“Platform businesses” have been all the rage for years now. The general idea of a platform business is that it provides an opportunity for a buyer and a seller to meet and perform a transaction. Airbnb, Fiverr, and Uber are examples of such businesses.
On the one hand, platform businesses have been a godsend to people by making all sorts of services easily accessible at very low cost. But this benefit comes with a hidden cost, as all such things do. Critics have noted that quality can be eroded, performance standards undermined, and accountability and safety often ignored.
Take the example of Airbnb. I’m very grateful for this business, as it allows me to stay where I want in nearly any city around the world. I don’t have to deal with the high prices and often restrictive policies of hotels. But there are some downsides, as I was recently made aware by reading a recent BBC article.
The basic problem, as the article notes, is that Airbnb hosts have realized that they can make a great deal of money in a very short amount of time by renting out extra rooms or even whole houses to visitors. That may sound fine in theory, but in practice it creates problems: everyone wants a piece of the action, and this means that everyone wants to get into the short-term room rental game. When that happens, the overall supply of houses for sale or long-term lease goes down, and this means that costs go up.
Locals may suddenly get a notice from their landlord that they plan to convert their space to an Airbnb room. It’s simple economics: landlords have realized that they can make far more by renting short-term than by keeping a space occupied year-round with a local resident. In many cases, an Airbnb host can make more money in a few days than in an entire month if the space is under a long-term lease.
It may sound reasonable, but the problem is that some cities have housing shortages, and that means costs can skyrocket when someone is forced to look for another place to live. Sometimes, the landlord will simply raise the rent on a long-term tenant, as a way to take advantage of the increased number of options he may have. Renting is not always the panacea that it’s made out to be. Owning your own property has its merits, too. We would do well to remember this.
Berlin seems to have taken the lead in dealing with the realities of the new situation. Beginning on May 1 of this year, a new law called the Zweckentfremdungsverbot came into effect. It prevents owners from renting out entire houses; only individual rooms can be rented. The law also imposes a major fine for violations (up to 100,000 euros).
Critics, of course, will point to two arguments: (1) the new law is an indirect way to help the hotel industry; and (2) the government should not interfere in allegedly “natural” economic processes. That may sound fine in theory, but it is doubtful to be a sentiment shared by locals who are furious to be facing steadily mounting rents costs. Hotels also hate Airbnb for the simple reason that it has seriously cut into its profits. For decades—perhaps centuries—hotels were the only option available for most people who traveled. Now there are other options.
The same argument has been made in support of the platform business Uber. Some say that it is the natural outgrowth of the laws of supply and demand, and that no regulation should interfere with its workings. Taxi drivers who may have spent significant amounts of money and time to get licenses see the situation quite differently, of course. They point to the fact that Uber is a way for a few people to get rich while impoverishing a legitimate trade (the taxi service).
As I said earlier, I am a frequent user of Airbnb and have no plans to stop using it. I actually began using it only in response to hotel policies I thought were demeaning and inappropriate.
For example, some hotels I have stayed at felt the need to mandate restrictive policies on female guests that came to visit guests. In order to protect guests “safety,” these hotels argued, they needed to have female visitors sign in at the front desk, and would prevent them from staying overnight. I found these policies to be insulting and unnecessary.
Airbnb is driving up rents in many cities
Platform businesses are here to stay, like it or not. Every profession will be affected, whether you are an accountant, doctor, lawyer, banker, or whatever. With regard to Airbnb, the projections are that it will be doing over half a billion nightly bookings by 2020.
No one expects Uber or Fiverr to be going anywhere any time soon, despite the grumbling coming from some quarters. The reality is that we all have to adapt to the new landscape. No one who gets into an Uber vehicle feels guilty about hurting taxi drivers: cost trumps concern.
In the same way, no one who uses Fiverr to perform some service wrings his hands over the fact that he might be denying business to someone in his city. Even if he does think this way, the regret quickly vanishes once he realizes his cost savings.
All of us should be thinking about how these changes in the economic landscape will affect our employment and living situation. Adapting to the new changed landscape will mean the difference between survival and economic failure.
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Screw hotels and taxi drivers. An average hotel in the city costs like 200 bucks for what? A bed and a shower they can all go out of business for what I care.
Dam fucking right and where I am from taxi’s arent cheap either.
Exactly. Taxis had sanction with legally enforced monopolies via licensing/medallions. They’ve had their time in the sun and no competition was allowed, at all, period. Fuck them.
Medallions make a normal entrepreneurial activity criminal, they’re a legalized racket. Time to end pay for play!
I could not agree more.
Last time I was in a taxi, it was driven by an aloof muslim whose disinterest in job and passengers came dangerously close to outright contempt for the “kafir”.
In contrst, Uber/Lyft folk seem personable and intelligible in my experience.
Last time I was in a cab with an actual American driver, it cost $20/person to go about 20 miles (it was a monopolistic situation). Small wonder Uber/Lyft are destroying cabs.
And, like all legal monopolies, the service was AWFUL. Dirty, smelly cars. No chance of getting someone to pick you up at busy times. No centralized booking mechanism (standing on the street in the rain waiting for something yellow is about as sophisticated as rubbing rocks together to make fire).
Uber would not have been able to do what they did if taxis provided good service at a good price. They don’t, and therefore, you have Uber ripping their business model apart.
Just wait until the maids are no longer illegal immigrants and the hotels have to pay them a legal wage plus payroll taxes.
The fact they make women sign in at the front desk. Now they want to get rid of illegal maids. How will anyone be able to pay for sex? LOL
Perhaps then we’ll get lower taxes and the elimination of the asinine minimum wage concept, since then people with clout will be pushing for them.
Though experience has taught me that the hoteliers with clout will just be given special just-for-them tax breaks and minimum wage exemptions, paid for by the “little guy”.
Crony corporatism 🙁
AirBnB horror stories are common now. Its the ideal set up for sex workers.
http://www.ktnv.com/now-trending/airbnb-guest-used-california-womans-home-to-make-porn
I’ve seen lots of “artists” and “graphic designers” complain about Fiverr. Despite an overabundance of supply, they act like they are entitled to $100/hr for slapping together a t-shirt logo.
On the one hand, you get what you pay for.
On the other hand, sometimes what I want is only worth $5.
Right, and the consumer should decide that. I’m not pricing the cheapest lawyer when I am in trouble. My point was the gall of the people complaining like it was somehow unfair to them. These people expect somebody looking for 50 t-shirts for a fun run to shell out to pay them hundreds of dollars for their “vision” of a dog wearing running shoes.
Exactly. There are people willing to write a few hundred words for a fiver, but if I wanted someone to write a college essay for me I’d stick with Academic Compositions.
I take the $50 test. Assuming each hour of life is worth $50 to me and how long a task takes, is it more efficient to farm it to someone else? Making a shirt design definitely is (assuming you can get a decent result from Fiverr), but I can crap out a five page essay cheaper than hiring someone else.
That is definitely true, it seems that Fiverr is place to shitty service for shitty price. I cannot imagine anything with good quality for such a cheap price.
But if you want shit, then why pay a lot for shit?
Honestly, you can reuse logos so long as they aren’t copywriten. For example, I could design a relatively basic design for fun-run t-shirts, then sell that design over and over with only minor modifications.
It strikes me that Fiverr is a great way for decent, but not great, artists to make a few bucks. So long as you have a few dozen designs, who’s going to care that this one was also used for the Central Bumfuck 5k Charity Auction?
Exactly. If you want high quality designs go to 99designs.com instead of fiverr .
If I remember right, that’s a bidding site where you get a bunch of potential designs on the cheap.
Better than Fiverr and pretentious graphic designers, for sure.
Yeah you let many skilled designers work for you and choose the best one. If you dont like any of them you pay nothing.
That’s also where Roosh got his cover design for Free Speech isn’t Free”
That’s really the problem. In 1999 when like 4 people knew how to use photoshop and it was prohibitively expensive so no one could buy it then people who got a pricy 4 year degree learning how to use it could demand a premium.
But now you can pay an affordable monthly fee for the full Adobe suite with Photoshop and like 50 other programs and there are a billion YouTube tutorials on how to use it any college kids have all been using computers since the woman so if someon is in anyway artistically inclined they can figure out how to do that shit in no time flat and over the course of their high school career get better and better.
With tons of people out there who have easy access to the equipment and a free education on how to use it they basically sunk the value of the market.
Oh what’s that? You went to Pratt institute, one of the finest American arts universities, and you got a 250k degree and now know how to do all this stuff? Yeah that’s cool, my kids friend from gym class can also do all that and he told me he would do it for 50 bucks and a 6 pack of beer so, yeah, good luck with that.
The sad thing is that this was a predictable outcome of the advancement of technology. Like the RIAA and bands like Metallica bitching about bit torrents why not use some of that famous artist creativity and figure out how to monitoze your art form in this new world we live in rather than try to cash in based on how things worked in th mid 90’s
Dude, 99% of people today can’t use PhotoShop.
Not my experience. As far as I can tell a very large number of people under 25 are adequate if not good at creating stuff on the shop.
Have to agree with GOJ here, Photoshop isn’t something you learn in an afternoon with Youtube. Can you airbrush a picture after a few hours? For sure. Can you create a complex layered composition for print style artwork? I doubt it.
However, is the airbrushed photo “good enough” for 95%+ of what people “expect” out of PS? Yes, in most cases, it is.
We’re becoming an economy of mediocrity. Nobody wants to pay for quality, just “good enough, cheap enough” anymore. I see it even in my field, people paying millions for software/hardware and then outsourcing it all to India. The quality of work is typically “bad”, sometimes “awful” and very rarely “adequate”. And yet, outsource away, because, even if it takes 3 times as long, it’s still 1/2 the cost.
The art of “custom” is being lost in the mob; it’s why things that have to be custom (like anything done in your home by a tradesman) are becoming harder and harder to find, and, frankly, at some point, going to become prohibitively expensive to purchase for most people. Hiring an expert ain’t cheap, and hiring someone to do creative/original work is really expensive (and getting more so every day).
A bit off topic, but every contractor I know is working with a 6 month lead time before they can pick up a hammer in your house. I have to ask myself, why are they operating this way? Why have so much work that you can’t do it; raise your prices until the market equalizes. If you have a 6 month backlog at 60/hr, raise your price to 100/hr and tell me you can be here next week. Seems like the laws of supply/demand, for some reason, aren’t working correctly in the skilled trades.
well said.
Air BnB may seem like a great way for young people to travel and get to be part of a city a bit, but they are a bunch of criminals and the entire idea behind air bnb does nothing but devalue the property and neighborhood.
Also: It is literally Hitler.
What do you mean by “devalue the property and neighborhood”?
When we catch someone letting out air bnb in our of our buildings we begin eviction proceedings. It is in their lease specifically that they can’t do it. Having transient tenants in the apartments always causes problems. They don’t treat the place the way someone who lived there would. You don’t know if they are using it for prostitution (plot spoiler: yes they are) or to sell drugs. The neighbors complain to the landlord (me) about noise and whats worse is that you have nothing to threaten the transient tenant with because they will be gone before you know it. They are an insurance liability. I can go on. Like I said above, I am on the ownership side so I am biased to side with landlords.
Bias is a bitch. But who could live without one. 🙂
Ha. I am a hired gun. If Air BNB wants to hire me as their COO and pay me more than I currently get paid I will switch sides. For the time being, I am paid to do a job and do it well and that means working for the team I am on…not against it.
Yeah, I get it.
Exactly right. Don’t shit where you eat but when an opportunity arises you have two obligations-to yourself and to your wallet.
Couchsurfing is a much better way to travel when you are young and single than AirBnB. Couchsurfing is literally the 101st Airborne Division.
I am biased. I work for a company which builds and manages high rise rentals so air bnb is a daily pain in my ass.
Air BnB is giving you more billable hours. Win-win.
Capitalism: God’s way of determining who is smart and who is poor.
Capitalism: God’s way of determining who is smart and who is poor.
It’s always a good day when you see a Ron Swanson quote online.
Ha. I am on salary so more hours never good.
I like your definition of capitalism. Max Weber said the same thing pretty much in The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism only in german and a little wordier.
Airbnb isn’t bad by nature, actually, but like everything capitalism-related it ends up becoming a destructive economy of scale that pushes out the rightful inhabitants of an area. Ironically it’s a tool for many people who couldn’t afford the insanely high rent to begin it. Why the rent is so high in the first place, well, if you look deep enough there’s probably another exploitative mechanism in there. It’s honestly not hard to see why people want to try out communism, terrible as it is, when you look at the objective evils of the profit-driven capitalist system.
Um, yeah, thanks Mr. Lenin.
Capitalism doesn’t reward moral or moderating behavior, and is partially responsible for the social cancers of today, like feminism and anti-traditionalism. Communism is worse for other reasons, but it is the other side of the same ugly modernist coin.
Also, Lenin was a very interesting person. People think things would be fine and dandy if only he had lived longer, but his continued rule could only be worse for Russian culture and society. The early USSR had free love and gay rights and stuff. Stalin came in and destroyed all of that nonsense.
How does communism reward moderating or “moral” behavior?
People were all kinds of immoral back in 1890, yep. Running around naked in the streets, all that shit.
Except, they weren’t. And they were 10k% more free market capitalist than we are. In fact, we’re barely mercantilist these days and are bordering on a weird mixture of Fabian socialism combined with Fascism. This is YOUR world, the world of the Left. My little 1890’s nearly pure capitalists were almost all, to a fault, highly aware of and conforming to a set of institutional and religious values.
So yeah, not buying what you’re selling, man.
Then again, there was little worth calling “free speech” in 1890s.
Political speech was perfectly free. What you couldn’t do was roll around naked on a canvas on the sidewalk “expressing yourself”. Because, as it turns out, morals. But if you wanted to absolutely decimate a political ideology or argue your case of philosophy, in the true sense of freedom of speech, nobody was going to stop you.
This “freedom of expression” shit invented by the Hippies is almost wholly bullshit.
I disagree with both your points, but I’ll focus on the political speech here.
It is the opposite of what I read. Indeed, freedom of speech, as far as I know, came to be popular in the 20th century when parties wanted to be able to use satire and attack the reigning party etc without repercussions.
It existed before, as an amendment in the federal constitution, of course. But the constitution itself was something that was not taken very seriously, partly because people disliked the idea of a federal government.
I don’t know about Germany, but I know that was not the case here. The literature of the 18th and 19th centuries were absolutely full of every kind of social and cultural critique you could hope for, newspapers would savage political parties, and your average man on the street could and did have his say. People took all kinds of interesting photos (that’s part of paper ephemera), up to and including “scandalous” type photos and I mean even in the 1860’s.
I collect antique paper ephemera, there was always a healthy regard for freedom of speech here. All of the State Constitutions stipulate a Freedom of Speech article in them as well, btw.
Interesting. That would indicate that the book I read was not very accurate. (It was indeed about the US specifically). Maybe I just don’t remember the details perfectly.
I’ll pass for now.
A lot of America-hate is to be found in Euro-lit I think. Hell even in modern American lit nowadays.
But consider, just by way of for example, Mark Twain and his huge popularity. That dude was scathing.
People in the 1890s were definitely on average happier and led more normal lives than people now. But that was simply because their system hadn’t the technology to develop into what we have today.
In many ways, the problem is that human psychology (and with it, concepts of good and evil) isn’t really adapted to function with modern infrastructure. Modern technology has made it really easy for those with inhumane intentions to establish and perpetrate their rule. The aims of the successful American capitalists, European colonialists, and Japanese industrialists were as dark as those of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. With the aid of railroads, machine guns, submarines, atomic bombs, and now the internet, they cemented their rule. Their aim is to remold the human average to become obedient consumers and laborers, while they stay on top indefinitely.
In 1890 Trump’s views would be those of a normal American man. Further, the average Westerner would balk if you told him there were no god, no good, no evil. Now, it’s pretty much the basic viewpoint. Now if you have those old views you are a monster or delusional. Why? Because this huge, super-human system has been created and has supported an alternative view of what humans can be—instead of moral members of a community, they are self-righteous narcissists, whose drug use, promiscuity, selfishness, and bad habits are encouraged by the physical infrastructure of society.
Capitalism created this, and, like Marx said, it has turned into communism, where progressive thinking is considered good because Christian or otherwise traditional morality and social order belongs in a barbaric age where people worked with their hands, not in a world of smart phones and “empowerment.”
True, capitalism and market forces might be a fine way of running an economy. But as history has shown, without strong morality and tradition (i.e. nearly all cases), capitalism leads to communism, whether by violent Leninist takeover or gradual corrosion of the old and unprofitable social order.
My mother grew up in China and had exactly two pencils to work with in school, per year. She got mostly perfect grades and is an articulate and principled woman, married for nearly 30 years. She has a simpler, more normal view of life that puts her at odds with leftist Americans of the very same generation, and makes her feel more at home in the company of Eastern Europeans.
If she grew up in 1990s and 2000s America she wouldn’t know or care how many materials she wasted, and instead of trying her best to make a living and have kids, she would think it her special right, obligation even, to rant about the evils of the patriarchy.
I don’t think communism is good, or that people should be forced to give their products to the state, but look what lives of plenty have brought the West. Even the “redpill men” on ROK are mostly just annoyed that they can’t get the hot woman they want, not that society is being actively destroyed.
It really makes you wonder where it all went wrong. It never ceases to amuse me that the Hippies of the 1960s with their so-called disdain for authority figures and the like are now such but on a whole exponentially more authoritarian in pushing their idiocy.
That’s how Leftism rolls. GenX figured out their parents before their parents figured out themselves.
You have it right until “capitalism created this”. No sir, your Leftist governments did this. They hold the power of the gun, ultimately. It’s what most libertarians have been warning about since at least WW2.
Strangely, my wife, who grew up in rural Ohio (that’s America) has no such issues.
I’m grateful not to have been poisoned by such. Raised in a staunchly conservative household and my ancestors were such too.
Actually, same here. We came over, both sides, after WW2 from Britain. My family knew the score.
My relatives fought the communist scuunbags in the Greek Civil War and resisted the Nazis during WWII and then migrated out from the old country in the 1950s and beyond.
Mine’s been here as long as there has been an America. We settled multiple counties.
Capitalism gave rise to an infrastructure with broad powers of control (i.e. communism) that people either can’t or chose not to keep in check. Seeing how it’s taken over over the entire first and former second worlds, I’d say the former is true.
Their mistake was resisting the Germans. Now they are are at the mercy of Muslim invaders.
Hardly a correlation. They’re in such a situation because of the fucking Krauts and how they use Turkey as a threat any time Greece wants to exercise its sovereign rights.
I have never felt that profit driven capitalist system was so very evil. Then again, I don’t really believe in evil. To be honest, I have benefited greatly from the capitalist system I was born into and for all its ills I have achieved things that in any other type of system would have been expressly forbidden to me.
Are their abuses? Sure. But name one system without abuses. When you can be born dirt poor in a communist system and through hard work and dedication drastically change your station in life and, all the while, enjoy what the world has to offer, then let me know. Until then, the idea of changing systems, even if it is not perfect, seems a lot like hitting on a natural 20 and hoping to get an Ace.
Profit is just a form of motivation. All people require some form of motivation to do a task. The profit motivation is based on self interest, and therefor is the best motivator towards action. Decrying it as “evil” is really, well, stupid. If you eliminate the profit motive (you won’t), you’d have to replace it with something else which would likely actually *be* pretty fucking horrible. There are incentive type motivations, and punishment type motivations. Nobody does stuff because they feel all ooey gooey altruistic, that’s just not a function of human nature, in any culture, at any time. Individuals may spontaneously act altruistic, but 99% of their life is guided by self interest. As long as that is kept in check from actually physically harming somebody else or causing theft, then I’ve no problem with it at all, it’s realistic and it works.
“but 99% of their life is guided by self interest” Do you think, it’s that much? Hobbes infamously described the life of the average man in 17th Britain as “as short, nasty and brutish” but I think his general misanthropy clouded his better instincts on this matter.
I used to believe that this was perhaps some type of universal truth among all peoples, but, when I traveled around a bit, especially in Latin American countries, this idea gradually changed in my mind. I visited places which were really poor by comparison to the west, but, the actual mutual bonds of solidarity and help that people showed to each other daily was quite striking. I’m not sure why this is the case, as they even showed outsiders like me a huge degree of hospitality and kindness. I’m inclined to think in these places that it was a blend of the strong family/clan ties the people have and also the ethos of the Catholic church which is still a living force in their lives.
I’m not sure about the profit motive either, essentially what most people want is stability and purpose in their lives, and, not just an ideology that says the only way to be happy and fulfilled is by acquiring as much money as possible, and then filling up the void in yourself with a whole load of consumer goodies. I know you’re not advocating this, but, unfortunately it has become this to many lost souls who need to become wealthy, successful and famous at all costs.
Don’t confuse self interest with a callous disregard for one’s fellow man. If I get pleasure in helping somebody out who is in a bind, I’m still helping him because it makes *me* feel good to do so. One can be fully self interested (rationally) and still be a genuinely nice person to others.
Ayn Rand could not have said it better.
Seriously, though, it boggles my mind that this is not obvious to people.
That’s true, but, in poorer communities the self-interest of the entire town or village seems to be served better through altruism than avarice.
I actually consider altruism to act without a regard to self. I don’t think that’s what they’re doing. They’re acting in a way that fulfills their moral code, and they also (I can guarantee you) think that if they get in a similar bind that others will help them out due to how they are acting today. I’ve been to a lot of central and south America, btw.
The Amish here are an example of what you’re alluding to. They’ll raise a barn for a neighbor, but if no other neighbors reciprocated, they’d probably not do it as it ultimately won’t help them to just do shit for other people for no return (or an expectation of a return). And the Amish are fiercely free market, btw. Way more than “the English” they live near.
Why? Unfortunately our society has become conditioned to associate, sometimes even respect, self interest that’s combined with a cynic indifference and callous disregard to others around them. The 1985 movie (a great classic) was the epitome of this mentality.
That’s short term self interest and usually is combined with a high degree of irrationality. I don’t deny that it happens, but I separate self interest into rational and irrational. If you’re going around stepping on bodies to get what you want, ultimately that’s going to get you hurt or even worse. It’s an irrational long term way of acting. Sure, you may never live to see it happen and die an old man in your sleep, but by acting irrationally you’ve increased the odds exponentially for somebody to “pay back” your lack of regard for your fellow man.
Agreed. If you cannot become more than you are then why bother being great. If being great and sitting around drinking vodka and talking about the caspian sea will yield the exact same results, tuck in and hand me a glass. At no point in my life have I ever felt that there was something (within reason) that I could want and never achieve. It has always been a question of how much I want it and whether it is enough to be worth the work it will take to achieve.
Find someone who was born the same year as I was in CCCP who can say the same thing honestly.
I thought your birth pre-dated the Russian Revolution?
Only my soul. I think my soul may have a little russian in it, even if my lineage didn’t. Hell, I invaded poland last night.
The problem is most people think they’re more rational then they really are.
Besides, the way this world is going, it’s becoming more and more difficult to neatly demarcate “rational” from “irrational” behavior in terms of what’s acceptable.
It’s strange that I find myself agreeing with Richard Dawkins recently where he commented rather pointedly that we’ve now created a society that values “emotion, expression and sentiment” over “reason and impartial investigation” when it comes to public discourse in our public lives. I disagree with many of his ideas, but, I concur with the tenet of what he’s said as you can witness the weird way that irrational people and behaviors are valued so highly in our world, because these people are seen as somewhat truer and more human, due to their emotional weaknesses. It also feds into the whole veneration of being “different cult” like transgenderism which people buy into at this level, but, if argued at a rational level it could easily be described as a mental illness.
The point is, I guess is that all these lines are “fluid”…
You may have benefited, but the capitalist system has brought us into communism, despite the efforts of a doomed few who saw the negative impacts that modern society was having on human morality and community.
Now the default view is a kind of manifest nihilism—why should I not act in my self-interest and follow the commandments of an ancient mythology book instead?
If moral thinking rooted in faith cannot overcome this nihilism, then it’s the end for this iteration of organized society.
It is basic Plato’s cave. Moral thinking rooted in faith is living inside a cave your whole life where every thing makes sense. When someone goes out of the cave and comes back and tells you everything you know is a lie you don’t reward him, you condemn him. That’s the way it shakes out every single time.
There is nothing wrong with faith based morals per se. It is just that you are in a cave. Nihilism is the red pill of morality the way that the manosphere or net-masculinity as roosh calls it is the red pill for other things.
The capitalist system brought on the excess which leads to communism…sure….but while history repeats itself it is always different in some way…never exactly the same.
In the end we are given a hand to play and a finite amount of time to play it. the longer we sit around wishing the cards were different the worse it gets.
That’s why I don’t actually agree with the redpill. I’m a realist about women, but I don’t think that they are either uncontrollable succubi or worthless for nothing but sex and service. Men and women have complimentary roles in human existence and in that sense are equal, just not in the ways the feminists demand.
Plato’s cave is actually for people who are blinded by appearances—i.e. principles that can be gleaned from observable facts, and change whenever the observed facts change. The point of the philosopher-king is not to be this nihilist god-ruler who commands his religiously ignorant subjects. Rather, while the subjects may not have time to care about complex moral questions, and just do what makes sense to them, the philosopher king acts based on a disciplined body of ideals to rule in a consistent and upright manner that affects the general population.
Unlike the mean man, the character of the philosopher-king does not sway in the face of observed changes. His actions and policy may vary based on the objective circumstances, but the underpinnings of his rule will not. This consistency can only be achieved through what would be today be considered irrational or delusional faith.
you are right, but that is where the cave analogy falls apart. Plato was just another in a long line of people trying to shoe horn objective truths about morality into a world where no such thing exists.
It is simply not true that faith is the only way to achieve consistency. Heraclitus did it without faith hundreds of years before plato. Kant did it very well and, in my opinion, correctly. For that matter, Nietzsche gets consistency in the same way that Heraclitus does.
The cave is simply people super imposing a belief that there is meaning onto something without meaning and, in turn, being outraged when told.
Ultimately, the question of whether morality exists ends up looking like the question about whether God exists. After long and careful consideration, my default answer to this is simply that the atheists, nihilists, and other wreckers can use human language to make clever arguments for what they believe, but that they end up turning on and destroying one another. Look at the prominent trends in leftism. You can tell their calls for humanity and human rights are worthless and self-destructive by the way they think of the unborn as “clumps of cells” and the newly born as annoying, loud, and dirty creatures that get in the way of their hendonism. How can a constituency like that persist? They will become extinct, but not before they make life miserable for the faithful and try to convert as many of the latter to their foolery.
Religious faith meanwhile can be destroyed physically or corrupted, but the for the genuinely pious, the point of life isn’t so much physical gratification but a pursuit of what Plato would have recognized as ideals.
But in the end plato was totally full of shit.
I don’t know if a god exists or not. Further, I don’t care. It really doesn’t matter to me at all. What I know and what matters to me is human will and individual achievement. Everything else seems like just another crutch to me whether it is leftist politics, religion, spirituality, careerism…its all just compulsive masturbation in my eyes.
Plato hasn’t actually been relevant in and of himself in almost 1000 years and even then he was relevant different than the way he intended to be. I am sure you and I will get to the same destination on many issues, despite taking different roads though.
Lines are not fluid. Dawkins was a shield maiden for the world he’s now lamenting. He is one of its standard bearers, even if he’s uncomfortable with that.
Reality exists. Logic is math. Reason is impervious. He and his kind gave us this world, and this world is failing.
I’ve no use for him.
The only folks who ever got rich through Communism were the ones who founded it.
Being the stereotypical sort who use AirBnB-vagabond hipsters-ought to be a criminal offense, but it isn’t.
So how are AirBnB users criminals?
The Uber thing only points to the arrogance of those who want security by learning a “trade”. What an obsolete concept. To have people give you a “permission” to do a job you are perfectly suited to do anyhow. In Germany, we have the same with photography. “Photographer” is a trade name here and you are not allowed to call yourself that unless you do the apprenticeship thing etc. It’s ridiculous. As if having learned a couple rules guarantees you take better pictures.
But these nuts will always find some pretentious reason for why they are “professional” and better than “just some random person who takes pictures”.
I like the social fluidity of the U.S. We’re not bound from noes to toes by half the things that Germans are. It’s one of the few good things left going on in this nation right now.
Yah. And I did think about moving to the US for reasons like these, but seriously, looking at your fucked up election process and bipartisan system, I shudder.
Just look at this:
Your country is doomed to go under!
Maybe. I don’t see Merkel taking Germany anywhere but to the nearest toilet either though.
Germany sucks ass. I am leaving as soon as I bring up the courage and a good idea where to go and money. This is a land of fascists.
Same here. Will finish my bachelor of science in 2017 and then I will leave this shithole. To be honest and objective: without the whole migration thing going on germany would be in my humble opinion the best country on the planet. Of course we have many fat fucks and ugly girls but every rich country has that problem. But germany ten years ago was just beautiful. It was safe and you don’t need to think about rabies, hepatitis a, dengue fever, yellow fever, dangerous spiders and snakes and so on because all those things just don’t exist in germany.
Furthermore we have a great university system where you don’t need to pick up crazy amounts of student loans like in the US. The state gives me nearly 500€ every month because my family is poor and when I am finished I need to pay half of it back (maybe 7000€). That’s amazing even though we could debate about the sense of the western educational systems in general.
Two hours ago I was taking a walk through my small village and there was a newspaper lying on the street – an arabic newspaper. That pretty much sums it up.
TL;DR: I loved germany. Without goat fuckers it would have been the best.
I am not sure what to think about the fact that the state pays for universities. In the end, the taxpayer has to back it and a lot of people waste their time there.
That’s right and that is why I liked the former system better where the Bafög payments where lower in general but the best 10% of each years graduands didn’t have to pay anything back. Now the system is more ‘same outcome instead of same opportunity’ = socialist bullshit.
I think I’d always prefer a system where visiting a university is not necessary to be allowed to work. And where, if you indeed feel the need to visit a university, have to come up with the money on your own. Unless, of course, you find a sponsor or something who wants to hire you afterward.
Yeah, that is the ideal system but my point was comparing it to the United States where you are 100,000$ in debt when you graduate. Congratulation mister, your hard work payed off and you are now a slave so you can work hard to pay off!
Hah, I like my english puns.
Damn these cunts are dumb as fuck. These are probably women who identify with feminism and have no idea what Sharia Law is. Good God this video is a painfully obvious example of why not to allow females to vote. Fuck, I am so happy I never had kids.
Another great reason to end women’s suffrage. I hope that’s his next video.
Think of it this way. Things are so good here, people move here just to complain about it and never go back to their home country. lol. When it goes under, it’ll still be better than what’s left. There is an auto show on Worthersee lake that Id like to attend next year however so I’ll be able to compare. That may be Austria though, not Germany. If I recall correctly.
“Don’t you think women suffer enough in the US? They make 75% what men make, they are discouraged from high-paying jobs. I mean, the patriarchal notion that women deserve suffrage is in the Constitution, put there by white-cis-het-men – we need to fix that now!”
I’ll bet that would get a ridiculous proportion of the feminists.
We had a viscious feedback cycle that was driven almost entirely by the government here in the States.
1) US makes employment tests very difficult to design on grounds of equality
2) College education becomes surrogate for employability, especially in the STEM fields. Other fields of study expand as students take largely worthless majors just for the paper that says they can get a job done.
3) Price of college rises to compensate for new value of degree
4) Government establishes programs like student loans and federal assistance to compensate for higher cost
5) Price of college rises to compensate for new money flowing in
6) 4 and 5 loop indefinitely
In short, college is outrageously expensive because the government gave them a monopoly and raises taxes to compensate for rising college costs.
(Oh, and did I mention the federal assistance program is largely funded by people who don’t merit the program? Fully half my tuition went to pay for the tuitions of the “underprivileged”.)
That third girl can kneel facing my mecca any time.
and that toilet is in a ladies room but men in dresses can go in.
Agreed!
South America (Uruguay or Chile, even Colombia in a high end place) is a good place.
Would be my first choice as well.
All the foreigners rag on the “bipartisan” (it’s not really…) system but I don’t see any other party system working out better in these other countries.
Other countries might get some party with sense elected, but that so often turns out to be useless.
There is a well established tradition of Germans emigrating there…
I’m not sure I’d put too much stock in South America myself though as those countries have been mercurial and corrupt for centuries; Australia remains-for now-the only exception to the “global south” stereotype.
Her voice is so deep. Wasn’t expecting that.
Now go on, make your joke about not being able to hear her voice.
That’s what happens when Joos flood your nation with Muslims i.e. You get nationalism and it ain’t al bad either you Marxist whiter
“. It’s one of the few good things left going on in this nation right now”
…for the time being anyway..
Yeah. We have guns too, so I guess that’s the other good thing.
“Yeah. We have guns too, so I guess that’s the other good thing”
At least we have some fighting chance, but no doubt, I’m getting convinced that this election will be one of the most important elections ever in the history of the USA.
I rented out my second bedroom and living room for Airbnb, and even with dirt-cheap prices, I’m still making a profit on my well-placed (and hideously expensive) NYC apartment. That being said, I don’t blame my landlord for telling me I need to cut it out and find long-term roommates, and I totally get why it might be a good idea for a city to ban Airbnb (or the entire internet, but that’s a topic for another day).
At the end, what causes these economic problems is capital (internet) plus ridiculous amounts of unchecked greed (buying up whole apartments to rent out to tourists for massive profit). Individual entrepreneurs may not feel immediate consequences, since the blowback comes in chain reactions, but society certainly will. It’s a bit like rampant promiscuity, actually.
But I don’t care if professional taxi drivers go extinct because of Uber. Every time someone honks like a heavy metal band member or almost runs me over it’s some idiot from Zimbabwe or something who thinks his yellow cab gives him a right to ignore the law and common sense.
Uber? A (((federal-reserve))) fueled taxi company that is killing thousands of local transportation companies and quickly becoming a monopoly.
Easy solution, start your own similar service and undercut them.
And hope to not be outmafiaed.
Uber doesn’t seem to be “mafia” so much as a bunch of disorganized people giving out rides. Big whoop.
Oh, I was just rambling. Don’t think nothing of it.
Uber actually is mafia in a sense. I mean not that they are connected, but that it is a group of different people earning a living under the auspices of a protector and promoter who they kick a part of their profit up to. It may not be a couple of italians in the back of a cafe sipping espresso and taking envelopes of cash, but the principles are the same…
Outside of the criminal aspects of the mob, their organizational structure was pretty logical and sound. Plus they had a very good sense of honor that you won’t find in your average person. Even half the things they did that was criminal, should not have been (thinking Prohibition here). And when they went to-a-shooting each other they ensured that they usually kept it out of the direct public, there was an expressed fear of pissing off the heavily armed public as I understand it. Perfectly rational. I’m kind of neutral on them as a whole, at least in the sense of the 1920’s and 1930’s gangsters.
The organization is smart in a way. The problem with the mafia was the same problem with anyone. It begins with a code of honor and ethics, a bunch of people who are being shunned and unable to create a good life for themselves come together and make something happen. A few generations after its success it gets gluttonous, decadent and downright absurd.
If you remove the criminal aspect of it (and remember, a lot of time that criminal aspect was gambling, hookers and booze which really ought not be a crime in the first place) then it is really just a bunch of people with shared interests and culture who are doing favors for each other and amassing and consolidating favors from others.
In the end, if you came to new york and bought a condo and needed to renovate you would come to me because I have thousands of contractors and am working on a job north of 600 million so people are likely to do me favors to get in good with me. I help you out and save you money and when I am in ohio looking to build a hunting lodge maybe you know some local alderman who you can take me out for drinks with and he will make it easy on the permits for me etc. etc.
The problem is, once money starts getting big and once the current generation has no recollection of the lean times, it turns into a corrupt circus.
I concur with you-by and large they confined their violent activities to themselves and those of their ilk be it rivals or those who broke oaths and otherwise abided by a code of honour where innocents weren’t being targeted.
The mafia did well to keep out the Colombians, Jamaicans and other groups with a much greater propensity for violence.
The Yakuza fulfill a similar role in Japan. Contrary to popular perception, their main role is essentially an up-jumped version of the boy scouts mixed with neighborhood watch.
How can I compete against free rides paid by the FED?
If you want to deal in silver, then I think we’re having a different discussion. The currency is, whether we like it or not (I don’t), Federal Reserve notes. So technically, everything you do, up to and including buying the computer you’re typing your disagreements with me on, was payed “by the FED”.
Neither you or me are the first ones to receive the money that comes out hot of (((their))) printer. (((Investors))) do.
Ok, so investors receive money. Seems rational. Why would somebody invest in something if there was no return to be made?
Look man, I hate the Fed and want it abolished. I absolutely loath fiat currency, right? But it’s what we use, whether we like it or not, so complaining about one service that uses it when every other good and service also utilizes it seems like a strange thing to pick on it for.
So I am confused. Not trolling…really asking, because you seem like you are an intelligent guy. What exactly is the problem with the Fed printing money? I mean so what?
Because they charge interest on something that was, and should be done by the treasury for 0 interest. That interest is then pure profit which is used by the fed’s owners to support the growth of government so more debt can be created.
Because it has created a huge amount of debt, it is literally a debt based currency. There’s a reason we’re 20 trillion in the hole right now and if you count our true debt it’s upwards of 100 trillion. Without some kind of material backing to limit expansion, we’ve literally printed ourselves into a corner. The Fed Reserve was pumping 80 billion a month into the stock market (I think that was the number, I might have that wrong though, but it was huge nevertheless). Shit they printed out of thin air, because they could. The result was a jobless recovery, and a huge spike in inflation. People say that inflation doesn’t exist now, but they’re wrong, the Fed simply manipulates the Basket Items it measures inflation by to fudge numbers. Meat and food cost nowhere near what it does now, just 7 years ago. Believe me, we watch the grocery bills.
A commodity based currency has an inherent limit on government built right into it. You can’t print a 20 dollar gold piece if you ain’t got no gold. Just using gold as an example of course.
All of this rings true, but the US hasn’t had a commodity based currency in what 100 years? more? I mean everything comes with pitfalls, but with a flawed system there are always always ways where creative, industrious and hard working people can gain an advantage. I mean, if the choice is between a much better system and the system we have, fine…that’s great. but it isn’t really a choice in the first place…this is like wishing your wife was her 22 year old self, never aged and came with a billion dollar dowry. I mean yeah that’s great. But, ya know, not happening.
In the end nothing you say is wrong. But people (you and I included) who have paid attention have learned to make this system purr like a kitten for us.
And that is bad. But with no viable alternative, we should remember that this system has created opportunity for people as well. I don’t know a lot about economics so I don’t want to get into a debate about it. I do agree that things are kind of fucked up for the reasons you list and more.
That said:
1) There is no system without fucked up flaws
2) There is no changing the current system
3) While it is flawed it opens up opportunity for people to use hard work and ingenuity to get ahead.
Is it ultimately a huge ponzi scheme? Yeah, of course. But, I mean, and I say this having seen pretty much every level of how to live in several countries, from uber wealthy to nearly homeless, life is pretty fucking good.
“–but the US hasn’t had a commodity based currency in what 100 years? ”
1971. Nixon ended the convertibility of dollars to gold to stop a gold run– mainly France.
Shadow stats. They use the 1990 standards to measure inflation and unemployment instead of the garbage the feds publish today.
wow, no idea it was so recent. Thanks for heads up on that.
Again, I preface this by saying I really don’t understand economics on an expert level. It has never been my field as it were. I do understand happiness though. I would much prefer to live in 2016 US than any time prior to ’71
Not to say that there aren’t aspects of older times that I don’t admire…but I have to say, things really are pretty good from my pov right now.
We had a good system before the fed between 1800 and 1900 there was no inflation. Central banks produce absolutely nothing and simply funnel money into themselves by making everyone poorer. They have in fact failed miserably at every problem they were touted to solve. They promote welfare and warfare as a means to enslave governments in debt. We never had a perfect system, but it was a lot better than this one.
For a short historical back drop, you can follow the below link. It is a small piece of info why the 70s sucked.
http://www.federalreservehistory.org/Events/DetailView/33
There is no one who is more anti welfare than me. However, I will say that (and yes this is personal experience and not valid economic theory) the chances of me being born as poor as I was in the 1800’s or early 1900’s and having succeeded in the ways that I have would have been significantly less to the point of approaching 0 than having been born when I was.
It is pretty simple the way I think of this ya know. I think “I like my life…there are ups and downs and some things I think are wrong or unfair but in the end, I am very happy with my life and what I get out of it so the idea of changing things is something I look at with suspicion.” I am an optimistic kind of nihilist and I feel very fortunate to be living my life….problems and all. I wouldn’t want to risk that for a theoretically better system
Without some kind of material backing to limit expansion, we’ve literally printed ourselves into a corner.
Economists refer to this as the Hitler Corner.
It is not a matter of rationality, it is a matter of fairness and equality of opportunity. The problem is we, the populace, are subjugated to a group of friends that are gaining control of everything through monetary expansion (quantitative easing). Not everybody has the same access to this money (credit), which makes sense until some point, but after 50 years of unleashed monetary expansion, the meritocracy in our “capitalist” society has been flushed down the toilet.
I’m not the best expert on this, but I’ll give you my opinion:
It is a matter of fairness and equality of opportunity. The problem is we, the populace, are subjugated to a group of friends that are gaining control of everything through monetary expansion (e.g. quantitative easing). Not everybody has the same access to this new money (credit), which makes sense until some point, but after 50 years of unleashed monetary expansion, the meritocracy in our “capitalist” society has been flushed down the toilet.
I don’t think printing our own money means that we would return to the 19th century. I think you are looking at the standard of living then and thinking that’s what it would be today if we had stayed on that system. In other words you give credit to the advances of the 20th century to central banking, which it deserves none of as it was a hindrance not an enabler of advancement. Anyways I’m glad to hear you’re doing well, but I think you’d be doing even better in a system where you actually owned your own money and were subject to far less government.
That seems fair to me as a point. That said, I feel like I have been given every opportunity to succeed or fail and that ability has been in my own hands and power. I have succeeded sometimes and failed at others and never felt powerless once in the charting of my own destiny.
No, I will never be a billionaire 1% elite. But the amount of distance I have covered between birth and now has been extraordinary and at no point in my life has there ever been a different system
no, not standard of living per se. I am just thinking that the opportunities for someone to be born with little and be smart and creative and hard working and have a reasonable expectation to have a lot is not something that was nearly as feasible 100 years ago let alone in feudal societies of old.
thanks. Will read tonight.
I accidentally hit the post button too soon whoops
Last paragraph sums it up in a nutshell. When we lost the gold standard in the 1930s we essentially traded value as something that could be quantitatively measured for a value when ascribed to legal tender that cannot be assessed. This was the root cause under the whole recent credit crisis- no tangible measure of worth.
far less govt is a good thing we can agree on that for sure. Also, owning money sounds good too. My question is what are its pitfalls. I understand how to manipulate the current system to my advantage. I mentioned it to someone else before: sure, I would like to get a natural blackjack, but I am not hitting on a 20 and hoping for an ace.
no worries. i saw the rest
Good for you. I cannot complain either, but it is not the case for an increasing percent of people.
I always wonder about this. I mean, i am not talking about getting rich and retiring to a mansion and taking my yacht out etc….but it really doesn’t seem all that hard to live a nice life if you are willing to put in the work. In my life I have rarely met someone who was industrious and hard working and at the same time suffering in poverty. Maybe it is my limited experiences. I honestly feel if you dropped me naked into a strange city with no belongings I would, in site of 3 months, have my own place, a job and some plans to improve my station. And not because I am so great (which I am) but because I have always done whatever was necessary to advance myself towards my short and long term goals without shying away from hard work or measured risks.
Great analysis-it’s startling to see the rising cost of basic commodities and necessities whilst the CPI and wages have not risen accordingly to match that. The average spend for a trip to the supermarket has skyrocketed exponentially and over here $100 will buy you a fraction of what you could have had 10 years ago.
Historically the pitfalls were that every so often there could be a run on the banks, but these were mostly orchastrated events. The bull/ bear market didn’t exist in the form it does today. I think there was also less speculation and certainly less financial instruments. I’m sure there were lots of other differences that could be hazards too, but I don’t know what they are.
Fiat based money is a relatively new phenomenon in the US. Fiat currencies have historically *ALL* failed.
The pitfall is the US is currently living above its means and we would no longer be able to do so. Those who logically argue for a rational currency want this to happen by choice, in a planned and safer landing instead of it one day collapsing and we see another Black Friday x100.
The debt based currency is why we have inflation. It’s why everything costs more now than it did last year. And why if you saved a dollar from 60 years ago, it has lost 98% of its value. Inflation is an invisible tax, primarily on the lower and middle classes. If you have a 6 figure job in the finance, construction, banking, real estate, etc. sectors, you are on the receiving end of this Ponzi scheme and it benefits you.
this is absolutely true. But who is to blame here. Is it the system that allows it to happen? is it the media which tempts people into it? or is it people being dumbasses and living above their means. Our culture of immediacy has lead people to just assume they can have what they want now. To me, that is the persons fault. If a married couple who are, say, middle school teachers and make a combined income of 85k a year buy a 600k house, lease two brand new cars, by the most expensive appliances and kids stuff and go out to eat often and do it all on credit I don’t want to hear them complain that the system is skewed against them.
Hard to say who is to blame for this stuff because of course it is complicated but one of the people to blame, if not the first on the list, is the dumbass who is living so far out of his means he has no idea what he is going to do with himself.
The brilliance about the US now and why I think that the currency will hold out longer than some expect it to, if not indefinitely, is that we have figured out that as long as people can lease and credit buy enough shit to keep them in an entertainment coma and make minimum payments they will just keep rolling that boulder up the mountain.
One thing to do since money was tied to commodities would be to set up shop where Gold was found, wait for the rush, and charge an exorbitant price for cheap goods. Not sure how that would work today with Amazon, but if your smart and creative you’ll find your niche
Things get more complicated once one has dependants or illness/disability. Anyways, I was talking more about business ownership and social elevator to the top, more than personal subsistence. I see your point, that’s why I am not a fan of socialism.
Agreed. And dependents does make a different conversation. I need to do enough to keep myself in a lifestyle I enjoy for the next 50 years. I don’t need anything left over.
As for a social elevator, it is monetary for sure. Make enough money be more of a part of society. For my part, I don’t want a social elevator. I am perfectly content with being an anonymous guy who wrecks some pussy, pursues his hobbies and eats well.
There is always a way
I had a teacher with a fiat Zimbabwean bill. 50 billion dollars, roughly equivalent to a cup of coffee in the States, with an expiration date that is now long past.
All value and all income are ultimately determined by the State now. The government determines how much of their money you can keep every April, and the Fed determines how much that money is actually worth. It’s a depressing state of affairs for a nation once so wealthy and powerful.
I believe the leaders of the Weimar believed the same thing. It ended poorly.
probably, but it has changed. Nothing lasts forever, but our current system has more staying power than previous ones me thinks.
Aaron Clarey always says that we’re just the least terrible currency right now. So long as people around the world continue to think we have a strong currency, we will.
But even Sisyphas must eventually get tired of pushing the boulder. When we reach the point where we just let it go, I shudder to think how very poorly things will go, and how quickly.
that sounds about right. I live my life on the gamble that I will be in the ground before that happens. I realize there is an element of danger to rolling those dice, but we must all make a decision on how to live our lives and this is what I chose.
Set up a tinder app for miners, call it Goldiggers.
Next fifty years??
Arent you an almostgeezer already?
longevity on both sides of my family. ugh.
Experts are Literally Hitler!
My corner is Literally Hitler!
Because those who get the money first get full value for it while everyone’s savings are eroded in value.
Those close to the central bank buy up real and productive assets with the newly created money they borrow for nearly or no cost. They can then use those assets to make money. People who have to earn money to buy productive assets are shut out. It takes them too long and they will always be overbid.
If this goes on long enough then everything of value ends up in a few hands.
So the people at the very top have an unfair advantage and passively make a ton of money on the backs of everyone else. But that is how every single system has been always. I mean, I get that it is very flawed…but I would rather have this than, say, a feudal lord making money on my labor and from the moment I am born I know exactly how much I can achieve and it is pretty much equivalent to dick in a box.
The link to gold and silver was eroded slowly.
In 1913 the federal reserve act was passed but the fed still had to maintain the gold standard. In the 1930s FDR made gold illegal for americans to own and then devalued the dollar against it. After WW2 the bretton woods system was established where the US dollar was linked to gold and other nations linked to the dollar. The only ones who could exchange dollars for gold were central banks.
In 1965 the link to silver was broken when silver was taken out of the coins and silver certificates recalled.
Through war in vietnam and great society LBJ was spending too much money. Much of it newly created. As a result the French started demanding gold for their dollars. In 1971 Nixon closed the gold window and ended bretton woods.
At that point it was established that oil would be traded for in dollars. This kept up the demand for USD. Now that system is slowly coming unglued.
The goal IMO is to build a rental society. We, the peasantry own nothing. Everything is rented and consumed and we live hand to mouth. Nose to the grindstone not never getting out of line.
I get that that is the general idea, keep us as wage slaves waking, working, consuming, sleeping all while being distracted unto death and never getting uppity so people with extraordinary money can add to that money exponentially. But when hasn’t it been like that?
When people weren’t trying to enslave others? Never.
When people who were trying to enslave were losing that battle? Mostly the USA with high and low spots. But the financial chains just keep getting worse these days.
Fiat money systems are especially hideous and make it much easier. the prosperity of the USA came out of the periods where there wasn’t such elite control or it was hindered. The US did not always have a central bank.
You might be surprised with what peasant had that we don’t. But that’s neither here nor there, what we are talking about is overt vs. covert control.
The system determines how much money you’ll make and how far you’ll go. Federal income tax, property tax, bringing in foreigners, requiring licenses, on and on. It’s not overt like it used to be and today’s human farming is more free range, but if the system wants to stomp someone out it can. Just look what it does to those who run afoul of it some way. Sure you can have the attitude of ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ but the compromises you’ll make to go as far as can under this system will make you part of it and tied to it, demanding it continue.
The system and those who run it have the final say and can take out whomever they want when they want. With so many felonies on the books it’s just a question of someone wanting to.
Yes, a friend gave me one of those. I gave it to the neighbor kid next door because I’m sure it impressed him. But yes, expiration date on the money! That was insane.
I can’t argue any of those points. You have it dead to rights. But with no desire to procreate and already being half way through my life and being generally happy and satisfied with quite realistic expectations of living a long, happy and comfortable life I have no desire to change things. I acknowledge that for people who are trying to set up a dynasty with children and grandchildren who will tell their children about you that you have a vested interest in seeing long term positive change. But I the world burns the moment I die it won’t bother me one bit. I can respect the other side, but I’ll never risk my comfort for the greater good
The other “pitfall” would be less availability of credit for the public, however this hindered consumerism and its deleterious effects that we all know.
Very true frugality was greatly encouraged back then. One thing that amazes me is that you could have a middle class life just as a subsistence farmer, he’ll nowadays the land would be worth millions in my state. Now it takes two incomes just to have kids and put them through public school.
The funny thing is that this is not new. The Roman Empire had all silver currency and one of the things they slowly did during and though out the decline was to slowly lose the silver content in their currency until all they had left was basically a worthless Nickel or penny.
Fairness and equality do not exist.
Neither you nor I have to like it. It’s a simple fact.
Improvise, adapt and overcome.
The point is that technological advances not economical ideologies or financial mass scams are the factors behind our albeit limited prosperity. Economic and financial schemes, if anything they hinder our progress. My point: If you have more opportunities than yesteryear it was because of the work of great men in engineering and sciences, not because a dreaded “feudal” system is no more.
Exactly. But if you live in an urban economy it’s like “steaks went up a buck” every year and you don’t notice. If you’re out here in flyover with kids that kind of rise makes a huge dent.
Totally agree.
Absolutely.
Short term thinking benefits immediately, but at our level of debt, expect Chinese troops in your future. And not the nice ones who will only make pee pee in your coke.
That it does. It’s insanity.
The current system will be changed. It’s just a matter of time and if we change it before or after the whole house of cards comes down.
While the system allows industrious people to get ahead the boom bust cycle of a fed economy allows bankers to steal the wealth created by industrious people. Basically it goes like this. The market is flooded with cheap money and everyone whom is industrious gets in and works hard to build a new business or expand their current one. Most take on debt. A bubble ends up forming as the interest rate is held artificially low. When the bubble burst all the sudden there is no money on the market. Now businesses can’t pay their loans and years of hard work go downtown drain for half or more of these businesses. Banks foreclose and they sell the scraps of the businesses that are left to their larger competitors whom ere able to weather the burst of the bubble.
Now this isn’t an issue when boom busts happen on their own. But when the fed can control this cycle through their control of the money supply and the cost of money, they have power to seriously enrich themselves and their friends and family in this cycle.
Hence, a fiat currency. Exactly.
Yep.
My understanding is that rags to riches success stories where common at that timeframe.
Hell it was still somewhat common when I was a pre-teen. The hell that has been wrought upon our system is shocking.
1971
Since then Reagan presided over the first 1 Trillion in debt. Total debt. Actual debt.
Now we’re 20 Trillion admitted. 100+ Trillion actual.
In our lifetimes.
Rome took that gamble. They lost.
I’m a Honkystorian. They had a hugely opulent entertainment based society. Now they’re a small city that hosts the Vatican and which is being overrun by Muslim colonists. So there you go.
We already have that. I don’t like that kind of society.
Can’t do that without jobs.
We’re not even close to what is desired yet. Agenda 21 and agenda 2030 give some clue.
Tell these guys: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/985d2b55db5292c7119027decde20f58cc4a23e8adb9f917a435947227a004f8.jpg
Kinda hard for anyone to believe that the US dollar is the fabled “petrodollar” nowadays when our government does everything it can (and then some) to stop us from drilling our own oil, building more refineries and that we left the Iraqi, Kuwaiti & Saudi oil to them.
China’s economy is far worse than ours, they’ve raised eyebrows with their rather recent trend of temporarily “disappearing” Chinese who could topple their hilariously unstable stock market.
China’s economy is also defined as “maker of all of our crap”. If we don’t have money, China doesn’t have money.
Chinese troops invading the USA? Even after Dubya & 0bama tag-teamed to gimp the US military, ours is still better. How would the Chinese military even get here? Jets that they knocked off from Boeing and more of Putin’s hand-me-down ships?
I think you’re underestimating the economic boom time that was the 19th Century in the USA.
Everyone
was a Horatio Alger story just waiting to happen, striking it
relatively rich then was as easy and effortless as a “6” getting picked
up at closing time is today.
I have to ask how one could have a middle-class life as a subsistence farmer. The two terms seem contradictory.
Also, the words from Silent Cal, the most recent “conservative” President, come to mind: “Farmers have never made much money. I don’t believe we can do much about it.”
Drop me into 1952, and I’d probably burn down Central America faster than the UFC.
China owns the individual majority of foreign debt. The vast, vast majority of debt is domestic. We’re more likely to be in their streets than they, ours in the future.
I agree. I’m fairly young, and while I make a lot of money compared to my peers, I still don’t make that awfully much in the scheme of things. I have zero problem living comfortably. I can spend like a sailor and still have massive reserves of liquidity.
That all came home to roost with the Great Depression. Just as the excess of everyone ‘buying’ a 4-bedroom house in a decent neighborhood did with the 08 recession.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the issue. Americans have been taught from birth that simply living in this country is a right to anything and everything, all the time. It’s only getting worse with the Bernieites taking the mic as a legitimate political movement. People are so deluded that they not only believe they deserve and can have it all, they also believe they can give everyone else in the world it as well, i.e. refugees, illegals, immigrants, etc.
Ian Smith predicated exactly what would happen after he stepped down. Bob Mugabe and his supporters deserve all the misery they created.
What makes you believe that? Once the rest of the world is decoupled from the USD (China and Russia have been squawking about that for some time) as the world’s trading currency, you will be waking up in a new world.
I would advise anyone to take a graduate course, or better yet simply buy the texts, on Federal Reserve Banking. It answers alot of questions brought up on this site (and no, it isn’t da jews).
It’s true and I’ve no doubt that you are right about the Chinese. My money is on it happening after I’m dead though. You know what they say, Rome wasn’t overrun by Muslims in a day
Much of what coolidge is talking about was caused by is the legacy of reconstruction. However it is true A lot of farmers were poor, you weren’t guaranteed anything and farming used to be a lot more risky which is why farms were polycultures not the monocultures of today. But a lot of homesteaders did however make a good living. Not everyone who was a farmer back then owned the farm, there were a lot of farm hands that didnt make much. Also i think generaly the owned the further back you go, when land was cheaper probably the more likely wealth was. But I guess I’m just judging by different criteria too. You could own your house a lot of land have as many kids as you wanted and could provide for them.
the FED is like that episode of “I Love Lucy” with the conveyor belt and the chocolates: “Speed it up a little!” Print more fun money.
I would rather sleep on a park bench in a nationalist fascist society than live in a top floor penthouse in this sick melting pot witch’s brew cultural Marxist hell.
just print more money: speed it up a little!
It would be cheaper to have your baby drink gasoline than milk!
There won’t be any troops: China will just be allowed greater ownership and control of the US: 305,000 Chinese students study here in the U.S. each year. Increasingly, the Chinese are buying up the real estate in NYC, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Houston, and Vancouver. and they’re not buying double wides and crap shacks but $2-10 million penthouses.
America will become a landlord society where foreigners, primarily the Chinese will own the
property, means of production, media, academic and entertainment apparatus. Top positions will be held by Chinese. And the American citizens will be the serfs and peasants.
The 29 crash wiped out a significant number of smaller banks too. Debt and monopoly.
It’s often said that Americans will need to speak Chinese. Nonsense. The only words future Americans will need to know in Chinese are “Yes, Master.”
I don’t know man, I have lied on a park bench and I have lived in a penthouse and, all things being equal, I will take the penthouse. TO be fair, I have never lived on a park bench or in a penthouse in a nationalist fascist society, but I like the luxury that our society has to offer.
It is def a system that is unsustainable. The question is, how long will it hold out and who will it benefit before it collapses. My guess is that it will hold out for long enough to finish my lifetime and the benefits favor me in a much better way than any alternative grounded in reality would. I used this analogy a few times yesterday and really like it. Of course I want a natural blackjack dealt to me. That said, I was dealt an 18 and I am not looking to hit on it.
The Great Depression was a 20th century phenomenon though in its entirety.
It’s no surprise that it came about hot on the heels of the Progressive Trio (Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson) and their disastrous “reigns”.
Without women voters, states denied federal representation & the Federal Reserve (etc), I question if the GD would’ve occurred.
It certainly wouldn’t have grown from “Depression” to “Great Depression” if socialist FDR hadn’t purposefully extended it so he could enact his socialist New Deal; as today’s leftists say: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
…Probably why his wife called FDR a “benevolent dictator”.
Don’t have to, they figured it out on their own.
They figured what? Being on charity lines for bread and hot coffee?
The only issue with the China/Russia saber rattling was that while they were doing so, they were putting a huge investment in those same USDs. In fact China went so far as to actually copy the US model of printing money out of air to finance growth. It’s really little more than currency musical chairs, but the fact is it’s similar to mutually assured nuclear destruction, as no one can be the one to admit the music stopped a long time ago.
The same arguments were made about the Japanese back in the 80’s and early 90’s. It was really about attempting to hide money in a more stable economy by their elites.
I would assume because the USD is still the trading currency, they are hedging their bets. China’s problems are multiple and Russia still hasn’t deversified their economy off energy and has been burning their foreign reserves.
Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Here’s a little backup for what GOJ is saying here…
The Fed is Literally Hitler!
taxi companies are just older more local cartels in many if not most places.
You are right. But Uber is not the solution: a global cartel is much dangerous than local ones.
uber can’t be a cartel. Nothing stops someone else from doing something similar. Offering drivers a better deal or lower prices. Uber doesn’t have government protection.
At least not until it is termed “too big to fail”.
Perhaps Uber already does have government protection of a sort-financing-as companies like Google and, most infamously, Tesla do.
I agree, except I have to ask what is/was a local transportation company?
I’ve got a few local transit companies around here, but they don’t compete with Uber (ie: buses).
Taxis can be companies as well. And buses do compete with Uber.
The bus companies in my area don’t compete with Uber.
As for my local taxi companies, well, if Trump were to engage in deportation and/or the rescinding of superfluous (ie: illegal) visas, they’d lose their labor force overnight.
If state vehicle inspections were more than a racket, most of their cabs would be off the road too; That these poorly-maintained cabs are still on the streets is a testament to Ford’s engineering of the Crown Victoria.
I’d rather support actual Americans via Uber, who drive decently clean and reliably vehicles, than the English-incapable illegals and visa vampires who have monopolized the cabs here.
The existence of illegals has nothing to do with this.
Yes it does.
Visa vampires, who are technically illegals, and actual illegals, are driving the vast majority of cabs in my area. Very stereotypical illegals to boot.
Uber, in contrast, is comprised of “independent contractors” who are fluent in English, personable and at least true legal residents of the USA.
With Uber, I don’t have any reason to suspect that my money is going to Mexico, India or to fund crazies in Pakistan.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/investors
Here you may find some reasons: do you like Qatar and Saudi Arabia?
Uber still comes out ahead of my local cabs.
Uber vs Cabs is rather like buying gas from Maduro via CITGO or directly from Maduro would be. Both choices would do something to aid despicable governments, but only one would actively harm the USA.
Given the open secret that cabbies here aren’t exactly legal, it’s probably a crime to actually use their services.
Welcome to the brave new world where we’re all part-time taxi drivers
The opposite is actually happening in some cities. Hotels are notorious at upping prices when particular events occur in those cities. AirBNB has provided people with an alternate. Also be aware that AirBNB are inclined to hand over your records and earnings to the government tax authorities…….
Here’s the rough formula for building the monsters in question:
1) Create the platform via startup money from the uber-rich (pun intended).
2) Seed it with investment money from the uber-rich to inflate its value for the eventual IPO.
3) Use unfettered media access to promote the platform (the same families who seed the startups own 100% of the mainstream media, so it’s a piece of cake to run “news stories” about the new platform worldwide).
4) A huge number of consumers immediately start using the service, while more and more come aboard with every passing day.
5) A partial monopoly is quickly realized and smaller competitors go out of business.
6) The partial monopoly grows steadily and destroys untold numbers of jobs.
7) Prices ultimately go up and consumers pay more – ironically, while some of those very same consumers have to accept jobs at slave wages while working for the platform’s ownership.
8) The uber-rich families own the controlling shares of stock, and they get vastly richer, while the public suffers via higher prices, poorer service and access to fewer jobs (most of which are low-paying).
A person could argue with this, but the avalanche of facts available which backs up these notions is so overwhelming that it would drown out the voice of any dissenter.
(“Welcome to the NWO. May I have your order?”)
Yeah, the IPO thing. Keep in mind the financial purpose of an IPO is to provide capital (money to pay for large expenses) in order to fund or expand a business.
http://fortune.com/2016/06/09/uber-ipo-travis-kalanick/
Uber is in almost every major city. They don’t have substantial capital requirements–basically they need some computers and network infrastructure for maybe a few tens of thousands of dollars. Something that has already been purchased by Uber, as they already operate just about everywhere. If and when Uber has an IPO it will be solely to ‘cash out’ its casino chips. Just ask yourself, what is Uber raising money for? Exactly.
Yup. Then the principals will cash out a nice chunk of their stock after the IPO, and mom-and-pop idjit will jump in and get Amazoned, like they did 15 years back. Sweet formula. I admire their cunning operation, to be totally honest about it…I mean, “good” and “bad” aside. They have brass balls and long-term vision.
yuppers. That IPO will come the moment they think that long term profits will be beaten by a huge payday.
That IPO is Literally Hitler!
The IPO serves no other purpose than allowing private ivestors a way to cash out and sell their shares to the public after most if not all of the money has already been made.
I have doen the grunt work launching IPOs and I agree with what you have said, but there are other reasons why IPOs are launched besides a quick pay day. Those owning the company are at their limits how much further they can grow the company, hence part of the launch usually requires the owners and senior management are no longer part of going forward. You will get some children of rich men who inherit the company and it all starts to come apart. To salvage what they can, you prepare to sell it or do a launch. I am currently cleaning up a private company for shareholders and preparing it to sell, but it will be a few years before we are there.
If all of the money has been made why do these companies stay in business then?
Isn’t the fundamental point so that you can increase the financing options of the company and hence grow it much larger than you could with private equity? And why shouldn’t you get paid for doing a good job?
Yes. However every company is in a different set of circumstances at a given point in time. As the owners are not capable due to managment incompetence, insufficient financing options, bad WCR, non-collection of AR (bad debt right Offs), etc… the new buyers or capital investment banks (for IPO) want to get rid of the bad blood and pull out of the dive before it crashes. The decision makers who put the company in jeporady will be replaced ASAP in most cases.
I agree with you second point. Those who have built or taken the compnay further should be rewarded.
I’m not sure I understand. Are you suggesting that companies have a public offering to get rid of a bad company? Why then, would anyone buy shares in this company?
No, I am saying that once a compnay Plateaus, they need to look over their options and move accordingly. If your compnay is in decline and you are losing market share and you are strapped with debt and liminted credit, you have to make a decision. Plenty of reasons to buy a company in decline– their patents, tech, customer base, key employees or simply a justifiable tax right off.
OK but are we now talking about something other than IPOs here?
I was encompassing the sale of a company along with IPOs. Your point:
“Isn’t the fundamental point so that you can increase the financing options of the company and hence grow it much larger than you could with private equity?”
Is correct. The founders/owners of a company are promptly bought out of their rights and handed a bag of cash. The financing institution sponsoring the launch have their people on board to make the transition to a public entity. It is a ruthless scheduled execution as the investors have milestones when they will get a ROI. However expectations of what an IPO will bring and how it is received in the market upon launch can be drastically different. Not revealing my last employer who did this, but the market sold us at $3 a share lower the expectations. What ensued was an immediate restructuring to boost share price (it worked).
Business is blood sport and not for the meek
True but it beats joining a band of brigands and raiding the local villages right?
Perfect for thieves who’d rather not muss their manicures.
Do you care as long as you get from A to B cheaply?
I care that a fundamental part of the financial markets has been permanently altered and perverted. But I also work in finance, and am reliant on a functioning financial market for retirement income.
The IPO was created as a way of getting a large amount of money for starting a new business. It’s basically the alternative to getting a large loan. Firms wanting to start or expand have two choices: sell shares in the venture and then pay them back with profits (and they are rarely doing this second part–see below), or get a loan from a bank.
Banks will not loan someone like Uber a ton of money, at the end of their expansion, because the bank will want to see what the money is being used for, and what the payback schedule will be. Uber won’t be able to comply, so they take the route of IPO were dumbass investors give them millions of dollars that go right in the owners pockets. Perhaps it shouldn’t bother me, but it’s a direct undermining of the entire capitalist investment model, and maybe the entire thing *should* fall down if it’s that flawed and corrupt, but this kind of stuff has way bigger ramifications than what type of taxi you call to get across town.
Many stocks no longer pay dividends, which was the method used to repay the owners (stockholders) for their investing in the business : they then become entitled to a share of the profits. If I was investing in any business, say a plumbing company with a buddy, or a real estate rental, I would absolutely expect to be entitled to half of the profits. And if the buddy said, no, you’re not going to get any profits, I would know it was a scam. But this is what many investors accept today.
The combination of zero dividend stocks and late-term IPOs is destroying the entire *reason* and function for a stock market, which is a very dangerous thing for a nation like the US, which has so much of its economy reliant on a functioning finance system. The US is extremely fragile when it comes to finance.
Nice post spicy
Mate nobody has to buy into a IPO or a growth stock if they don’t want to. And most of these investors are institutional. Trust me they are not “dumbasses”. You are aware that paying dividends retards the growth of a company right?
The way you’ve described an IPO (as an alternative to getting a loan) sounds like a good thing. Why shouldn’t there be alternatives to debt? It makes the company less risky (i.e. fragile) and means that these companies have access to capital so that they can expand their operations. Sounds great.
The point is an IPO is no longer an alternative to debt. The article I posted showed the head of Uber saying not to expect an IPO for another year or so. In other words, well after he has raised all the money he needs to for his business, he will issue an IPO and cash out. That’s fine, good for him, it’s the equivalent of enjoying the decline and smashing away while the world burns. But it spells disaster for society that we allow and support this.
And it’s easy to say “sure, you had a choice not to buy a collaterized debt obligation”. Which means absolutely zilch when the entire system nearly collapses because the banks are trading literally trillions of dollars of them (2007). The next time it will be worse.
Thank you. I see lot of rambo-protestant working ethic here. Then you see them sleeping on cardboards on the street.
This. Some guys get it…and the rest just fan the flames of total jackbooted oligarchy due to their ignorance. We all end up where were supposed to be. The Hilton or the sidewalk or somewhere in between. But dead, in the end…which gives us a major commonality. The genius of the operation is the fact those in control can divide us and conquer us. Make us squabble over turns of phrase. All while they gorge and the world burns. Brilliant.
I think you are conflating issues. If the head of Uber wants to sell his business for a profit after working hard for years, whats wrong with that? Why do you have a problem with him doing what he wants with his property?
And why can’t other people buy this business with their own money, grow it and make a return on it? How exactly is people doing a good job and getting paid for it a disaster?
The bank system crashing in 2007 had absolutely nothing to do with IPOs.
As long as all parties are insured and licensed (if necesssary) employing “legal” workers I do not.
Other than that I welcome disruption in any business, my own included, as we compete on merrit and there’s always a niche somewhere and it’s not always about price.
Already the UBER model is turning their drivers into low wage earners like the rest in the cab business so nothing new there with this Hipster “innovation.”
Correct! Control exercized without force is best. Give them , the masses, vain tools like FB and loose morality in exchange for surrending their freedom like not voting..
I don’t agree with licensing. Licensing is a way of creating a false barrier to entry and raising the price (i.e. stealing your money).
Uber is not turning anyone into anything. Nobody is forced to work for them. And frankly if getting an Uber is cheap, that’s great.
If someone creates his business and wants to sell it, fine, go for it. When one uses the public stock market, a regulated exchange, and one that has huge ramifications on the rest of the economy, as the stock market is a prime tool used by fiat bankers to inflate the currency, then one must play by certain rules. The IPO is not a tool of cashing out your business, nor a way to sell something you have created. It is a method of financing a business, like taking out a loan. That’s really all that needs to be said, and regulators should shut down any IPOS that are not used for financing purposes, but I will elaborate.
Even if one doesn’t participate in these dangerous IPO purchases, the financial industry is such a large part of the American economy, that one will be affected by the outcome. Look at Groupon. They created a coupon business, and after it was established cashed out with $700 million by selling an IPO.
Four years later, the firm has never even turned a profit. Not even a million dollars a year (at which rate it would take 700 years to BREAK EVEN on your investment). Is it because it’s still a growing business? No. Groupon has peaked, and will probably never sell more coupons going forward than it has before. Tough luck, you say? Those who paid $700 million just made a bad choice?
Again, an IPO is a source of funding, not a method of cashing out your chips. That’s why laws were created to establish and regulate IPOs. If one uses it for anything other than funding a business, that is a misuse of the law, and a form of financial fraud.
If a business is really free to do whatever the hell it wants, why not sell a billion dollars in worthless paper with the Groupon logo on it? 2 billion? 10 billion? 100 billion?
The $700 million in worthless ticker tape that groupon sold wasn’t used to purchase new servers, or hire sales staff, or expand the firm in any way. No; that was already done. It went straight into the pockets of the owners. And it was orders of magnitude more than the business would ever be justifiably sold for. Groupon has never made a profit. It sold shares at $20 that are now worth $5. Is groupon doing 1/4 the business it was doing in 2011? No. Is there any logical thing one can point to and explain why the business is 1/4 smaller than it was in 2011? No. This was all financial manipulation, and market hysteria. If you want to leave people free to make crazy hysterical decisions like this, don’t complain when the entire western financial markets crash and burn or if there is another $10 trillion taxpayer bailout around the corner.
And IPOs didn’t cause the previous crash? So what? Housing didn’t cause the crash prior to that one. That doesn’t mean we shut off our brains and stop criticizing blatantly criminal fraudulent financial tricks by the banksters, because they’re abusing a new tactic we’ve never seen before. Ever heard of Collateralized Debt Obligations? Neither had anyone else 15 years ago.
In some areas like gas fitting and asbestosremoval the license is essential IMO for safety but for driving taxis (to operate them) I think it is a cash grab forcing up prices.
I mean a license inToronto costs over $150,000 that is lunacy!
That is the government excuse for licenses. If contractors constantly fucked up asbestos removal or blew up their customers with gas fitting how long do you think they would stay in business?
IPOs have never caused any crashes anywhere. Bankers do not use the stock market to inflate the currency. This makes zero sense. Think about what you are saying. The stock market is the market for equity not debt!
No that’s not tough luck that’s stupidity. If you’re going to invest £700m you really should make sure of what you’re doing.
Anyway, essentially what you are saying then is that a private equity investor shouldn’t be allowed to publically sell his shares. If that was a law then you would effectively shut down the private equity market and ultimately the public equity too.
I’ve worked in banking for 20 years so yes I have heard of CDOs. Used to work with them 12 years back.
Let’s go back to 2006. CDOs never caused crashes anywhere. Therefore, CDOs cannot be bad. See the problem with that logic?
That’s not my logic though, although if an object doesn’t cause any problems is it bad? I suspect that you have watched the The Big Short and got a little bit carried away…
Seems many tech startups entire MO is to raise money from private investors long enough to go public…
Businesses that are successful must be viewed with skepticism if intending to go Public. Why deal with all the extra paperwork/oversight?
Spot on. This is what I tried to say earlier. Thanks for making it clearer.
It kinda popped into my head. I think the collective consciousness stirs shit up in the ether sometimes, and a guy can grab part of it on occasion, while people are busy adding to it with their thoughts. (Thanks for the thumbs-up.)
It’s like when people say that Bill Gates financed Microsoft from nothing, most of these conglomerates come from people who already had rich parents.
Yes. And then they dust off that guy-who-invented-the-billion-dollar-company-in-his-garage scam, and it takes center stage. Pushed through to the masses by that same media, owned by those same uber-rich. A red pill within a red pill within a red pill…on and on it goes.
blue pill, you mean. Blue is for fiction, red is for reality.
Actually I meant you have to take a red pill, within a red pill, within a red pill, to figure it out…semantics. Bleh.
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/c4/c40c893a06f6819733b6df35a29675b022543c0351c274fadc352623cdb66955.jpg
Heh. Funny shit right there.
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Which people said that Bill Gates financed Microsoft from nothing?
It’s often implied that Bill Gates made his entire fortune through the deal with IBM to license an OS for their PC’s. However this is not really the truth, most entrepreneurs tend to be given a boost early in life to succeed.
But who implies this? It’s well known that Bill Gates went to Harvard and had wealthy parents. And obviously he didn’t make his entire fortune through the IBM deal. He’s made a packet since then.
All entrepreneurs need a boost. The only question is from whom.
i dont know….but i know the bill gates invented computers in his basement as a poor man story is pretty common…..whether its true or not ive never looked into it too much myself. but thats the story and its fairly common.
Just sounds like something people who don’t know anything just repeat to each other. If you look him up you will find the real story.
The myth of the “Self-Made Man”
This is the Marxist argument against free markets.
There is no “avalanche of facts”. There is nowhere where this is happening unless it is a government created monopoly. Based on what you are saying, computers should be getting more expensive rather than less.
Slave wages? Slaves don’t get paid wages mate.
Marxists do not exclusively hold this argument.
Distributism can hold this argument to without resorting to the Marxist solution.
That’s great. Its still wrong.
“This is the Marxist argument against free markets [and therefore it is evil and wrong]” – this is what you are insinuating.
My counter-argument is that it’s not exclusively Marxist, and there are alternative solutions to the problem of free markets and mixed economies.
The subtle encouragement I was getting at was this: because Marxism isn’t the only alternative to the current global economies, you’re jumping the gun with your comment.
Don’t jump the gun.
The original post by Bob Smith was a mere criticism of the current environment in the vein of many RoK articles and individual comments. He wasn’t exactly suggesting a proletariat revolution.
I was simply stating what is obvious to those whose eyes are open, in my original comment. Revolution is something the individual has to do from within himself – burn down his bullshit belief system, and start over. Because nearly everything he believes is a lie, force-fed to him by his betters, to turn him into a compliant machine. And you can’t stop being a machine, unless you first realize that you are a machine. Evolution is a better term. Fuck that worldwide revolution crap – I personally don’t want to see fat women in sweat pants who thumb-fuck their cell phone keyboards, eventually running the show. No sir. I’m into internal revolution on a personal level – the betterment of oneself. If you don’t know how to escape the prison of ignorance as an individual, what good is your advice to anybody else…
Since I’m talking reality here, and not advocating anything but personal evolution, ironically, if you dig deeply enough into Marx, you’ll find out that not only did he hail from elitist roots, so did his wife. His uncle was an uber-rich industrialist and banker. One of Marx’s main arguments was that the proletariat was a revolutionary force. Do you think his uber-rich, industrialist/banker uncle, who was underwriting the project, wanted the Great Unwashed to bring him and his buddies down? No fucking way. Marx’s uncle underwrote the operation to prevent it from happening. The socialist movement, which was on fire during Marx’s time, was viewed as a danger to the rich. So Marx’s job was to splinter the movement and neutralize it. All solutions are on the table in such situations – except class warfare. That’s to be avoided at all costs. And that’s the goal of all such “movements” – protecting the interests of the elite.
Gandhi was the same kind of agent provocateur (he was actually loyal to the British Empire to his dying day; his first fast was against the caste system, which had considered changing its tenets to allow Untouchables higher status – Gandhi, despite what you have read, was a devout believer in the Hindu caste system). He started as a barrister in London; he drove a medical taxi during the Boer War, as a British soldier. Man of the people? Fuck. The movie “Gandhi” is a great example of what I’m talking about here. It was produced by an elite Hollywood movie production company, owned by the uber-rich. It won numerous Academy Awards – all handed out by those same owners. Do you really think they are going to give you the formula for taking them down in a movie? Bwahaha. No way. Martin Luther King Jr., same deal – the guy was a shill, an actor, a Pied Paper. “Peaceful, non-violent resistance” – this just makes it easier for the agents of the rich (namely the police and the Feds) to identify the dissenters, round them up, and either incarcerate them or kill them. They recycle this same script from the same playbook and use it over and over, across the ages, to neutralize the masses. But most people wouldn’t believe it, because it was not written that way in the history books, which themselves were all written exactly as those in power wanted them to be written. On and on it goes…zzzzzzzzzzzz.
I didn’t insinuate anything. You’ve essentially repeated yourself here just in more verbose fashion. I don’t care what the vein is of many RoK articles. Wrong is wrong no matter how many times you repeat it.
There is an undercurrent of unconscious socialism (and/or liberalism) running through many RoK articles, especially this one, and this needs to be called out and stamped out.
Marxism was invented to divide the proletariat and render them ineffectual, so that they wouldn’t look at the big picture and consider class warfare. It all depends on how you look at it…from one plateau, or from another.
Wasn’t Marxism all about class warfare?
In any case, the enemy you want to be looking at is the Government.
What to make of it?
Fiverr owner = Micah Kaufman (Jewish)
Uber Owner = Brian Kalanick (Jewish)
AirBnB Owners = Blecharczyk, Chesky, and Gebbia (All Jewish).
Time to pull my tin foil hat out of the closet.
Of course it was the elites all along. What was anyone thinking. And they actuaried the whole thing from the get go. They must be experienced in the subtrifuge arts for longer than we know. Before our most ancient ancestors were but a glimmer, those elitist TOIDS had volumes of books on running their colossal game. Of course it’s ‘toids as usual (‘toids – derogatory slang for ‘reptoids’). Most can’t see them but you can learn to smell them.
https://mywakenews.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/dd395-reptoid-site.jpg
Hahahaha….David Icke called. He wants his acid and tinfoil back.
Notice the U.N. logo…hmm…are they trying to tell us something here.
Money is green – lizard green on back and gray green on front. Very lizzardy. I once knew a girl named Liz in kindergarden. Since childhood I always for some reason equated the name ‘Liz’ with ‘lizard’. She was cute but something lizzardy about her. I couldn’t put my finger on it since I was only five. A few other ‘Lizzies’ throughout the years have also proved to have some sort or another of lizzardly quality about them.
Now take the name Eliza-beth, combining the reptoid ‘liz’ with the Hebrew ‘Beth’ or ‘Bethany’ or ‘Bethsheba’.
Queen ”Eliza”>>”Beth”.
It’s flat. Do with that what you will…
This is comment of the year material. You have silicon Valley down to a tee man.
Remember when that female founder of theranos was having her blood test medical shit shoved down everyone’s throats? Then it turned out she massively bullshitted and was a fraud because silicon Valley horny venture capitalists thought a blonde piece of tail might be good to invest in? Not only was she a liar, she was an idiot as well
As long as jobs are being created domestically, its good. Think of all the jobs getting shipped over seas, thats the real problem.
If we could retrieve even 50% of the outsourced jobs, it would do wonders.
That means getting rid of the minimum wage. Any business will compare all costs of operating domestically or overseas and chose the most favorable one.
Considering the frivolous lawsuits and sexual harassment laws here in the US, it may be better to deal with the political unrest overseas.
Overseas = transit cost, inferior product construction & theft of intellectual property.
If the Trump Tariffs come into play then overseas production will be scuttled. If Trump could cut the minimum wage, which shouldn’t even exist, then it’d be a complete win but he-sadly-seems to only chime in on the subject to say that he’d raise them (though this does come off as obvious Unionist/Bernie pandering).
We do need to get rid of it, the minimum wage is garbage.
Agreed
Outsourced jobs are Literally Hitler!
It’s just a way for a business to have employees without giving them benefits or even having them considered ’employees’.
They shouldn’t be considered employees IMO, and with the punitive laws that are written about “employees”, I can’t fault any business for using the contractor dodge.
These businesses are nice concepts, but the application tends to fall short. I have used airbnb and liked it, but lately rates are approaching hotel levels, and to me it’s only good for medium term to long term stays (say a week or more).
Uber, when I have priced it, is basically the same price as a taxi (and sometimes more expensive, particularly if you tip). When you consider that a taxi driver does have some training, experience, and investment in the transportation industry, whereas Uber is just selling you a flashy car and flashy website, and pocketing the difference, I’ll stick with taxi, thank you. If Uber fundamentally changed the model, like actually being a ride SHARING service, like it purports to be (ie like those ride boards in college, where you save money by agreeing to join another passenger who is also going to your destination for a lower price) then great, bring it on. But it’s really just another Yellow Cab company, albeit one with a slightly different fleet and less experienced drivers.
Don’t know anything about fiverr, but it sounds cool. My experience with all these services is the middleman company overestimates its value in the transaction. This is all stuff one can find for free on craigslist, albeit with a lot of effort.
How much training in driving does a 35 year old taxi driver get that a normal 35 year old driver does not?
Agreed on pricing. Another company will pop up shortly to take over that niche. It’s not something to fret over.
It has more to do with the logistics of the city. I’ve talked to a few taxi drivers and they know things like “when I’m going to club Freakazoid, the best place to park and wait for your ride is this alley right across the street” and “this train always comes down 3rd Avenue in the early mornings” and stuff like that. Uber drivers are more likely to just stop in the middle of the road and turn on their hazards and cause mayhem.
Cab drivers also know stuff like “You do not want to buy your weed here. That guy is a cop.” and “No, you should not pick up a prostitute from 5th Avenue, he is probably a tranny.”
I’m just not very impressed with the “idea” of Uber because it’s nothing revolutionary or really any different than yellow cab, which also now has an app that lets you order a ride. Airbnb on the other hand *is* rather different than renting hotel rooms and I like it.
THIS
Clearly your cab drivers are several cuts above mine.
But it does. It also allows you to use it like a Yellow Cab, but if you do it this way, you’re doin’ it wrong.
Whacky the Iraqi in a 40 year old Volkswagen Rabbit doesn’t exactly scream ‘training’ to me.
All of the problems with platform businesses that you describe are directly caused by buisness-crushing government regulation. The answer to that is not MORE buisness-crushing government legislation, it is less. Much much much less.
Exactly. As I have pointed out before, all those regulations that leftists love so much that can be used to punish ” those that don’t pay their fair share” only give them an advantage over the small business owner.
Large corporations can afford the lawyers and accountants necessary to jump through the hoops of those regulations. The small business owner can’t and through excessive and unnecessary regulations is forced out.
I would bet a paycheck that in next years congress some new regulations will be brought up or new executive orders to ” protect consumers” from platform businesses that instead of protecting anybody, they will give it to us up the tail pipe just like always. At the rate they are going the only jobs left besides waiting tables will be working for the government.
The advocates for “democratic socialism” in the U.S. should be marched out to a mass grave. The only difference between democratic socialism and communism is you just get to vote on who is going to redistribute your stuff.
I never thought I would live to see the day that we would see shit like that here.
I am not an advocate for any of the above mentioned business’ nor have I ever used any of their services, I just note that someone saw a market and took advantage of it and are now shitting in some big business’ big brick shithouse and it won’t be long before they are regulated out.
The government is probably going to spray roundup on my Kratom orchard for saying that.
that would be dangerous. If the gov’t sprays round-up on the kratom the round-up will become DDT
Perfect then we won’t have to worry about fungul infections from these tramps! Spray away government..
as a side note, if Round-Up becomes DDT you can fully expect to be sued by Jake “The Snake” Roberts
Yeah but, then I won’t have to worry about Zika when I do my morning naked somersaults.
You have made the comment I was going to make.
The problem is that who can do business is restricted. Access to capital comes through those few at the top of the pyramid who can borrow for nothing and own just about everything already.
But what solution do people want? More government regulation where those on top get greater (effective) control over all the property. Oh I can’t rent my* property but the wealthy through corporate ownership have all the property that is zoned and permitted for rental.
*do we even really own anything at this point with all the laws restricting use and the property taxes?
Agreed. How about first try REPEALING some laws before we go making new ones.
Everytime I hear, “There oughtta be a law”, I starting thinking, “Ok, NOW who’s gonna gonna get screwed?”
Stinky Third World taxi driver vs. Uber yuppie? Hmm guess I gotta go Uber.
LOL
That’s hilarious.
…Indian cab drivers would be an upgrade for me. Round here, the cabbies look like they could’ve been the “stars” of Al Qaeda videos
Indian cab driver
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f2/5a/7d/f25a7df188338dd0c0fff01beef0605c.jpg
Monkey bar experts
How else can you have a free market these days …
We haven’t approached a free market in over a century.
You weren’t supposed to take it that seriously. (Laws against … Free market …)
Platforms are Literally Hitler!
You’re wanted below
Literally…..
Hitler
Is literallyHitler.
Platforms are for Hillary’s hitter?
Reminds me of the TV show Elementary where a hotelier was purposefully sabotaging AirBNB-esque renters, and another where a thinly-veiled standin for Uber (and the god complexes of its devs) was portrayed as being rather evil in intent.
Good ideas turned bad because they’re run by leftists. I have to agree that laws banning them are worse.
“It may sound reasonable, but the problem is that some cities have
housing shortages, and that means costs can skyrocket when someone is
forced to look for another place to live.”
But *why* do some places have housing shortages? Read The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell for more in depth information, but there are a few concerns about these so-called “housing shortages.”
1. In a market economy there is no such thing as a shortage. If there demand of housing exceeds the supply, price goes up and people take on roommates, choose a smaller apartment, or find some other way to adjust
2. Rent control actually makes housing harder to come by because it makes it so that developers cannot profit from the construction of new housing. If landlords were allowed to charge what housing is actually worth, they would have more incentive to build more housing. Instead, they only build luxury apartments because those are the only ones that rent control does not apply to.
3. Environmental regulation drives up the price of real estate. People are getting pushed out of their apartments because places are being converted into short-term rentals. This new demand for short-term rentals due to apps like Airbnb drives up the demand for housing in general. So if the demand goes up, prices goes up, AND DEVELOPERS NOW HAVE MORE INCENTIVE TO BUILD MORE HOUSING. But if environmental regulations prevent them from doing that…
You may have a valid point but it’s important to remember that politics and economics are inseparable. Current housing problems are a result of bad policy which has led to the creation of a system that strives for maximum profit in the short term. Developers don’t want to build affordable houses when they can make more money from luxury city centre apartments.
The solution is a mass government house building scheme like the sort that happened in 1930s Britain. It would screw a lot of people in the ass by devaluing the value of property but they’ll get over it.
Britain has devolved into nearly a third world country. So yeah, I’ll avoid their “solutions” to things.
No, the British just aren’t representated properly by their government because they can falsely believe that labour and conservatives are different when in fact they are both Blairite globalists.
Can you explain why a mass house building scheme would fail?
Only 60-70 years ago pepole started to buy homes en mass but the shit political classes restricted new build so much that places like London are devolving into a medieval rental society.
That won’t happen unless someone like Jeremy Corbin gets elected. Properties around the “green belt” accumulated so much values that every new mass housing scheme is seen as literally Hitler.
I know it wont happen which is a shame. Neither labour or the conservatives want to anger all those middle England voters.
You from the UK?
Here’s the deal. Its not the job of landlords to give you a home or make sure everyone in a particular city has a home. It is their property and they can do what they like with it. It is not up to them to manage the local government created housing “crisis”. If you don’t like the rent you are paying you are free to move to an area where the rent is lower or offer to buy the home.
And as for taxi drivers who spend time and money to get licenses (read: artificial barriers to entry), that is their fault and the fault of the government requiring licenses. Why should I have to pay more for a taxi just because an illegitimate trade says I should? They don’t have some special right to more of my money.
You sound like J.G. Wentworth: “It’s my money and I want it NOW!” lolz
These platform businesses are helping to concentrate wealth into the hands of a small minority whilst decreasing the wages of everyone else. Most uber drivers earn bad salaries compared to traditional drivers furthermore uber is working to eliminate human drivers altogether which will further concentrate wealth.
Look….its probably said somewhere in the comments….but these businesses thrive because the hotel industry is taxed to death and has to thus overcharge you out the ass. seriously a half way decent hotel can only be found by getting lucky on hotel deal websites which isnt a 100% guarantee.
the price of hotels is simply obscene no matter how you cut it. I’d love to stay in hotels every night….and 30 bucks a night i probably would. but the only 30 dollar hotel I’ll find is a crack hotel and most of those are motel 6’s charging at least 50. its not worth it to most people so alternatives arise. then we have the ever lovely complimentary breakfast that translates to plastic food. when i was in germany, hotels gave you complimentary food too, but it was fresh straight out of the bakery hand made….i’ll pay for that. not frozen waffles and plastic eggs that gets passed off as the infamous continental breakfast. if you dont want to stay in a crack hotel prepare to pay 100 bucks a night unless you get lucky on hoteldeals.
i agree with the premise that these platform businesses suck….but well something needs to be done to make travel possible.
same with uber….taxi’s are great….but shit is expensive as hell. theres no reason they need to charge 3-4 bucks a mile or whatever their ridiculous price is
this is how these businesses come about….the main ones have to charge so much either because greed or because they are taxed to death.
Isn’t kind of strange that when the Soviet union collapsed and engineers, teachers, and other professionals stopped getting paid and had to resort to driving taxi cans around Gorky Park to survive it was seen as implosion of a non-viable economic system and now, 25 years later, driving part-time as an uber driver is seen as a great career in the modern world? I’m seeing ads, “Drive for uber” on tv.
I don’t understand the premise of Uber: why do these people own a $75k luxury SUV if in order to make payments on said SUV, they have to drive around 12 hours a day chauffering strangers around? How does this make sense???
I’ve heard that it’s actually pretty good scratch. Not confirmed that of course, I have no interest in carting around strangers in my automobile unless they are 22, female and super hot. Even then…
Airbnb: so I’m going to rent out my bed so that a stranger can jerk off in it? all to make a few extra bucks.
Welcome to the new economy fuckers: where we’re all part-time b&b owners and part-time uber drivers
So instead of having a dedicated class making an unenviable but livable wage as taxi drivers, now we have a much larger number of people working to make a “little extra scratch” ?
I still don’t understand how any of this shit is legal: I thought you had to be zoned to rent to different people each night, i.e. be a hotelier, a b&b propreitor etc.
Same thing with being a taxi driver: I thought you need a chauffer’s license?
Back when I got my learner’s permit in high school, they had all these stipulations attached: no driving at night, no driving with more than 1 passenger, etc. But now it seems none of the rules apply.
Maybe I will start the uber version of a medical doctor: who says i need a license to practice? Monopoly I say! Artificial barriers to entry I say! Free markets I say!
I guess the rich fucks have their protective guilds and associations (American Medical Association, the state bar, etc.)
The “rules” are what fucked up the market so much that things like Uber and AirBnB are able to thrive. The “rules” are nothing more than socialistic licensing schemes and money grabs by government. They created this mess, the market responded logically as it always does, with something better.
True. That’s why the best economic decision any of the hotel chains could do right now would be to make campaign contributions to city mayors and aldermen with the expectation that they will pass a law banning Airbnb.
I sense that you and I have very little in agreement regarding economic theories.
All I know is that if it were me who proposed the idea of uber to a bunch of VC’s, they would have laughed my ass out of the room: “Hey, I have this multi-billion dollar idea: we’re all going to rent out a spare bedroom to people who are either too poor too cheap to afford a hotel room. And we’re all gonna be part-time taxi drivers. To make a little extra scratch, ‘ya dig?”
“He wants to sell his paintings but the market is slow
They’re only paying him two grams now
For a one-man abstract show”
The premise of Uber Black is that it is the high-end service, right? So the cars are luxury cars, escalades, etc? Are the drivers of these cars the owners? Or are wealthy people letting some guy drive their car at night and then splitting the money?
“Hey baby, see this sweet luxury car? Cost me $75k. All i have to do is drive around at night 12 hours giving rides to strangers. In 10 years, this baby is all mine.”
So can I start the uber equivalent for offering teaching services? Oh no wait, the teachers have a union and you have to pay dues etc in order to teach. Otherwise, you’re just a freelance tutor. I guess the secret is to look for industries with no protective guilds or unions or associations and then skull fuck them.
Airbnb: I’ve turned down the bed for you, you cheap lout. Now, please, commence with jerking off all over the fresh linens. And I’ve taken the liberty of placing a mint on the pillow. Mentos, never certs. We keep it classy in this flop house.
Must resist … urge … to quote … Eugene V. Debs …
This is savage neoliberalism at its finest. Billion-dollar “business angels” create the opportunity for some people to concur with others, at the cost of a heightened competition and of course externalities. Look at AirBNB: it gives an advantage to landlords (more money from short-term rentals) and rich guys (you can rent a whole beautiful flat for the price of a regular hotel room) but fucks up all those who are not landlords, i.e. most of the middle class who used to live in cities without owning their walls. Guys, honestly, fuck “the market,” what I want is a world where we can live at peace without being overrun by avid Jews, hords of immigrants or jerks who want to take away all girls and money. Men should learn anew to be happy with but a fair share of the pie, without trying to get it all. Fucking American “dream” based on the fiction that everyone can be a billionaire or try and overlook the consequences.
The problem with “fair share” is that I’m never asked for my input on what is “fair”, it’s simply decided for me by third parties.
So no. No thanks.
Of course it is. Our problem is that third parties are all too often made of cronies and Leftists. But remember the Middle Ages and every genuine traditional society in the world: the merchant caste is not allowed to grow without spiritual supervision. Let the merchant caste run everything and what you get is a depleted world, a lot of rivalries and a lot of frustration given all the disappointed hopes. Look at the current elite: it has thrived on the expense of most Whites, who have been dispossessed of their job and regular wives. Can we let a John Steward fuck around with his $80 million and fuck dozens of whores whereas most blue-collar guys struggle to even pay their rent? Definitely not: this kind of guy should be recognized as a sinner, stripped of his undeserved money and publicly flogged for his misbehaviour. Do that a lot and you get a society where people are glad to live with but few things and are grateful to be even alive.
Protestantism was the beginning of the decline of the West.
try North Korea while it’s still around.
I agree, neoliberal economics is responsible for a lot of the problems in the world today.
They’ll never be a return to old fashioned patriarchy (which a lot of guys on here advocate) unless ordinary working class guys have the chance to own a house and raise a family. Without the opportunity to do this we’ll all be reduced to surviving of part time work and casual sex non consequential sex
Yeah, that’s really the elephant in the room that nobody talks about around here.
AirBNB means that guys who are not rich, such as myself, get to stay in nice places we couldn’t otherwise afford to.
The free market has atomized American society and caused most of the problems that are bitched about here on ROK. The race to the bottom has killed off community, citizenship, and culture.
The apartment and housing shortages are caused by rent control, licensing requirements and land use laws. It is not caused by the sharing economy.
If my labor is worth $100,000 per year and the government says that anything I make over $50,000 will have an 100% tax, I’ll work until I earn $50,000 and take the rest of the year off.
The same with rent. If a rental unit is worth $1000 per month and the government only allows me to charge $500, a lot of would be renters won’t rent.
But rent control does not apply to “luxury” apartments, so landlords have an incentive to invest in luxury apartment units creating a shortage of rental units of people of moderate means. This is why liberal cities like New York, DC and San Francisco have high rents.
Land use laws which limit the supply of land that can be converted to housing also increases the cost and rents of land and thus housing. This is why moderate houses in San Francisco can cost close to $1 million.
By restricting the sharing the economy you hurt a) normal people who could rent their houses or drive for extra money and b) consumers who want these services.
These anti free market laws only help big business like the hotel industry and taxi companies. These anti free market laws make it harder for normal people to succeed.
This is not exactly true. Land use laws exist because there is already a high demand over land use and thus aims at offering more people the ability to get their own share of land. The problem comes when too many people want to have their own share, whether short-term or long-term, of the same space. Both “rent units” and AirBNB apartments have the same effect: they reduce the offer of long-term apartments for those who do not benefit from any of these reserved ones. In both cases the problem comes from a very high demand and a lack of supply.
Cut down globalism, get the rich and the immigrants out of the main cities: demand will fall, the prices will fall and those who have a legitimate right to live in these cities (say, those whose grandparents helped to actually build them) will be able to live there again.
totally disagree. I´m a landlord in a European big city and none of them are ellegible to tourist oriented. ARNB properties are usually close to the city center or to nightlife areas.
Also if are going to be involved in this kind of rented properties you should outsource the land management (something i hate) because there are to many people in and out, you´d need professional cleaning, law advisory… not my business thanks.
the whole analysis is rather very specific scenario based. My personal and ideological nationalist based rule of the thump is the following: Market of goods and services should in the general case be free. Communist countries proved this. A few exceptions may be strategically important products eg weapons products, and corrosive of ethics of society eg widespread open porn industry and prostitution. Market of jobs except perhaps an elite of highly specialized in their field, should be controlled and protected in national basis. The modern western capitalist countries with the open borders proved this.
”Airbnb is driving up rents in many cities” I don’t actually believe that. That sounds like special pleading from the hotel lobby. The hotel lobby that so grossly overcharges for its services. More competition please!
If you are in a tight market with low apartment vacancy, then removing several thousand apartments from the market and using them for different purpose will push up rents.
Theoretically, it might, in some circumstances, have a marginal impact. In reality, it isn’t a real issue.
A scroll through the comments reveals the typical purple pill lunacy I’ve come to expect here. Bob Smith seems to be the only one who gets it. I will just say this: all you smug, cheap shits who support these services – it is you who will suffer in the long run. Not only will these cheap services cease to be cheap as soon as the market monopolies are achieved, but your job is next. Today you are laughing because you are not a hotelier or a cab driver. But nearly every single job on the planet is under threat from these types of platform businesses, and the huge multinational investors responsible for them are the only ones who win long term.
The patriotism of goods is a fallacy. Why you should pay more for the same product for example a smartphone, or a kilogram of grains? It is an extra fee to pay for what? Have you lived in a small town, and have to shop from a few local rich merchants, overpriced shit? They were the first ones to hire illegal immigrants, to save a few bucks. Now after the crisis they started to bitch because people are spending more carefully and even have adds to spend “locally” . Of course if you say that you should hire local people it is racist, they made even laws against it. To sum it up. market of goods and services should be almost free. market of jobs should be closed in national level, and protected.
I believe things like Uber and AirBNB are were but pilot projects with the Silicon Valley oligarchs to determine how globalists can bypass regulations and licensing at the municipal, state and federal levels. After all, they have bought out politicians and bureaucrats and all levels, everyone thinks its “cool”, and the media will never expose them.
Enter FinTech….a bigger game plan. Same “platform model” you describe but for central control of banking, bypassing the financial regulations of sovereign nations – a great annoyance for those who intend to rule at a global level.
Good reason for alarm….I was surprised how far and fast it has spread globally. The media is now starting to sing its praises.
http://www.businessinsider.com/8-18-2016-fintech-ecosystem-financial-technology-research-and-business-opportunities-2016-8
In my town there’s only 1 taxi company, and most of their drivers are assholes and frauds. So I’m really happy Uber broke their monopoly
Uber etc are a godsend in SE Asian countries and elsewhere where dishonest local cabbies are notorious for driving around in circles, jacking up fares, and cheating travellers any way they can. Pre-set fares make it much easier to get around when the local cabs can’t be trusted