A Capitalist and a Socialist Walk Into a Housing Bubble
Picture, if you will, John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx seated together at a shabby-chic café—one of those places where the avocado toast costs more than the GDP of a small nation, and the Wi-Fi password is probably “late-stage.” Imagine them sipping overpriced cortados, locked in a heated yet oddly harmonious discussion about the ruinous potential of turning homes into speculative assets. It’s a scene so absurd it could double as an exhibit in the postmodern museum of late-stage capitalism.
And yet, the irony of their agreement on this one issue—the weaponization of shelter as an investment vehicle—is as poignant as it is biting. Because when the capitalist’s wizard of macroeconomics and the socialist’s prophet of class struggle both sound the same alarm, maybe it’s time to listen.