Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz grew up in a Brooklyn Housing project, George Soros survived the holocaust and worked waiting tables, David Murdock of Dole Foods was homeless. There’s tons of examples.

Here’s a fun article that ranks the whole Fortune 400 list. 80% of them inherited their wealth or at least grew up middle class.

Jeff Bezos actually scores high on the list because his Mom had him when he was 17, he flipped burgers in high school and by and large did not grow up rich.

Goddamn those time-travelling Venezuelans.

So where are you going in Australia?

“No idea mate. Figure I’ll sort it out when i get there.”

You can’t take the train before the tracks are laid down.

Go to Europe my friend. You can go from Madrid to Barcelona for $30 on a train that goes over 300 km/h.

A lot. Because our infrastructure and zoning basically demand you buy a car. That’s not the point. The point is to advocate change through local government.

It’s an interesting trend i have seen online since the onset of the post-pandemic inflation.

At its core it’s an ethics problem of Kant vs Utilitarianism. On the one hand Kantians are big into the golden rule. They would point out that we shouldn’t accept stealing in society, because we as individuals don’t want to be stolen from. If you can steal from a store why not steal from your friend’s parents or the local community centre? In fact why don’t we just all go steal the things we want whenever we want? Utilitarians on the other hand would argue that someone stealing food (if they really need it) creates more good than some investors losing a small amount of profit does harm. Utilitarians think we should live in a world that minimizes harm and maximizes good. If you’re familiar with the trolley car problem they would pull the switch to kill the 1 guy instead of the 5 on the track. They argue there is no objective system of ethics but rather every moral problem depends on the situation and the circumstances of the perpetrator and victim.

In my experience people on both sides of the political spectrum fall into utilitarian and Kantian camps. But I think people who fall on the left of the political spectrum and who also have utilitarian beliefs have a much more amplified opinion on this because they not only see stealing as a lesser of two evils but they view the whole capitalist system as an exploitation of the working class, and that the gains were ill gotten in the first place and theft is almost a natural revolutionary action to take back what is rightfully there’s.

The additional complication though is that this is also an economic problem in an economic system. Sure maybe if it was a one-off thing where somebody desperate stole something from a store one time then no systemic problem would occur, but because this is happening in larger volumes it becomes a multi-period prisoners dilemma. As opposed to the single period prisoners dilemma where defecting is the optimal choice, in the multi-period version participants develop rational expectations. Recently grocery stores such as target have been closing in inner cities because shoplifting has become endemic and they no longer believe they can make a profit there. This is terrible for inner city residents that do not commit theft because it raises the cost for them to transit and find groceries. So the system of “stealing when you need” isn’t tenable in this economic system.

Whether you believe that means we need to change the economic system or alternatively you believe we need to impose harsher penalties for crime, what’s clear is that in the end we will need a legislative solution, and so we probably should’ve just gone and done that in the first place.

Because in practice the line between capital and personal property is very thin. Can a car or apartment not be used to generate income in a modern economy?

When the soviets were in power they would force multiple families under one roof (kommunalka). Think 4-8 families sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. Each family was given just one room and all housing was considered communal housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment?wprov=sfti1

After Stalin’s death families began receiving single family apartments due to massive housing reform by Kruschev, but were hastily built and called ‘khrushchyoba,’ a cross between Khrushchev's name and the Russian term for slums. That by the way still leaves a multigenerational period from 1917-1954 where the kommunalka would have been the primary unit of housing.

People need a place to stay and not everyone has piles of cash for a down payment. Vote for the change you want, but in this system we need rentals.

I think it’s sort of a catch 22. The people that tend to be the most knowledgeable about a particular science often have industry experience doing the exact thing you want them to study now. The idea that people could study the effects of aspartame for decades but are now “tainted” because they used to work for a soda company doesn’t necessarily square up to economic reality.

If however, you choose to put your foot in the sand there you’re going to have a bunch of people on a committee that have no idea what they are doing (which by the way people will also criticize you for) Remember when Trump appointed senior cabinet positions to people with completely unrelated experience? Such as Ben Carson (a former medical doctor) being appointed secretary of housing.

It’s a lose/lose situation I’m not sure what you all are expecting.

This is an oversimplification. In the land of monarchies progressives were pushing for more liberal democratic reforms. Capitalism is the economic manifestation of democratic liberalism. There was a huge desire to keep religion out of politics at the time of the American Revolution l’est society return to the divine rule of kings and queens. This is why separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution.

Over time power structures changed and the largely white protestants that established the wealth and dominant culture of the land developed a political ideology around preservation of the status quo. This is where the word 'conservative' comes from. So it’s not that capitalism co-opted religion, it’s that the religious and the wealthy are hugely overlapping segments in America.

These polls are really out of date. These numbers have since improved substantially in capitalism’s favour.

Oh shit my phone doesn’t work back here. I know I’ll send him to art school!