61–70 of 105 posts
Capitalism optimization: make the rich richer making the poor poorer
You live in the most privileged period in human history. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/poverty-explorer?tab=li...
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You live in the most privileged period in human history. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/poverty-explorer?tab=li...
So what? That seems entirely tangential. Unless your point that economic inequality inherently accelerates technological progress (which seems valid at least to some extent)?
The prices of everyday goods rose (sometimes more than double) and the profits from VAT(24%) with them.
High duties on fuel + fuel price went up, combined with rent prices (living far away from your workplace) => longer work commute, bad infrastructure and older vehicles ( no money to buy a fuel efficient one when you are poor)
Liberalization of the energy market forced by EU which lead to extreme prices. (new companies that don't produce anything got in the middleman position with only goal higher profits)
In summary, everything has been and continues to be done at the expense of the majority (low-wage earners), while making them even poorer.
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You’re posting this like it’s a counterpoint, but it further highlights how disgusting the situation is. We have people becoming trillionaires while 10% of the world’s population is considered to be in extreme poverty. It’s ‘less bad’ than in the past but it’s still absolutely horrifying.
How much of that trillion is liquid? If people stopped buying a Tesla, would that somehow help the poor? Making electric vehicles more mainstream seems like a net-positive to the world.
The way this wealth inequality is so common around the world. makes me wonder if the next time the pitchforks come out, it will be some kind of global uprising. Perhaps accelerated by social media. Or are the elite better able to control the masses in this age?
Remember the plurality of the rich are working off asset loans on paper wealth. Those credit lines get cut by an event, that triggers an asset sell off which creates a vicious cycle.
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Renting itself isn't inherently the problem if you have very strong tenant rights. Imagine renting came with all the rights of owning except the money flowed differently (like a perpetual mortgage) - that'd be pretty okay, actually. It is within the power of a government to enable something like that.
But renting is a problem if there's no asset at the end of it. Even if rents were capped at half what a mortgage for the same property is, you still are in a position that once the asset of the house is paid off the landlord now has an asset that earns income without labour. And the inverse. Regardless of what you earn (to a point, even into higher income brackets), if you do not put it into an asset that can house y…
A separate concern is who should receive the money and how we morally justify that, since they didn't produce anything or work to earn it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re posting this like it’s a counterpoint, but it further highlights how disgusting the situation is. We have people becoming trillionaires while 10% of the world’s population is considered to be in extreme poverty. It’s ‘less bad’ than in the past but it’s still absolutely horrifying.
How much of that trillion is liquid? If people stopped buying a Tesla, would that somehow help the poor? Making electric vehicles more mainstream seems like a net-positive to the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of that trillion is liquid? If people stopped buying a Tesla, would that somehow help the poor? Making electric vehicles more mainstream seems like a net-positive to the world.
Possibly. If they invested their money into something more societally productive and/or the government took their money to do that or they weren’t allowed to accumulate enough surplus wealth in the first place. Of course the last two options have been a bit problematic historically.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? That seems entirely tangential. Unless your point that economic inequality inherently accelerates technological progress (which seems valid at least to some extent)?
You don't think capitalism played a role in eliminating poverty?
I actually think that free market competition has been the main driving force behind human progress for quite a while now. The issue is that the “winning condition” of capitalism results in the complete subversion of that process. So it’s always a balance.