• @unfreeradical
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      11 year ago

      If you chose to use your house as collateral in order for the opportunity to enrich yourself, then no one owes you any gratitude. You are not a hero. You acted in your own interests, not for helping others.

      If workers provided labor, and you only paid them wages, then you profited from their labor, and prevented them from advancing by realizing the full value of their labor.

      The only reason your house was at risk was because the bank hoards capital, using lending as a device to augment its own wealth.

      If capital were shared by everyone, then all the problems you describe would not occur. No one would lose houses or cars, no one would be a tens of millions of times richer than anyone else, and everyone would be paid fully for their labor, without distinction of owner versus worker.

        • @unfreeradical
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          1 year ago

          You are not understanding.

          The risk is artificial.

          Those who have the most wealth, the most capital, are not facing risk, compared to everyone else. Someone who has $10 billion in assets and loses $2 billions has not lost in the same way as a poor person who loses a car. The billionaire is completely insulated from the precarity faced by most of the population, because the billionaire privately controls the vast wealth of society. The losses suffered by the billionaire owe to the instability of the business and the business cycle, not to the trials of life.

          Those who are most wealthy face the least risk, and in fact impose the genuine risk on everyone else.

          If control over capital were shared, then no one would be precarious, nor need to use a home as collateral for a loan.

            • @unfreeradical
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              11 year ago

              You are being incredibly dishonest.

              You mentioned Elon Musk.

              I simply observed that most of the capital is owned by a tiny cohort of society. Small businesses, especially businesses worth approximately the same as a house, comprise a relatively small valuation of capital (which is not the same as the number of businesses, or the number of jobs).

              There is no reason why economic activity needs to be tied to someone risking becoming homeless. Such a relationship is a consequence of the system, the way that wealth is hoarded by the few and made available to the rest only under conditions that serve the private interest of the wealthy. A different system would not need to carry the same feature.

              • Neuromancer
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                -11 year ago

                No, it isn’t. I just proved to you otherwise. Every day people fund most. That is how most companies get started and most companies are risky ventures. Most large corporations are heavily leveraged as well. People hear profit and they think the company is swimming in cash when they have billions in debt.

                Now I agree it shouldn’t be this hard to start a business. People should not have to risk all their savings, house, etc and that is something that could be easily solved. We need better incubator loans from the SBA. No collateral, no risk to your credit but heavily supervised. I would fully support that. I would like to see most of the megacorps fail and instead of a Starbucks on every corner, a small coffee co-op or a small co-op chain of restaurants.

                I will take a wild swing but your best meal has never been at a McDonalds.

                • @unfreeradical
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                  11 year ago

                  How did you prove that ownership of capital in terms of its valuation is not extremely heavily concentrated?

                  You only gave the statistics relating to the count of small business and jobs in them.

                  One business can be worth more than a thousand others.

                  I suggest you review statistics on wealth distribution in various countries. Learn how much wealth as a share of the total is owned by various cohorts, and investigate questions such as how many individuals own half the wealth.