Well, I found my first topic. Over the past few years, I've come to notice that people love posting memes that only sound good if you have zero education on the topic they address. A lot of these focus on the topics of finance and economics. Now, don't misunderstand me: both of these topics are chock full of some serious bullshit that seems purposefully designed to frustrate everyone, but there are some basic ideas about which some people are getting incredibly stupid.
The most recent example is a tweet from some idiot going by Commie Warlock, who apparently thinks economics is magic. It reads: "humans really made up paper money and to give it value said it's value was based on a metal which also has a made up value and then convinced everyone again that those made up values are constantly decreasing and that they determine whether or not a child can eat".
Holy shit. I don't even know where to begin with this.
Okay, first, I'm glad those long ago humans did that, because I'm really happy not to have to carry every bit of disposable wealth in a cart everywhere I go in order to pay for things. The barter system is crap if you want a modern society. If you don't, fine, but don't complain to me when your inexpertly planted crops fail and you can't figure out how to forge your own shovel. A medium of trade is vital for anything beyond small tribal societies, and I'm happy to have the opportunity to live past the age of fifty (fingers crossed). So quit whining about the existence of money and actually study fiscal policy.
Fine, there are problems with our financial system, which I will happily concede. It's basically a giant casino where the wealthy place bets with people's lives. It used to serve a worthwhile purpose, but that purpose is long forgotten, it seems.
The second issue I have is pretty much any leftist meme decrying "scarcity" and usually claiming scarcity is artificially created by the rich. There problem here is that many leftists don't bother to actually study economics. "Scarcity" is an economic term that merely means that a particular thing is not available in infinite quantities. For example, food is scarce because there simply isn't an infinite amount of food. On Earth, air is generally not scarce, depending on where you are. This is why we have to pay for or put work into getting food, whereas we don't usually have to do anything special to breathe. Scarcity has nothing to do with the relative availability of any particular thing. It just means that if a thing is scarce and people want it, it has economic value of some kind. So please quit screaming about it.
Now, if you want to talk about shortages, fine, as long as you recognize that shortages rarely have anything to do with the global availability of some commodity and much more to do with the difficulty in storing, transporting, and distributing said commodity.
Okay, I think I've settled down now. Have a great day.
As a leftist when I start yelling about scarcity, it's exactly because it's been manufactured to create economic value. In America we have more housing than is required to house everyone and more food than needed to feed everyone. In both cases we artificially create scarity to increase the value of these goods. When it comes to an actual fundamental supply these goods are not scarce. I'm not saying we shouldn't have to pay for food or housing, I'm saying that if someone is unable to exchange currency for food or housing we as a society have decided they should be homeless or they should starve. I call bullshit on this. I say we are all morally complicit in their suffering and in thier death. Scarcity in these cases is a choice we as a society have made. It's bullshit because in an actual do we have these things sense, it's unreal. This is why I rant about things not being scarce. To remind people that the supply is there.
ReplyDeleteAnd those are discussions that can be had. But don't call it scarcity! How would you like it if people called every instance of attraction between two objects "gravity"? Do you want to spend every waking hour screaming, "That's not gravity, it's fucking magnetism!"?
DeleteI don't. So just don't call it scarcity. Call it shortages, or artificial rarity (like deBeers does with diamonds), or price manipulation. You have your science, I have mine. Let's show some respect for it when you want to talk about it.
In terms of lack of housing and food in the US, you're absolutely right. There are lots of things we could do to fix these issues, and they have nothing to do with the relative availability of these resources. So talk about the actual problems. Talk about restrictive building codes that prevent the building of affordable housing in significant enough numbers to help. Talk about urban sprawl that puts a lot of those available homes too far away from jobs to do the poor who need them any good, because what good is a house an hour drive away from your job if you don't have a car? Talk about the actual issues and educate yourself on the problems. Because one mistake a lot of leftists make, particularly in housing, is they forget the three most important aspects of real estate: location, location, location. Geographically, a lot of available homes are in places they wouldn't do the poor any friggin' good. Yes, there are desolate suburbs full of empty houses. Do you plan to warehouse people there? Where are they going to get food? Where is their job? What about schools? How do you get all these people to the places they need to go? You have to address all these problems, beyond just putting a roof over their heads.