Unfortunately, I think you’re right. As long as property can be owned indefinitely with inconsequential payments into the system (property tax), the race to own useful land will be the last chance for people to establish their own rent-seeking behaviour.
Eventually, the bottom of the pyramid gets crushed or gives up trying to hold the rest of it up. Guess we’ll find out soon enough :(
I’ll admit that nothing I’ve come up with was something I couldn’t immediately poke gaping holes in.
The problem with any economic system is that there are always weaknesses that knowledgable people can exploit if they’re not concerned with those who are hurt by the strain that exploitation adds to that system. Ultimately, the battle is the attempt to impart a near-universal understanding of the negatives and positives of greed and how to best control it to our mutual benefit.
Capitalism is failing in this goal because it requires the promise of endless growth, but can’t meet this promise in the physical world, so now it must grow in the virtual/abstract sense. People’s control over their own lives and their access to society are quickly becoming a tiered subscription, instead of a goal we work towards of our own volition.
Cynical capitalists might argue that this was always the case, but it was previously a consequence of a natural system instead of one engineered by an “owner class” to extract value for a select few that don’t have to participate to enjoy the rewards. Once we had passed the tipping point in which new businesses rarely grow to match existing mega-firms before being bought or crushed, we had essentially locked in the next generation of nobility.
Really, we should be doing what we did in the beginning of the previous century; tax the hell out of the rich and get capital moving again (this, of course, solves nothing long-term).
You’re not woefully ignorant, you’re correct.
This is the thing people keep missing with those prior experiments; their limited nature insulated from the negative consequences of the devaluation of money because neighbouring communities were meta-stable under the current strategy.
The second we have universal basic income, money will devalue until the significance of that money essentially trends towards zero in terms of impact.
In other words, we’ll make the “free” money worthless, which will cause hyperinflation or require extreme market controls that traditionally haven’t done much but stifle economic activity.
You never play a game using someone else’s rules. You either change the rules or change the game.
Telegraphed?
I stopped buying nectarines and other Israeli produce; I have no idea if it’s being grown in occupied soil.