What makes you imagine I have a thin skin? I gotta be one of the most abused UnStuckers. Have I complained once?
Also, I wasn’t calling you stupid. Sure, I’m calling @ DrChesspain stupid for the obvious reasons. For the record, I feel you are obviously the opposite. Non-stupid people get stupid ideas in their heads all the time. No big deal.
But this idea that you have in your mind, and that you brought into the thread, about making everything all “equal” in every way always, or whatever, is… as a matter of fact… childishly stupid. Think about it: if even short-bus prog-rockers like Rush were making fun of it… it must be a really stupid idea indeed.
As long as we were chatting about Homage to Catalonia…
In the English language, two works stand out regarding the Spanish Civil War of 1936. As non-fiction, Homage of course. As fiction, E. Hemmingway also traveled to revolutionary Spain as a journalist. After the war, he wrote…
That’s obviously not the idea I brought into the thread. The first time you suggested it I figured you were just being silly. But now I guess you are twisting it because you have no real answers.
Hard to make your spot equal to inso’s in Milwaukee, but Ted Turner owns 2 million acres; more land than in the state of Delaware. What do you think about that?
What do I think about it personally? Well, when I think about T.Turner I always think about him, and then wife J.Fonda, sleeping in the stands during the World Series. Man, if I was married to Fonda -or- my team was playing in the Series… the last thing I’d be doing is taking a nap.
My understanding is that a significant amount of that land is a de facto wilderness sanctuary… but I could be mixing my eccentric billionaires up, I’ll admit. That’s a good thing IMO. I also believe that he also owns a large live stock operation that uses the wage system. That should be expropriated by the cowfolk IMO.
It’s great to have wildlife sanctuaries, but should one person have the power to decide what to do with that much natural resources? If so, why? Because he gave some money to the people who drove off or killed the people living there and put up fences and posted no trespassing signs?
But as my favorite Nazi* philosopher M.Hiedegger famously said “we are always already in a world”. We’re trying to build a new world inside the shell of this world we are already in. And in this already in world it’s a better thing if eccentric billionaire T.Turner has his own private wildlife sanctuary -vs- just plain evil billionaire C.Koch strip mines it all.
Personally & IMO, of course.
*credit @ microbet for this correction. I had originally said “Nazi loving”.
Speaking of googling things… If any are interested in the nuts-n-bolts of the Spanish Revolution.
Not surprisingly, the primary sources are mostly in Spanish and Catalan. However, unlike just a few years ago during the 2+2 era, some of this info is becoming available in English on the interwebs. In particular…
It costs pennies and 5 mins to make bread at home. Anyone can do it. Yet I still walk into the capitalist’s doors (supermarket) to buy bread from the middleman. Capitalist makes money from every piece of bread I buy from producer / labourer.
Why is that? Capitalist is just a middleman that has no use but for a simple product like bread that has no barrier to entry we still use the middleman. Farmer working the field has eggs to sell, why does farmer use middle man to sell his eggs? Why doesn’t consumer (me) cut the middleman out and go buy eggs straight from the farmer?
I don’t do any of that because it will take me an entire day to drive around and get eggs, meat, vegetables from every single producer. I can get all that done in 1 hour and pay the middleman a 10% profit.
Middleman literally saved me an entire day of time which I can go spend doing something more productive… aha! Value is created.
So lets reapply this to housing. Labourer and supplier want to get paid to build house. Me the renter want to live in house they build. How does this house get built without capitalist?
Ok. We somehow managed to build the house. Now without landlord / capitalist, who is responsible for management of the property? My toilet doesn’t work. Is it the renter now that has to pay fix everything himself? The plumber won’t come without getting paid.
Very simple questions are answered with very simple answers.
They’re not very good questions and they’re quite easy to answer. Renters currently supply all the money necessary to do the building and maintenance and generate a profit on top of that.
There are better questions. You could do a better job of describing the services the housing developer or income property owner provides.
When you look up cooperatives, baking is maybe the number one hit - so there is some cooperative bread. But it’s still a tiny part of the market. Why? It’s true that a cooperative can on paper deliver better bread at a better price. Why doesn’t that happen more often? (lack of money and credit is not really the answer)
How does a real estate developer generally get their money?
(supposedly the people of the United States - ie the government - through the fed puts some digits in some bank accounts, they put some in member banks, they put some in the developer’s accout, the developer puts some in the supplier’s and laborer’s accounts - IE the developer borrows money and the income from the property is used to qualify them and a mortgage is used as security)