Comment by jongjong

11 hours ago

This article is clearly about Geoism; its traditional interpretation. In its essence, Geoism should be about rents, not about land specifically. Of course they couldn't have known about tech platform monopolies back then, but they are very much about rent extraction and a far greater concern than land is nowadays. I feel like such articles are a distraction and would lead to even bigger problems. Essentially prepping to dispossess middle class land owners who are the last bastion of decentralization.

It's absurd in this day and age to be discussing land rent-seeking when the cause of most of our modern problems is platform rent-seeking. Frustrating how people twist everything good into something bad; of course there was no talk of Geoism when land rents were the main problem and main mechanism of rent extraction; only now that elites have found a different way to extract rents, now it's OK to discuss the (now) lesser evil of land rent-seeking and distract away from the new variant of the problem.

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jongjong

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mlinksva  10 hours ago

You're dramatically underestimating land rent, probably well over $10t/year, total land value over $200t.

  • jongjong  10 hours ago

    Maybe, but at least they're not depleting my access to opportunities like platform rents do! In the old days, I could still find opportunities in my social circles to earn money to cover the rents because they still had money.

    Platform rents are worse because they extract wealth by centralizing awareness, centralizing opportunities and literally shrinking the pie whilst concentrating wealth for those in the middle. They prevent me from finding opportunities which would allow me to pay the rents which they extract from me and my social circle! My social circle has no money so I can't rely on them! Only way to make money is a bs bureaucratic job working for a monopolist.

    It's worse, satanically worse! Mark my words, with the current approach we will be forced to go either UBI route or start charging people proportionally to their incomes using universal digital ID to check. And the 'AI taking jobs' narrative is already in place to provide a phony justification!

    Opportunities are depleted systematically from the periphery. "I make my own luck" is bullshit when when the entire system is working 24/7 to ensure you don't get any! The average elite ignores more life-changing opportunities in their inbox, every minute, than I'm exposed to in a lifetime!

    Literally, elite rent-seekers took all the money and now there is no more to take! The system is now trying to saddle people will useless debts! Getting them to spend it all on their useless junk (pointless gender studies university degrees, ads for their marketing/lead acquisition startups, fake magic internet money, junk bought on credit cards...)! And then forcing them into bankruptcy for a few years, move onto someone else, then when that first person's bankruptcy period is over, repeat!!! They do the same thing with shell companies; saddle them with debt, funnel the money to the beneficiary company, let the shell default on its debt, then repeat. This is the backbone of the modern economy. It's utterly insane! The system is completely broken!

    • Frieren  5 hours ago

      When a country main form of getting rich is thru rent (land, platforms, or any other). That country becomes economically sick. The middle ages were dominated by land Lords. War to increase land ownership, no social mobility, and economic stagnation were the norm.

      Platform rents are really bad. And for land rents, it would make more sense to be a public good that finances the government that privately owned and creating a owner class that gets all the profits from society production.

      > Literally, elite rent-seekers took all the money and now there is no more to take!

      There is more money to take, that is why they push for conservative governments that reduce taxes for the rich and eliminate laws that protect the working-class.

      Creating new things should be incentivized over platforms that take a cut on the work of others.

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