Decathect

I'm really curious what your point is, since the willingness of capital markets to extend financing seems like it'd be very related to a company's capital structure and leverage. Like, were the businesses in question not over leveraged, they'd find it much easier to find the capital to continue operations during a downturn.

First, I don't think the rich are cartoonishly evil, Machiavellian, or even particularly interesting. It doesn't take superhuman skill or sociopathy to live off other people's labor. They're just trapped in a game they can't help but win and are by definition incapable of walking away from.

Second, the idea that there is a 'we' encompassing the 1% and 99% or some future and even more fractional segmentation is unrealistic. There's already been millennia of slavery and serfdom: let's not repeat them by trusting that our seat at the table is somehow ordained and not the result of centuries of people fighting from chattel to power on our behalf.

If we can't achieve even the most basic, obvious reforms (a universal healthcare system, a livable wage, an end to global warming in our lifetimes) given the current power structure, then contributing to the further entrenchment of the wealthy isn't just counterproductive, it's suicidal.

Wealth is accruing to people with power and capital. The people who produce automations are laborers like the rest of society, just with a temporarily elevated standard of living. As writing software is deskilled and supplanted, it'll be increasingly apparent that we were just a midterm necessary evil to the people signing our paychecks.

To me, the central problem is wealth disparity as a proxy for power disparity: our democratic government is more than capable of addressing our ongoing needs and desires if not for the overwhelming, unjust, and unearned influence of the wealthy.

This is why I think Sanders has the correct prescription and Yang is naive: the solution isn't a policy or set of policies to fix specific problems, no matter how farsighted, it's restructuring our political system to be solely answerable to people who it feigns to represent.

Inherited wealth gives you an unearned advantage. Therefore, on average for any given slice of society, the least talented members will be the children of privilege. The more money you’ve been given the more likely your peers outclass you.

This is evident to most people, but surprisingly not obvious, in my experience, to the people most directly affected.

I mean, all those positive changes happened in an ostensibly democratic system and were later ratified by it. They just didn’t happen because ‘moderates’ were convinced by logical argument to grant people basic rights through the ballot box.

That’s the farce, that political change happens through some cosplay conception of an Athenian forum instead of the accumulation and exercise of power. It’s a fact that fascists know instinctively and the left has been waking up to. For liberals, who are enthralled by process and satisfied with the status quo, the threat of change is more serious than the reality of injustice.

I think you missed my point: all those things can be tools for accomplishing a just society, but they are not sufficient or an end in themselves.

Slavery was ended by war. Labor rights were achieved by fatal street battles. The civil rights movement was legitimized by a growing threat of a domestic insurrection. Marriage equality was established by an unelected Supreme Court. Basically every time significant positive change has happened in this country has been the result of extrademocratic leverage being found and exercised, not going hat in hand to ask an uncaring majority for what you are due as a human being.

Finally, as a moral being with obligations to others I absolutely get to decide who is a bigot, just as you do.

The First Amendment didn’t prevent our genocide of native peoples. Democracy didn’t prevent 100 years of slavery. ‘The marketplace of ideas’ didn’t keep us from torturing people to death or killing a million people in a pointless war.

The problem with liberals is they mistake the means for the end. Because their lives are insulated from consequence, they prefer the “negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice”. They have a fairytale understanding of the world, where Nazism can be stopped with debate instead of carpet bombings.

What matters is that the hungry are fed, the sick are treated, and the vulnerable protected, and that everyone can live free of the threat of violence or deprivation. Decorum and the delicate feelings of bigots do not matter.

Amazon famously avoids turning a profit and yet its CEO is the richest person in the world.

Its market cap divided evenly among its half million full and part time workers would make all of them millionaires.

If everyone was paid exactly the value they added GDP per worker would be the average wage, with no caveats required.

Equal productivity would just mean the average and median wages would be the same.

Government spending, funded by taxes, contributes to the GDP like any other spending.

Intermediate goods are explicitly excluded from GDP calculations and resale of finished products only increases GDP by the value added amount. In your scenario GDP would be $2.

Regardless, GDP can be calculated by summing all income across all sources. It represents a nationwide increase of wealth. The gap between wage per worker and GDP per worker indicates that, despite labor being the only source of wealth generation, labor only receives a fraction of its productive efforts back as wages. I like it because illustrates the gap between capital and labor, as an alternative to the more traditional income inequality between workers.

There's many examples of people who have survived cancer and lived another decade, even five decades. I highly doubt they’d spread the advice that having cancer is a hopeless disease.

The commonality is it was out of their control, they absolutely needed outside help just to survive, and that their odds were terrible. The existence of rare exceptions only highlights the fatality rate.

Unlike cancer, however, there's a known, 100% effective cure for poverty: money. GDP per employed person in the US is over $120000 while the average wage is just over $50k. The solution is obvious.

It’s because the problem is the existence of the system, not that the instigating companies haven’t learned or cared to learn how to obscure the unjust advantage they are buying.

Those aren’t exclusive attributes, either colloquially or legally. As a renter you have a variety of rights (including to “quiet enjoyment” of the property) that prevent, for example, the legal owner from entering the premises without advance notice and a legitimate reason. Similarly, while exterior cameras aren’t explicitly illegal, interior cameras are. Don’t allow simplistic maxims to occlude your tenant rights.

They died in the accident, leaving behind a critically injured spouse and their kids.

The medical bills for any one of the surviving parties dwarf the net assets of the deceased.

Who pays the remainder?

One of the provisions of Obamacare was a cap on the administrative costs of insurance companies at 20% of premiums, with any excess returned to the purchaser as a rebate. The first year it was in effect more than a billion dollars was returned. The deadweight cost of the private insurance industry over the years is pretty staggering.

In contrast, the Medicare program spends less than 2% of its budget on administrative costs.

It's an arms race. The ideal position is a. spend as little as possible and b. outspend your opponent. This inevitably results in spiraling escalation that harms both parties. The obvious solution that the US has avoided and France has embraced(1) is enforceable limits on spending. Like many applications of the prisoner's dilemma, the existence of external authority limiting the freedom of participants actually results in a better outcome for everyone involved.

1. This is the entirety of what I know about French campaign finance as of five minutes ago: http://www.loc.gov/law/help/campaign-finance/france.php

Free markets are only efficient if consumers act rationally. In addition to being unethical, manipulative marketing is bad for the economy. It's in everyone's long term interest to regulate false advertising.