Not to pile on, but I do think it’s important to point out that no, NOT everyone is definitely for removing waste and corruption, and in fact, the people with the closest to what you’d consider a “hand on the dial” love it the most.
Waste, in the form of crap we throw away, as well as waste generated as part of production processes are all inherent to a system based on constant and growing consumption, i.e. capitalism. The people building mountains of wealth from this system fight tooth and nail against any regulation that tries to restrain this. Add to that the fact that those same have the most wasteful lifestyles (private jets, multiple private homes, only wear socks once, etc…), and you have your proper policy target.
In fact, in parallel to your argument about how poor people* should stop replicating is the argument that regular people (“consumers”) are individually responsible for environmental destruction because they don’t recycle enough, or like to buy things. This, again, shifts the burden from those profiting the most from these damaging systems, and spending decades dumping misinformation and misdirection into the system to avoid meaningful change.
In an ironic twist, capital is also increasingly aligning itself with opponents of family planning and bodily autonomy…
*even if you’re not intentionally saying that, you are. Rich people having fewer babies wouldn’t make a dent, there are very few of them.
There’s not really any rhyme or reason to it. When we were touring our last apartment, before we decided renting wasn’t worth it anymore and managed to buy a house, the agent was touting how clean and modern the apartments looked now that all the extraneous molding had been removed. Just monolithic painted gypsum board from floor to ceiling, with some cheap plastic trim piece at the baseboard just to cover up the hastily-cut vinyl. They also tried to sell the fact that the counters were laminate instead of stone, because they’re warmer or something? It was bizarre. Salespeople gonna salespeople.
That’s a really good point that I hadn’t thought of before.
In Canada, house listings include typical utility bills and taxes for the property. It’s extremely helpful! Not sure if this is nationwide, but in BC they do, anyway.
Generally people don’t hoard anything with a limited shelf life to get rich. It for sure isn’t because people rich enough to hoard things in an attempt to get even richer would choose not to hoard food just because it means some people would starve.
(also I’ll admit as a member of the “I do have enough money to do dumb things sometimes” I fully expect I buy more perishable items that manage to go out of date because I merely feel bad that “I should have used that ground beef for sloppy joes or something” but managed to forget about it/not be in the mood/too tired for anything more complicated then heating in a microwave kind of place for long enough that the ground beef is no longer food and now trash then I expect people with less money because they would think about how much of a pain in the ass it is to make a meal involving 3 whole ingredients and actual cooking and think about how much that beef cost and decide they are going to make that “real meal” even if they are dead on their feet while I’m too self-pampered to make myself do it just because it is $8 or whatever – but I’m hoping that I don’t actually starve anyone due to my refergiator mismanagement, I’m not wasting 100 sides of beef after all, just a normal single humans worth of food for a few meals here and there)
Unfettered capitalism not only prioritizes profit over need, it would rather waste food (and living space) rather than have it go to people who need it but can’t afford it.
Econ 101 teaches us that markets reach an equilibrium when supply matches demand – where demand is defined by how many people want something at its current price. (And of course, the fact that so many markets obviously spend most of their time out of equilibrium is somehow to be ignored.)
Case In Point: Austin’s homeless population and HEB throws out entire dumpsters of produce that is perfectly good to eat because that’s what the regulations dictate.
This is the great lie of capitalism taught to every MBA on their first day- that the market optimizes allocation of resources through the magic of pricing. It doesn’t. It optimizes wealth extraction from resources, which is a very different thing.
I’m lucky enough to own my flat, but I’ve got younger colleagues who have to rent. And the market in London is horrifying at the moment. They have to bid on rental accommodation. Whoever offers the highest monthly rent “wins”.
And 99% of the time, that’s shared accommodation.
As I said above, too many landlords in the world. Scumbags, the lot of them.
But then, I’m of the opinion that no-one should be allowed to own more than one property.
Not a belief that’s likely to get any political traction any time soon considering that at least 18% of UK MPs also happen to be landlords.
I agree with most people’s disdain for landlords, which I interpret as the greedy investor class of landlords, but I think this statement oversimplifies the issue.
We need to have some kind of rental market. I don’t know how I could’ve moved out and attended college and found my way to home ownership without the stepping stones of rentals along the way.
I think we need more humane regulations around owning multiple properties, though, for sure. Including stricter regulations on short-term rentals and ones that sit vacant for long periods.
Agreed. Or some kind of public private partnership, at the least.
I think there are several variations of solutions. The one thing they need in common is the shared goal of providing safe, affordable housing, not maximizing profits to the detriment of society.
this reminds me: i read about a study which compared costs for low income renters and high income renters. excluding those specifically “luxury” rentals, lower income people tended to spend more on rent than higher income people. especially if they’d been evicted.
the logic of landlords was: these people are likely to be unable to pay, so i have to charge more now. they were also unlikely to pass any of the now seemingly mandatory credit checks, so that also tended to exclude them from the nice but cheaper places
eta: it was in one of the episodes from this series
Yah, I think the root of the problem is treating shelter as a commodity, rather than a human right. Modern democracies guarantee access to clean air, water, education, and many other things depending on the country, but everyone draws the line at shelter for some reason.
