That’s the natural progression of capitalism if you don’t take measures against wealth accumulating at the top. Owners need to find ever more places where their capital can earn money.
Because of inflationary currencies that punish anyone that simply accumulates money instead of investing it. They want to make everything "efficient" by incentivizing everyone to either spend their money or lend it out so that someone else can spend it. Under such a system, people must allocate their capital just to break even. To fail to do so is to lose money to inflation.
After a certain point, personal wealth is nothing more than a highscore showing how good you are at the capitalism game. There is no need to accumulate an ever-growing pile of money - you could just spend it on stuff and let trickle-down economics do its job. It's not like you are going to need it when you inevitably die.
It creates the incessant need to offset those losses. This turns housing into an investment and prices everyone out.
> After a certain point, personal wealth is nothing more than a highscore showing how good you are at the capitalism game.
What? No. Money is a form of power. It's hard for mere mortals like us to even comprehend the extent of the power wielded by the truly rich individuals and corporations.
With enough money, you can buy laws by lobbying the government. If that doesn't work, you can often just ignore laws and buy yourself out of trouble once it catches up with you. Fines? They're nothing.
Want to see something happen? Just invest some money into it and things will start happening immediately. Want to change things in the world? Just buy whatever you want to change and remake it as you see fit. Use money to incentivize the behavior you desire.
There is no point after which it's enough. The more you have, the more powerful you are. You're limited only by your dreams and ambition. There are rich people out there who bought military fighter jets just to fly around in a highly maneuverable aircraft. How many children out there dream of doing that?
> It's not like you are going to need it when you inevitably die.
My children will. My parents worked hard to give me a good life. I consider it my personal responsibility to honor that effort by going even further in life than they did. I want my children to be even more successful than me.
I think you're spot on with this.
This seems to be the public establishment of a neo-feudalism, where the new barons are the megacorp capitalists, who can afford to strategize long-term and implement land grabs, while lobbying with governments to strenghthen their stranglehold on the people by capturing natural resources. Capitalist piracy, in a sense.
Now, I'm not a (neo-) Marxist in the strict sense, but this is too much in line with the Marxist understanding of the state as an institution that looks out for the interests of (big) property owners, rather than those of the people.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and we can project with some certainty an outright voiding the social contract that understands the state as a neutral institution that cares for the interest of the people, and reverting to such feudal-esque configurations.
And, for the record, no, I don't believe for one second that playing it the capitalist way and buying shares in megacorps has any possibility of having a positive counter-balancing effect. It'd be more like buying shares in slaveships, and partaking of the profits of the trade.
Now where does the average person find the initial capital, such that they can enter the game of capitalism..
The average person gets the initial capital to enter the game of capitalism by living like a poor person and banking the difference. That's how it works: this "capital" that earns a return is simply the difference between what people earn and what they consume. If you get a positive return on it you might eventually start being able to earn like a rich person and live like an average person.
I agree that most people can't, and we need to do something to ward off a populist uprising
But that's not enough Lords!
Strong, "let them eat cake" energy with this one.