Quote:
Originally Posted by sendler
Labor has no leverage. Owners of production hold all of the power. Rentiers win. Renters lose. The free market is warped toward out of control wealth accumulation at the top. There is no such thing as a functional Laisez Faire free market. There are already levers and controls all over the market. And more new levers must be installed to instill an adequate dispersal of social surplus in the new global economic system. Which is not happening now.
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We must also begin to transition to a steady state economy that uses resources no faster than they can be replaced. Which must be administrated on a world level so that no one region that attempts to comply gets left at a competitive disadvantage in the market. Herman Daly built on Georgescu- Roegen's work from 1970 and also added the requirement of a steady state population whereby 2 children per family would receive subsidies and no more. if you had more than two you would have to pay for all healthcare, education, ect yourself.
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You've never been a landlord, have you? They certainly get the short end of the stick. When you give a tenant 2 extra weeks to make any part of their rent, they fail to do so, eviction papers are served, and they take a hammer to the walls, do you think the tenant ends up paying the damages? The judge won't even find them at fault if they say it wasn't them. The law states that landlords can't discriminate for certain arbitrary reasons, even though exercising discrimination is absolutely fundamental to every decision we make. I've had the best roommates because I discriminated against those most likely to be dirtbags.
Marx had a distorted view of the world and reality. The bourgeoisie generally take initiative and risk, and are rarely but sometimes rewarded (what percent of startups exist 5 years later?). The proletariat (myself included) are mostly there by choice. Most of us are followers, and few are leaders. Employers can't pay whatever amount they want, they must pay what the labor market demands. You think I can open a law firm and then pay my lawyers minimum wage?
The unfairness of life was there in the beginning. It's baked into every facet of the universe and of being itself. Blame the initiator of the beginning if you must.
I'm not a Libertarian, so you won't see me arguing for a pure Laissez Faire economy. Tragedy of the Commons is a real problem; one that is not sufficiently addressed by individuals seeking their self-interest. It seems to be a problem when a certain amount of wealth is accumulated at the top, but at what point it represents a problem I couldn't say. The wealthy don't Scrooge McDuck in their money; they invest and spend it.
70% of wealthy families have lost the fortune by the 2nd generation, and 90% by the 3rd. The wealthy aren't certain families, but an ever changing mix of humanity.
There is no such thing as social surplus because that's a subjective evaluation based on relativity. To a caveman, 99.9% of stuff in the world is surplus. We could all sit in a vat of goo like in the Matrix, hooked up to VR and fed intravenous nutrients. That would be some sort of minimum "footprint", with everything else being "surplus".
I agree that something more sustainable is required, but I don't know how to achieve that. "...Which must be administrated on a world level so that no one region that attempts to comply gets left at a competitive disadvantage in the market ". This is a surefire recipe to tyranny. We're not smart or good enough to set up such a system of control. It's certainly orders of magnitude worse than what currently exists.