Read on Twitter
Something that economist @yanisvaroufakis has been talking about quite a bit this year is the idea that the world absolutely could have markets without capitalism. We could regulate capitalism out of markets and still keep the essential idea of trade intact. They're not married.
It's really, powerfully hard for any social scientists to propose any policy solutions that undermine capitalism because we've all taken for granted that 84 rich guys having all the money is the only kind of world we're ever allowed to have.
My academic background in grad school was in public housing policy until I realized that there's literally no demand for public housing policy because anything I would ever propose as policy would be dismissed as undermining housing market profitability. That's sad, right?
People ask me why I wrote a dissertation on dating behavior if most of my grad school career was centered on federal housing policy and the reason why is bc I realized that nobody who would change housing policy to benefit the poor in America would ever be put in charge of HUD.
Housing inequality is arguably the most fundamental crisis facing America right now but we can't expect change in housing policy because any change the government would introduce would alter the housing market in some way, costing someone profit, and that's strictly forbidden.
When you think about it, the housing market exists to socialize Americans into thinking of themselves as housing profiteers. It's not efficient. It doesn't actually succeed in providing the best shelter. It wastes so many resources. But what it does is create ideological buy-in.
HGTV is one of the greatest tools of capitalist propaganda anyone in the history of propaganda has ever conceived.
It literally shapes the material culture around us in real time, faster than anything else.
It literally shapes the material culture around us in real time, faster than anything else.
The vast majority of Americans watching HGTV think they are being presented a representative picture of how the rest of the nation lives. They have no idea. Most Americans don't even have friends.
Then they watch sitcoms that reinforce this idea of how the "middle-class" lives.
Then they watch sitcoms that reinforce this idea of how the "middle-class" lives.
The reason so many millennials secretly fantasy-shop on Zillow is because we've been conditioned by literal decades of TV show friends to imagine that real happiness occurs pretty much only in the context of a four-bedroom home with a yard.
You know, or sitcom sets.
You know, or sitcom sets.
That show Modern Family isn't about family, it's about luxury houses in the suburbs.
