solarpunk memes

It's 2023. If we start burning motherfuckers and taking their businesses there are going to be memes.

Don't let your dreams be memes

It should be.

And all of those policies were in the middle of a global war so I’m assuming wartime and peacetime economics is a little bit different.

Which was reasonable?

With no control, a few could buy huge volumes to resell in the black market, just like what happened in the CoViD start with masks.

The consequences of "total war"

Specifically the fourth feature:

4. Total control: Multisectoral centralisation of the powers and orchestration of the activities of the countries in a small circle of dictators or oligarchs, with cross-functional control over education and culture, media/propaganda, economic, and political activities.

Wiki

could have*

What should they have done instead?

It was mostly to keep us from eating the rich, but there are ways to deal with uprisings now that didn’t exist then.

Price controls cause shortages and rationing.

Because toilet paper was price controlled during COVID, right?

No. Price controls don't cause shortages. Price controls redistribute the burden of an existing shortage. Without price controls, shortages mean only poor people go without; with price controls, everyone shares in the burden.

Imagine there's a shortage of toilet paper. In a capitalist market, if there's a shortage, the price of the good goes up. This means rich people still have all the toilet paper they want, middle class people have to budget and go without other things to avoid toilet paper, and poor people can't afford toilet paper at all.

There's no rationing in capitalist markets, either, so people with enough capital can buy extra toilet paper to sell at a higher price, making it even harder for the middle class and the poor to afford toilet paper.

In other words, without price control, the burden of the shortage falls on the poor and middle class and gives wealthy capitalists an opportunity to expand their wealth at the expense of the poor.

And if you doubt that this happens look at how many small businesses Amazon pushed out of business during the lockdowns.

That's what capitalism is. It's not magic, it doesn't create resources where none exist, it is a method of distributing scarce resources by prioritizing people who have the most resources already. Capitalism "solves" shortages by raising prices until enough poor people can't afford the item that everyone else has enough. Capitalism is hateful, elitist, and contemptuous of basic human rights.

So we impose price controls and rationing. Everybody has less toilet paper. But everybody has some toilet paper. Instead of one part of society being immune from the shortage and one part of society having nothing, everyone shares in the burden.

And this is why our political and capitalist classes hate price controls. They think they should be above economic hardship. If they can't get anything they want anytime they want, it means they're just like poor people. And they'll do anything to avoid that injury to their pride.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.