I'm not talking about SF and places like that. Those are even more ridiculous. I just mean the median housing price across the entire state, which is about twice that of the country in general. I live (and always have lived and want to continue living forever) in an area with median-priced housing for the state. I make about twice the national median income, which (my income) is not much less than twice the California median income, and I have no debts (besides rent), so you'd think median-priced California housing should be affordable to me, but as it is, it would be a stretch for me just to afford the national median housing prices, and the California median is about twice that still. And the majority of other people in the state are even worse off than I am, both in terms of income and in terms of other debts.

It still seems unfathomable to be that in most of the rest of the country mortgage payments could possibly be less than rents. Can you show me some examples?

Toys are irrelevant when it comes to class and who controls the basic necessities. Take me to a future where everyone has personal Star Trek style replicators and holodecks but all of the land is controlled by a tiny handful of people so everyone else is still subservient to those people if they want to have a place to legally keep their replicators and holodecks and, you know...just exist somewhere at all...and I'll still call that a dystopia.

I'm not concerned about how much monopoly money the top 1% have compared to even the bottom 1%. I'm concerned that the vast majority of people are in one way or another forced into debt to that top 1% and can't even just sit and be poor all alone without being bothered if they want; they have to struggle constantly working for those with more than them just to justify their right to have a place to even starve to death in peace.

A poor African farmer who owns his own land with a hand-made shack on it and crops that he grows for his own food with his own tools passed down for generation is more middle-class than the waiter in New York who has a game console and a big screen TV but has absolutely no hope of ever escaping the perpetual insecurity of being thrown out into the street if he misses one month's rent.

Here in California —pretty much anywhere in California I've looked — just the interest on a mortgage would exceed the cost of rent you'd otherwise be paying. I have spent the past ten years fighting an uphill battle desperately trying to get to a place where I can stop throwing money down a rent-hole and actually start buying something I can eventually stop paying for. If "most places in the US" really are like you describe, and it's actually cheaper to buy than to rent (and looking at median incomes and housing prices, I have doubts about that), then that's awesome and the way things should be, but California is the most populous state, so there's still a huge chunk of the population stuck in a situation where renting and homelessness are their only options; and since homelessness is effectively illegal and not a reasonable option anyway, that means renting pretty much is obligatory.

I was too quick on the draw and thought from context that that was "obviously" a link to a different xkcd before clicking on it. I actually like the one he actually linked.

I was too quick on the draw and thought from context that that was "obviously" a link to a different xkcd before clicking on it. I actually like the one he actually linked.

From your earlier description I don't think I would describe you as "borrowing capital". You're laboring upon someone else's capital, but it's not like they've lent it to you and you owe it back, and you pay part of your income from your labor with it to service that debt. You're just selling your labor.

Even if using your employer's tools did count as "borrowing capital", you've also suggested that you have possible means of income that would not require "borrowing" like that, which in my book would still leave you middle-class because you're not borrowing out of necessity, you're just choosing to. It's like the difference between someone who rents because that's their only option besides homelessness, and someone who could totally buy a house at any time but rents because it's more convenient for them or something. I'd call the latter definitely (at least) middle class, but the former definitely not.

Someone else who responded to me already pointed out that Jews were actually prohibited from lending at interestto each other. But lending to gentiles was allowed. Christians also follow the Old Testament, and there's the famous scene where Jesus flips his shit over the money-changers in the temple, so there's also basis for Christians prohibiting it, though why they'd still allow Jews to do it in Christian lands, I'm not sure.

That's not what capitalism is, and it's not what I said it was either. That is just a free market. Capitalism is something more than just a free market. It's not capitalism until it is possible to make money simply by having money (or other wealth), without working for it; basically, a system where property income is possible. That is not necessarily possible in every free market, though it's an open question as to how to prevent it without compromising the freedom of the market.

You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but I think it's pretty clear that when people say "free of government regulations" they generally mean markets free of a specific kind of regulation, namely the kind obliging anyone to buy or sell anything to anyone at any specific price. But not one free of regulations against force and fraud.

In that same vein though, I think those same people generally assume that it is also not free of government enforcement of artificially created obligations, i.e. contracts, and that's a possible point of contention. A system with maximal (to use Hohfeldian terminology) liberties and immunities is consequently one with minimal claims and powers, and while plenty of free-market advocates bang a loud drum against claims more than minimal negative claims, they seems pretty gung-ho on allowing pretty extensive arbitrary power to contract, which does not automatically come part and parcel with a system that allows only the minimal claim to property and the minimal power to trade. It's an extra thing added on top of that minimal free market system.

I think it's that power to contract where all the problems with capitalism (and many other social problems) creeps in, and though I mostly make a big noise about certain specific kinds of contracts being problematic (those involving rent and interest), I've half a mind to throw contracts out entirely. The deontological half of my mind, arguing from first principles at least; that would obviously have fairly far-reaching consequences and unlike eliminating just rent and interest, I don't quite have thorough solutions to all the problematic consequences already in mind, so deontological arguments be damned, I'm not quite sure it's a good idea just yet.

Not if we stop using force to enable that advantage. If we simply didn't enforce contracts of rent and interest, hoarding would become almost useless, because there would be no reliable way to extract value from those hoarded goods other than by selling them off proper (rather than lending them out), which would make them no longer hoarded. No need to stop people from accumulating; just need to stop enabling them to leverage that accumulation. They can still try if they want, but without enforcement of the agreements necessary to do that —and with standard laws against violence in place, to stop them from enforcing their own agreements — those efforts will depend entirely on the goodwill and trustworthiness of the people they're trying to take advantage of, and so not go very far. All by having government do less, not more.

I just realized you linked a different comic than I thought you had from your text. The one you actually linked is actually funny and not just the preachy bullshit he's been putting out lately. I retract that half of my comment.

And an outlier of the set "people" may likely find people in general to be stupidly really fucking dumb. Nobody ever said every single individual person is really fucking dumb.

That xkcd is just more of the recent bullshit Randall has started putting out lately. Comic is going downhill if you ask me.

I think it is a bad thing to have "rich" or "poor" when those are defined in terms of necessity to work and borrow. I think it's a bad thing to have people who are "poor" in that they have no choice but to borrow, and for other people who are "rich" in that they have the choice to not work, at the expense of those others having no choice but to borrow. I want a middle-class world, where nobody has to borrow, and everybody has to work — at least, as much as anybody has to work at all, since to get back on topic, ideally technology will spare us all from work eventually. But if many people are still in a position where they have to borrow when that happens, and can only afford to borrow by working, and working is suddenly unnecessary, then they're all completely fucked, and either most of the world will just die (which you seem to think would be fine), or more likely they'll go down kicking and screaming and take you and all of civilization down with them. I don't like either of those options, but instead of focusing on how to fight the whole point of technology and make continual work for everyone (well, for those poor plebs who don't have the choice to not work), I'd rather focus on eliminating the need for anyone to borrow, and then we can all welcome the end of work and the glorious robot utopia that comes with it.

Wonderful, then we have no disagreement because I haven't advocated that.

But not all investing is lending with interest. Just like all capitalism is free-market but not all free markets are capitalist. Basic set theory here.

"Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property."

"As to Marx, keep it to yourself"

All I hear here is "la la la I can't hear you". You're arguing against things I'm not saying and ignoring the things I am saying. I'm done here. Except:

The amount of savings people can accumulate being proportional to their labor is a GOOD THING. If you are making money just by having money, without working, you are accruing the product of someone else's labor. Money sitting in a pile by itself doesn't magically multiply itself; people working with the things it buys is what generates new wealth. Every bit of new wealth generated is generated by someone, and if you're getting wealth that you didn't generate, you're getting it at someone else's expense.

(And because you apparently can't read: the above is not saying the market is a zero-sum game. Do not try to interpret it to mean that. Pay attention to the word "generate". New value is being made all the time. It's just a question of who keeps the value that who makes).