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>This whole article seems to be implying that the situation is some sort of moral failing of people who drink "natural wine" but if there's a problem here it's the underlying inequality, not the choice of wealthy people to spend money on veblen goods?

The trick is that the article isn't about anything, really. There might have been a smattering of true facts in there, but the authors profession is getting paid to paint generational stereotypes and then talk shit about them.

Can’t agree more. Taking about inequality while looking at those who have more than you is never going to work for me. Her opinion would have been more interesting if she had written about how privileged she is compared to the vast majority of the world population.

I had a similar reaction. As luxury goods go, their quote of ~$30 per bottle natural wine isn’t all that expensive. But then I read:

> The trend is now in full swing worldwide, and in my area, you can order a “natty” at most good small bars and many larger establishments.

It’s not the item, it’s the culture around it. I understand the Australian predilection for shortening words but this makes my skin crawl. But responding to your statement:

> Many people also believe that capitalism inherently leads to wealth inequality unless efforts are taken to stop that.

Because there’s a lot of evidence to support that. I can grab you some references if you like.

I'm not even fan of term 'natural' and I produce some.

When I was in college, a 'natty' referred to a far, far different drink. But then again, I did my undergrad at Flyover State U. On the other hand, I bet 80%+ of those folks own a house right now.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29/653/

I'm pretty sure "natty" means Natural Light and/or Natural Ice at every college. Except maybe some of the rich-kid fallback private schools in the East that most people have never heard of. There, maybe not.

Well, in the United States. The author is from Australia.

Good point.

I’ve been hearing the term “low intervention” recently… not sure if that’s better or worse.

> As the growth limits of free-market economies are approached, the logic of late-stage capitalism dictates that new markets must be identified and aggressively pursued.

Also, "late-stage capitalism" was first identified... 120 years ago. If it's late stage, it's lasting an awful long time.

The reality is this is happening everywhere - how have we not run out of movies or music or books or ideas? New genres must be identified and aggressively pursued - and yet we are dealing with growth limits there as well. If late-stage capitalism is a thing, I would argue we are more in a late stage society.

Obviously "late-stage" is a continuum. Capitalism is always "progressing", and you can draw a line wherever you want and say: "That's it, that's where it crosses the line into what people will no longer tolerate, and something is going to have to change".

While maybe "late-stage" is a newish term, of course the idea itself isn't. Why might we credibly think that what's happening now is really "late-stage" as compared to, e.g. the industrial revolution?

I think you can make a case for it. You can make a case against it as well, but that leaves you arguing essentially "it's been just as bad for a long time, so there's nothing special about now". And at that point, it's a semantic quibble and you've nearly bought into the idea behind the phrase, which is "maybe something is going to have to change".

> Many people also believe that capitalism inherently leads to wealth inequality unless efforts are taken to stop that.

Or alternatively, capitalism is gamed by legislation passed by the government, written by lobbyists, to ensure corporate cash cows are never troubled. Medical, pharmaceutical, insurance, banking industries are good examples. That's not really capitalism.

You have that backwards. Capitalism is not gamed by legislation, buying legislation is a core concept of unregulated capitalism.

As is "buying people" and "paying someone to make the dead hooker go away and not be a problem"

One of the core ideas of a constitutional republic is that there are fundamental rights and laws that are not for sale. As such "efforts are taken" to prevent the worst that pure unrestrained capitalism could do.

Same goes for wealth inequality. Collecting taxes to finance schools available for free to those who could not pay for a school out of their own livelihood is "not really capitalism" and yet it is one of the key elements of social upwards mobility.

And yes unrestrained capitalism is creating more inequality. A core concept of a capitalist-social-democratic-republic is that workers can unionize to have more power in wage negotiations. In a pure capitalist society a factory owner would consider paying mercenaries to shoot the union leaders and beat up anyone willing to protest the conditions. That happened a lot in the last two centuries.

> That's not really capitalism.

That's exactly capitalism: the system that emerged as the mercantile class leveraged their growing influence to wrest control of government from the titled aristocracy to themselves, and organized it to suit their ends as a class.

(It's not the utopian vision created to justify capitalism after critics identified “capitalism“ as a thing and started attacking it, but...that vision was always a lie to keep the working classes in line and believing that the dominion exercised over them was fair.)

There's a pretty stark difference between 'golden age' capitalism and whatever this is now we're moving towards. The author is right to point out that the old social contract, which consisted of mass employment and labour as the primary input is largely being replaced by more and more bizarre ownership and asset speculation schemes.

Natural wine is one example, a more topical one is the entire 'crypto-industry'. Which isn't really an industry because nothing industrial is going on. There's not really any employment, productive work or goods produced as much as it is one big desperate attempt to get your foot into ownership schemes of various sorts.

'Economic activity' in that realm primarily consists of shoveling symbolic value from one purse into the other without producing or consuming anything of actual use value.

So, you're saying the crypto-industry is just like the banking industry?

Yes-ish. Increasing financialization (going hand-in-hand with deindustrialization) seems like a precursor for this. With the difference I suppose that there is a core to banking of lending to the productive industry and allocating resources that is absent in the crypto world entirely. So more accurately maybe it's high finance on steroids

Ultimately, the existing banking system will either eat crypto, or crypto will become the basis for the new banking system.

It's not really any better or worse. People are excited about it now because the power structures aren't so entrenched yet. It looks like a chance to re-write the same history, but with yourself and your friends on the New Wall Street by dint of your cleverness and honest (ok, maybe not honest, but ) work... two things which no longer get you anywhere in the traditional finance sector.

I can't in good-faith argue very strongly _for_ crypto, but I can't argue against it either.

Does anyone open a restaurant or build a bridge with Bitcoin?

> The author is right to point out that the old social contract, which consisted of mass employment and labour as the primary input is largely being replaced by more and more bizarre ownership and asset speculation schemes.

If you believe Piketty, this was true for most of human history, and the high value of labor was just a temporary blip from industrialization.