>>596449It still holds true, it just seems to be the inverse.
Wealth speculation in the financial markets and with cryptocurrencies is seen as a way to buy one's way to a good life, and is not only encouraged but advertised to workers.
Property ownership used to simply be the purchase of a commodity; today that commodity is the focus of speculation, and in the process has converted all who possess homes into asset owners.
What's extremely funny about this is it's a clear generational divide which tends to be quoted endlessly as source of derrision for boomers. The wage gap from 70 years ago has accelerated and torn apart with it the system of goods that once secured a general system of prosperity.
Home ownership essentially becomes a pledge to capitalist society due to the individual's investment in their own speculative appreciation; there is a salience between the best outcome for the individual and that of capital.
For example, someone made a post on this site the other day about how homelessness in California could be solved through mass-construction works and alloting the homeless access to single family houses.
Imagine the resistance tax-paying home owners would put up upon finding out that the federal governemnt was essentially going to destroy their property bubble. (Imagine the resistance businesses would put up. Imagine the resistance lobbyists, senators, and financial corporations would put up).
Imagine the outrage individual home owners would feel upon learning that they are shackled with 40-50 year mortgages, having worked and earned their way through the system (sucking up like bottom feeders), when now not only the indigent, but the drug addicted schizophrenics who cannot hold down a simple retail job, are about to be donated houses free of charge off the dime of the tax payer.
Home ownership is simply one of the most literal forms through which you can observe the ingratiation of the worker into the capitalist system and the bundle of privileges it grants them.
I will never tire of this: You can walk into a coffee shop, the bigger the corporation the better, and endless streams of people will arrive to buy their coffee. You can walk into a supermarket and make your way to the checkout with your basket. You can go to a restaurant and place your order with the hostess.
All of these service sector staff, every single one, is incumbent to the wage system. The exploitation of their labour is not only generalized, but entirely on display for the world to view. The profit model of the very busienss you are in is predicated on what is essentially a form of slavery. Even more, the logic to which capitalist businesses are naturalised is that profit is the order of the world, as though they had developed some copernican understanding through their use of 'sensible business practices'.
And nobody bats an eye. Nobody questions why we must use money to obtain these commodities, or even questions the very form they take as commodities themselves.
Even those who have worked in the service sector and know how grueling it is consent to this. And yet right before their very eyes, the magic of the valorization of capital unfolds.