I live in a small rural town in Michigan and the common people can hardly afford a home or farm land. It seems mortgage companies like Black rock are buying properties at an inflated price for renting out. I dont have an economics degree but i figured this out.

Excellent ..........we have moved into a rentier economy run by large corporations.

This was incredibly fascinating and frightening.

Fascinating and tragic enough to make me pre ordered the book

Imagine an economy where virtually all production was rent based, but instead of paying rent in money directly, renters gave up the ownership of what they produce for less than what it sells for, and the owner just pocketed this difference left from all renters and their labour, as a form of rent. In this way all means of productions would work as a scarce resource, one which ultimately would consentrate around few owners who had less insentive to improve it compared to just gaining larger control and increasing the rent. That would be wild

For those who are economically securing enough to consider this an intellectual exercise, fine. For the rest of us it means the difference between surviving or not. So tell us how to get the politicians to hear us and act in OUR interests.

Prof. Blyth, Rhodes Center folks, much appreciation for all your great work. Would you be able to suggest short 5-8 book reading list for contemporary economic literacy? Thanks for considering it.

Data rights for software and other types of data has got to be the next stage of the renter economy. The power to control access to data and software is the power to control the economy. Remember when TV was free as long as you watched the commercials. Now we pay for access to how many streaming services, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, etc. Most people don’t even know how many they subscribe to and how much they pay each month.

looking at the US I would ask the question: is there an economy at all? the most dangerous part of that I think is that, after distracting themselves with election and deluding themselves with the stock market, americans (at least some) are asking: "will there be a crash and when?" how do you think they'll take it, when they realize the crash happened at the end of march and early april? when the amount of debt in the system of both households and business basically made all cash disappear? revenue couldn't cover monthly payments, so they couldn't borrow new cash to pay wages... had to fire employees and still needed the FED to cover the difference... and the same happened for households... only for them there's no FED... since then businesses and banks have been technically bancrupt being kept alive by the fed... but the song is sung... the revenue situation hasn't improved and won't since there's no wages for large parts of consumers... how are they even still in an operative state? I'm aware the magic of accounting keeps them technically alive so long they can keep the stocks they base their asset value on rising... but still it seems like utter madness to me... but then again I'm german, we're quite arcaic and produce things and sell them...

Very interesting discussion. Thank you!

Fantasic episode. I listened 2x on Google Podcasts, but they don't have a comment/rate section there.

Very interesting. Definitely getting my hands on that book

The extension of the copyright duration.

Fantastic

Woohoo! Went to look for the book and found it’s a Verso pub, which means my Verso Bookclub membership will pop it into my ebook library, when it’s published, mid Nov. Awesome!

Keep up the good work Mark, weer"all pull'enforyu

Wow so this explains Australia's bjorked political system...

If you really parse rent out... it's outsourced tax collection. Tax principally through history was assessed based upon land, property ownership. This makes sense as it's the easiest to tax but also basically is forcing the people of the controlled territory to produce something with the property that they have in effect leased (don't pay your taxes and the government will revoke the lease and find someone who will pay.) However today everyone wants to become the rent seeker over a sphere but NOT PAY TAXES. In other words, the justification for the private property doesn't exist. They do this through a lot of means, like convincing local authorities to waive taxes assessed on the property until the property debts are paid off (at which point the corporation shuts down the property and moves on, they'd rather pay debt, less than zero percent interest than pay tax.) They are no longer "outsourced tax collection." They are STEALING what is ultimately the state's domain as the land, the property all of it is the state's and private property is really a lease document at best.

Neoliberalism? More like Neofeudalism.

Of course it was meant to happen. Why else do you suppose that the exact same process occurred across every single Anglosphere country in the world, on the same timescale and by governments on the left and right. Here in Australia, Prime Minister Hawke, ex head of the Unions Labor PM, implemented pretty much all the same policies as Thatcher, as did NZ, Canada and the US, with the exact same outcome. Do you seriously believe that they had no idea what the impact of those policies would be? Bear in mind that, of course, it was not really the politicians deciding any of these things but the Executive Managerial classes in the public service ( or civil service in UK). They all knew exactly what they were doing and if you don’t know that then you clearly haven’t read the international agreements and domestic policy documents of the time

Henry George wept.

i feel sorry for economists, they are always swimming in the kiddy pool, and can never stop the big people in the main pool of politics from disrupting their theories.

READ YOUR MARX!

Given the generalized decline in the rate of profit that we've seen over the past decade I don't see how any attempt to bring these assets under public ownership is allowed to happen. The "commons" that not just the UK, but all western economies had was the product a specific institutional organization that is not just extinct, but couldn't be brought back if we wanted to. Capitalism has destroyed any ability for these countries to provide a decent standard of living for its inhabitants and it's going to destroy it's own ability to sustain itself continuing down this road.

Socialism FTW!

Fellas... your point that Facebook and Google are profiting from "scarcity." It's the internet. It's as scarce as the number of servers you connect to it. YOU can start a website. You have the same opportunity to draw eyeballs as anybody. There are loads of shopping cart services to help you extract your "rent." Further, in the UK, don't you pay $1,000 a year to operate a television? Another $1,000 a year to operate a car? Am I hearing wrong? If true, do you really think the Utopia you're looking for is just a few more taxes away?

How fked are we?

Commulism!

consumer attention?? google? facebook? read " The Age of Surveillance Capitalism ". watch " money as debt " on youtube. last time i check labor creates capital, always has, always will. also to end with is ( sorry more reading ) : " j as in junk economic's " ; " killing the host " ; and " ........and forgive them their debt. " lastly " Debt: The First 5000 Years " . steve keen is another from the area of thinking.

So, basically, the UK is back to Fudelisim. You trying to tell me, that some watery tart gives you a sword, and that gives you the right to talk down to me. Help Help, I'm being repressed !!

and that is why rentiers fear organised unions......

Can we get an explanatory theory without the word salads and historical methods please?