And yet we have such terrible poverty.
When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simplest thing. Space. Some space to fucking sleep and live.
How can such a large country suffer from a bigger housing crisis than we find in jammed up dense countries like Singapore, South Korea, and India?
Why hasn't the market solved this problem?
Believe it or not, its not impossible to manufacture a living space in a factory and assemble it on site in a day, to provide extremely well made and affordable housing structures.
There is space enough in American cities if density is allowed to be increased. In other words if these fake "liberal" NIMBYs in American cities can be persuaded to give up the precious "character" of their neighborhoods, we can make space for everyone. CHEAP space.
Maybe "the market" is not a good tool to solve inequality.
We aren't natural. We don't need natural evolutionary states. We need unnatural, human-oriented, ethical states.
I don't need "unnatural, human-oriented, ethical states". I'm perfectly happy with a state where I can acquire as many resources as possible, even if that incurs a significant cost to others.
Assuming the natural resources you might want to exploit are living beings, you have to maintain an equilibrium in the environment or you can get resource starvation, which then impacts you directly, either as increased costs or an end to the goods entirely. You can easily see this in things like elephant/rhino poaching, where the unregulated demand will eventually result in no more supply at all. Even slavery requires considering the costs of maintaining the slaves, as if the slaves deteriorate, they won't be as productive, and it will cost you more to acquire new ones. Or if you attempt to take over some new lands, but your diseases wipe out the native population, now you don't have the natives to use as slaves anymore.
In respect to the American economy today, inequality and exploitation can lead to several problems. 1) Lack of skilled workers, 2) ballooning health care prices and increased taxes, 3) political unrest leading to trade problems, not to mention limited business growth, 4) overthrow of government, 5) state taking over commercial entities, 6) economic collapse , 7) massive refugee crisis. Oh wait, that's Venezuela. For us it's just the first few.
No matter what, you will eventually have to consider the costs to others if you want to acquire unlimited resources.