Since the discussion is about whether the rules should be changed, your back-stepping doesn't make much sense in the context of this thread.

You asked why the taxpayer would want more money in their pocket. I gave my answer: Freedom.

That's not how the steps we just walked through work out.

If someone has $100 in the S&P and someone else has $1,000,000 in the S&P who do you think suffered more pain this week? Who do you think had the bigger loss? It's all about exposure. If you're taking on more risk you'll reap bigger rewards and suffered bigger losses.

If someone only has upside risk and no personal downside risk something is very, very wrong. I'm thinking here of bankers in 2008.

First of all, your math still wouldn't add up to less than millions for the security you're talking about.

I'm not saying you have complete financial independence at that level, but you have a really nice cushion and more freedom than people who are living paycheck to paycheck. If someone has $250k of liquid assets and their monthly expenses are $4k they could literally spend years doing nothing.

But that aside, it's striking to me that your idea of "freedom" comes with such a narrow view of how one ought to live.

My version of freedom (financial independence) allows to spend and use that money however you want. I'm not telling you that you should do anything. Sit in your house and smoke weed all day for all I care. Go travel. But if you want - and only if you're actually interested in having this freedom - you should tend to try to be fiscally responsible.

A poor person who spends $30/week on starbucks coffee is harming their financial future. A rich person who does the same is not. Again, not my rules, just the reality of the game we're in.

You might talk about how sure, one can take other risks, yada yada, but then you fall back on the "right" choices people have to make in order to survive in your world.

This isn't my world. I don't make the rules. If you want to spend all your money on time shares or expensive cars or whatever I don't care, but don't go railing about how evil capitalism is when you come up short paying the bills or find that you can't retire as early as you thought you could.

Okay great. And you said earlier that more risk comes with greater rewards. Combine those two things then: the more wealth you have, the more risk you can afford to take, and so the greater rewards you can reap. Mentioning that risk is a factor in the middle there doesn't change the basic connection of more wealth to greater rewards... and less wealth to greater costs, conversely. Which was my original point. The involvement of risk doesn't negate any of that.

you can associate greater wealth with greater numerical gains just like you can associate greater wealth with greater numerical loss. it's two sides of the same coin and to ignore one side isn't right. at the end of the day though it's up to the portfolio owner how much risk they're is prepared to take on. i know plenty of well off people who take very little risk.

i don't necessarily associate less wealth to greater costs, but i do acknowledge that poverty has costs. if by costs you mean investment losses this is definitely not the case.

You do know that you are here praising the virtues of the government as an employer, the role of the public sector.

Yes, I've been employed by them for over 5 years now. I work alongside plenty of Americans who come from pretty considerable poverty. You'll never see me advocating America dismantle its state or its military.

There are costs though. There's a loss of freedom. You may find yourself dependent on the system and the paycheck (but not necessarily so, I have seen financially responsible people avoid this.) Some of the medical care is suspect. I'm 100% transparent about my experience in the military.

Someone's first responsibility to themselves. I'll 100% stand by someone joining the military to get out of poverty.

The more wealth you have, the more risk you can afford to take.

Thank you, now you're speaking my language. I agree!

If there is some gamble you can take where for 49% of the time you lose everything and 51% of the time you win a million times what you put in, and you've got enough cash to take that bet over and over again thousands of times, losing as much as you need to to get that big win, then you're virtually guaranteed to come out ahead. But if you can only afford to lose once and then you don't have anything to gamble with at all anymore, that's an awful bet.

This bet is insanely good. In fact, you could be losing 99% of the time and winning 1% but its still a bet you should absolutely be taking if that pay out is 1,000,000x. That said if there was that 99% chance of ruin you should not be throwing your entire portfolio at it whether that portfolio is large or small.

The mistake you're making here is that you're seemingly supposing that the poor (or middle class person, maybe?) must throw their entire portfolio at this investment. If the poor person only had 1k to invest and if they lose they go broke, they could only allocate, say, 5% or 10% of their portfolio to riskier investments which promise higher rewards. You don't need to buy a whole stock or a whole bitcoin.

1,000,000x returns are kind of unheard of though.... for the sake of discussion lets just say a riskier investment could return 10x or 100x and have a high risk of ruin. For such investments whether you're dealing with a $100 portfolio or a $10,000,000 portfolio you should generally only allocate a smaller % of your total portfolio.

tl;dr: You're making it sound like we're at a roulette table where the table minimum is like $10k when this is not the case.

A huge chunk of my net worth is in stocks. I lost thousands of dollars overnight, several days in a row, this week. And I don't care, because I don't need that money immediately, I can afford to wait for the market to recover, and the drop wasn't even enough to undo the unearned gains I've made from having that money invested for just a few years now.

That's a good mentality.

While someone who really needed that money soon... probably shouldn't have had it somewhere risky like stocks, and so wouldn't have been making those kinds of returns on it if they were doing the smart thing and not risking it, and would have just lost something they can't afford to lose if they had been desperate and reckless enough to risk it anyway.

Yes, the poor are generally not able to take advantage of the stock market which is a shame even if it does sometimes lose money. This is where some like Dave Ramsey or a financial advisor would come in and take a good hard look at what this person is doing and what their life circumstances are and how these can be improved. It is unfortunate though that those without money cannot take advantage of the market. There's a billion questions I could ask about this though: Is this person working? Are they addicted to drugs? Are they financially irresponsible? What kind of lifestyle choices have they made that have got them here? Every situation is unique. Maybe they're in the process of training or schooling for a better job. Nobody feels bad for med students who will be graduating soon.

Individual people and families are no different in that respect. Poverty costs you money on an ongoing basis. Wealth gains you money on an ongoing basis.

Poverty is expensive; I get that. I get that there are added costs there. You'll never find me defending modern banking practices which charge overdraft fees which disproportionately target the poor. Yet, you still see plenty of people overcome poverty. I know you saw my last post.

Wealth does not automatically generate more wealth though and I don't know where this idea comes from. It certainly can sometimes, but it's not automatic. Who do you think got hit the hardest these past few days with the stock market? The poor don't really have money in stocks, the rich got soaked with the recent stock market crash. Certainly if we're talking investment we're talking risk. If we're talking business we're also talking a huge amount of risk: most start ups fail. It's really no easy task to do even if you have decent starting capital. I think something like 90% of start ups fail within the first few years.

I'm much more comfortable talking about investment here because it's something I do regularly and read up about. I guarantee you that wealth invested does not automatically mean more wealth. The more risk you're willing to take on the higher the prospective returns.

One thing you consistently have a hard time grasping is risk and you speak in huge generalities (as is characteristic of you) when you just say that wealth generates more wealth. It might generate you more wealth; it can also crash and you can lose money like you never thought was possible.

It's an enormous, nigh-impossible uphill battle to get from the poverty most people are born into up to a truly middle class position (where returns on investment cancel out servicing debts, so your changes in wealth are truly down to your own actions)

You can literally join the military from a poor family and become middle class. By middle class I am going by income levels and lifestyle (home ownership is high among members of the armed forces), which is how middle class is generally defined.

And THE FACT that MOST people are NOT financially responsible doesn't affect that opinion at all?

Not at all. It would be like if drunk driving rates were to skyrocket in this country and you saw me getting into my car drunk; could I just tell you: "well MOST people drive drunk, it's fine!"

You can literally educate yourself for free on this topic. There's a billion resources and it's vastly relevant to your life if you're not already rich and you're concerned about your financial well-being.

You seem to support Social Security, which exists exactly because the government realized that people would NOT be financially responsible unless they are forced.

As a rule I don't really believe in paternalism and I feel that money could be better invested elsewhere. I don't want to turn this into a discussion about social security though. You will (hopefully) be getting paid it out though.

It is not about him being a perfect example. It is about the fact that he is FAR more responsible than most.

I honestly don't even know about this. I've already had this discussion with him and given him several suggestions. I gave him a podcast to listen to about the topic of real estate investment and he refused to listen to it. I don't know how his financial responsibility compares to the rest of the country. He's doing somethings right and somethings he could be doing better.

Uh, they would never teach that in school because it would slow the economy as people buy less stuff...right?

Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I don't know why schools don't teach certain subjects, but regardless its still something you should be familiar with.

One cannot learn about X unless X is a part of one's life. I think that you grossly underestimate the sheer differences in everyday thought of those who've been born into struggle, and those who've not.

Do poor people have access to the internet? Can they watch Dave Ramsey? Is there a library near them? I don't know, but given economics is invariably thread into life and always a factor you'd think people would be a bit more interested in it. I just don't buy the argument that poor people can't possibly educate themselves on fiscal responsibility. I've seen plenty of them do it. I work with plenty of them.

I would bet the farm that wealthy people spend far far more money on frivolous items than poor people do. Fiscal responsibility you say???

Yes, because they can actually afford to and it's just not a problem for them. Rich people have other problems (I'd be happy to discuss these; the rich still have things that can ruin them.) Fiscal responsibility can still be a problem for rich people if they overspend, they would just have to overspend on big ticket items. Fiscal responsibility when it comes to everyday items (coffee, groceries, etc.) is a much more relevant issue for the poor or middle class.

And the fact that the greatest predictor of a child’s future wealth is the wealth of their parents doesn’t contradict that at all?

Prediction isn't fate, and you're ultimately responsible for yourself. I hate to say this, but if all else fails just join the military (preferably Air Force). I work with a ton of people from poor backgrounds who thanks to their job will be middle class.

EDIT: I should also mention that there is no risk of dying in most Air Force jobs these days. My field doesn't even get deployed.

I have little sympathy for people who can see a problem coming, oh, 40-50 years in the future and not do anything about it. If you don't take care of your life that's not my problem. Get a side hustle. Get a better job. Train as a welder or an electrician. Move to a cheaper area. It's not someone's fault for being into poverty, but it is their fault if they die poor. Plenty of people don't care to try to advance. Not my problem.

I would estimate that no more than 40% of Americans retire with "and then some". What do you think the percentage is?

Have they been paying into social security (I hope so). Have they been paying into a 401k? How about a roth ira? I don't have statistics on this at the moment. If someone retires with 0 in savings that's not the fault of capitalism or the evil system (there are some rare possible exceptions....)

Lets be very clear what I'm saying here: I am not saying that everything is hunky dory and that life is totally fair. This isn't an argument about capitalism, all I am saying is that financial responsibility is your responsibility first and foremost. If you don't take ownership of it, it will take ownership of you.

There are very few extremely financially responsible people out there like @Pfhorrest. (someone who can retire and then some off of a median income). If most people are NOT financially responsible it seems unfair (and wrong?) to suggest that everyone should be.

I've already had a talk like this with Pfhorrest and I refuse to hold him up as a perfect example of personal fiscal responsibility. I've already had this discussion with him and I don't feel like rehashing it. He's doing somethings fine but he can certainly improve.

Everyone should absolutely be financially responsible just like everyone shouldn't drink and drive... this holds true even if some people have a really hard time with it. Fiscal responsibility is a basic requirement of adulthood and it's a shame they don't really teach it in school. They only exception would be if you're extremely wealthy.

I'm not sure you have a good grasp on how long money will stretch in this economy...

I'm entirely aware. I'm just a single guy with no kids in a medium cost of living area. I'm entirely familiar with my monthly expenses. Obviously if you're a single mom with 3-4 kids it's a completely different ball game. Children can absolutely drive someone into poverty; they're massively expensive.

You don't need to be a billionaire. Think much, much smaller. You don't even need a million to start feeling the effects.

You mean in the hands of your employer, the market, and the corporations from which you buy the goods for your "freedom and security."

If we're talking savings and investment then I can pretty much go with where ever I want. I can choose to risk it in the market or not. I could keep it all in a savings account or my mattress or a safe. I could bury it.

With enough money you don't need to rely on an employer.

Thinking it's all in your own hands and only yours is pretty naive, no matter which system you choose.

I take risks. I don't determine the outcome of these risks, but I choose to take them. I deal as best as I can with the hand that I am dealt.

When Europeans have adequate health care and education provided to ALL of their citizens that helps them attain freedom and security.

Am I right? Or are you? Or are we both right from some perspective? Obviously, it must be the last one, which makes statements like this entirely worthless...right?

Personally, I would pretty much always go for financial independence over having slim savings despite good public services. I understand public services are good, but the freedom provided when you have enough money to retire and then some is much preferable IMO. I favor placing my own financial future first and foremost into my own hands as opposed to hoping the government with its services can provide for me.

So far your contribution is at the level of a five-year-old. Good job! - if you're five. is there anything you can articulate that any of us can respond to?

He's confused, and it's a confusing topic - and this is coming from someone who has taken an upper level philosophy course on the topic years ago. If it can confuse people who have studied philosophy for years he's well within his right to be confused here.

However, I have never understood why Wittgenstein would be a genius. I have never seen anything Wittgenstein wrote, reused at all, by anyone, and in any other context. Seriously, I have never seen anybody doing anything even remotely useful with his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus or his posthumously published notes.

You can divide wittgenstein into "late wittgenstein" and "early wittgenstein." Early wittgenstein is tractatus, while late wittgenstein is philosophical investigations and I believe his essay "on certainty." philosophical investigations is a total reversal of tractatus (I have read the former but not the latter.) philosophical investigations is basically a critique on a platonic/a correspondence theory of language which, as wittgenstein believes, gives rise to philosophical problems (most notably metaphysical ones.) by shifting how we conceive of language, according to wittgenstein, many of these philosophical problem disappear (but certainly not all of them - for instance obviously ethics is still an issue regardless.)

If money is good because of the other things it provides, it's not an end in itself, first of all.

You are technically right here, but in society money is what will actually provide these things and come to think of it I can't think of any other ways of attaining freedom and security. Money is intimately connected with the two.

Second, the freedom and security of any working adult should be inherently guaranteed and not be dependent on their relative wealth.

It's nice that you believe that but we're talking about the world as it is. When american taxpayers have more money in their pockets after taxes that helps them attain freedom and security.

Biden has shot up in the polls and he's now ahead of Bernie on the betting sites. Total insanity. It's such a generational thing too - my parents (mid to late 50s) like Biden because he's more middle of the road and he'll do what the establishment tells him unlike Bernie who they consider too far left and in their opinion is likely to be less cooperative. It's like the total opposite of what I hear you hear on reddit and other social media sites mostly run by young people.

I'm starting to think there's a deep generational divide. I don't even think I know any younger people who support Biden.

Meanwhile I'm just sitting over here as someone who's right of center and watching the left duke it out.

You and I, and hopefully others, who show up for this conversation, on this forum, with the assumption that many people are acting irrationally, against their interests, can then have a more fruitful conversation -- cooperatively trying to figure out that question. If we get too stuck on words, the project can't get off the ground. I don't think it's wrong to engage in the philosophy, of course, especially given this is a philosophy forum, but given we're in a political thread it has the potential to slow things down to a crawl.

Yes, I'd like the discussion to progress so I try to stay concise with my answers. The reason we can have a fruitful conversation is for a few reasons: a) We're hopefully both hoping to discuss the issue and flush out the other person's ideas as opposed to challenging them on every aspect and just hoping to beat them (i.e. we are engaging in good faith.) Another reason we're able to have the conversation is that we both share common assumptions.

You've touched, I think, on the heart of the issue. But again, I don't accept the idea that because neither you nor I have a foolproof way of convincing people to change their minds or that they're being irrational, that this somehow makes us wrong in our assessment that they are being irrational (in the sense I meant above).

Ok, my issue is more when people use "rationality" as a sledgehammer which ties in with my next comment.

The question in the latter case becomes, Why do people believe weird things?

Well, I start with the idea that people are inherently situated (i.e. we're not disembodied minds capable of viewing the world perfectly rationally except in rare circumstances.) I believe that we're molded by our own unique psychological characteristics to a considerable extent, and for that reason I am extremely wary about me - with my own weird psychological quirks and weird experiences - laying down that phrase "irrational" on others when rationality, by its very nature, is universal. It would basically be me claiming that I can stand outside my own body and experiences so it's a very strong claim.

Some people just love things that I don't. I recently talked to a guy that loved drag racing. Is that irrational given the risk? You tell me (I personally think it's insane but I don't know the kind of pleasure he gets from it.) Personally, I love poker and I've been playing for a while which also entails a degree of risk. Am I irrational? I had a friend who grew up poor his entire life and had finally attained some degree of financial stability blow his savings on an expensive car. Am I - who grew up in a very different environment - going to label his action "irrational?" Yes, financially, I think we would both agree that the action was irrational but from his perspective owning a nice car finally means one "made it" or had attained a certain status - something that I wouldn't be conscious of owing to my class upbringing. He wasn't only considering the financial implications of the action when he bought it. When decisions start cutting across domains things can get very muddy.

If you have a more full proof, all-encompassing method of determining which goals are rational then let me know.

The answer to "are more people starving now and why?" doesn't depend much on how you define starving, it depends on how many people don't have enough food or sufficiently limited access to it.

Quick question, is starving a feeling or it an actual physiological process? Is it different from being hungry? At what point does hunger turn into starvation? If someone with plenty of access to food is just too lazy or depressed to eat and skip a few meals have then are they starving? Could someone living in an area with a shortage of food have adjusted to the conditions and no longer have the constant sensation of hunger? Moreover, is the data really giving us the 100% honest picture of their situation?

What decisions?

Say, a decision to vote for or support a certain candidate.

We can argue about why they have this goal, as I want to do and in which there's interesting research about,

You seem to be advocating for a different position (or at least very much expanding) on what you were saying earlier. Here you say:

If you decide on a goal and to your best ability, given the available evidence, make a choice which you've concluded is in service of that goal, then you're being rational.

So, in the case of a proponent of traditional marriage he votes for a candidate who supports that and donates to that cause he'd be rational by that definition, but now you're saying that's not enough and that those goals are in question.

I feel like you're on solid ground with your first view. It basically takes the form "If X, then Y" with maybe Y having support of empirical data or logic. What you're supporting here is Kant's hypothetical imperative. Don't question the goal, only the means. Unless maybe the goal is in service to some higher goal. It might not be in the conservative's case though; some things (or some value) could be seen as ends in themselves.

The manufactured irrationality of their hierarchy. Meaning sacrificing all other values, which are in themselves (or collectively) of greater importance and greater benefit, for one value -- like transgender bathroom rights or traditional marriage or anything like that -- because you "feel" like it, is not only a mistake but an irrational choice.

You're talking about weighing values here, right? If you look at moral psychology liberals tend to highly value care and fairness while conservatives tend to place relatively equal weight on care, fairness, loyalty, sanctity, and respecting authority (this is from Haidt's research.)

Frankly, I don't see any easy way to resolve this. I mean don't get me wrong there there are insane religious extremists who would really highly value, say, sanctity and in group loyalty but I have no idea how I would go about convincing them that it's "rational" to adopt a more balanced view when their beliefs are tied up in their scriptures and weird psychological quirks. I just don't know.

I would tend not to use the word "irrational" to describe the 9/11 hijackers. They had a goal and they accomplished it well.

The fact that even their choices made for their stated goals often have the opposite effect.

This is fair. It ties back to the hypothetical imperative mentioned earlier. If your goal is A, and B has been empirically shown to be detrimental to A then choosing to go with B is irrational all else being equal.

errr... I'm not American so I've got excellent social security but I do pay about 52% taxes after deductibles. I wouldn't know what a realistic upper middle class US family income would look like.

According to what I've found upper middle class income for a family is between 100k-350k, but we're also paying much, much less in taxes then you are. I think for your income tax bracket on a federal basis you'd be paying 24% and some states have no income tax. I only pull around 50k from my job but I wouldn't be surprised if our after-tax take home pay was similar (I take home around $4k/month) but I pay very little in taxes when April rolls around.

Depends why you want lower taxes.

Having money is absolutely an end in itself. Money can provide security and freedom. Any working adult should be able to recognize this.

People make irrational choices all the time, for many reasons. If you decide on a goal and to your best ability, given the available evidence, make a choice which you've concluded is in service of that goal, then you're being rational. There's always a chance you're wrong, of course. Mistakes happen, etc.

What if the conservative's goal is "preserve traditional marriage" or "have more money in my pocket by paying less taxes." How are their decisions irrational?

They precisely did vote irrationally. They vote against their interests (irrationally) when one person's policies would have had an empirically demonstrable positive effect on your community and the other exactly the opposite, yet you vote for him or her anyway. I'm talking about specific communities, but the argument can be made nationally as well.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to this idea if we're only talking economics, but if we're talking social or foreign policy issues (within reason no one is talking about nuking the world) I don't quite get it. In any case, many of the actual community issues are left up to the town or the state rather than federal government.

You have endless patience.

Math works, but it's not a belief, it's a language, and the system of this language are based axioms. I doubt axioms.

You can doubt anything you want including doubt itself. Why stop at doubting axioms? Why not doubt your doubt itself?

Do you think it's a relevant difference if Trump is saying these statements while trying to negotiate with Kim as opposed to, say, if he were passing a historical judgment years later on someone?

It's not just that.

In any case I'm on the other side of the political spectrum than Sanders so it's no surprise I wouldn't vote for him (although I do favor his more liberal drug policies).

I was just talking to Xtrix about getting an honest picture of his views purely out of interest.

Baden, can we talk about issues which are actually relevant in 2020 as opposed to Nixon bombing Cambodia which was like.... 1972ish? Or Reagan funding the Sandinistas in the 1980s? I mean I'm fine with having a discussion about it, but it's just not that relevant to the issues to the 2020 elections.

Let's at least be very clear: Bernie is an avowed "Democratic Socialist." It sounds like I'm splitting hairs, but it happens to matter in this case. Why? Because Bernie, as anyone would expect, does not identify with the state owning the means of production or any Soviet-type government. He's not in favor of dictatorship or authoritarianism. What Bernie means is a label for New Deal style policies. That's all. Given that, any way you feel about socialism, its history and track record, is already moot -- why? Because that's not what Bernie is talking about. That's precisely why he adds the "democratic" part, to differentiate from Russian and Cuba and others.

Alright before we begin this discussion I'll just let you know that I would really never vote for Bernie. I'm just interested in the actual contents of his beliefs. From what I know - off the top of my head - he's said favorable things about Castro and the USSR, and he favored nationalizing.... some industry in the 1980s and doing so in a manner without even compensating the leaders of those industries.

Again, not looking for a debate here just an honest picture of what Bernie believes. Something intuitively strikes me as a wrong here when you try to cast him as an FDR style Democrat (who I still dislike) when he's explicitly used the terms democratic socialist.

Likewise, what people think ought to be the case, or what they want, is not relevant to the good. What actually hurts them is, though.

What do you mean by what actually hurts them? What is this actual good that you are here to tell us all about?

Though I think ↪god must be atheist's point is a useful exercise, I'd like to criticize the premise that "justice can hurt society sometimes".

I honestly didn't think it was a useful exercise, so I didn't bother responding to it.

It's like take a concept like fairness - everyone should have an implicit understanding of it and this still holds true even if there are some vague cases involving it. If I'm talking about fairness in the usual sense I'm not interested in arguing those border cases which can be up for dispute. Fairness is still a meaningful concept even if there are these border cases. Otherwise there would be no such thing as day and night because twilight exists.

However, there is no logical alternative to a concept of justice other than the public good

So, just to provide some context, in the discussion me and Pfhorrest were having earlier we were roughly defining good as "social contentment or satisfaction" or something along those lines. Under that definition it should be clear that carrying out justice can conflict with "the good" - it can indeed make people very angry and could also lead to riots. Discontentment can certainly carry broader implications.

I wasn't really thinking along the lines of slavery when I wrote this. I was more thinking along the lines of the Making a Murderer case with Steven Avery.

In case you haven't seen it, imagine this: The community hates this guy. His family is poor and dirty, the family have like 10 kids who are bad students and one of them, Steven, has a minor criminal history. A murder in the city happens. We have reason to suspect - but not conclusive evidence - that it was Steven Avery - so we maybe cut some corners but in the end we find him guilty and throw him in prison. The community is happy.

I'm not saying that this is exactly what happened in the case, but these were along the lines I was thinking when I wrote about the potential contradiction between the public good and justice. Now of course you can just define the "public good" as inherently containing justice or define justice as inherently linked, but subordinate, to the public good... We can play with our definitions but under a fairly typical conception of "public good" to which the actual satisfaction of the community is the chief component it should be clear that individual justice and community contentment can certainly contradict. We can also play with other definitions of "public good" - the term is not cut and dry. Our conclusions will depend on the definitions we use.

Which is just? Your paying the $5, or not paying the $5?

the justice on this one is hazier, and there's no need to use this as an example. I already cited an example and one clear example is all I need for the concept of justice.

And the point of complaint isn’t that a specific price point of house is out of my reach, but that ANY house available for purchase (not a MH on rented land) in a very very broad area is out of my reach, and consequently out of reach of almost everybody else in that area, who mostly do barely scrape by check to check.

Just curious, what's your solution to this problem? Should homeowners not be allowed to decide which price to sell at?

If I tried to mortgage right now it would be yeah, which is why I need to save a ton of money for a huge downpayment in order to make it manageable. I basically have to pre-pay-off over half the house in order for “buying” (mortgaging) to not delay the day I have something paid off even longer than renting + saving already will take.

I think you're viewing it wrong. I want to show you a podcast a successful real estate investor sent me. The goal isn't to pay off the mortgage ASAP and therefore have no more payments (which even then isn't true you'll always have payments.) But seriously that money could be invested in much, much better places than in a house.

The podcast that was sent to me was "Get Rich Education: With Keith Weinhold" it's an apple podcast it's #6 "Here's why you aren't financially free" and it directly addresses this question of financially free vs debt-free.

Justice for one man is injustice for the other.

no, if someone is wrongfully convicted of a crime that's injustice.

My point is that I’m already doing every right, doing better than a supermajority of people, and I’m still facing an impossible uphill battle, which is a sign that something is systematically wrong that I personally am not responsible for single-handedly overcoming or else helplessly succumbing to.

From the picture you've been painting you seem to be doing generally alright. Sure, maybe a 600k house is a little out of your range but you seem to be financially secure with a nice emergency fund and decent savings. You mentioned you have disposable income and you're able to go out to eat whenever you want which is really nice.

I understand you want the house but you know the mortgage on that thing is going to be a constant stressor and much more than what you're paying now for the land ($800ish?) I live in a 1 bedroom apartment so I figure we probably live in similarly-sized areas and I'm honestly perfectly happy with mine. I think even if I had a partner 700 square feet is fine for me. Your insistence to get a house is a matter of your personal psychology, not a failure of the system. It's just hard to me to try to sympathize with you when you're able to go out to eat whenever you want. I mean sure the rent is annoying but it's only 1/4 of your income.

As I suspected, rather than offering actual solutions, you’re just denying the problem exists.

Get a side hustle, make a budget, and maybe look into the tiny house movement. I'm also not sure what your IRA is invested in, but the S&P is a decent option. Do not go for mutual funds which often have higher fees and tend to underperform the S&P. I have given you considerable real-life, practical advice which is directly applicable to your situation.

But clearly instead of this advice the better solution here - one which would clearly directly help you - would be if I were to agree with you in theory and tell you "sure lets go kill those capitalist pigs."

I rescind all of my earlier advice and declare that my solution now is to cause a worker's uprising and send all the disenfranchised capitalists to Madagascar. How's that.

Didn't you say something like well-being in another discussion? Or human welfare? My point remains. I shouldn't have to read an entire essay you should be able to put forth your view within a sentence or two.

There are clear cases where the welfare of the community (as normally understood) is in opposition to justice.