Notices by Alan Zimmerman (alanz@social.coop), page 20

That was a fun read https://squid314.livejournal.com/324957.html

@dredmorbius @Angle @wrenpile I'm always fascinated by the question:

If there were say only 1,000 of us living in a generation starship for 500 years... would the notion of 'economic growth' be meaningful? We'd value stasis and balance above all, surely?

But we'd still have an economy, right? Might even be a market one.

What might it look like?

@Angle @natecull @wrenpile ***MIND THAT YOU NEED BOTH OF THESE.*** If you have a UBI without asset taxes, the income simply gets eaten up in economic rent extraction.

If you have asset taxes without a UBI, you *still* have the problem of wages driven down to subsistence levels.

***THESE ARE NOT SEPARABLE POLICIES. THEY MUST BE PAIRED.***

And /that/ is part of the wage & rents classical economics discussion that's been almost entirely forgotten.

It's certainly not taught. Or wasn't me.

11/

@Angle @natecull @wrenpile And a conspicuous lack of foresight.

How do you fix this?

One part is to tax wealth directly: *tax assets to capture the socially-derived value.* Put a high carrying-cost on them.

The Tobin transaction tax, the ancient Chinese practice of requiring money to be regularly stamped (for a charge), *putting a carrying cost on cash*, estate taxes: these all accomplish much the same thing.

Another is to ensure a basic income. Living wages, universal income.

10/

@Angle @natecull @wrenpile Upshot: banks needed nominal returns. Real estate was providing nominal returns. /Homeowners/ were happy with this, because, hey, *we're asset holders, our assets are inflating, FREE MONEY!!*. Sucks to be their kids though.

Banks, real estate holders, property owners, and a whole mess of others, recognised that /any little thing/ they could do to bump up prices was a net good for them. So they did.

No Vast Conspiracy Needed. Just plain old self-interest.

9/

Me: people are tooting good lewd jokes about lambda calculus but they'd be hard for me to explain
My partner: I'm glad you've found your tribe

😅😘