Conservatism is a fucking plague of oppression, misery and death that targets the most vulnerable first. It needs to be eradicated and innoculated against.
We need some revolutions in education technology and theory. These conservatives really only learn when they actually touch the hot stove. So something like that alien device from Star Trek that let Picard live an entire alien life. Or that monument to the alien war from Voy that let a bunch of their crew experience the people’s memories.
Who the fuck cares? It indicates a massive flaw with the system. Either they can’t afford it or we aren’t doing anything to help it, or they’re just exploiting her to gain more wealth. Whatever the reason is, it isn’t a justification. It’s only an indictment of the system that allows it to happen. The fact the police are used to support the little lordling and not the poor old woman just makes it worse.
The point is no one should be in a position to say no. I’m not saying I would do better as a landlord (I would, but that’s why I probably will never be a landlord), rather that the system is broken and no one should be, or at least not be allowed to deny this woman at minimum.
Is it so hard to imagine that there can be other incentives to work towards than profit? Profit is not a good goal for a system to prioritize. Can you agree with that? If so, can’t you imagine that a system could exist that prioritizes doing good or creating happiness or anything else?
There are independent landlords out there. One of my cousins rents out a bit of his property to some dude because its seperated by thick brush and its easier to just rent out the remote edges of the property than it is to make trails and do the required paperwork for the permit. He also rents a chunk out to the road maintenance company.
My point being theres landlords and then theres Landlords one is just someone renting out property for whatever reason and the other makes is running it as a business.
Should people get free housing at 92? At what point does a squatter get a free pass? Should we force the owner to give charity to the elderly squatter? What makes her more deserving than, say, Doctors Without Borders?
What does that even mean? Concrete, lumber, electric, plumbing, plus location location location that everyone else wants. How can it NOT be a commodity with fluctuating prices based on basic market forces like supply and demand? Explain
Decommodification means to cease production for the purpose of profit. Instead, have robust public housing and personal house ownership, rather than allow private landlording. Red Vienna is a similar example in real life.
If they’re wealthy enough, yes. Or ideally, people who can’t afford a home should be given one by the government. No landlords needed. Having a roof over your head should be a basic human right.
Nothing. Again, basic human right. Everyone is entitled to a home.
Ok so govt is the landlord then, got it. Who gets to decide who gets free housing? Housing inventory is limited so somebody is going to be homeless. Seems like the govt agency, or worse, agent, has the keys to the kingdom and wields a lot of power in your scenario.
Yes. At the point where an owner can easily afford to lose that building as a tax write-off. Yes, if their own wellbeing isn’t dependent on that property, with a reasonable compensation for their loss. She was there first.
She was there first?!? It’s the owner’s building! What does “easily afford to lose that building as a tax write-off” even mean? What do you know about tax? I presume zero based on your comment. smh
So govt forces owner to donate to 93 year old squatter charity instead of donating to a different charity of their choice. Still a forced donation because money is fungible, doesn’t matter who got there first.
The tax write-off bit means being rich enough that donating the building to charity won’t even make a dent in their wealth
Government forces people to donate their property for specific projects often enough. This wouldn’t be much different. A proper government that is a representative of the people it governs wouldn’t allow these type of situations in the first place, but those rarely exist, so we deal with what there is.
“Codify” huh? If you’re looking for lawmakers, you’re in the wrong place.
Profit is worth less than human lives. If you disagree, also in the wrong place for that.
If you’re talking about eminent domain, the gov has to pay fair market value for the assets it takes, at least in the USA. So you’re just flat out wrong using that as an example because in this context you guys are talking about the government forcing someone to provide something to somebody else for free, or just seizing their property (!) to do it themselves.
I’m looking for you to be able to articulate a specific rule or set of rules with hard numbers and thresholds that applies to literally everyone. You can walk around all you want saying rich people are big bad meanies and should give this poor woman free housing. But it turns out people will always act in their own rational self interest, and until you can figure out a way to codify your values into law, you might as well be writing letters to santa. I wish everything were perfect and nobody wants for anything, but the universe just doesn’t work that way. It’s hard to believe there are so many people naive enough to not know this by now.
I’m definitely in the wrong place because all I’m hearing is a bunch of morons.
Yes, if their own wellbeing isn’t dependent on that property, with a reasonable compensation for their loss.
You want hard numbers from people who don’t have hard numbers, who didn’t take statistics, economics or specialize in this domain. If you want hard numbers, go get them from where they’re available and accurate, talk to the people who can give you exact results, in percentages or whichever method you need. Then come back and let us bunch of morons reject it all on the basis that the numbers are rigged.
Let’s keep it simple here. The owner wanted to evict an old lady. 93 years old. Was she rich and just didn’t want to pay or was she poor and wasn’t able to pay? Was she able to go somewhere else specific or was she to be thrown out in the street without a care? The context matters. Here, it’s the difference between losing a potential income and likely causing someone’s death. There’s no contest on what the priority should be. Don’t like it, raise hell with those in power, not the powerless.
Not the cause of the issue, but still a player. Another bastard cop, “just doing my job - that I chose to pursue and will continue to do.” What a hero.
Exactly. They only rely on police because for the time being it’s cheaper and more cost effective to outsource their violence to the state. The minute they can cut out the middleman, they will.
It’s not just about being cost effective - the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Private firms doing this without state backing would be immediately read by anyone watching as illegitimate and they would quickly face organised resistance to it.
The unrestrained mass of people organising is a much more powerful force than any police a state could muster. That’s why the state has to find ways to legitimise itself so as to be allowed to stay in power.
Corporations don’t have that level of cultural legitimacy yet, and we should hope they never get there.
Thankfully, that monopoly on legitimate violence is one that the people can give and take. If the people decide that the state’s violence is illegitimate, then it is illegitimate.
Yup, I was going to make the distinction between perceived legitimacy and actual legitimacy, but on reflection I think legitimacy is socially constructed, so perceived legitimacy is just legitimacy.
That’s why things like the George Floyd uprising was so important. The legitimacy of the state’s violence has taken a huge hit in recent times, and I don’t see it getting better any time soon.
the US had a fairly successful public housing program until the 1980s when it was defunded then the coffin was nailed shut with the faircloth amendment passed in the 1990s.
Ideally the governnent with our tax money instead of using it all to bomb nations that aren’t a threat to us and lining the pockets of politicians and their friends.
Man it’s always govt with you people. I challenge you to codify your feelings into actual policy with facts and figures rather than loaded emotional imagery like ‘govt should pay for housing for everyone.’
One way would be to stop enforcing private property privileges for one’s second house. We already have more housing than people, and thus don’t need to subsidize additional construction.
When you decommodify a thing the state takes a role to ensure the good or service is provided to all. You can have a mixed system with private and public construction. But as long as there is a robust public housing sector, prices for all houses will be much lower than in the current system where we have scarcity.
I read something recently analyzing what tends to happen when there’s tons of artificially cheap public housing. Market forces determine housing prices regardless of government interference, so when the govt rules by decree that their public housing will be cheaper, the price differential doesn’t go away, it just changes form. And more importantly, it changes hands. The price difference changes form from money into power, and it changes hands from the landlord into the govt agency or official in charge of determining who gets to live there and benefit from the lower cost. Make sense?
I don’t disagree that housing costs are out of control. I think everyone is missing the point though, and the cause. It isn’t mean rich people being evil bastards charging people too much. Right now what we are seeing is the natural result of decades of exponential economic growth. Real estate is an asset like any other with prices strongly positively correlated with other asset classes. If everything is growing exponentially like equities, of course real estate is going to grow along with them. I don’t know what the solution is, but it certainly isn’t anything suggested in this thread.
So instead of having people spend 60% of their income on housing we will have some slightly annoyed people who aren’t in the neighborhood they want to be in, spending <20% of their income on housing. Sounds like an improvement to me.
No, all you’re doing is shifting power from the big bad mean rich landlord into the hands of the government agency or agent in charge. How do you not understand that? No matter what there’s going to be an asshole with too much power/wealth.
The basic math there obviously doesn’t jive if you take a second to think about it. Even if it’s 1/10 of the population, the defense budget is only about $20k per person which is not nearly enough money to change anything.
The healthcare budget (about 5x the defense budget) should be plenty to provide healthcare if it wasn’t for privatized insurance mucking the whole thing up
Everyone always jumps to defense spending which is not the problem. Defense spending creates hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs to American citizens. The large majority of the money used to produce military goods goes back into the economy.
if it wasn’t for privatized insurance mucking the whole thing up
Insurance companies aren’t saints, but their whole goal is to keep costs for themselves low so they can pocket the premiums. A lot of factors go into driving up health care costs, this is nowhere near all of them but to name a few: AMA keeping residency slots low to control supply of doctors and keep wages high, high educational cost meaning doctors require higher pay, long education needed(high lead time on new medical staff, doctors have some of the longest educational time in the US of anywhere in the world), intellectual property law enforcing drug monopolies, extremely expensive FDA approval process, (?)expensive FDA certification of some equipment(this I’m not entirely sure about- but I suspect its the case), Certificate of Need laws restricting competition in some areas.
Everyone always jumps to defense spending which is not the problem. Defense spending creates hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs to American citizens. The large majority of the money used to produce military goods goes back into the economy.
Sorry to say Keynesian economics died.
Other than that, the first part of your comment is right.
The number of residency slots is actually controlled by Congress as residencies are funded through Medicare. The AMA has been trying to fight back against and regulate privately funded residencies like the ones started by HCA. Those ones were created as a way to exploit residents’ labor and are of such poor quality that HCA won’t even hire their own graduates.
The AMA doesn’t directly control it, what it does do is lobby congress to limit it. The AMA actually is the reason the cap was put in place in 1997. Doctor administrators are also often AMA members/supporters/in some capacity bound to the AMA, so they often don’t explore other sources of funding than government for expanding residency capacity.
I’m curious as to where you are getting that information. There are other explorations into funding for residency slots as it tends to benefit the institutions that have the residencies, but the issue is that there needs to be a guarantee of funding in perpetuity in order to create the slot, and many offered funding sources either cannot guarantee that perpetuity or they only offer the money with a lot of strings attached.
I’m a medical student member of the AMA and I frequently get emails from them asking for my participation in lobbying campaigns to increase the number of residency slots. (I have written to my representatives about it a couple of times, but I don’t really have the time or resources to do much else.) The individual colleges and fellowships are also advocating for their own specialties. The ACEP and ACOEP (American College of (Osteopathic) Emergency Physicians) are both investing a lot into advocacy campaigns for the specialty.
The price to build a house is nothing compared to what it will sell for. The selling price is mostly speculation. Housing used to be something you just owned, like a car, we as a society decided it had to be an investment and everything has gone to hell since.
Well, why do you think the price of houses goes up while most other commodities go down. Except for… education, healthcare, and cars in the past 20 years. It feels a little like to me the government backed lending(among other things) has something to do with it. Something something- taking a low interest loan means you’re less concerned about a 20% higher price, and so is everyone else- or something.
Where this type of lending is less frequent, like mobile homes, prices haven’t risen as much. But as that lending has gotten more common, they’re starting to.
Cars, new ones at least, depreciate in value the second you drive off the lot in one. This depreciation will slow down after about five years, and stop after 10, after which the car is essentially worthless. At that point the value of the vehicle is dependent upon your care and maintenance of it, the equity you put into keeping it pristine, until eventually the vehicle reaches “classic” status and is worth more as a museum piece. Of course that won’t be until long after you’ve died and left the vehicle to your children, who leave it to theirs, who leave it to theirs, and so on. So, you will never get to enjoy the money of the sale your once-new car after about 50 years of appreciating in value after it becomes a “classic” car.
Maybe, mabye not. If you buy the worst car that is for sale today…and keep it in good running condition by do frequent maintenance, in 30 years you’ll have a very interesting classic.
For example if you bought a Dodge Omni in 1990, or a Chevrolet Citation in 1985, you’d have a very interesting and unique car today.
Education went up in cost because nothing was stopping it from going up and everything else is so broken it took the place for it. Kids need therapy and they can’t get it, so schools hire therapists. Kids come into higher ed unready so schools has to hire tutors and offer basic classes. No walkability so here comes a campus bus system. Systematic racism so here comes 8 offices of diversity. A nasty combo of unlimited money and mission creep. Want to stop it? Limit the salary of all uni employees to no more than say 110k a year, stop subsidizing the NFL, and fix all the shit that isn’t working around the ages of 18-23.
Healthcare went up because insurance companies. They are a useless middlemen.
You left out the parallel police and court systems that can only inflict academic punishments but have greatly reduced due process rights and rights of the accused in general. To the point that they had to lose lawsuits over things like the accused being allowed to know what evidence will be brought against them or what the procedure is supposed to look like or what training those involved in conducting the procedure had on it.
Biden’s changes to the policy actually rolled back the idea that maybe the people whose roles are analogous to prosecutor, judge and defense in a “real” court should not all be the same person, but then he basically rolled back to the Obama-era version of the policy, except where the changes were just spelling out something from a court judgement.
Education went up in cost because nothing was stopping it from going up and everything else is so broken it took the place for it.
Well yeah, that’s my point? Why do you think their customers are able to pay any amount? Because they’re taking government loans.
Healthcare went up because insurance companies. They are a useless middlemen.
How did insurance companies increase the cost of healthcare when their goal is to decrease it so they can profit more?
Cars really haven’t gone up that much.
New and used cars definitely haven’t gone down in price despite increased mechanization, improved shipping, etc. But yeah out of these things they have the lowest infinite free money behind them.
Housing insurance how it is is a scam you’re right but the insurance itself is not. If they could operate ethically (they cannot) then everything would be fine.
I’m confused because I’m unfamiliar with any governments in the US that require homeowners or renters insurance. The closest I can think of is that FNMA or FMAC backed mortgages would surely require insurance to cover their collateral, but the government doesn’t require that you have a mortgage backed by either of those.
So… what are you talking about with “the government makes you have it”?
Also, how is it a scam? If you want to insure against a risk, you can choose to purchase an insurance policy against that risk. Sure, the insurer wants to make some profit off of that, but government insurance regulations and competition both help to keep that profit in check a bit…
There are many stories about people having home insurance but the insurance company refusing to pay because their inspection team didn’t approve the claim for some bullshit reason.
Oh sure, it will be hard. But we have done lots of hard things. Maintaining a road system is very expensive. The government has built aircraft carriers. We went to the moon.
Being hard and expensive has never stopped the government before. It’s just a matter of whether or not we want to do it.
I don’t understand how comments like this are made. Is the status-quo so deeply ingrained in people’s minds that they literally can’t even think of any alternate method, or was there not even any consideration put into it to try to?
Does literally every action, in your mind, come back to profit? Have you never helped a friend just because it was the right thing to do? Why should our system of focusing on profit be the only consideration when regular people can obviously consider more noble goals, such as good or happiness, as end goals to chase themselves? Clearly the system that promotes profit over these more noble ideas is the issue, right?
But I did? Profit shouldn’t be the goal ideally, so “who pays” isn’t a valid question. Whatever system is in power incentivizes it. Either the community supports them for their good work or the government gives them whatever for it.
Assuming we don’t actually change the system though, we can incentivize it using tax money. Pay people to do the right thing, instead of making the most profitable thing doing evil. As long as profit is the goal, and we don’t correct it with some external force at least, we get assholes trying to benefit themselves instead of trying to help other people. Why should we accept that that is how things need to be?
Who pays is a very valid question because right now you guys are all saying the owner should pay instead of the squatter. Then you go on to talk about tax money which implies the govt should pay. We live in a world of finite goods and resources which is why things are the way they are. These comments are like letters to Santa.
They’re like letters to Santa if Santa were alive and perfectly capable of delivering the presents if he just did what he should. There’s finite resources, but there’s still far more than enough to go around.
Right, if only this mean rich person would go against their best interest and do something stupid. But they didn’t because there’s zero incentive to do so, because what you and everyone in this thread is suggesting is a bad decision to make of one’s own free will. So other folks are arguing the gov should step in and, what, force the owner to rent their unit to the squatter for free just because she’s old I guess?
I challenge you to codify your position. Meaning, if someone is over X years of age they get free rent? Or the gov pays their rent? Or if someone is over such and such net worth they have to give free rent to people? Or something? You’re just not making any sense and you’re arguing out of pure pathos, emotionally laden incoherent thoughts that you can’t build a functioning economy out of.
I’ll codify my position: housing should be a human right. Either the government should pay for rent (up to some value) or the government should control the property and not charge rent. It’s not that hard to understand. We easily have enough money in this nation to do this.
Check out “What is Property.” Land is something that all humans need to live, whether that’s for shelter, food, or water. How did these people come to own land? It’d be absurd to suggest they could own air and charge rent for it, right? Why can they do so for land? Land ownership was made up by governments by saying they control it and selling it, removing it from the commons into private control, giving the people nothing in return.
the government should control the property and not charge rent. It’s not that hard to understand
Yes it is hard to understand because we are having this conversation despite it being a ridiculous idea. If the gov controls the property and doesn’t charge rent, it doesn’t lower the cost. The value of that property doesn’t go away. It just changes hands from the private owner into the gov agency (or worse, agent) who controls who gets to live there. Imagine a neighborhood where everything costs $10k/month to live there, but you control who gets to live in that one place that costs $1,000/month. Think of how powerful a position that is. The value of that rental property didn’t magically disappear just because the government waived its magic wand and said so. Economics doesn’t work that way, and it’s really frustrating talking to people who don’t get this. You can’t solve these issues by decree.
Well yeah, that’s what you get when you don’t pay your rent.
Seriously, society needs to stop cherry picking who’s more deserving than whom. There are 653,000 homeless Americans in this country. All living on lower than low standards, barely squeeking by another day and everything. They’re now on the podium for the right to even sleep on the streets and parks.
Yet, they suddenly don’t matter because oh, this one single 93 year old person is evicted and now will be on the streets. I again ask - what makes her the exception? What makes her special? Stop treating everything like a damn off-on switch and continue focusing on the bigger picture that would prevent and resolve problems like these.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. The people in this thread do think problems like this should be prevented and resolved. What exactly are you arguing?
America has great public housing, free meals and they even provide everyone with a job. I just don’t understand why residents need to wear those funny orange suits.
Equal treatment. Can’t accuse of inequality if everyone dresses the same. As for why orange, because it’s a warm, neutral colour that can more easily turn to brown or red as needed.
Sort of the joke in Western countries. We took all the absolutely critical domestic infrastructure that we all agree needs to be funded and we all rely on to exist and passed it off to the most greedy sociopath assholes we could find.
Now we’re shocked to discover that our planes crash and our retirement homes price gouge and our tech companies just do fake money scams to the tune of $2.5 trillion dollars. Our local sports teams are all run by a big casino. Our universities are all run by sports team owners. Our domestic energy companies keep getting pranked by the fake money scammers, while complaining that environmentalists just made the price of natural gas go vertical. And our health care system is six hedge funds in a set of doctor’s scrubs.
But when push comes to shove, if you ask an American why this country seems to be circling the drain, the answer is some combination of “Woke Communist Joe Biden put transgenders in charge of the military industrial complex” and “Cheeto Mussolini Donald Trump gave Putin/Xi the sticky note with all our passwords on it, right after Barack Obama had fixed everything.”
You’d never even know Blackrock Financial, Goldman Sachs, Citadel Advisors, and Berkshire Hathaway exist, much less why they have more control over the global economy than any two dozen elected officials you could name.
the real reason why american has gone down the shitter, ironically, is the existence of political parties. The parties ironically haven’t done anything themselves, though they’re trying to. It’s the lack of action outside of the parties that’s causing it.
If we weren’t so fucking laser focused on calling people idiots for no reason, we’d have a productive and healthy society. But no the elites have their own class, and they give us this shitty fodder to play with while bored, and we just fucking eat it up like pigs in a feed trough.
political parties are symptomatic of voting systems. That is to say the number of political parties a place has depends on the kind of voting system it has.
the real reason why american has gone down the shitter, ironically, is the existence of political parties.
I don’t know if I’m going to pin a failing economic model on the existence of organized political groups. That’s a hair’s breath shy of blaming poor economic policies on the existence of governments.
If we weren’t so fucking laser focused on calling people idiots for no reason
Its rarely for no reason. Mystifying the political process by asserting you have to be a Smartie to understand it is a method of Other-ing and alienating people from any kind of activism or intervention. Its a deliberate rhetorical technique intended to push people out of government.
we just fucking eat it up like pigs
We eat it up like pigs when the denouncement is aimed at the opposition. We recoil in offense when its aimed at us.
One of the big hopes of social media was to better organize and empower large groups of people by rapidly getting them up to speed on how political systems and effective interventions work. But Web2 and Web3 centralization of media, combined with a bunch of COINTELPRO style harassment of larger outside groups, has destroyed the foundations that local communities tried to build up in the 90s/00s.
This gets us back to big corporate interests simply owning everything. If you need to suck Elon’s cock in order to get any kind of positive media exposure on Twitter, the only political organizers with any effective purchase are going to be the current batch of white nationalists and tech bro sychophants Elon loves. Same with Facebook/Instagram/Threads and Google search results and Microsoft’s pet AI project ChatGPT.
If it looks like we’re eating like pigs, it might be because all we’re ever fed is slop.
I don’t know if I’m going to pin a failing economic model on the existence of organized political groups. That’s a hair’s breath shy of blaming poor economic policies on the existence of governments.
let’s have a think on it, why would the economic model be failing? Because it’s profitable for the people with the money, and those in government. Why would the government be busy not preventing this? Why would companies be pushing for this? And why wouldn’t the general public be pushing AGAINST this? Because we’re too busy complaining about how trump deregulated the economy, making things harder, as well as the other side complaining about how joe biden fucked up the economy by [insert argument here]
Its rarely for no reason. Mystifying the political process by asserting you have to be a Smartie to understand it is a method of Other-ing and alienating people from any kind of activism or intervention. Its a deliberate rhetorical technique intended to push people out of government.
exactly, and it’s also why we keep fucking falling for it, because we’re idiots that can’t see the hook through the bait. You think the parties are productive when the vast majority of their time is spent on completely irrelevant shit? No, they’re not. That’s not why they do it, they do it because if they do, then they don’t have to fucking do anything, because we’ll all be preoccupied bombing abortion centers or churches or whatever the fuck we’re supposed to be doing.
We eat it up like pigs when the denouncement is aimed at the opposition. We recoil in offense when its aimed at us.
One of the big hopes of social media was to better organize and empower large groups of people by rapidly getting them up to speed on how political systems and effective interventions work. But Web2 and Web3 centralization of media, combined with a bunch of COINTELPRO style harassment of larger outside groups, has destroyed the foundations that local communities tried to build up in the 90s/00s.
This gets us back to big corporate interests simply owning everything. If you need to suck Elon’s cock in order to get any kind of positive media exposure on Twitter, the only political organizers with any effective purchase are going to be the current batch of white nationalists and tech bro sychophants Elon loves. Same with Facebook/Instagram/Threads and Google search results and Microsoft’s pet AI project ChatGPT.
If it looks like we’re eating like pigs, it might be because all we’re ever fed is slop.
why would the economic model be failing? Because it’s profitable for the people with the money, and those in government.
The capitalist economic model is failing because of the law of diminishing returns coming into contradiction with the demand for higher next quarter profits. Individual sectors of the economy with the most leverage can raise their rents, but only at the expense of other areas of the economy. So Boeing can sell shittier airplanes by purging its staff of skilled engineers, but this creates downturns in neighborhoods where those engineers live. And it also scares people away from flying commercial airlines.
This was immediately profitable for Boeing (10 years ago). But its been awful for Boeing right now. And even worse for a government that needs Boeing’s airplanes to maintain both commercial and military aviation roles. Folks with money in Boeing stock also aren’t thrilled with this turn.
Why would the government be busy not preventing this?
Because government officials surrendered their role in manufacturing and regulating aircrafts to Boeing itself, on the theory that Boeing management would not behave shortsightedly. Oops!
Now the engineers who are blowing the whistle are showing up in court rooms (when they aren’t killing themselves in the middle of a deposition) and government agencies are scrambling to figure out how to do jobs they haven’t had to do in decades. But its a big ship and slow to turn.
we’re idiots that can’t see the hook through the bait
We’re blind men feeling at an elephant. Its a big problem and when one guy’s got the tail and another’s touching the tusk, it may not seem like the same thing to everyone.
That’s not because we’re all stupid. Its because the problem is big and the solution is hard. But the process to solving the problem requires teamwork. That’s where Americans tend to suck hardest.
Because we all assume the other guy is stupid, I describe the tusk and you describe the tail, and we both accuse one another of not knowing what we’re touching.
The capitalist economic model is failing because of the law of diminishing returns coming into contradiction with the demand for higher next quarter profits. Individual sectors of the economy with the most leverage can raise their rents, but only at the expense of other areas of the economy. So Boeing can sell shittier airplanes by purging its staff of skilled engineers, but this creates downturns in neighborhoods where those engineers live. And it also scares people away from flying commercial airlines.
This was immediately profitable for Boeing (10 years ago). But its been awful for Boeing right now. And even worse for a government that needs Boeing’s airplanes to maintain both commercial and military aviation roles. Folks with money in Boeing stock also aren’t thrilled with this turn.
and squeezing as much money out the people of a community is useful to those who have the money to then buy up that community. Gentrification. This all inevitably leads to economic collapse being profitable to rich people, and those who enable them. I.E. corporations and the government.
Because government officials surrendered their role in manufacturing and regulating aircrafts to Boeing itself, on the theory that Boeing management would not behave shortsightedly. Oops!
Now the engineers who are blowing the whistle are showing up in court rooms (when they aren’t killing themselves in the middle of a deposition) and government agencies are scrambling to figure out how to do jobs they haven’t had to do in decades. But its a big ship and slow to turn.
probably also related to lobbying money, i’m almost certain that boeing lobbied for this, so that they could make more money, possibly even gave money directly to politicians. Boeing is probably in the middle of lobbying right now even.
That’s not because we’re all stupid. Its because the problem is big and the solution is hard. But the process to solving the problem requires teamwork. That’s where Americans tend to suck hardest.
it’s probably because we allow corporations to lobby the government and decide shit for us instead of doing it ourselves. But that’s another problem.
Because we all assume the other guy is stupid, I describe the tusk and you describe the tail, and we both accuse one another of not knowing what we’re touching.
you’re assuming that i’m calling anyone specifically stupid, i’m not. My point is literally that WE, us, me and you, are sitting here, yelling about the technicalities about the actual problems, which we both agree exist. Rather than simply doing something about it. I assume that’s also your point however. In which case, stalemate?
yeah idk, maybe get people to jointly hate the government, and how aggressively they overstep on our rights.
We just passed a funding bill for three different countries, two of which are actively at war. There’s absolutely the possibility that we can do this but for basic economic shit.
Everybody hates tax, find a way that cleans it up such that both republicans and democrats like it. I’ve proposed moving income tax from the individual to the company, which means individuals no longer have to deal with income tax (though they still technically pay it) and that also makes it much easier for the IRS to go after income tax fraud.
maybe get people to jointly hate the government, and how aggressively they overstep on our rights.
The Nine Scariest Words In The English Language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.
~ Ronald Raygun
We just passed a funding bill for three different countries, two of which are actively at war. There’s absolutely the possibility that we can do this but for basic economic shit.
We passed a Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to the tune of $1.2T in federal spending less than three years ago. But the money is primarily focused on propping up private businesses friendly to the goals of the current administration.
Everybody hates tax
If you want to live in a country that doesn’t have any taxes, try North Korea. 😆
But the preponderance of wealth makes the tax burden very uneven. We also spend absurd amounts on a military that’s proven itself ineffectual and unreliable and a transportation system that’s expensive and wasteful. This while draining money away from education, health care, and pensions. We’ve practically zeroed out our spending on public housing.
Folks don’t mind kicking in to make their communities grow. But I’m living on a street that hasn’t been repaved in over 10 years, using utilities that haven’t been upgraded in at least 20, and I’m being told my property taxes are going up because my house’s market rate keeps climbing. Where is my money going? That’s the thing that annoys me more than anything.
I’ve proposed moving income tax from the individual to the company
Sure, fine, cool. But where will it go? To my local school system? To some border prison for migrants? To the newest payload of a bomb detonated over Rafa?
The Nine Scariest Words In The English Language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.
~ Ronald Raygun
notoriously right wing governmental figure, and actor with no political background*
We passed a Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to the tune of $1.2T in federal spending less than three years ago. But the money is primarily focused on propping up private businesses friendly to the goals of the current administration.
that’s a governmental problem, and also a corpo influence in government problem. I don’t know what you want me to do about it. A lot of that funding went to critical infrastructure, roads, water utility, electric utility, internet, etc. A lot of those could be passing through private hands, but that’s just the state of the market.
If you want to live in a country that doesn’t have any taxes, try North Korea. 😆
i mean yeah, you could also just not exist. That’s also a solution to taxes, great blanket statement there.
But the preponderance of wealth makes the tax burden very uneven. We also spend absurd amounts on a military that’s proven itself ineffectual and unreliable and a transportation system that’s expensive and wasteful. This while draining money away from education, health care, and pensions. We’ve practically zeroed out our spending on public housing.
i mean yeah, that would have been why i proposed pushing it onto corpos, They control most of the money flow anyway.
Folks don’t mind kicking in to make their communities grow. But I’m living on a street that hasn’t been repaved in over 10 years, using utilities that haven’t been upgraded in at least 20, and I’m being told my property taxes are going up because my house’s market rate keeps climbing. Where is my money going? That’s the thing that annoys me more than anything.
i mean yeah, that’s fair. That’s certainly a valid complaint, but don’t come swining at me, go swinging at your local representatives.
Sure, fine, cool. But where will it go? To my local school system? To some border prison for migrants? To the newest payload of a bomb detonated over Rafa?
it’s the exact same, except that you don’t fucking file it. Because the entity you work for does now. It’s not like companies control where their taxes go, unless they commit tax fraud, which is a big no no.
if you ask an American why this country seems to be circling the drain
You could always ask. I know that I’m not the usual American but I’d say that the reason (and reason why nothing of note has been done about it since neoliberalism set its hooks) is as simple as the increase in wealth disparity.
That’s definitely a consequence of current policy, but it isn’t the cause.
We have domestic policies and social structures that encourage wealth aggregation. And we have certain administrative heads that champion these policies.
If you want to get to the deepest of root causes, it’s definitely anti-social mental illnesses exhibited by those seeking and holding power, leading them to be driven to gorge on more and more.
Any higher than that, I’d still argue that wealth/power/resource disparity is the cause of the vast majority of societal problems. From crime, to healthcare access, to homelessness, and invasive, privacy-violating tech. They all come back to one thing: people don’t have enough resources, despite there being more than enough to do around. The disparity enables those with the lions’ share of resources to leverage them to extract even more, in a cycle that we’ve been seeing since at least Reagan’s union busting days.
it’s definitely anti-social mental illnesses exhibited by those seeking and holding power
That’s more a survivorship bias. People with anti-social issues have an easier time maximizing the profitability of their financial ventures.
Its also why so much modern business has to happen in increasingly alienated fashion. Don’t own a sweatshop, invest in one. Don’t invest in a sweatshop, invest in H&M stock. Don’t invest in H&M stock, invest in a textiles ETF. Don’t invest in the textile industry, just give your money to a professional investment advisor. The farther away you get, the less the consequences of your actions will haunt you. The whole system is designed to hide the messy details from the people moving the money.
Also a big reason why we have a bunch of AgGag laws in big farming states. Can’t let people who buy the meat see how the sausage is made.
They all come back to one thing: people don’t have enough resources, despite there being more than enough to do around. The disparity enables those with the lions’ share of resources to leverage them to extract even more, in a cycle that we’ve been seeing since at least Reagan’s union busting days.
Absolutely true. But even before Reagan, the old 1950s/60s union leadership was selling out its base in the name of American nationalism. Truman and then Eisenhower spent their respective terms empowering Hoover’s FBI to purge all the Lefties from labor. Hollywood got its blacklists. Universities were purged of their Marxist professors. Shop floors had to denounce the IWW before they could win contracts with the more business-aligned AFL.
By the time Reagan started cracking knees at the FAA, the spine of the labor movement had already been broken.
That’s more a survivorship bias. People with anti-social issues have an easier time maximizing the profitability of their financial ventures.
I think that we’re actual nearly in agreement. To clarify, when I say “anti-social mental illnesses”, I don’t necessarily mean Anti-Social Personality Disorder (not discounting it either but, it’s likely more complex than just that and it’s a topic that I am not aware of seeing much study because those afflicted are considered models of “success”). Rather, I mean that these individuals are exhibiting behaviors that are knowingly detrimental to the society and the human species for individual gain (most often gain that could be greater and more sustainable without anti-social behavior).
Also, please note that I’m not trying to say “mental illness” is the cause of all of the world’s wrongs. Myself and just about everyone that I am close to have some form of mental illness and/or neurodivergence and I can guarantee that we’re not the cause (nor have we heard of a secret society called The Stonecutters /s).
Rather, I mean that these individuals are exhibiting behaviors that are knowingly detrimental to the society and the human species for individual gain
If you want to get really anthropological and take a long lens view, this is a process of speciation. Humans as accidental super-predators give rise to the Homo Capitalismi, an apex predator who annihilates the parent species in the same way humans annihilated millions of other species.
Also, please note that I’m not trying to say “mental illness” is the cause of all of the world’s wrongs.
Fair enough. I’ve heard more than a few folks suggest the medicalization of the market mechanic, wherein we can have our free markets if we just get all the CEOs on enough mood altering chemicals. Glad you’re not on that track.
Myself and just about everyone that I am close to have some form of mental illness and/or neurodivergence and I can guarantee that we’re not the cause (nor have we heard of a secret society called The Stonecutters /s).
If you want to get really anthropological and take a long lens view, this is a process of speciation. Humans as accidental super-predators give rise to the Homo Capitalismi, an apex predator who annihilates the parent species in the same way humans annihilated millions of other species.
That is an interesting and incredibly dystopic suggestion. Could make for excellent satirical fiction. For reality, definitely an awful thought. Should the hypothetical H. capitalismi be anything but an evolutionary dead end, either a “cross-species” caste system would be required (those at the top tend to make up for lack of tangible skills with money) or major leaps in technology necessary to realize transhumanist visions. Such technologies are, barring major leaps, are unlikely to be available within any current lifetimes.
Fair enough. I’ve heard more than a few folks suggest the medicalization of the market mechanic, wherein we can have our free markets if we just get all the CEOs on enough mood altering chemicals. Glad you’re not on that track.
Indeed. I also want to be extra clear due to “mental illness” being the latest favorite scapegoat for things like mass shootings. My thoughts are more that understanding better why some individuals act in such anti-social ways could lead to potential rehabilitation but, more importantly, equitable social organization that is more resilient in the face of such forces.
While no politicians have actual hearts, opting to have them replaced with mechanical pumps and dark magic, the ones down in the south do enjoy devouring them - preferably while still beating.
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