upvote

points

by Avicebron5 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby cm20125 hours ago|
[-]
Look around you and see we are not living in mud and huts anymore
reply
upvoteby inigyou2 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Actually I'd rather start from a mud hut and then upgrade it myself than live in the current rental system, but I don't have that option because landlords own most of the land.
reply
upvoteby saghm5 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Housing prices certainly can get high, but they aren't anywhere close to a billion dollars, which is the actual number under discussion
reply
upvoteby margalabargala4 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
The thing being discussed is that wealth can be created, not merely stolen.

The existence of housing is an example of something vlauable being created. The price of housing is not relevant to the example.

reply
upvoteby hnav2 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
But it's extractive, i.e. the housing costs what you can pay if you sacrifice. Those who got housing first need to get paid by latecomers. If the cost of building magically went to 0, the soft costs would inflate.
reply
upvoteby margalabargala1 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Sure. The extractiveness of housing costs can exist alongside the fact that constructing a building on land creates value.
reply
upvoteby oh_my_goodness3 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
Always the same straw man argument. Nobody here is arguing that wealth can't be created.
reply
upvoteby margalabargala2 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Did you not read the comment chain above? That's precisely the point that was being discussed, then misunderstood.
reply
upvoteby oh_my_goodness39 minutes ago|
parent|
[-]
I read the comment chain above. I just went back and read it again. I question whether you've done the same.
reply
upvoteby margalabargala11 minutes ago|
parent|
[-]
I can't understand the writing for you. But I can present it.

TheTayTay said "wealth can be created". Avicebron asked for an example of wealth creation. cm2012 provided one, housing. saghm misunderstood the intent of the example. I pointed out the error, and then you came in and have apparently repeatedly failed to understand again multiple comments, both the people who literally are saying that some quantity of wealth cannot be created, and myself.

If you didn't get that after a reread, all I can suggest is that you seek out a literacy class at a local community college. It will improve your life, because this certainly won't be the first or only time you misunderstand written words.

reply
upvoteby BurningFrog5 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Also note that we're 8 billion people living on a much higher average material living standard than when we were 2 billion 100 years ago.
reply
upvoteby atwrk4 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
No one is arguing that such a thing as wealth creation doesn't exist. The question is about who or what creates it.

Which is a topic of intense discussion in economics over the last few hundred years, BTW, and the discussion here so far has shockingly few references to those.

reply
upvoteby crawfordcomeaux5 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
It's racism that fuels this comparison with value. I'm living in a yurt and would gladly trade it for a mud hut. Humans are currently threatening most life (including our own species) on the surface with extinction in multiple ways. That's not value and it is an inevitable conclusion to any form of binary thinking at scale. That includes the thinking that says "this way of life has more value than that way of life." We're living in the curse of the Greeks, whereby we've grown away from connection with our environments in the same ways they did by pedestaling their ways, including a form of logic that's too constrained to model reality.

Here's a paper on uncertainty logic to expand from. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03123

reply
upvoteby AndrewKemendo5 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Thank you for saying it. The racism is so embedded into western society it’s intractable
reply
upvoteby crawfordcomeaux4 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
And saying so will get you downvoted on here most times. To anyone downvoting, show us the depth of your reasoning for it?
reply
upvoteby cm20124 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
The fact that while racism exists, Western society is certainly not at the forefront of it? If anything the collective "West" is the most sensitive about race and racial issues.
reply
upvoteby crawfordcomeaux3 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
It's performative because resolving it would require the end of the governments within the "West" and replacing with reindigenizing governance. Supremacy is at the foundation of the whole "West" and racism will always exist while that's in play. The racism is systemic and cultural. Sensitivity isn't sufficient; there needs to be actual systemic shifts that help drive cultural shifts and vice-versa. Not simply language changes, either. Rooting out binary thinking is key to it all. Nondual animist views are more aligned with how things work in the cosmos than dualism/nonanimism.
reply
upvoteby deaux3 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
> Supremacy is at the foundation of the whole "West" and racism will always exist while that's in play.

If this is indeed the case, then it is very much not unique to the West, nor is it most tightly ingrained in the West. I'm not sure in how many different countries you'd live, but I can tell you this from lived experience. It could well be that most of the West is above average on a global scale in terms of belief in supremacy. I too have not lived in a 100 countries so I can't place "the West" as a block with accuracy. What I can tell you is that it does not land at #1.

Unless you call any vaguely US-aligned high-HDI country "The West" regardless of ethnicity, but that would be completely opposed to how any reasonable person would interpret your stance given the mentions of racism.

reply