• PbSO4 [comrade/them]
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    4 years ago

    "Those who play with the devil's toys come by degrees to wield his sword"

    All of a sudden, you've got a financial incentive to act against your communitarian instincts. Whether consciously or not, it's there and influencing your attitudes and choices.

    • AMWB [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      IMO the best response.

      People have no pension, pathetic social security, and high interest rates. There is no choice. The only way to take care of yourself when you are too old to work is to invest.

      I've been investing since I understood the power of capital and it is the only way I'll be able to buy a house and stop renting. It is so seductive to look at the numbers go up, it's like gambling but the odds are in your favor. Its so insidiously easy to think, ok I deserve this free money and the free money I get next year will yield even more free money which I also deserve. And it should go up forever 🤑 The most liberal people you meet will undermine public housing to protect the value of their house. Who's to say that in 40 years I won't be some boomer kneecapping young workers to protect my nest egg? What ideals are more powerful than class interests?

      Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown...Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are more delicate res sacrosanctae, extra commercium hominum able to withstand this alchemy. Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions. -Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 Ch. 3