[calepayson]

Honestly great question. I think of it as:

I invest my wages to take advantage of compound interest. It’s kind of my only hope of having a family / owning a home / retiring. If stuff stops compounding, I’m fucked. Multiply by however many millions of people are on the same position.

I don’t necessarily think the theories are making any assumption about what is good (except for the “greed is good dicks”)but more acknowledging that this is how our system currently works and the first generation to step off this ride will have a horrible time.

[tavavex]

But isn't this just a more abstract example of the 'circular explanations' thing that OP mentioned? The reason why we need compound interest on our savings accounts instead of just being able to put away some money every year is a product of having to counteract inflation, which is the result of policies trying to induce growth by making saving less appealing than putting the money into more companies making more things for more profit. We need infinite growth because everything around us is designed to expect infinite growth. But what happens as we start running out of headroom? Is there really no other way at all?

[bobson381]

We are going to find out. See Limits to Growth.

[bombcar]

There existed ways to build a family/home/retire before the financialization of everything - those ways still exist and still work, even if disadvantaged.

[trumpdong]

Do they? Is there a way to get land without buying it from someone who currently owns it? I'm totally fine with building supplies costing money since you can scale that from a tiny shack to a mansion (or a sleeping bag in the dirt) based on your wealth, but the price of the smallest parcel of land seems to be a lower bound on how much you can spend.

[bombcar]

Yes, depending on what you consider "buying" and perhaps what you consider "owns", and it varies by country.

The practicalities are that the places you can use the "tricks" (like homesteading still being valid, or mining claims, etc) are places where the land is so cheap as to be free (or nearly so, eBay has "land" available for a few dollars, because you pay lawyers $500 for the transfer and the land is somewhere in the Nevada desert).

Practical usable land (for some value of "you could grow things on it, and it's not a desert") seems to put a lower bound in the USA of about $1,000 an acre.

The problem is most people want said land to be within commuting distance of a job, where it jumps to $5-15,000 an acre.

[trumpdong]

Right, and you can't get any $ at all if there are no jobs. So maybe only land within commuting distance of a job should count. And the cost of commuting to that job should also be included in the effective price. If the government wants to not be responsible for people's wellbeing, the government can't gate existence behind $ and then gate $ behind whatever.