The reason real estate overvaluation is difficult to deal with in the market is that there’s no upper end to it. There’s always a truck full of money someone wants to park somewhere. I wouldn’t say the math of it is hyperbolic, but for a given large range it is.
I thought praxis was supposed to take care of this, that it was supposed to be up to the men of ability to benefit from the rough and tumble of the market.
Er, no, this is exactly what happens when corrupt oligarchs get what they want, principle and ability be damned.
Yeah, yeah, it’s for “Opus”, not “One”. Same developer.
I noticed they had two names for it.
Maybe if we stopped empowering our rich to steal the resources, wages, and public budgets of impoverished regions, we could end hunger and survival insecurity for all time.
Maybe if we just give the surplus food that we’re already growing to the people who need it to survive, with no monetary exchange required on anyone’s part, it’ll end hunger?
Nah, making essential nutrition a commodity item is a much better idea.
If that works, sure, but don’t get hung up on optimal when there’s multigenerational reform and disobedience and revolt to get through first.
I just don’t see how dismantling the entire class structure is less work or an easier sell than just giving people what they need to survive, when we already have it available in surplus.
Because the rich won’t allow us to have a universal safety net (or whatever implementation of food security you’re stuck on) until we cut their power down to democracy-sized morsels. I take that as a given.
The easier it is for proles to get by, the harder it is for plutes to celebrate their moral and intellectual superiority, and the harder it is for plutes to hire someone for their sexual fantasies.
I don’t.
Explain.
I think the rich would fight back harder against trying to take large chunks of their power, compared to taking small chunks of their money.
For example, which do you think they’d fight harder against: a bill with a small tax hike to pay for taking food that was already being thrown away and providing it to those in need, or a law designed to weaken the Citizens United decision?
I think they’d fight harder, much harder, against the latter.
Maybe it’s addressing a symptom instead of treating the underlying disease. But when that symptom is “a whole lot of people are dying of starvation,” I think, in the short term, that’s worth taking our eyes off of the long game to deal with.
Why do you think it’s a given that overthrowing the oligarchy altogether is easier than willing small victories against them?
Sparks have flown when I try to explain to some entrenched “patriots” who claim to be defending “American culture” from The Scary Other - from Eastern-European communism and anarchism to Middle-Eastern
Islam - just how little they really know geographically and culturally. If you look at the widespread utopianism of the US Christian “intentional communities” of the 18th century, you can see a lot of the DNA of communism all over it. Marx and Engels were in communication with Shaker communes before they even wrote their manifesto.
The reactionary waves of publicizing communism, anarchism, labor unions, etc as being “un-American” seems to be very much a product of industry owners and investors of the early 20th century capitalizing upon fear of immigrants from Germany, Russia, Poles, Jews, etc and exploiting perceived cultural differences to drive xenophobia, and then cripple popular labor movements by repeated association. Re-inventing US Christianity into a popular movement of faux-moral conformism and ignorance was a more recent development.
@mindysan33 probably knows more about this,
(preemptive drunken posting disclaimer for typos grammar etc)
Reform is overthrow? I’ve always advocated carrot as well as stick. You seem to think that returning stolen goods as charity will actually lead somewhere.
Again, treating a symptom may not do anything at all to cure the disease, but when the symptom is horrible enough, it’s worth treating anyway.
And when one group of people have the lion’s share of the political power in a system, and reform would take much of that power from them, then yes, reform is overthrow.
I never shit on treating social symptoms, but wishing the rich will change their business practices to save food without making a big profit… and sticking it to the public budget at the same time? I don’t think you know how this works.
Remember, this conversation, here, now, began with the tongue-in-cheek possibility of substantial charity from these guys who have substantially negative value to the world. By all means, work with a food recovery program, work on small businesses to collect and redistribute the food, but that’s not this conversation.
Best billionaire. Representative at least.