Make America Own Again
An Antidote to the Youth's Embrace of Socialism
It’s not surprising young people are socialist when we don’t own anything.
We don’t own our homes, cars, labor, subscribers, or much of our income as it’s taken to pay off college debt.
If conservatives want young people to be more capitalist than preaching to them about its virtues will only go so far as nature and the system intended humans to be more low-information short-term focused.
Therefore to make young people more capitalist we need to make capitalism align more with the youth’s short-term self-interest!
We need to Make America Own Again!
We need to be a nation of homeowners, business owners, content owners, crypto-owners, and stockholders! Once the average young American has a greater stake in the economy then they’ll care more about its overall health and freedom since it’ll affect their own wallet.
There are numerous ways to increase American ownership, but what will have the greatest positive impact is deregulating the banks.
I know that’s an unpopular and uncommon opinion precisely because despite what we’ve been taught by the influence-industrial complex it would hurt, not help the 1%!
It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking. — Ron Paul
In simple terms, the federal government protects big banks from risk in order to encourage lending.
Ostensibly, politicians want to make lending easier because they’re so CARING AND COMPASSIONATE! People who couldn’t get a loan in the 80s can now take out a MASSIVE loan to go to college, get a medical treatment, start/invest in a business, buy a home, car, or even a TV.
The political pressure to make lending easier is strong in the swamp.
Corporations lobby for easy lending so they can make more “investments,” i.e. often stock-buy backs to further drive up their stock price, and so that their customers will also be able to afford more of their products. And the general public likes easy lending too because then they can get that thing they were told they needed NOW and therefore in-debt themselves further into the future.
And what inevitably happens with easy lending?
Prices go up and up and UP!
A buyer is no longer limited by his bank account, but by his appetite for debt.
We were taught to blame the big banks for the 2008 financial crash, in part, because academia is one of the greatest beneficiaries of easy lending.
But the truth is that the 2008 crash occurred because in the 90s politicians effectively forced big banks to give home mortgages to people who couldn’t afford it. Short-term this meant more poor people could buy their “own” home, i.e. the American Dream. But long-term it caused a massive housing bubble that the banks knew would eventually pop.
If the housing market was a genuine free market then housing prices would have course-corrected much sooner as it would have been in the banks financial interest to give less loans to high-risk borrowers, but because the banks could pass much of the risk onto the government via Fannie May and Freddie Mac the banks effectively had no choice but to continue to provide those loans.
And in the end, the banks won BIG by doing what the federal government forced them to do and now they’re bigger than ever before not because of a lack of “banking regulation” as the influence-industrial complex wants you to believe, but BECAUSE of regulations. Fun fact: corporations generally lobby for MORE regulations.
To therefore Make America Own Again our bigger-than-ever-before federal government should STOP protecting banks from risk.
Just as your friend Joe wouldn’t lend you $300,000 over 30 years so won’t the big banks once the federal government stops being their mafia enforcer.
Buyers would therefore be more limited by the money in their pocket again.
And then guess what would happen?!
The market would readjust itself.
And prices would go down and down and DOWN!
The price of housing, medicine, cars, and college would drop to a more purchasable level. In addition, even more affordable options would BOOM as businesses would have to craft their products around what money consumers actually have in their pockets.
Instead of just building luxury homes as is the current housing construction trend, one of the great trends I expect to see over the next 30 years is more and more homes being built off-site and easily-detachable from the land you place it on in case you want to move or sell it. Technology is getting to the point where entire skyscrapers could be mobile! Imagine entire cities on automated electric vehicle wheels! Once the rich are more financially incentivized to start building tiny homes then I suspect much of the red tape we see today will miraculously disappear.
Of course, if you’re currently a homeowner then a genuine free market may not sound very appealing to you as your home’s value would drop (another reason why politicians create housing bubbles as homeowners are a powerful voting bloc), but keep in mind that as much as you gain from the status quo, big real estate owners & developers are making 1000X more therefore fueling much of our inequality.
In other words, the more you currently own, the more easy lending benefits you because your success is only limited by your ability to persuade indebted people to buy.
In conclusion, the federal government should stop protecting big banks from risk in order to make lending easier.
But the question becomes, “What about the poor person who doesn’t have money to go to college or get a lifesaving medical procedure? Is the answer just “Tough luck!”
No. For one, banks would still give out loans, but they’ll just be financially incentivized to be more cautious again so if Little Jimmy doesn’t have the money for tuition then the bank may still give it to him if he can prove it’s ACTUALLY a degree that has the potential of paying them back. There’s also voluntary giving, i.e. charity, which leads to a more moral and grateful community rather than an entitlement-based society where the people who take the most are the most indignant.
In addition, I believe in increasing federal employment whenever unemployment exceeds 5%. If you’re young and healthy there’s no reason the government should be giving you money to do nothing, especially during a pandemic! Clean the streets. Pick up trash. Plant trees. Administer tests. Teach. Care. Protect! And so therefore when anyone who wants a job can get a job there’s no reason for a massive welfare state or to make lending easier because everyone will eventually have enough money in their pocket to buy into our big beautiful innovative free market.