this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] shalafi 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Robert Heinlein did an interesting thing. He and his wife Virginia wanted to tour the world, but didn't want to do the usual trip, London, Paris, Rome, etc. They decided to tour the Southern hemisphere. Those essays are mind opening.

Heinlein made a point of asking cab drivers to take them to the very poorest part of any given town in order to get a handle on the various economies. Think on that. (This was a guy who fucking loathed the Soviets, went to Moscow and calculated the true city population by observing shipping from his hotel window. His numbers turned out to be accurate. Virginia learned Russian, from listening to records, so as to not get faked out or fucked with on the trip. LOL, those two were extra.)

One of my favorite bits finds them in Paraguay or Uruguay, I forget, and old Bob is angry with the cabbie. The were driven to a part of town with tiny little houses, flowers in the windows, neat gardens, clean roads, zero trash, all that.

"I specifically asked you to take me to the poorest area!"

"Oh senior, these are the poorest people. They are on assistance and are very ashamed."

This was all from Expanded Universe if you're interested in reading more.

Give this a shot as well:

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015083085392;q1=%22robert%20a%20heinlein%22;start=1;size=100;page=root;view=image;seq=151;num=145

[–] jpreston2005 28 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Don't know if I picked this up somewhere, but I have a saying I oft repeat:

A society will be judged by how it treats the least among them.

Our society fucking hates poor people, and it kills me inside every time I'm reminded of it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

If you want to fix a system, you should probably ask the people who it doesn't work for, first.

[–] GlendatheGayWitch 5 points 1 day ago

I think Jesus even taught that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me in reference to the poor. Yet the Christian fanatics are the ones doing their best to wreck the lower classes to benefit the richest.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya 9 points 1 day ago

It's the decades of conditioning to hate on the poor starting from Reagan is why we are where we are now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

No, see, if prices go up in the stock market (and other investments like real estate) that's good and means the economy is doing well and when prices go up for things like food and power that's bad because people will need higher salaries or more money in welfare and that's bad. And it's bad because that decreases the gap between the richest and the poorest and that would decrease the amount of power the richest people have.

[–] lettruthout 57 points 2 days ago (1 children)

…and how the bottom 30% are doing with housing.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Housing shouldn't be an economy at all.

[–] makyo 20 points 2 days ago

Amen. Any basic necessity obviously won't work well with the laws of supply and demand and should be given a different relationship to the free market.

[–] CrayonRosary 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What does that mean? Like, what are you invisioning? Forced government housing for all? No one is allowed to own a plot of land with a house style of their choice?

I want to live in a cabin in the woods. My friend wants a 4 bedroom colonial because he wants kids. How can we have the freedom to have these things unless we are allowed to buy and sell homes to each other?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think there is a different take here. The government needs to subsidize large scale housing development with a focus on housing cooperatives (people owned apartment complexes, not profit-driven company owned), and change laws so that people don't have to live so far away from where they work.

You can buy your house and plot of land, but we need more places for people to get out of the street in general, and ways to put people in places where they can contribute to a city's economy. The government can also do things like reduce minimum parking requirements within a city so that apartment builders don't need to subsidize car infrastructure out of pocket. This would have the side benefit of people walking or biking to work more, which can help out local businesses in a city.

The benefit is that if there are more affordable housing options available, that gives people the freedom to switch jobs or take a leave from their job to care for their loved ones when they fall ill. The stability that is provided by having a home is so important to being able to integrate into society.

edit: adding some links for sources on housing cooperative effects on housing costs and the cost of parking requirements on new developments.

Role of housing cooperatives in reducing housing prices

Role of parking minimums in increasing housing/building prices

[–] CrayonRosary 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I agree with all that, but how does any of that get implied from "housing shouldn't be an economy at all?".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

If housing isn't an economy at all, I can understand how you came to that viewpoint in your original comment. But, I feel that as a usual internet comment, it was exaggerrating and envisioning an ideal world.

We aren't living in one of those. When I read that comment I understood it as basic housing not being an economy, and luxury housing still being purchasable-- which is much more realistic. And so I wanted to give a bunch of examples in the ways that it is feasible to create basic housing even in our capitalist system today.

I mean, hopefully in the future we can get to a post-scarcity economy where not only is the housing provided for free but it is also exactly what we want. That day won't be for a long time, though..

[–] Anticorp 42 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's not even the top 1% that are the problem, it's the top 0.1% who are hoarding all the resources.

[–] Speculater 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

And the bottom 30% voting them into power... So...

[–] wpb 2 points 1 day ago

You voted for Elon Musk? How? And who voted for Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, etc, etc? I personally have never been given the opportunity.

[–] NewNewAccount 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The .1% are not elected officials but are instead controlling them. Billionaires and capitalism are the root of the problem.

[–] WhatYouNeed 2 points 1 day ago

Citizens United, and other initiatives that allow obscene and often obscure funding into politics, need to be stopped.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Nah it's my neighbors fault who are just rich enough to survive off moldy bread and expired meats from the food bank but too poor to do anything aside from watch TV for hours on end after their 12 hour shift or surviving (stealing!) $800 a month to survive from my taxes.

There's no one else to blame, don't look behind the curtain, no inquires, back to your scheduled programming.

It's a culture war, not a class war.

/s

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't even have to invent anything new here: This is what purchasing power indices describe, and they definitely should play a much larger role in public discourse.

[–] MisterFrog 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I tried looking this up, is this what you're talking about? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP?locations=AU

What exactly does this mean?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm a lay person, too, so I can't help much with detailed references. My understanding is that PPP is intended for cross-country comparisons (i.e., purchasing power in one region/country compared with that in another). Purchasing power indices more generally measure the (real) value of someone's wages (after deducting regular expenses like rent, insurance etc.) for purchasing certain goods (e.g., a standardized "basket of goods").

To find information for your country, you could check your national statistics agencies to see if they provide data on such indices. Real wages are one example that you can probably find, although they don't adjust for cost of living expenses (but they typically do adjust for inflation).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

But then the people with the highest score wouldn't be able to show it off.