Most countries don't allow billionaires to influence elections like the USA. Maybe they still do in other ways.
Anyway, I think blaming the 0.01% for how 50%+1 vote is too easy.
Take electoral reform. Is that the 0.01%, or is the case that it's just the only one that could improve elections with electoral reform never has any incentive? Still, if voters really made it their priority and punished parties that run on it and ignore it once they win, it would be more likely to happen.
No doubt there is problems of reproduction of class, and conservatism to preserve existing hierarchies as they are. But is it the 0.01%? Or is it actually a much larger fraction? Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny even if it's 51% lording it over the 49% instead of 0.01% lording it over the 99.99%.
History shows people have a desire for minority scapegoats. We should know that is wrong.
Take housing. Is unaffordability to blame on the 5% of the population that are landlords? The 1% involved in housing development? Or is it maybe the 60%+ households that live in detached homes being insulated from the problem and being NIMBYs in local elections?
Social media won because it's better for the consumer and producer.
For the producer, it's free infrastructure but it's also advertising. Having a large subreddit means your game getting recommended to others and potentially being seen being introduced to more people.
For the consumer, these social media sites do usually do provide a better experience in showing people what they want to see and keeping away stuff they don't.
I'm sympathetic to forums just because I think if someone likes something they shouldn't need to join a potentially social media site with potentially toxic designs and sub-communities. But these are negative internalities that people mostly ignore.
>If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge. The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will. Instead of persuading the skeptic, ship the thing they think is wrong and let reality settle it.
I wonder if victims of religious persecution agree...
Facts do not always win. The evolutionary fitness of an idea is (sadly) not entirely dictated by its truthfulness.
>The Alchian–Allen effect was described in 1964 by Armen Alchian and William R Allen in the book University Economics (now called Exchange and Production[1]). It states that when the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is because the added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.
>Thus no matter what your productive output is per hour of labour, you will always work as much as you can, because you are - presumably - insatiably driven to always consume ever more with no end to it.
No, that's not how marginalism works. There's both diminishing marginal utility from consumption, and leisure.
The person I replied to was trying to separate necessities from consumption in the "traditional sense of the word".
No doubt there's problematic regulations like exclusionary zoning laws. But you can't say that these regulations are so binding that there is no choice and no expression of preferences as opposed to needs in their choices. Lots of homes still have unmandated second floors, basements, bathrooms, and square footage.
The human brain is great at (ir)rationalizing wants as needs. If you want to live in a nice place in a high-cost of living city, that's a want, not a need.
That's not a distortion, that's just what the choice is.
When a new gaming console comes out and someone works extra shifts to afford it sooner, that's not a distortion.
I think your mistake, based on how you're talking about the "real value of leisure" is thinking there is a single value of x. That's labor theory of value era thinking. There is only marginal utility and marginal rates of substitution.
Trading leisure for consumption via labor is the choice, not a distortion.
Necessities count as consumption. You could survive off rice and live in an internet cafe for $15/night. I don't know what you think the traditional sense of the word "consumption" is.
I don't really. It smells to me like the lump of labor fallacy. Labor participation results from supply and demand and it going down does not necessarily indicate less demand, but can also indicate less supply. That's what you'd expect as countries and the world become wealthier. Leisure is a normal good.
Labor is not a market distortion and average wages not following average productivity is not evidence that it is. In a competitive market, wages should follow marginal productivity.
Probably what happened is America was in an increasing returns to scale part of its production function. Now it's in the diminishing returns to scale portion. If I had to guess why, it would be due to growth boundaries of cities and lack of new cities. There's no new Manhattans. Instead Manhattan has just gotten more and more expensive to live in.
Anyway, if F(Population) is the production function, then wages should be F'(Population) and total wages should be Population.F'(Population).
F(Population)-Population.F'(Population) is total production minus total wages and is known as economic rent.
The right thing to do would be to tax economic rent. Use a tax on land value and natural resources to fund UBI.
It's really not the easiest. You have to prevent gifting things at a lower tax rate while alive. That means it comes bundled with income tax or gift tax implications.
Fairest? I mean, land value tax is fair. So are Pigouvian taxes. In fact they're arguable more than fair. Not having these taxes is arguably unfair. Who deserves ownership of natural resources or to inflict negative externalities on others?
Taking things someone earned through labour and not letting them give it to who they want isn't very fair.
I know it's unpopular to ever say statistics show this generation is fine, because of course there's always a bunch of other troubling statistics, not to mention always people that are actually struggling.
But honestly, many people that feel hopeless can afford to put a few thousand in an ETF every year. That would likely be millions even adjusting for inflation after many years.
You can really tell from the comments those who didn't read the article and who are taking the headline extremely literally.
He quoted Shakespeare's MacBeth, "It is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." when talking about he thinks sketch comedy is the greatest form of self expression, even moreso than poetry from people like Shakespeare.