Thomas Sowell: "I'm afraid that I haven't even looked for the causes of poverty. I regard poverty is just simply the absence of wealth. So what I look for are the things that cause wealth to occur."
@2XfsgD2PsyttvWz I had bought 30 shares at $88 before that. As of now I am not buying more. I am waiting to build up some more cash and start a position in META.
“The individual is nothing; the collective is everything.” - Stalin
“The interests of the individual must be subordinated to the interests of the collective.” - Mao
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” - Mussolini
“We’ll replace rugged individualism with collectivism.” - Mamdani
Don’t be afraid to call out objective evil when you hear it.
“If I were rich, I would have a plaque made up, and sent to every judge in America, bearing a statement made by Adam Smith more than two and a half centuries ago: ‘Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.’”
— Thomas Sowell
The Starter Home is extinct. And it’s not because of BlackRock.
If you listen to the ragebait, the story is simple: The system is rigged, hedge funds are buying every house, and you’ve been priced out by corporate greed.
But the reality is more boring, and it's much harder to fix.
In 1950, a home cost 3x your salary. Today, the median home costs 7x (or 11x in California). But we aren't buying the same product. Look at the chart below.
In 1950, the "American Dream" was a 983-square-foot plywood box. It had two tiny bedrooms, one bathroom, and no air conditioning. It was shelter, not an asset.
Today, the "entry-level" standard is over 2,700 square feet. We demand granite countertops, two-car garages, energy-efficient windows, and central air.
We didn't just get poorer. Our definition of "minimum" got massive.
What was a luxury earlier is a necessity now. Which is fine, but it brings up the uncomfortable question: Why can’t we just build the small ones again?
Why is it so hard in most cities to build a simple, affordable 1950s-style home?
“The essence of the individualist position is this recognition of the individual as the ultimate judge of his ends, the belief that as far as possible his own views ought to govern his actions.”
— Friedrich Hayek
@jk_rowling "Luxury beliefs" is a term coined by Rob Henderson to describe ideas and opinions that are adopted by the affluent and educated elite, which serve to confer status on them, but have negative consequences for people in lower social classes.
Your rhetoric is so corrosive because you sneakily never use words like “earn” or “reward”. Instead you always favor helplessness words like “give”.
In everything you say, it’s clear you hate personal agency - it is always about the invisible hand of big brother coming to the rescue. And of course you should control that hand.
To set the record straight, for Elon to earn that kind of money, many tens of millions of people on earth will need to buy Elon’s products and pay for it with their hard earned money. In order for that to happen, his products will need to be revolutionary, cheap and superior on multiple dimensions. This is not obvious or straightforward.
So, if that happens and then people buy Tesla products, they will now do so also knowing that some percentage of the profit goes to the CEO of that company.
It couldn’t be more transparent and obvious.
At its core, leftist ideology is based on violence toward individuals.
Leftists depend on government force to control human behavior and redistribute private property.
As we celebrate Labor Day, consider your wages are given in US dollars, money is a store of labor, and the U.S. government has been robbing you of it since 1913.