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Comment by schmidtleonard | Hacker News Reader

The purpose of capitalism is to establish, reinforce, and perpetuate a class hierarchy where the people on the bottom must constantly pay to exist while the people on top constantly get paid to exist. This shit isn't a side effect, it's the entire point of the exercise.

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Unfortunately in their rejection of capitalism, the people have mostly decided to do feudalism, i.e. legitimacy comes from land ownership and land tenure. It is even hereditary: heirs get to pay much lower property tax than transplants.

I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on capitalism, but even Marx would agree with me that it's better than feudalism.

"That's not true capitalism!!!"

Sure dude. Now where have I heard that before?

Spoken like a true Marxist. The purpose of Marxism is to literally kill hundreds of millions of people who oppose the Marxist way. Like they did during the 20th century in the countries where Marxism prevailed (even briefly).

It is not spoken like a true Marxist; they didn't even believe this. Here's Engels saying being a renter is not exploitation:

https://x.com/TheOmniZaddy/status/1559949666543878151

Georgism is better though, and the homeownership market isn't about "capitalism".

Ah, Georgists. Smart enough to see the problem, but dumb enough to think the people benefiting will help them solve it.

Capitalism gives you opportunities to climb the ladder

Capitalism also continuously adds steps to that ladder

Progress should be saying "we don't have to spend so much of our time and effort on the ladder".

Our forefathers would be baffled to see that we've coerced crops into tenfold their natural yield, conquered lightning, the wind, and the sun itself, and yet, millions of people are still working 40+ hours a week to not starve or go homeless.

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