This is a remarkably reductive and unsophisticated take. Businesses acting "greedier" and rents shooting up has correlated very strongly with the DIRECT inputs of stock prices and property values; in other words, artificially low interest rates and artificially high liquidity. Naturally, these sorts of reality-warping forces will feed into a more hostile low-trust culture.
You'd have to prove that there's something particularly special about urban decay as opposed to rural decay, and rural decay is a very strong force in the Western world. Where I am in the USA, rural properties and home prices are skyrocketing, the original communities are being hollowed out, old folks are dying to fentanyl while their grandchildren fly off to urban centers around the country, and investment firms gobble up huge amounts of land. It's just as greedy and unaffordable as the urban landscape.
We have systemic changes with robust explanatory power, and I already gave two. People's character tends to reflect the environment they are trying to survive in; try not to look at people's behavior as a cause, but a symptom.
>Businesses acting "greedier" and rents shooting up has correlated very strongly with the DIRECT inputs of stock prices and property values; in other words, artificially low interest rates and artificially high liquidity. Naturally, these sorts of reality-warping forces will feed into a more hostile low-trust culture.
I didn't claim otherwise. And I don't think you're contradicting me. I think your argument simply slides along with mine.
And let's not pretend that only the big evil faceless banks and corporations are to blame for everything skyrocketing. Oh no, the average joe has also given into mass greed as well, who'd more likely rent out his inherited apartment to a tourist for 50 Euros/day than a local broke ass student for 500/month.
First of all, you blame peoples' behavior without searching for incentives and shaping forces. This is very "kids these days" argumentation, and specifically blaming greed or an increase in greed is downright utopian. Past ages and societies were no less full of greed, nor can future ages and societies be cleansed of greed. However, unless artificially warped by an outside influence, most social interactions and relationships tend towards cooperation as the best solution (see the Prisoner's Dilemma). Competition is a great example of an emergent interaction which incentivizes "altruism": Forcing prices down, encouraging resource efficiency, punishing waste and fraud.
Second, your idea that our societies are suffering from deregulation is downright delusional. Artificially set interest rates and liquidity injections are the ultimate form of regulation, wherein governments actively decrease the entire population's time preference by inflating away their savings, impoverish everybody but the wealthy by boosting assets, and reduce competition by shoring up the biggest businesses to bloat up even bigger. Remove this ultimate regulation, and with the current conditions, markets would choose staggeringly high interest rates, forcing deflation and thus absolutely demolishing fast money, investment scamming, and real estate speculation overnight.
So no, my line of argumentation does not slide into yours. You actually don't know what you're talking about and rely on appeals to fantastical sentiment.
>markets would choose staggeringly high interest rates, forcing deflation and thus absolutely demolishing fast money, investment scamming, and real estate speculation overnight.
But, but ..muh "Japan's economy hasn't grown in 30 years" argument against deflation.
>Second, your idea that our societies are suffering from deregulation is downright delusional.
I never made such a claim, so funny that I'm the one being delusional here. Are you off your meds?
>So no, my line of argumentation does not slide into yours. You actually don't know what you're talking about
Oh please, stop it with the kind words, you're making me blush.
If you actually think Japan is suffering from deflation, you most definitely haven't the slightest clue what you're babbling. The Bank of Japan actively buys stocks. It has mired itself in stagflationist monetary policy for decades.
That's rich, coming from someone starting with the vacuous "deregulation" meme of high school armchair economists and following up with nothing of substance. Counter my points, substantively. And no, this (https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/money-supply-m2) is not deflation.
You'd have to prove that there's something particularly special about urban decay as opposed to rural decay, and rural decay is a very strong force in the Western world. Where I am in the USA, rural properties and home prices are skyrocketing, the original communities are being hollowed out, old folks are dying to fentanyl while their grandchildren fly off to urban centers around the country, and investment firms gobble up huge amounts of land. It's just as greedy and unaffordable as the urban landscape.
We have systemic changes with robust explanatory power, and I already gave two. People's character tends to reflect the environment they are trying to survive in; try not to look at people's behavior as a cause, but a symptom.