181–185 of 185 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution isn't to put a band-aid on it. But to get out of the way as much as possible. If you prohibit most profit you prohibit most progress.
Pretty sure Upton Sinclair debunked that theory over 100 years ago
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution isn't to put a band-aid on it. But to get out of the way as much as possible. If you prohibit most profit you prohibit most progress.
Profit should not be a thing in housing, healthcare, or food until everyone is housed, cared for, and fed.
The reality is that if all those things were provided population would grow unchecked until resources ran out. It’s not sustainable.
On the other extreme, we can do a lot better than artificial scarcity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the book The Affordable City [0], this is illustrated with a really powerful analogy: Every year in the United States, the Toyota motor company sells about 2 million regular Toyota cars and 300,000 expensive luxury Lexus cars. Suppose that we introduced a law that each motor company can only sell 300,000 cars a year. Which cars would Toyota continue to make? [0] https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city [1] ht…
Simple: Toyota would stop being a motor company. It would instead start 10 new motor companies, and a parts manufacturing supplier system for those motor companies, and keep controlling interest in those new companies. More deeply, I don't understand how it's analogous. Why are companies prohibited from selling more than 300K cars? Is it because of too-high pollution (CO2 emissions, tire micro particles, etc.)? Is it…
In which case the rebuttal to your argument is as simple as adding another arbitrary layer of assumptions that do not generalise, in order to restrict your use of arbitrary assumptions that do not generalise, e.g "the government will not allow that split, back to discussing the original scenario."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the book The Affordable City [0], this is illustrated with a really powerful analogy: Every year in the United States, the Toyota motor company sells about 2 million regular Toyota cars and 300,000 expensive luxury Lexus cars. Suppose that we introduced a law that each motor company can only sell 300,000 cars a year. Which cars would Toyota continue to make? [0] https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city [1] ht…
Precisely why the law should really say that making X affordable cars per year buys you right to sell 1 luxury car. You actually want it more complicated than that, maybe something like for every dollar of affordability you sell (under $X), you earn the right to sell $0.10 worth of luxury.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should someone go through all the effort to do that if they aren’t getting paid for it?
The workers get a livable wage. The organization breaks even.