Hacker News
points by Frieren 2 days ago | 0 comments
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.

[–] jongjong 2 days ago
This is true but I don't see that alternative approaches prevent an owner class from developing. It just creates a different kind of owner; a more politically-oriented one, with an incentive to manipulate the political system to their benefit to increase their stake in it. People then strive to become stakeholders of the state itself. I don't think that's a better form of ownership.

I'd rather capitalists be distracted pursuing land ownership rather than pursuing ownership over the machinery of ultimate power and control.

If you remove tangible forms of ownership, people will try to claim ownership over intangible things instead, like state power.

[–] psd1 23 hours ago
Well yes, people should be stakeholders of the state...?

I agree that high state control will give rise to a different kind of owner class. But that's a balancing act. Defence is widely agreed to be the state's business; industry is widely agreed to not, mostly, be the state's business. We're all in an Overton window, right?