51–60 of 82 posts
It is more likely your kids will have no job.
That would be in a perfect world..
Kind of like it already is in Latin America, Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia and elsewhere for large swarms of people.
Capitalism is about the flow of capital. Most people don't have capital, so they have to trade their labor for a small amount with people that do have capital, who are only trading it to get more capital. Articles like this assume that everything will change - except how capital works. Bitcoin. Crowdfunding. Distributed banking. Mass market barter transactions. I can't help but think that centralized stores of capita…
Which has increasingly been the case since the 70's:
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red doesn't sell well in the USA. We'll have full communism but we'll market it as something else. Probably still calling it the "free market capitalism". That's what we inaccurately call our current system and nobody blinks. Most likely it'll roll out like public libraries / utilities. I already drive on government owned streets kept safe by government paid cops and clean by government paid trash pickup to visit the…
All of those govt paid employees are paid by you... their employer. Not the govt. The govt owns nothing nor employees anyone.
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I usually work as a consultant and my income is highly variable. Of course in our field when I earn it's nothing to complain about, and my average for most years is certainly nothing to complain about. Financially, I'm lucky. And yet. I'm disciplined with money. I'm not impulsive or indulgent. I can build a mean spreadsheet. Put all this together and still the uncertainty and variability is stressful. Running down a…
Someone always has to take the risks - when working for a company it is the company owners that take it. On average they probably are well compensated for it - but surely they must be more stressed. Or maybe when you are above some level you are not so stressed about the fluctuations - because you know that you'll not hit the bottom whatever happens?
And the higher up the scale you go, the less likely "company owner" is to be a single individual who only owns one company. It will be people or investment bodies with diversified portfolios. The most stressed person is probably the small business owner who is genuinely at risk if it fails.
The "precaritisation" is about pushing as much risk as possible onto those least able to bear it, reversing the expansion of risk-sharing that is the social insurance and the "welfare state".
Capitalism is about the flow of capital. Most people don't have capital, so they have to trade their labor for a small amount with people that do have capital, who are only trading it to get more capital. Articles like this assume that everything will change - except how capital works. Bitcoin. Crowdfunding. Distributed banking. Mass market barter transactions. I can't help but think that centralized stores of capita…
Can decentralised capital get a better rate of return than centralised capital? If so, centralised capital can just invest in it. If not, you'll end up paying your decentralised returns back and more in rent. Property is the ultimate centralised store of capital.
Capitalism is about the flow of capital. Most people don't have capital, so they have to trade their labor for a small amount with people that do have capital, who are only trading it to get more capital. Articles like this assume that everything will change - except how capital works. Bitcoin. Crowdfunding. Distributed banking. Mass market barter transactions. I can't help but think that centralized stores of capita…
This is where "r > g" and Picketty's work is relevant. The rate of return on capital matters. Centralised capital earning a return will always pull ahead of small-scale capital unless there's enough regulatory and other handicapping to the advantage of the small capital investment. Can decentralised capital get a better rate of return than centralised capital? If so, centralised capital can just invest in it. If not,…
I think this would assume that decentralized investments won't be able to afford autonomous, off-the-grid living arrangements. There's still a whole lot more land out there than we need. And it wouldn't need to support everyone, just enough so that there's an alternative to keep rents from skyrocketing.
Anything else you pay for can be decentralized, as the article demonstrates.
Capitalism is about the flow of capital. Most people don't have capital, so they have to trade their labor for a small amount with people that do have capital, who are only trading it to get more capital. Articles like this assume that everything will change - except how capital works. Bitcoin. Crowdfunding. Distributed banking. Mass market barter transactions. I can't help but think that centralized stores of capita…
>Unless, of course, they're kept alive by force. Which has increasingly been the case since the 70's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailout#Cases
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Assuming we have some sort of base income I agree.
Base income does not come out of nothing though. You need state income, which depends on taxation, which depends on people working and consuming.
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Someone always has to take the risks - when working for a company it is the company owners that take it. On average they probably are well compensated for it - but surely they must be more stressed. Or maybe when you are above some level you are not so stressed about the fluctuations - because you know that you'll not hit the bottom whatever happens?
That's what the privilege of wealth, especially hereditary wealth, is - freedom from having to worry about hitting the bottom. And the higher up the scale you go, the less likely "company owner" is to be a single individual who only owns one company. It will be people or investment bodies with diversified portfolios. The most stressed person is probably the small business owner who is genuinely at risk if it fails. T…
Not many humans thrive under high-stakes insecurity. We'll have a pathological (and cruel) society if it's built on the pretense that everyone's an entrepreneurial whirlwind who gets a kick out of doing it without a safety net.
If you have in-demand skills then maybe the 'gig' economy can be a nice place to be: money and flexibility can create quite a nice lifestyle, if some comments I read on HN are to be believed. But for those not in the top-layer its going to be "welcome to the precariat" [1]. Constant hustling, unpredictable income and housing, moving-on a lot, fewer social ties. For those at the bottom it's zero-hour contracts driving…