Mgxr44
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It’s crazy to me how many people understand how evil companies like Blackstone are, but don’t understand they are the inevitable result of ✨capitalism✨ The rich people of the world do not want to compete. They want to set up toll booths on things we need to live and extort you for as much as they can.
If private ownership is the issue, collective ownership is the solution. That’s all capitalism and socialism are. Do we let random rich assholes own everything? Or do we collectively own everything. Those are the two options, and the one we’re doing sucks
TheN8
Hey, look, if there's ever an upside to American home construction methods - it's that they are extremely flammable and often close together.
lightfoot2
Serfs up!
xanthio
I actually know a lot of people that are the exact opposite -- they are comfortable with the idea that there are failings of capitalism, but they think these are hypotheticals, they don't think these things are happening. I was talking to someone just last week, what we'd probably call "progressive" but not entirely "liberal", and that conversation was the first they'd heard of corporations buying homes. And they didn't believe me.
StarmineRendezvous
Investors and CEOs are human. They have names, and we have a planet of people they are hurting. Surely someone knows where they are.
invadeboiss
500% marginal tax rate on the first house owned above 1, the rate increases exponentially for every single house owned above 2.
powwerbottom
Stephen Schwarzman, the Chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group, serves as the chairman of President Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
TooSoonOldTooLateSmart
The car companies are also putting subscription services into the cars. No just SiriusXM radio, I mean actual car features you must rent to use. Gaming companies are doing similar.
BuckIndy
Forensickle
I mean, one dude definitely cared about Blackstone more than the NFL
whiterabbit1322
If they own your housing and you rent from them, if they own your car you lease from them, if they own your job and you work for them, how is that functionally any different from slavery? Being in a position where you can't build assets, they pay you and you give them all the money back on basic survival amenities is essentially being held in indefinite servitude. You are born with nothing and you die with nothing left behind, your only legacy being how much money you made them.
Leithoa
Private ownership != Personal ownership
Xenarion
That a corporation can own so many homes is absurd.
oldguyexlurker
Most of even the detached homes going up in the center of our (admittedly not particularly high socioeconomic town) are coming on line as rental properties only. But then there's 14000 homes under way on the south end of town that are literally being priced over $500,000. Our median income is $33k. 6% interest, 30yr fixed for $500k is $3k/mo just P&I. $33k/year is roughly $2060/mo net of taxes before healthcare insurance, healthcare (yeah, those're two SEPARATE costs), fuel to get to 1/
oldguyexlurker
the job that pays <$16/hr (if you're lucky enough to get 40 hrs), daycare if you've got a kid, (kid not in public school yet? $800-1,000/mo or you DON'T work) I make decent money. Between my wife and I, we have a decent household income. I couldn't buy down there if I wanted to. WTF do these people do for a living? Even if they're being sold to Blackrock and rented out, WTF do the RENTERS do for a living?
Bignholy
The upper class is forgetting a few key things. (1) Desperate people do desperate things, (2) almost all assets are flammable, (3) so are they.
They forgot how we got unions. They forgot why, during the Golden Age they laud (and misunderstand), the most successful companies learned to take care of their workers. They forgot it is far more efficient to pay a living wage than to stomp on fingers.
Beleg7
idrinkcheapbeer
Isn't this basically feudalism?
MotoCanuck
OMG the new chant against this tyranny is "Noot! Noot!"
Mediocreclient
that's how many homes the US builds every six to ten weeks; where are the rest of them going? all the homes built the other 42 weeks of the year?
SavageDrums
Hooray for the return of feudalism!
ThisNameUnavailable
Private ownership isn't the issue. If you think this your critical thinking skills are lacking. Literally just pass a law under capitalism that says "corporations can't buy residential properties".
EnderKing567
Time to start finding a list of every Blackstone owned house in America. We going on a TOUR.
IndependenceHallPhiladelphiaPA
ok, so who wants to join me in going to NYC to demolish 345 Park Ave? realistically, this is the sort of thing that needs to happen. every employee from the doorman to the ceo to random citizens whos 401k invest in them is complicit.
HeraldOfTheBadger
HEY EVERYONE 40Y+ some of us are lucky enough to own homes. Want to help? Rent your spare room out to your friends. Help pay for those property taxes and give them a place to live that's cheaper than renting at Market rate.
I'm here in NJ and rent is out of control but my property taxes haven't gone up that much in 10 years.
You probably have a room you're using for storage and you can move your shit to a storage unit, people can't live in those.
HeraldOfTheBadger
I had a friend who helped me pay my property taxes and utilities for about 2 years, cheaper rent for both of us meant he could save up 20K, enough for a down payment on a cheap house in North Carolina
NKato
Meanwhile here in Washington State, property taxes keep going up because Democrats don't know how to increase revenue without fucking over the bottom half of the people here.
It's ridiculous.
hoopsnek
Thanks for posting, @OP. It’s important to be aware of the class war waged against us.
Mgxr44
Hard to call it a war when we refuse to fight back 🤷🏻
hoopsnek
Some of us are. Don’t let their demoralisation succeed.
possumattack
Socialism isn't public ownership, just fyi.
Mgxr44
What do you think socialism is, genuinely curious
possumattack
It doesn't forbid private ownership. Socialism allows for private and capitalist enterprises, though it's meant to have controls so that the greater (social) interest isn't disregarded. In contrast of course with pure capitalism, which I don't disagree we are veering toward. I'm just responding pedantically because I don't think an extremist response to our current society is either practicable or sustainable.
Mgxr44
I mean, you can have mixed economies for sure, I’d say all economies are. But the parts that allow for private ownership and whatnot wouldn’t be parts I’d refer to as socialist. The same way universal healthcare is socialism, but that doesn’t mean Europe is socialist. At least to me
Gheebun
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1dHdjdHc3c3JrYmJpd3Q3N2FmZ2x2eXRlZzF1bzZ2c3czZWphNDh2YiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/XBoYoCVQNBpJe/200w.webp
Mgxr44
Adventurism is cathartic, but they can replace CEOs waaaayyy faster than we can uh… depose them 👀 we have to take control of the means of production or nothing will change
Gruesslibaer
And how are we to take control of the means of production? Ask nicely?
CommanderXirlos
Decentralise the market. The main way that production leaves the control of the proletariat is through monopolies that the 1% control. Support smaller companies, co-ops, individuals, etc., with whatever money you have in any market you have a stake in. This is what you can do RIGHT NOW if violence isn’t an option for you.
Mgxr44
No, you probably have to take em by force. Taking out a random ceo doesn’t do that either
Nottii
Blackstone is probably one of the most corrupt companies in the world. The shit that they manage to get away with is downright fucking deplorable.
Mgxr44
✨capitalism✨where money is power, and they have a lot
Heisanevilgenius
I still think Nestle is worse
a1b3117
I mean they essentially want to make you subscribe to water....
Heisanevilgenius
They use child slave labour for their chocolate and they deliberately caused harm to babies in the third world by spreading misinformation that baby formula is healthier than breast milk so poor mothers would needlessly spend money on Nestle products
azgrak1
Sold my moms house and made sure it went to a family and not a investment firm. I was willing to take less if I had to. But a family twenty miles away was the top offer.
DontKnowTheSource
I did the same. But it turns out that they didn't care about the house, they tore it down and turned it into a concrete square building with 7ft tall fencing all around. My childhood home now looks like a cinder block drug den.
Comet260
The GOP will soon make NOT selling to a scummy firm illegal.
DaveSamsonite
@op you think they spent 1000 billion USD? LOL
Krumbles
Oh no. It’s only $320 billion dollars. Time to give them a pass. Stfu with that nonsense.
DaveSamsonite
The post says they spent $1 Trillion, which is a COMPLETE LIE. Houses are expensive and i dont like to see companies buying existing houses in existing neighborhoods.
We do need lots more housing, however, and
we need new housing developments. In order for housing developments and large amounts of new housing to be created - unfortunately this has to be funded by companies that build houses or provide funds for houses to be built.
I wish people would use critical thinking skills more often.
DaveSamsonite
You claim that they only spent $320 billion is also wrong, and you provided no source for this claim. It's assure indication that you need to use critical thinking skills when someone makes claims about gigantic numbers without quoting a source.
DaveSamsonite
This gets downvotes from the sockpuppets. If they really had spent $1 trillion which is equal to 1000 billion dollars, that would've given them enough money to buy 1 million homes worth US$1 million each. It's just flat out preposterous.
stonecollector
Social democracies are fine. However your meme shows the hammer and sickle of communism. Communism was an abject failure across the board because humans are corruptible no matter the system. Collective farming for instance caused the deaths of 10s of millions of people under Stalin and Mao. It is definitely NOT the answer. Social democracies on the other hand, like those of Scandinavia, seem to be the most successful.
usernameusedinlessplatforms2
Tens of milllions of deaths were becauae neither of those places had collective ownership. State stole everything from the ppl and was ran by handful of ppl that took all the resources.
It would be comparable if 1 corporation owned everything in the country, including army. People did not owns the means of production. (Or anything)
Do ppl in NK own collectively anything? None of those places never met any definition of Communism, even according to them
usernameusedinlessplatforms2
Also Lysenkoist pseudoscientific BS (Kinda like if RKJ jr was in charge) was a big reason a shitton of crops failed multiple years in row causing USSR famine.
He believed if you cut a tail of a dog, its offspring will inherit that. ... and that guy was in charge of growing food with "revolurionary scientific methods".
usernameusedinlessplatforms2
Mao decided to move farmers to work in factories and toss homeless ppl from cities to work the fields as its low skill job. (And 20m smaller workforce with 0 Exp can do it just fine)
Economic system was not the issue there, it was the unlimited power vested to a drug&sex addicted guy who thought he is a god.
Mgxr44
That’s bullshit on every level. First, those social democracies are only allowed to exist to protect capitalism. Notice how they only allowed them in areas near the USSR, China, NK. When people tried to do that anywhere else, we couped their governments and slaughtered people. Also, the countries still run on the damn near slave labor of the global south, which as I said, is kept in abject poverty by the capitalists. Also, the USSR doubled its life expectancy and China is gonna run the world
swishgifs
You sorta skirted around the comment mentioning 10s of millions of deaths under Stalin and Mao. Look at North Korea today. Are their people happy? Well fed? Upbeat about the future?
Be careful what you wish for. There'll always be greed and hierarchies in any system of government/society. If nothing else at least you can put your opinion online here without any consequence (for now).
Mgxr44
NK has had our boot on their neck after WE fascistly invaded, divided, and bombed their country. Every death of the Korean and Vietnam wars are on US for being fascist my guy. Does that disqualify capitalism for you? I’m guessing not.
Mgxr44
Famines are also something that happen btw. The Irish population still isn’t what it was pre potato famine. Which was a man made, cause by capitalism famine. Same thing in India under England. I’d much more readily excuse unfortunate famine in fucking I’ve covered Russia than ones just caused by capitalist greed elsewhere. And btw, 8-9 million people starve to death under capitalism every year. 3 million of em children. That’s today, not back in the 70s in a war… today
Hurch
Unrestrained capitalism is bad. It's a real life monopoly game where there can be only one winner. Capitalism needs limits. It needs guardrails against monopolies and trusts. We have anti-trust/anti-monopoly legislation, we just don't have the government representatives who want to have the legislation enforced. We have "leaders" who spew out the "trickle down" bullshit, while raking in untold millions in PAC money and sacrificing the livelihood of their constituents for personal gain.
Margrave9000
The name of the limit is socialism.
Capitalism deprives the individual of owning property, so we need socialism. The individual still won't be allowed to own property, but they will rent it from the well-governed state, administered by trained experts - instead from rich fucks and their lackeys. Rent in socialism will be spent on nice social programs and science instead of yachts as well. It will be so good.
glamdring1
Both systems are extremely prone to corruption cause people suck. It's not that either system is inherently better, its a matter of reining in said corruption as much as possible for as long as possible and then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down and has to be rebuilt.
M4UsedRollout
Or, the individual could still be allowed to own personal property.
This is different from private property. This is property you use in your day to day life. It’d be the house you live in, the car you drive, etc. But you wouldn’t be able to own multiple houses, fleets of cars, etc.
You’re going to still need some concept of individual ownership of living space. People really resented the communists that told people their houses were too big and forced them to live with strangers.
Margrave9000
'Or, the individual could still be allowed to own personal property.'
That'll lead to hoarding, exploitation and the recreation of capital.
'People really resented the communists that told people their houses were too big and forced them to live with strangers.'
It was an effective solution to the housing crisis of the time. Nobody needs a 3-story mansion or a 6-room apartment. Carve them up and let the homeless and the proletariat live in humane circumstances.
M4UsedRollout
“You’ve got 5 bedrooms for 4 people, so the government says your house is too big. Now you have a strange man you’ve never met before sleeping in the bedroom next to your children.”
This is how you lose people. Don’t advocate for this. The US already has enough housing to house everyone without turning single family homes into boarding houses.
Margrave9000
Because every single family home needs 4 guest bedrooms, 3 spare bathrooms (besides 1 for every permanent inhabitant) and 4 spare garages.
Is this a single family home?
https://www.reddit.com/r/McMansionHell/comments/kggoll/joel_osteens_horrendous_mess_of_a_dupecash_funded/
angelyric
Feudalism by another name; the sad thing is, the architects of our country predicted this would happen, much like the "problem of faction" (political parties) and the merging of the public sector, private sector, and religion.
We're looking at a brazen attempt to turn the world's largest (ostensible) democracy into a feudal, Christofascist state.
ButtblasterMcAssmaster
India is the world's largest democracy, assuming we're going by population. Just saying'.
Hurch
Man, talk about "politicization of the justice department". Trump always seems to blame others of what the Hell he's doing. It's too bad more "representatives" don't think enough of their voters know this, so they simply go along while enriching themselves.
vwzzjxv6f9101
A sort of American Taliban.
NonstopRampage
and doing nothing about it. Just a few generations ago, we were burning down factories, hospitalizing scabs, and terrifying business owners into not showing up to the protests, for fear of being followed back to their homes & families, because they were treating us like we were expendable.
THESE assholes are literally trying to OWN us.
mothermushroom
That was back when everyone had guns, unions were popular and plentiful, and people were missing at least one meal a day due to terrible conditions and poverty. We are too comfortable and fattened up now, too complacent. Guy Debords's Society of the Spectacle predicted a lot.
Zyrixion
And they spent every moment of time since then telling us how violence is never the answer and never solves anything. Wonder why.
NonstopRampage
I like how, the moment we put a stop to them, hanging evil bastards from a tree made us 'just as bad as they are', and somehow evil got super out of control.
angelyric
The pendulum needs to swing back. A new New Deal is necessary. The question is if the Union can survive long enough to see one come to pass.
Also, it seems the downvote bots have arrived
SavageDrums
The independent Republic of Caloregon is going to be dope.
NonstopRampage
Nah probably just some bootlicking nazi mad people are allowed to criticize the system as is.
saeheria
Or someone who thinks peacefully whining in the street is going to solve anything
NonstopRampage
"maybe if my sign is the flashiest, they'll listen to us!"