Working harder instead of prioritizing.
Some places are worse for this than others. London, for example, chews up 20-somethings in shitty accommodation, underpaid jobs and plenty of places to spend the few pennies you’ve got left. Eventually, 95% leave the city to actually build a life after they’ve realised that London will never deliver a suitable lifestyle for them.
Banks.
Using YOUR money to make a lot of money from investing in horrible companies.Not just investing. Every time banks loan money to someone they steal from everyone.
Fractional reserve banking means that banks only need to have a fraction of the money their customers have in accounts actually in reserve, based on the idea that not everyone will withdraw all their money from the bank at the same time. For example, if people have deposited €1000 at a bank, the bank may be allowed to have €1500 is customers’ accounts, because only a fraction needs to be covered by actual money. The rest is just entries in a database.
Because of the difference between what was deposited and what they are allowed to have as ‘virtual’ money in accounts, they can loan out the difference. So when someone asks for a €500 loan, they approve it and put €500 in the customers account without actually having more money in reserve. They basically create that €500 out of thin air. (Which the customer eventually has to pay back with real money).
Because the total amount of money actually represents the total amount of value created (e.g. by labour and manufacturing), and they just created more money without actually creating more value, the bank just caused a little bit of inflation by issuing that loan. Meaning every time they issue a loan everyone else’s money becomes worth a little less, and this difference eventually ends up in the bank’s pockets.
They only cause inflation by lending if nothing of value is created by the money they lend out, though.
Lending just shifts the value creation to after the money is created, with some risk in that some value isn’t created after the money has been created to represent the outcome. If we didn’t expand the money supply, we would have severe deflation.
Capitalism
Show me a working alternative that’s actually been implemented in the real and I’ll happily shift.
Until then I’ll happily stick with a well-regulated, Nordic-style market economy.
Zapatista territories and Rojava (until recently dissolved by force), and a bunch of smaller examples worldwide (including many tribes that live more traditionally/non-capitalist).
They are definitely proof that alternatives exist. Whether they can scale to governing a state of disperate cultures and peoples is a different question.
But you did answer with some real alternatives, which I’ll look into more. Thank you.
Car finance. It’s so prevalent, I think I’m literally the only one on our road that doesn’t drive a 1 year old, brand new, financed car. Literally everyone is like “but it’s only $499/month and I can just hand it back when I want a new one”. Well shit, yes, but try tallying up what you’ve paid for running all these new cars every three years.
Save up instead and continue saving after you bought the car. Then you can afford a different car later.
Save up instead and continue saving after you bought the car. Then you can afford a different car later.
Yes I get the point but I guess it depends on you considering a car a luxury or a requirement. Where I live, it’s definitely a luxury - we’ve got great public transport.
