud hut. Humans are currently threatening most life (including our own species) on the surface with extinction in multiple ways. That's not value and it is an inevitable conclusion to any form of binary thinking at scale. That includes the thinking that says "this way of life has more value than that way of life." We're living in the curse of the Greeks, whereby we've grown away from connection with our environments in the same ways they did by pedestaling their ways, including a form of logic that's too constrained to model reality. Here's a paper on uncertainty logic to expand from. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03123 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03123

AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
Thank you for saying it. The racism is so embedded into western society it’s intractable
- sieabahlpark 4mo ago
  [dead]
- crawfordcomeaux 4mo ago
  And saying so will get you downvoted on here most times. To anyone downvoting, show us the depth of your reasoning for it?
  - cm2012 4mo ago
    The fact that while racism exists, Western society is certainly not at the forefront of it? If anything the collective "West" is the most sensitive about race and racial issues.
    - crawfordcomeaux 4mo ago
      It's performative because resolving it would require the end of the governments within the "West" and replacing with reindigenizing governance. Supremacy is at the foundation of the whole "West" and racism will always exist while that's in play. The racism is systemic and cultural. Sensitivity isn't sufficient; there needs to be actual systemic shifts that help drive cultural shifts and vice-versa. Not simply language changes, either. Rooting out binary thinking is key to it all. Nondual animist views are more aligned with how things work in the cosmos than dualism/nonanimism.

BurningFrog 4mo ago

Also note that we're 8 billion people living on a much higher average material living standard than when we were 2 billion 100 years ago.

atwrk 4mo ago
No one is arguing that such a thing as wealth creation doesn't exist. The question is about who or what creates it. Which is a topic of intense discussion in economics over the last few hundred years, BTW, and the discussion here so far has shockingly few references to those.

inigyou 4mo ago

Actually I'd rather start from a mud hut and then upgrade it myself than live in the current rental system, but I don't have that option because landlords own most of the land.