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I feel we don’t talk enough about the capitalism to fascism pipeline.
@aral What's the point of saying that if they are twin brothers
I assume you're aware of Gary Stevenson's work on how exactly the mechanism functions, and his idea of what to do about it?
@eswag “The problem can actually be solved quite neatly and easily, allowing, but subtly forcing, the descendants of the very wealthy to spend their wealth over the long term, without any resort to taxation.”
Yeah, I don’t think so. We should be taxing the absolute shit out of billionaires and ensuring such wealth cannot accrue to begin with. Longer term, we should have universal housing, healthcare, and basic income for all instead of a system that sacrifices our habitat and well being in exchange for profit in the pockets of relative handful.
“Keep everything else the same but force folks to sell houses after 150 years” ain’t gonna cut it in my opinion.
The main thrust is that forcing owners to liquidate wealth is the proposed way to deal with inequality.
I think the 150 year ownership thing is a very UK-specific solution. Example - the sale of the Duchies of Cornwall & Lancaster (that are waaay older than 150 years), nets more than ￡1.5bn together.
You don't wait 150 years, you sell the wealth at inheritance time if it's older than 150. There are many old wealth trusts like this. Depending how old & crusty your country is, ymmv.
Leaving aside the huge public opinion misdirection in almost all politics, the main problem with taxing wealth is figuring out who owns what every n years, according to the UK the last time the Labour party seriously considered trying it in 1974.
Doing it at the time of inheritance is much easier because everyone (including the beneficiaries) actively advertises their ownership of the inheritance, in order to get legal protection for it.
Perhaps naively, I think, if property ownership is in doubt, give notice, 2 years grace to announce ownership, then the state owns it. See how fast the shady ownership schemes unravel & the owners come forward.
Trouble is, you still need a catalog of all assets. Today's IT certainly makes that more feasible than back in the 70s.
@aral it's very short...
@aral pipeline? it's more like a hyphen.
@aral Maybe it's just because it was animated, but the alt-right playbook from @innuendostudios connected the dots for me. I think the main one was "I Hate Mondays" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yts2F44RqFw .
But the whole series hangs together to show that for many "capitalists" money is just a proxy for restoring the "natural hierarchy" and echoing the Wilhoit quote on conservatives, the law protects and does not bind those higher in the hierarchy (more money) but binds and does not protect those lower on the hierarchy (less money).
Any resistance to the hierarchy (e.g. toward equality or democracy) is seen an "unnatural" and is to be rejected. It's against the "natural" order, so it will be defeated in long time, so best not to associate with it now.
Do you want to talk about Thiel and the Dark Enlightment?
[Socialism enters the conversation]