The protagonist being in a privileged position due to government seisuze of private property is certainly an excellent point. I just feel the state exercising power in the other direction, against productive ventures instead of property owners, may be a little too in vogue these days.
malaph
joined 2 years ago
You show me a single home owner who's enthusiastic about having a large multi-unit built next door .. I wouldn't be happy personally.
If you think capital has all the power look at TC energy's keystone pipeline. Look at LNG facility approval in Canada. No shortage of capital there but those projects are dead.
If there's demand for something (housing) markets will solve that problem you just get out of the way and let them. Capitalists would love to sell the same acre of developed realeatate to more than one person. Remember - they're greedy.
Why is industry creating carbon? They're building the things we need and generating our power. Probably 100% of industrial CO2 emissions are conducted for us. This is just our emissions upstream from the things we consume directly.
Also if you cut 100% of your emissions you'd be dead. Breathing emits CO2.
I like trains too. Unfortunately they rarely go anywhere I need to go where I live. In Toronto they also sadly win out in the homeless urine category over my car.
I'm actually not really. Here's at least a logical arguments one could make.
Healthcare is a scarce resource like all things. Making it universal doesn't exempt it from that fact. Removing it from a competitive market will likely make it more expensive and prevent innovations which will keep it affordable. Competitive markets drive efficiency.
Government provided healthcare rations service availability based on criteria they set. A private system rations availability based on the indivual's ability to afford the service. If people can afford the service additional capacity can be created with that money. Under a government system extremely long wait times are the norm .. With health this may mean late diagnosis of cancer and other suboptimal outcomes.
People are generally more wealthy in the later years of their lives and also in need of more care. Under a public system the costs associated with an aging population will be disproportionately placed on younger people who still pay taxes in their prime earning years. With the number of working people constantly decreasing when compared to the number of retired baby boomers this is unsustainable under a public system.
At the end of the day I think free markets apply poorly to healthcare because you have no ability to comparison shop during a medical emergency. Also US seems to have the worst mix of regulated private healthcare which has kept costs the highest of any country. I do think most social democratic countries are basically screwed over the next 20 years with the demographics being what they are.
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
All aviation is 1.9% .. Private would be a vanishingly small amount of that.
Everything is profitable if you raise prices. In a way you're just offsetting a certain segment of the populations transportation costs to everyone else under that system. Maybe you could privatize the roads too and use the tolls to fund more buses which operate at a profit. Its fun think of insane libertarian free marker solutions to such problems :) Cars might be less appealing if people had to pay the associated infrastructure costs on a per km basis.
If you really want to you can structure your life in a way where food is close to home.. did that through college. Paid for cabs for groceries .. Walked and used transit or my bike. Was pretty miserable in Canadian winters and not very convienent. Plus pretty expensive.. You can do it. Or just admit you like cars :) as long as most people secretly actually like cars and use them then society will be structured in a way to accommodate that. The world's a big place and in order to have most of the things you need really close isn't really entirely realistic.
You can agree with some principles of a work and reject others. What parts of her philosophy do you find to be lunacy?
It speaks against a system where political favour dictates your success as a producer over your ability to compete. If you feel land owners and intellectual property owners are gate keepers in a society where your can have your own ideas and buy your own property I don't know what to say.
Well two of probably a dozen or more requirements a week right? Your solution is "pay someone else with a vehicle" and after a certain number of times that makes less sense than just having a vehicle. Also imagine being a single mom who works with like 5 kids.. Trying to manage that with paying for cabs or trying to use a bus..
For non urban people like me you unfortunely need a vehicle to get everything. I vastly prefer public transport if I'm going into a major city because parking is a major inconvience and expense.
Public transport in areas with low population density is unprofitable and poor service .. Too few vehicles so long waits between pickups. My town has literally a single cab .. Better be the first person to call if you need a ride to work ..
I guess the difference being the people in control of permits and policies produce nothing of value. If a capitalist fails to produce he no longer holds the property or patents. Someone else gets them to try to compete.
The reason capitalism is moral is that the people who get the scarce resources need to be effective in providing for everyone else by creating or they lose them. Under a central planning system this is not the case. Scarce resources are held by connected people .. The state bails them out if they really fuck up.
Nothing is stopping you from creating an improved Gillette razor and competing without blatenly copying their patent.. Property is expensive but available (problem created by government with interest rate manipulation and making land one of the only viable hard assets) you can hire people for your factory. They'll cost 10x what they do overseas though.. So you'd probably just go there.
Man you won't find me defending fractional reserve banking or fiat currency. Those are also things created by politicians and bankers. They're just means of stealing value. You also can't have socialism without fiat currency. The myth that you can rob the 1% to pay for the needs of everyone.. Well do the math .. Liquidate the 10 richest people and it funds the state for maybe a month or something.
Ah I didn't get the joke I guess lol. I'm not really much of a fan of socialism. If companies can't build without permits and tax breaks then you dont really have a level playing field anymore and you no longer have functional creative destruction. Old inefficient well connected incombants strangle the new razor corp in the crib and you're stuck paying 35 dollars for blades :)