the wealth gap isn't widening because of capitalism it's widening because asset owners benefit from monetary expansion while wage earners suffer from currency debasement the cantillon effect isn't a market failure, it's a policy feature

jacobin ran a piece titled "social democracy won the century and lost the future." even the marxists are admitting it now sweden's social democrats ran the country for most of the 20th century. highest taxes, biggest welfare state, strongest unions. the model every socialist likes to point at as proof it works and now they can't win. the party that "won the century" is watching its coalition collapse. the welfare state they built is unsustainable. the immigration they championed backfired. the growth they assumed would fund everything stopped growing the socialist response: we just didn't do enough. same answer every time. same answer for 100 years. the model failed because the model was wrong. the response is always: more model, more government

socialists like to say things like “cancel all government debt” just proving to everyone and themselves that they have zero understanding of how an economy works if they cancelled all government debt, it doesn’t mean that debt disappears it requires a bailout i’m unsure as to whether they ignore this fact on purpose, or whether they are just incompetent

from each according to ability, to each according to need. beautiful line. who wrote it? marx. who enforces it? some idiot with a gun because ability doesn't volunteer itself. need doesn't self report. someone has to decide what you can give and what you deserve. that someone is the state. and the state always decides the same thing. you can always give more. you need less the market does this without a gun. you give what someone will pay you. you get what you can afford. voluntary on both sides. no committee, no assessment. and most importantly, no force marx's version sounds kinder. it isn't. it just moves the coercion one step back. instead of the employer telling you what your work is worth, the state tells you. instead of the market setting the price, the party sets it. every society that tried this formula ended up with a small group deciding everyone's giving and getting. from each according to ability meant from each according to what the party demands. to each according to need meant to each according to what the party allows. under the guise of liberation, rationing was put in place

marx's entire system rests on one idea: labor creates value. it doesn't. consumers create value by wanting things. labor is just how you make what they want marx got this backwards. so did everyone who followed him. 150 years of theory built on a sentence that's obviously false to anyone who's tried to sell something nobody wanted to buy the entire history of marxist economics is people explaining why a theory that fails every empirical test is actually correct and the tests are wrong. that’s not economics

the communist says property is theft. nothing should be owned. everything should be shared. the collective decides who gets what but "the collective" doesn't exist. only individuals exist. the collective is a word for the group of individuals who make the decisions. they decide who gets the house, the food, the medicine. they call it distribution. it's ownership by another name the difference between private ownership and collective ownership is who decides. under private ownership, you decide what to do with your things. under collective ownership, the committee decides what to do with your things. you don't own them. the committee does. the committee calls itself the people every collective in history had a small group that decided for everyone. the collective farm had a manager. the collective factory had a director. the collective economy had a planner. the people who said they abolished ownership became the owners you can't abolish property. you can only transfer it. from the person who built it to the person who took it. the collective doesn't share. it confiscates. and the people who confiscate always like to keep the best parts for themselves

the dollar has lost 98% of its purchasing power since 1913 this isn't a product of capitalism its a product of the welfare system

the keynesian says the economy is slow. the solution: spend. the government borrows, spends, and the economy grows. when it recovers, the government stops spending and pays back the debt except the second part never happens. the government spends in the downturn. it spends in the recovery. it spends in the boom. it spends always. the debt goes up in bad times and up in good times. borrowing becomes permanent. the keynesian says: this time we'll pay it back. the politician says: yes. the recession ends. the spending continues. the debt grows. the next recession comes. the keynesian says: spend more. the debt grows more. the cycle repeats you can't cure a debt problem with more debt. you can't grow an economy by taking money from the productive and giving it to the political. you can't create wealth by consuming it. the keynesian acts on all three and has the audacity to call it stimulus and the result? the economy ends up with debt it can't repay, inflation it cannot control, and growth reliant on the next injection

the socialist says wages are unfair. the worker produces more than he earns. the difference is stolen. the state should set a fair wage but who knows what a fair wage is? the worker thinks he's worth more. the employer thinks he's worth less. the market settles it: the wage is what the employer will pay and the worker will accept. both agree. both walk away satisfied the socialist says the agreement isn't fair because the worker has no choice. he has to work. so the wage is coerced. but the worker always has a choice: work for this employer, work for another, or start his own. the constraint is reality, not the employer. you have to eat. that's not exploitation. that's biology the fair wage the socialist sets is always higher than the market wage. the employer who can't pay it fires the worker. the worker who was underpaid is now unpaid. the socialist calls this justice. the worker calls it unemployment you can't legislate value. you can legisulate cost. the fair wage raises the cost of labor. the cost of labor reduces the demand for labor. the visible winner keeps his job at the new wage. the invisible loser never gets hired. the socialist tends to count the first and ignores the second

the socialist says some things are public goods. roads, schools, hospitals, parks. they benefit everyone. so everyone should pay. the state provides them. the market can't but "public good" is a category with no limit. food is a public good. everyone eats. water is a public good. everyone drinks. shelter is a public good. everyone sleeps. by the socialist's logic, everything is a public good and everything should be state run the test isn't whether something benefits everyone. it's whether the state provides it better than the market. and the state never does. the state road has potholes. the state school has bad teachers you can't fire. the state hospital has lines you can't skip. the state park has maintenance that never happens the private provider serves you because you pay him and can stop paying. the state provider serves you because you're forced to pay and can't stop. one has an incentive. the other has a budget. the difference is why one improves and the other degrades the public good isn't public. it's political. it serves the politician who funds it, the bureaucrat who runs it, and the contractor who builds it. the public pays. the public gets what the public is given. and the public can't leave

marx wrote 3 volumes about how workers should run the economy. he never ran so much as a lemonade stand. his income came from engels, whose father owned a factory. marx was funded by capitalism while writing the book that said capitalism should end he also never worked a factory job in his life. the closest he got was reading about one. in a library. for 30 years. on someone else's money the prophet of the proletariat was a bourgeois intellectual who married a noblewoman and let his friend's factory profits pay his rent. you couldn't write a satire story this good

The Austrian Economics Iceberg

the idea that the world is running out natural resources, or that resources are ‘finite’ is simply untrue if the total number of mineable surface area on out planet was one football field, we as humans have mined only the size of a small 70 by 40 cm table that’s not even considering breaking through the surface if the total volume of the earth was equal to an olympic swimming pool we have only mined as much volume as half a glass of water even if we double the entirety of the planets mining depth we mine one glass of water out of an entire olympic swimming pool resources are abundant. and they will become more and mode abundant the more time and resources we attribute to their mining and extraction

marx said after the revolution the state would wither away. no more coercion. no more hierarchy. just freedom name one time it happened russia. the state grew. china. the state grew. cuba. the state grew. venezuela. the state grew. every single time. the state that was supposed to dissolve became the most powerful institution in the country marx's mistake was thinking the state was a tool. it's not a tool. it's a living thing. it seeks its own survival. you don't hand it total power and expect it to let go. it doesn't work that way. it never has the revolution doesn't abolish the state. it becomes the state. the commissar replaces the ceo. the party replaces the board. the worker stays exactly where he was. except now he can't quit

marx said history is class struggle. oppressor vs oppressed. the pattern repeats in every era. the names change. the structure doesn't but the real struggle isn't between classes. it's between the productive and the predatory. the entrepreneur who builds and the politician who takes. the worker who creates and the bureaucrat who regulates marx put the capitalist and the worker in conflict. but they're on the same side. both produce. both trade. both need each other voluntarily. the real conflict is between both of them and the state that taxes, regulates, and conscripts them marx's class lens misses the actual division. it's not capital vs labor. it's the market vs the state. marx sided with the state without knowing it. his solution to exploitation was a bigger exploiter

a right that requires someone else's labor isn't a right. it's a claim you have a right to speak. no one has to listen. you have a right to worship. no one has to build you a church. you have a right to trade. no one has to trade with you. these are negative rights; they require only that others leave you alone the socialist says you have a right to healthcare. but healthcare is a doctor's labor. a right to healthcare is a right to the doctor's time, skill, and energy. the doctor didn't consent to serve you. the state compels him; or compels someone else to pay him on your behalf you have a right to housing. but housing is built by labor; the carpenter's, the electrician's, the plumber's. a right to housing is a claim on their work. they built it. you receive it. the state mediates the transfer and calls it justice you have a right to education. but education is a teacher's labor. a right to education is a right to the teacher's mind, preparation, and presence. the teacher is paid; but the payer is forced. the transaction isn't voluntary. it's a three party arrangement where the third party never consented every positive right follows this structure. someone wants. someone provides. someone else is forced to pay. the state calls it a right. the austrian calls it a chain; one link for the provider, one for the taxpayer, one for the consumer. everyone is bound. no one is free the difference between a negative right and a positive right is the difference between being left alone and being served. the first costs nothing. the second costs someone's labor. and if the labor is taken without voluntary exchange, it's not a right. it's a draft rothbard said the only genuine rights are property rights; because property rights require no one to act. they require only that others refrain. the right to your body, your labor, your property; these cost others nothing. they ask only for restraint the moment your right requires someone else to work, you're not exercising a right. you're imposing an obligation. and a society built on imposed obligations isn't a society of rights. it's a society of masters and servants; where everyone is master of someone and servant of someone else that's not freedom. that's a chain in a circle

What the actual fuck? How did we all know and he didn't?

the keynesian formula is c + i + g. consumption plus investment plus government spending equals output. to grow the economy, increase any of the three this is the fundamental error. it treats all spending as equivalent. a family buying groceries is the same as a company building a factory is the same as the government building a bridge to nowhere but they're not the same. consumption satisfies a want. investment builds future production. government spending takes from one pocket and puts in another and takes a cut for the bureaucracy in between the bridge to nowhere employs workers. the keynesian counts their wages as growth. but the bridge produces nothing. it connects no one. it generates no revenue. it's pure consumption of capital dressed as investment the austrian asks: what would those workers have built if the government hadn't taxed the money and redirected it? the keynesian doesn't ask. because in his equation, it doesn't matter. a dollar spent is a dollar of gdp. the hole dug and filled is as valuable as the factory built and producing this is why keynesian economies accumulate debt without growth. the spending counts as output. the output produces nothing. the nothing requires more spending. the cycle never ends because the equation can't distinguish creation from waste

the socialist says: cancel the government debt held by the central bank. it's owed to ourselves. just erase it. problem solved but the debt isn't owed to ourselves. it's owed to the central bank, which created the money to buy it. cancel the bond and the central bank's balance sheet collapses. the currency it backs collapses with it the debt exists because the government spent more than it collected. the bond is the record of that gap. cancel the bond and the gap doesn't disappear it just shows up somewhere else. in inflation. in a weaker currency. in higher borrowing costs for everyone else the socialist thinks debt is an accounting trick. it's not. it's a claim on future production. you can default on it openly or you can default through inflation. either way, someone pays. the someone is always the citizen who holds the currency the danger isn't the cancellation. it's that a major presidential candidate can propose erasing trillions and be taken seriously

the socialist says water, energy, and transport are too essential to leave to the market. they should be under public control. the essentials belong to everyone but the word "essential" has no limit. food is essential. shelter is essential. medicine is essential. clothing is essential. communication is essential. everything you need to live is essential. the criterion applies to the entire economy the socialist doesn't want public control of some things. he wants public control of everything. he just starts with the things people agree are essential and expands from there. the word "essential" is the wedge. once you accept that the state should control the essentials, the state defines what's essential. and everything becomes essential eventually the private company that runs water is accountable to customers who can complain, regulators who can fine, and shareholders who can sell. the public company that runs water is accountable to a minister who is accountable to nobody between elections privatization has problems. but the problems are usually regulation, not ownership. the water company charges too much because the regulator allows it. the solution isn't to nationalize the company. it's to fix the regulation. or better, introduce competition the socialist says the essentials are too important for profit. but profit is the signal that tells the producer whether he's serving the customer. remove the profit and you remove the signal. the essential service stops being a service and becomes a budget line public control of the essentials isn't public ownership. it's public monopoly. and a monopoly without the profit signal is a monopoly without feedback. it produces what the committee decides. the customer takes what's offered. the essential becomes rationed. and rationing is always the end of public control

"why should capital get the residual claim" is a question that only sounds deep if you ignore what residual means the residual is what's left after everyone else has been paid. the worker gets his wage whether the business profits or fails. the supplier gets paid. the landlord gets rent. the bank gets interest. all of these are fixed claims contracted in advance, paid first, guaranteed the shareholder gets what remains. if the business loses money, the fixed claimants still get paid. the shareholder gets the loss. if the business makes nothing, the shareholder gets nothing. if the business goes bankrupt, the shareholder is last in line the residual claim isn't a privilege. it's the position of maximum risk. the person who accepts it accepts the most uncertainty. that's why he gets the upside; because he bears the downside "workers take risks too" yes. the worker risks losing his job. but the worker keeps the wages he already earned. the shareholder risks losing the entire investment; every dollar he put in. the worker's downside is bounded. the shareholder's is total "most shareholders bought existing shares, the company got nothing" the company got the capital when it issued the share. the secondary buyer pays the original investor for the right to the residual claim. without the secondary market, the original investor wouldn't invest because he couldn't exit. the liquidity of the secondary market is what makes the primary investment possible "capital doesn't work, think, or create" capital is stored work. it's the wages someone earned and didn't spend. it's the consumption someone deferred so the resources could go to production instead. to say capital doesn't work is to say the person who saved his labor didn't labor "we could pay capital a fixed return and give the residual to workers" this exists. it's called a cooperative. workers can organize firms this way any time. the fact that most workers choose to take a fixed wage instead of the residual claim tells you which they prefer. the worker who wants the residual can have it; by starting a business, buying shares, or joining a co-op. most don't, because the fixed wage is safer the real question isn't why capital gets the residual. it's why anyone would provide capital without it. the residual claim is the incentive to invest, to monitor, to allocate. remove it and you remove the mechanism that directs resources to their most productive use the socialist wants to keep the investment but remove the incentive. keep the capital but remove the reward. the result every time is the same; the capital stops flowing, the investment stops happening, and the economy that needed both stagnates you can redesign the accounting. you can't redesign reality