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What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

theguardian.com

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Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#271

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mantas wrote: post #253
gradstudent wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will those people be better off sleeping rough? Everyone should have access to basic housing. If they do not that's a failure of government to provide a sufficient social safety net.

What is basic housing? Today's poor housing would look like a damn luxury 100 years ago. Today's luxury housing will probably look bellow standards after 100 years

no I'm sorry, I live in a house that was a damn luxury a 100 years ago and it's still a pretty fine house today. The houses described in the article would probably look pretty good compared to the poor housing of a 100 years ago, but not like any sort of luxury. The "look at those big screen tvs the poor have" argument does not translate well here.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#272

Post by thecopy »

crdoconnor wrote: post #267
thecopy wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are, in effect, saying, is that these poor people would be better off if the owner of the trailer park would kick them all out? Then they would not be "exploited". I am inclined to believe you are a troll, because the distinction between an aggression of violence and a voluntary free exchange on the market is quite easy to make, which in your argument you fail to do.

If every time you took an ambulance you were forced to sign over 80% of your wealth or be left to die in the streets in a 'voluntary exchange', that would be exploitation. The difference between that and slumlords is simply a matter of degree. Desperation is the route to profit in both cases. Truly voluntary exchanges without gaping chasms of systemic inequality do not provide opportunities for sustained profit.

I get the point in your scenario. The simple matter of "degree" in this case might be simple but it is very big. First of all, i would say that your scenario is unrealistic. It is made up and it would never happen in actual real life. First of all, what psychopaths would leave a dying man, woman or child like that? Also, how would these ambulances get customers? Thirdly, who would sign up for their ambulance service? Yes, if we accept your premise of a society where this psychopath ambulance service has a monopoly and everyone is forced to use it, then sure, it is exploitation. But on the other hand, someone with authority has therefore sanctioned this psychopath monopoly ambulance service. Where did this authority get this mandate? Democracy? If you want to argue that this scenario would happen on the free market, i would like to see your arguments to why this ambulance service would still have customers.

If you control the premise of the arguments, it is easy to "win".

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#273

Post by sokoloff »

ubernostrum wrote: post #236
Fjolsvith wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I don't see that this is perfectly reasonable to expect. TANSTAAFL. Food still has to be produced. Energy still has to be produced. All that stuff has to be paid for somehow or the producers stop producing for the freeloaders. What you think of as a mental hurdle I see as a way of discerning what is mine from what is yours. Show me a developed nation where a person actually doesn't have any personal property…

Food still has to be produced. Energy still has to be produced. All that stuff has to be paid for somehow or the producers stop producing for the freeloaders. The question is: what happens when most or all of the food and energy is being produced not by human labor, but by fully-automated processes? Why would, say, a farming robot care whether someone is "freeloading" off its labor? What you think of as a mental hurd…

Food still requires valuable farmland, water, energy, fertilizers, pest control, capital to buy and expand the automation, operating costs and labor to repair and oversee the operations. It's an enormous amount of initial capital investment and a massive on-going operating expenses, and that's just for basic farming.

Now, add all the post-processing and transportation logistics after the food comes out of the ground to get to basic staple ingredients. Then add all the preparation activities, cooking, and packing to get to the Hot Pocket/Pop Tart level of salable food (or food-like) product.

Watersheds need to be protected; water needs to be treated, tested, stored, and pumped under pressure through a distribution network of pipes. Sewerage needs to be piped in the other direction, treated, and disposed of.

Electricity needs space, energy input, capital, and opex and a distribution network that needs on-going maintenance and repair. Gas lines need a lot of the same. Internet distribution needs...

Medicine needs space, energy, [lots of] people with specialized training just to apply the state of today's art. It also has a large research and development component responsible for ensuring that we aren't still using leeches to treat "Bilious fever".

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#274

Post by morgante »

petra wrote: post #170
CydeWeys wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people in the linked article are frequently moving between housing, though. If they had thirty solid years of employment lined up they wouldn't be in their situation to begin with. What you're proposing is rent-to-own, which the vast majority of people would never make any headway on.

What about adding something like transferable shares mechanism - so so you could use your ownership stake in another house if you want you need to move?

So, money?

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#275

Post by rogual »

kefka wrote: post #191
imaginenore wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why bitcoin and alternatives are so important. Banking for everyone.

Oh please. Unless you were in on the ground floor with CPU mining, you aren't getting many coins now. There was only 6 months where you could use GFX cards, and now the "room full of ASICs" take the cake. Bitcoin is useful if you have goods, services, or currency to convert to it. It is not "free magical money". Its main attribute is that it is stateless... and that's a big deal and also not a big deal to those whom…

He's not saying it's free money, he's saying it's easy to have an account.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#276

Post by morgante »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #159
ctdonath wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, say those "exploitive" businesses didn't exist. That doesn't subsequently mean "non-exploitive" alternatives would exist, it just means those customers/employees would have no options (not even "exploitive" ones). Is having no option better than having a bad option, when good options aren't available?

I think it depends. Not having access to temporary credit at all is better than pay day loans. Of course, I'm saying that from my proverbial ivory tower. Philosophically I don't support banning those things, but I'll be damned if they're not fucking evil incarnate.

Payday loans serve a purpose. Thinking the poor use them because they're irrational or stupid is just elitist.

A payday loan might have an atrocious interest rate, but it's better than getting kicked out of your apartment because you're $30 short on rent or getting thrown in jail for a parking ticket.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#277

Post by DanBC »

sokoloff wrote: post #5

People in poverty use services and consume goods. Someone provides those goods and services. Would they be better off if every business closed their doors to the impoverished, so as to not "make a buck off the poor"? Of course not! The trailer park owner in the article owns 131 units and "makes" (presumably grosses) $400K a year. Those units are about $250 per month, hardly the stuff of Viking-style pillaging, IMO. T…

The problem isn't with companies that sell huge TVs to poor people, but with companies the sell huge TVs on credit to poor people with an interest rate of 65%.

There are many other safer cheaper ways to provide this service - "lay away" would be one.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#278

Post by majewsky »

ubernostrum wrote: post #236
Fjolsvith wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I don't see that this is perfectly reasonable to expect. TANSTAAFL. Food still has to be produced. Energy still has to be produced. All that stuff has to be paid for somehow or the producers stop producing for the freeloaders. What you think of as a mental hurdle I see as a way of discerning what is mine from what is yours. Show me a developed nation where a person actually doesn't have any personal property…

Food still has to be produced. Energy still has to be produced. All that stuff has to be paid for somehow or the producers stop producing for the freeloaders. The question is: what happens when most or all of the food and energy is being produced not by human labor, but by fully-automated processes? Why would, say, a farming robot care whether someone is "freeloading" off its labor? What you think of as a mental hurd…

> Why would, say, a farming robot care whether someone is "freeloading" off its labor?

The obvious rebuttal is that someone has to build and maintain the farming robot, so this is the guy whom you would be freeloading of.

On a more general note: The concept of property only ever arises because of scarcity. For example, you wouldn't describe yourself as owning the air in your apartment, since there is ample air. A diver, on the other hand, would definitely declare ownership in the air in your air bottle.

So how can we implement a post-scarcity society? My best guess would be to work on affordable technology that makes basic things like water, food, clothes or internet access not scarce anymore.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#279

Post by sokoloff »

Animats wrote: post #103

US housing has become much more expensive as a fraction of income since WWII. As the article points out, the big problem in the Great Depression was food, not housing. In 1950, most people in apartments in NYC were paying about 10% of their income for rent. Now, 60% in NYC, about 30% nationally. Why is this? Some of it is tax policy. Tax policy is very favorable to property owners. Not only can landlords deduct mortg…

Depreciation of rental buildings (the land is excluded) is just a tax timing issue and reduces the basis in the property, so it's eventually recovered via recapture.

The paper you cite takes as an assumption a monopoly of landlords. It does not prove that's the case. "It should be clarified that our model here is one where...landlords have monopolistic power. ... We do not claim that this case is in any way closer to the reality of the housing market than the perfect competition assumption."

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#280

Post by pyrale »

OJFord wrote: post #259
massysett wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this market were wealthier it wouldn't exist. The tenants would be getting mortgages or renting nicer apartments, not living in trailer parks. And, because governments like to have higher income residents, they would have more choices of where to live, as trailer parks are exiled to the fringe. Some of these market dynamics exist precisely because these people are poor and the landlords have no incentive for their…

> If this market were wealthier it wouldn't exist. The > tenants would be getting mortgages or renting nicer > apartments, not living in trailer parks. Which is what would make them more profitable.

No, because the cost of building, maintaining and keep in a state of compliance a housing lot is superior to the increase in rent. Sleep dealing is a lucrative job.

There are many factors explaining this : reduced access to law for the poorest, lack of alternatives, but also social perception of the tenants and of their worth, or the cognitive bias displayed by many about homo economicus.

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