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Your guitar and canvas are luxuries. A roof and basic food are not. That's really the issue I have with our version of capitalism - that we use the same token

Your guitar and canvas are luxuries. A roof and basic food are not. That's really the issue I have with our version of capitalism - that we use the same token for two drastically different classes of goods. That it infects everything. I think you're arguing against a strawman here really. I don't take issue with the idea of some people earning fantastically more than others. I have a problem when the bottom level is in squalor.

bmelton 12y ago
I'm not arguing against anything. I'm wide open to suggestions, but I've yet to see any alternatives to capitalism that prevented squalor. To my understanding, history has shown that bringing the top down doesn't necessarily take the bottom up along with it. If my understanding is flawed, then by all means, feel free to illustrate how.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  Why jump to 'alternative to capitalism'? You can have capitalism without everything being a free market. We already do. As I said, the issue is with our implementation. It doesn't make sense for land to be fully subjected to a free market because the endgame is fairly obviously lords and serfs. The same doesn't happen elsewhere really. If the state built homes until there were enough for everyone and then we played capitalism with food and cars and trains and skateboards and yachts and TVs and the Internet and all of those other things higher up the hierarchy of needs, would you not consider that capitalism? You'd still have returns on capital, you'd still have people owning more or less land. You'd still have bigger and smaller homes. But you might not be able to force (or heavily nudge towards) people into wage slavery. :)
  - bmelton 11y ago
    "Why jump to 'alternative to capitalism'?" Because this whole thread started with the assertion that "The capitalist economy is broken for youth today", so the assumption is that fixes are to move away from capitalism. "If the state built homes until there were enough for everyone" You can probably skip that step, and just rewrite the rules for adverse possession. America currently has more vacant homes than there are homeless people. In fact, if we wanted, we could give six vacant homes to each homeless person, let them pick the one they like the best, and give back the other five. It absolves the taxpayer obligation to maintain the homes (which isn't really being met anyway), puts the homeless in homes, and doesn't really have too much in the way of perverse incentives, but for the invariability that we might temporarily grow the homeless population for those looking for free homes. I don't know how that fixes wage slavery in any meaningful way though, as having a home doesn't positively correlate to having a job. The problem of poverty right now is lack of full time employment. There's not really any fix for wage slavery that is predicated on capitalism, if capitalism is to have any actual meaning, anyway. I mean, there's minimum wage, but while it's easy to acknowledge that there's no direct correlation between minimum wage and unemployment, OECD companies with the highest minimum wages tend to have the highest rates of unemployment. Unemployment very positively correlates with poverty, house or not. There's an argument to be made that if housing were free, that the minimum wage could be abolished, but that doesn't sound like something you'd support.
    - stegosaurus 11y ago
      I agree with adverse possession changes. I don't really want to engage with the rest because I feel 'poverty' is too vague a word to use in this context. Owning a home and having to be careful with what you eat and about whether you can turn the lights on is a very different state of existence compared to eating roughly whatever you want but worrying about making the rent. The latter makes you a serf to a lord, the former is a struggle. They are both difficult but their effect on the psyche is differebt.

bmelton 12y ago

I'm not arguing against anything. I'm wide open to suggestions, but I've yet to see any alternatives to capitalism that prevented squalor. To my understanding, history has shown that bringing the top down doesn't necessarily take the bottom up along with it. If my understanding is flawed, then by all means, feel free to illustrate how.

stegosaurus 11y ago
Why jump to 'alternative to capitalism'? You can have capitalism without everything being a free market. We already do. As I said, the issue is with our implementation. It doesn't make sense for land to be fully subjected to a free market because the endgame is fairly obviously lords and serfs. The same doesn't happen elsewhere really. If the state built homes until there were enough for everyone and then we played capitalism with food and cars and trains and skateboards and yachts and TVs and the Internet and all of those other things higher up the hierarchy of needs, would you not consider that capitalism? You'd still have returns on capital, you'd still have people owning more or less land. You'd still have bigger and smaller homes. But you might not be able to force (or heavily nudge towards) people into wage slavery. :)
- bmelton 11y ago
  "Why jump to 'alternative to capitalism'?" Because this whole thread started with the assertion that "The capitalist economy is broken for youth today", so the assumption is that fixes are to move away from capitalism. "If the state built homes until there were enough for everyone" You can probably skip that step, and just rewrite the rules for adverse possession. America currently has more vacant homes than there are homeless people. In fact, if we wanted, we could give six vacant homes to each homeless person, let them pick the one they like the best, and give back the other five. It absolves the taxpayer obligation to maintain the homes (which isn't really being met anyway), puts the homeless in homes, and doesn't really have too much in the way of perverse incentives, but for the invariability that we might temporarily grow the homeless population for those looking for free homes. I don't know how that fixes wage slavery in any meaningful way though, as having a home doesn't positively correlate to having a job. The problem of poverty right now is lack of full time employment. There's not really any fix for wage slavery that is predicated on capitalism, if capitalism is to have any actual meaning, anyway. I mean, there's minimum wage, but while it's easy to acknowledge that there's no direct correlation between minimum wage and unemployment, OECD companies with the highest minimum wages tend to have the highest rates of unemployment. Unemployment very positively correlates with poverty, house or not. There's an argument to be made that if housing were free, that the minimum wage could be abolished, but that doesn't sound like something you'd support.
  - stegosaurus 11y ago
    I agree with adverse possession changes. I don't really want to engage with the rest because I feel 'poverty' is too vague a word to use in this context. Owning a home and having to be careful with what you eat and about whether you can turn the lights on is a very different state of existence compared to eating roughly whatever you want but worrying about making the rent. The latter makes you a serf to a lord, the former is a struggle. They are both difficult but their effect on the psyche is differebt.