Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #54

kjkjadksj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t understand that advertisement and public relations are merely propaganda, I’m not sure what to tell you beyond that. We think in terms of wholly different realities I guess. Nothing can convince you of my side and nothing can convince me against this conclusion that advertisement is fundamentally propaganda, and as long as we allow for it in politics we allow for the opportunity of malicious intent on th…

Suppose we allow only short published stump speeches and nothing else. What prevents the green team from registering 200 yellow candidates who will all submit yellow-sounding platforms in order to split the vote? Don’t we want to allow the public to judge candidates on more than their ability to write a single speech? Politics and representation is picking someone to perform tasks as our agent that go well beyond wri…

Post by remus » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 4:29 PM UTC

hdgvhicv wrote: post #77

lastdong wrote: post #68

The modern UK leasehold system is, in many ways, rooted in the feudal landholding arrangements. In the UK, when buying a house, the buyer sometimes leases the land rather than owning it outright, and must pay ground rent to the landlord. A lease is usually bought for 80 years or more, but occasionally properties are sold with only a few years remaining. If the lease is not renewed, the homeowner risks losing the prop…

Vast majority of houses are not leasehold. It’s 125 years at lease, and aside from a couple of decades the ground rent was always a peppercorn (actual ground rents started in the 90s and have now finished)

Post by lurk2 » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

corimaith wrote: post #92

lurk2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy is following people's will, not "making things equal". His point is that democratic systems are subverted if absolute equality is not enforced. It’s a crude argument but basically correct. The only way you prevent usurpation is by making sure one individual doesn’t have any obvious means of scaling his influence to the point that he can challenge the democratic militia.

What you call influence is simply trust that others impart to an individual. There is very little a single individual can physically do by themselves. So if there is someone with the influence to challenge a militia then it's better to say a proportionate number of people are also challenging the militia with the person as their proxy.

Post by IAmGraydon » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

docsaintly wrote: post #5

This series will really make you examine social hierarchies, including the ones that exist today. They are no accident.

Post by watwut » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 4:54 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #147

docsaintly wrote: post #5

This series will really make you examine social hierarchies, including the ones that exist today. They are no accident.

Can we please move to a more intelligent discourse on this than “rich people are in on a giant conspiracy to keep us down”? The social hierarchy shows self sustaining intent on small scales, but by and large it has been clearly shown to be emergent and ever-evolving. Believing that someone is keeping you from moving up the hierarchy is a story you tell yourself.