“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
Modern rent seeking is rooted in a feudal concept. The lord maintained an army that protected the land, and the workers paid the lord for the upkeep of the army that protected them.
Modern landlords provide absolutely nothing but exploitation of their tenants. They take rent and provide nothing anywhere near equal in value.
They are parasites on the working class. Our labor gives them profit, and they offer only what should be ours by right.
We pay to live here. It’s our home. You only rent seek, you fucking parasite.
Not sure why you’re being so heavily downvoted, it’s true. Landlords, due to their position in society benifit from high poverty, less rent control, etc. Working class people want the exact opposite. It’s a clear and obvious dielectic contradiction
Not sure why you’re being so heavily downvoted
Currently his post has one downvote
Those handclap emojis trigger the fuck out of me.
👏 Don’t 👏 let 👏 that 👏 detract 👏 from 👏 the 👏 message.
Off topic but I read it as handicap emoji . I'm a boomer and use emoji and acronyms infrequently.
I hate when people clap alongside every word they say. It's so damn obnoxious and annoying, it makes me disregard whatever input they want to give.
Leftists try not to be insufferable whilst doing/saying leftist things challenge [impossible]
– sincerily, a leftist
100% with you. It's like writing "Period" at the end of what you said, as if that makes it more true. And, ironically, it's almost always some take that requires ignoring all nuance.
Okay, but other species aren't even able to pay to exist. If a human wants them dead, they dead —unless they the property of another human being of course.
They're also at the mercy of nature and all it entails. And nature is fucking brutal.
And they do pay to exist, just not money. They spend their time seeking food, expend their calories seeking more, risk their well-being to defend what they have from competitors, etc.
And that's how we would live too without exchanging money for good and services. It's just a resource, and no species is free from having to gather and manage resources.
Forgot I had this
I think the alternative is finding and defending your own space and possessions from others who have weapons and would take it from you, growing or hunting everything you require for survival, relying on whatever gifts other may give you or on trading whatever excesses you have accumulated for other needs.
Money has made this difficult job much much more efficient, leading to a vast excess of wealth accumulation*. Everybody can focus on what they can offer, in exchange for tokens of value. Those tokens of value are then exchanged for the goods and services that they didn't otherwise need to create on their own.
*The problem is that the accumulation is focused on the people and their heirs, mostly, who've acquired tangible assets. Although a lot of the wealth has been reinvested in improvements. We have GPS guided robotic harvesters now, for example and not as many people need to toil just to live.
There is no system through which to redistribute this wealth once it's locked into some dynastic family's coffers. There are many governments that could and should be tasked with improving the place constantly, however they typically suck at the job.
I think the solution now is the same as it has always been. When the masses are too pissed off they'll either stop reproducing, decline in population, leaving the production capabilities of the wealthy in decline, or they'll fight back in a revolt.
We are also the only species not threatened to be hunted down and eaten at the whim of another species. Sometimes, you get what you pay for.
While I generally agree with the overall sentiment and like the idea of UBI, saying we're the only species that pays to exist doesn't seem right. We're the only one that uses money, so of course we're the only species that has would pay money to exist. However, other species all over the world, many right outside our doorsteps, live much harder lives than we do and pay with their lives if they make a mistake. If I had to choose between working a job and being out in the great outdoors having to farm/hunt/craft and such to survive, I'd choose having a job, which is a choice we all pretty much make anyways. At any point I could quit my job, walk out the door, and live with just the clothes on my back... and I would probably not be able to hack it. It's not much of a choice and it's pretty much coercion, but the choice is there.
Capitalism is a system where you die if nobody needs you to do anything. Nobody needing your help is supposed to be a good thing.
That's incorrect, it's a system where you die if nobody wants you to do anything, which is a much lower threshold to clear given how many things can be delegated.
Like, you can make a living making art, which is not necessary but definitely something people want, if you're good at it.
Capitalism is a system where you die if nobody wealthy needs you to do anything.
Unpaid labour is still labour, and there are unfortunately billions of people living, and dying, in poverty who do an endless stream of labour for other people and their community, from caring for children, elderly, and disabled people, to cooking and cleaning, and providing a whole range of other physical, mental, and emotional support.
Them not being compensated for it is the feature of capitalism, not the need for labour itself, which leads nicely to
Nobody needing your help is supposed to be a good thing.
Actually, no, it isn't. Humans are interdependent and need each other to function as a society (even on the most a-social level - you're unlikely to be producing your own food, power, water supply, buildings, building materials, and so on, you need others to live, and at different points in life others will almost certainly need you in different ways). That's exactly why a hyper individualistic society like capitalism encourages leads to the kind of dystopia we have now.
If you are part of a tribe and contribute nothing anyone else needs, you'll soon be left to fend for yourself alone, which is a quick death sentence in nature.
Or we could, you know, give free housing, healthcare and food to people who need them. UBI only works in a perfect society where the market doesn’t take advantage of it.
UBI only works in a perfect society where the market doesn’t take advantage of it.
Sorry, but that is simply not true. Alaska has had a form of UBI for decades funded by oil revenues. It decreased inflation. Canada also has a basic income for families that also hasn't caused inflation.
With the introduction of this dividend in 1982, Alaska went from having the highest rate of inflation in the US to the lowest. Source
Sure, effectively all land is claimed by some entity, but not to deprive people from being able to make use of it. The US for example needs to claim ownership of its territory to have it recognized by other nations and enforce its own laws. Otherwise, someone could lure you into the wilderness and kill you without penalty like it's Runescape. And even "owned" land will be subject to emminent domain when the needs of the many demand it.
But buying undeveloped land for homesteading is cheap; you only have to have a token price for depriving the public of its potential value by your reservation. Otherwise, nothing prevents someone from taking it all for themselves for free (which really would leave nothing for others) just to not use it. Even if you did it illegitimately and just started using fresh land without paperwork or anything, you would likely still have recognized rights of ownership through common law squatters rights just by using it effectively for some time. But if you wanted to say, vote, or get mail, or have utilities, or have road access, or otherwise engage with larger society, the government would likely at least want property taxes. After all, getting that to you would take from the pool of resources used for the common good, and you need to contribute a fair share.
If you really wanted to forgo the social contract entirely, nothing is really stopping you from going into deep wilderness 100 miles away from civilization and fending for yourself, but people recognize that the benefits of being a member of society greatly outweigh the costs. Other animals do have to work to live and reserve their own territory. They just don't use anything as formal as currency for exchanging work for resources, and reap fewer rewards from less specialization.
I personally support UBI but trying to pretend nature is somehow more fair than modern human civilization is just arguing in bad faith. The systems we enjoy are certainly flawed but also undeniably an asset at recognizing the rights of others to live. Nature's resource distribution system is literally a combination of luck and might makes right.
This is fucking dumb. Even in the very ancient of ancient of time, people were working to survive. They had to go out, and farm the fucking berries out of the bush and hunt deers and what not. If you couldn't do that, I don't think you could be a part of the society. And then, another fucking tribes comes in and try to fuck you up.
What a fucking stupid statement to say. Nothing is free. Even if you remove everyone and everything, you still have to work to survive. And what a good way to survive than to be in a society that separates this burden. Some people farm, some people defends, some people heals and some people educate. Woooow, such a free tribe, they have to work to survive.
You're right that people need to work. I think you're reading something that's not there.
The point is that we need a physical place to exist, to sleep, to work. And since all physical places are already owned, in addition to the work we normally would have to do, we now have to pay a portion of our labor to people who own things. And sure, after we've been working a bit we start to own things too. But it's an uneven playing field. If you didn't come into the world owning, you can be denied work. You can be made homeless.
If we don't want the world to devolve back to the scenario you described where another tribe comes and takes what you've worked for by force, we should guarantee a base level of human needs being met.
It's not wrong that our basic needs are exploited by others, but it is wrong to say that we're the only species who pays to exist. All life must "pay" by expending energy to find food and shelter. We've just developed a system where we earn imaginary currency to buy things instead of having to go out and do all the work necessary to stay alive ourselves.
Also, claiming land is what all territorial animals do. They maintain high resource areas with violence. We are not so different. Nature is scarry.
The first sentence really throws it off. UBI might be a good idea, but it’s not because we’re somehow unique in the animal kingdom.
Pretty sure there's no basic income for Lions either
Hold up, is that guy suggestion we just fight or kill to take what we want like an animal would?
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