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“They’re providing housing!”
No. Construction, maintenance and infrastructure workers, planners and credit unions are, landlords merely fill the organisational power vacuum that cooperative or social housing would fill. Owning isn’t labour.
Wealth of Nations is surprisingly left-wing when you actually read it. Smith would probably be something like a social democrat if he were alive today.
A lot of it is “We don’t need top-down aristocratic control because people can order their own affairs; watch me describe how people make perfectly cooperative market transactions even though businessmen are conspiratorial shits”, and somehow now ‘capitalists’ who haven’t read it think it’s “CAPITALISM MEANS ARISTOCRACY IS GOOD, ACTUALLY”
I guess there are always defenders of the aristocracy, in every age, no matter what form it takes or what name it claims.
Reminds me of the subreddit r/austrian_economics in a nutshell. Even if you are not saying capitalism is bad, but merely pointing out where laissez faire capitalism is not nearly as good as advertised will get you branded a communist. Like tankies, but for capitalism.
God, the Austrian Cult of Economics is bizarre. My favorite part is where they explicitly reject evidence, conceptually (‘praxeology’).
Love that one. “Evidence disagrees with our theories? Don’t worry, we have a theory for that! It’s actually the evidence that’s wrong.”
Generally, you shouldn’t brag that your theories are unfalsifiable.
