The State as Estate Agent

Yes/no/both/neither.

What is your point?

I think it is a good idea where the property is being used only for business purposes for relocation would be more practical when required
Not so much where the property is residential and has been inherited by the next of kin as there would be an emotional connection there

Nearing the end of one’s life, the thing to do would be to sell the residence to the state and buy tangible assets like precious metals and jewels. That would be passed on to the kids.

Emotional connection to the family ownership of the property or just living there?

As I said, family may continue to live in any property they have an emotional connection to so long as they can pay the state’s rent after they take over. Not being able to afford the rent is just as tragic as it would be as things currently are if financial troubles prevented anyone from being able to continue to live in a property they can’t afford.

And as I said, nepotism compromising equality of opportunity should be no excuse - surviving family members would only have the right to live in properties that they have earned themselves in the name of meritocracy. I’m not in favour of any emotional connections attached to material objects being severed any less than the contemporary economy is if you can’t afford your property. As valuable as emotional connections to inanimate things are, meritocratic principles are more important and unfortunately may have to take priority.

And if the property has already been inherited by the next of kin, as I said, they maintain ownership until they die.

I’m encouraged that you see the potential in the idea’s application to business property.

Excellent suggestion.

How about… the state build social homes to rent out, not just take it from the dying… for Christ sake, so those who have built or bought their own homes get to continue living in it rent free.

Is this thread about theft? as that is what you’re advocating here… States need to pool money together to build social housing and unused land, and the money gained goes back into the State coffers.

Empty buildings… that lay empty for years… are a different matter, but still need to be checked into before claiming it for the state.

This thread seems to be advocating for a transition into communism. I agree with Mags, it’s theft.

Girls, how about reading the words:

“I suggest once current owners become deceased, ownership of all their residences passes to the State”
&
“This way a slow transition can occur without the need to forcibly remove anything from anyone’s possession”

I was specifically against theft.

Nobody is taking anything from the dying. Once you’re dead, everything’s been taken from you anyway, including your house - so no difference.

Just like you can’t pass down the ownership of people etc. in your wills anymore, the same thing now applies to property. Or in the “slippery slope fallacy” eyes of Wendy, perhaps no longer being able to pass down the ownership of people in your wills was likewise a transition into Communism and “theft”… but in line with strong recent evidence I’ll not assume her use of logic is consistent in this case either!

If anything, I am advocating LESS theft than our current system and replacing it with something more reasonable. Taxation is infamously “theft” to rightists, and worse it’s applied in such a way that feels like a penalty for contributing to society (taxes on income and profits etc.), but rent replacing tax means you no longer see a minus figure on your wageslip, instead you pay rent just as so many do already for the privilege of getting to live in a shelter in a civilised society with all the opportunities that it offers that you couldn’t get by going it alone. Landlords no longer get richer from sitting on property while it appreciates, so will instead be encouraged to invest in productivity, and we cut down on nepotism and its violation of equality of opportunity.

Positivity, not negativity, is what I am proposing.

You know what, MagsJ, I’d be happy to consider the possibility of those who build their own homes not legally having to sell it onto the state once completed, and getting to live in it rent-free until they die (that means after death, not while they’re dying). However the illegality of renting it out to others remains, and it would only apply to the actual builder(s) + everyone essential to the project. This would actually encourage building houses, instead of the current model where home owners benefit from less housing being built, driving up the demand for the house they own relative to supply.

How’s that? Definitely no theft now, yes? If you don’t build it, you can’t own it.

I’m not saying don’t check into empty buildings before the State claims it - I’d be in favour of that too.

And States are already trying “to pool money together to build social housing and unused land”, so that the money gained would go back into the State coffers, but apparently that alone is proving difficult - given the ever appreciating values of houses from a higher demand than supply. Property prices have long become a huge issue, they’re a barrier to businesses that require property to run, and to the essential prosperity of new generations who are struggling to get into the housing market now more than ever. Surely you can’t disagree with that?

Girls? Don’t! =;

Whether dying or dead… assets go to next of kin first, or why bother work for a dead-end means?

I’ll answer fully later, but please don’t use such patronisation in your reply… you’re better than that. :wink:

No I’m not :confused: It seemed more appropriate than guys, since you’re both girls and not guys, so I guess the patronisation was read into it on your side.

Working to improve your own life, not spoiling your kids enabling them to develop a sense of unearned entitlement, and not cheating on the high ideal of equality of opportunity is a “dead-end means”?

We have a different worldview, clearly…

We still pass down people, it’s called dna. For the time being parents still own their children, but as Sil demands the state must have an equal opportunity to own their children.

Are people endowed with inherited genes of high IQ, EQ, and physical perfection cheating on the ideal of the equality of opportunity or does reality not compute with you? There’s no such thing as an equality of opportunity when biology and natural selection are involved and they are always involved. People are not equal and no relationships amongst them starts out as equal, reality favors the smart, attractive, and fit above everyone else and no amount of pie in the sky ideals is going to change that.

There’s no point arguing with a panda-zebra, who doesn’t understand degrees of better or worse: more equality of opportunity is better than less, which isn’t the same as absolute or none at all.

I actually support natural advantages/disadvantages, but these are compromised when money/assets get passed down to less naturally endowed people who didn’t earn their rewards, which is worse overall and anti-meritocratic when the best aren’t succeeding the most.

Nowhere have I demanded, nor will I ever demand that the State must have any kind of opportunity to “own” children. Stop putting words in my mouth just to ridicule them - you’re adding the Straw Man to the list of fallacies that you habitually commit.

So far only phyllo and MagsJ have come up with improvements on my idea, which are very welcome, but if you have nothing but petty jabs to get back at me for calling out your hypocrisy on a different thread, for the good of this thread I suggest you cease.

see my thing is, i’m not seeing enough ‘greatness’ among those for which social darwinism is being justified, and i’m even inclined to suggest as nietzsche did in his ‘anti-darwinism’ sketch, that as we progress, there are less and less ‘bulls-eyes’, less and less aptitude for real strength. take a typical case of what we idolize as the realization of the western capitalism ideal. fuck it, we’ll use trump. now according to darwin, this clown is an apex predator… and yet he can’t even form a complete sentence. now seems to me that something is terribly wrong here… something terribly different from what we had expected darwin to mean, or even ayn rand, when the formulation ‘survival of the fittest’ came to be expressed in the western world. with nietzsche i say that the strongest are not the rule. today, fitness level is so easily acquired through luck, or underhanded cunning (manipulating, kissing ass, etc.), or coincidence, or inheritance, or any number of things that anyone, in general, could have accomplished. the vast majority of the ‘heroes of capitalism’ are just this; one bank account more than the average janitor. sure, once in a while you get one with enough money and a decent idea to finance it… but really, are we sure nobody else could have come up with the same shit had his luck been different? no victor ever believed in luck? okay. but we’re not talking about roman gladiators here. we’re talking about some shmuck who invented the coffee maker. hardly something the accomplishment of which would constitute a claim to ‘victory’, no?

see i’m saying capitalism has failed to justify itself as being necessary for greatness. if three hundred years of western capitalism was a TV show, it would be like america’s got talent… where seven eighths of the contestants are so incredibly lame you switch the channel to real housewives instead. at least here the people are purposely acting like idiots.

anyway there was a neat twist put on the darwinism spin by nietzsche… especially the timing. the timing was excellent. presently, the emerging bourgeoise class of high society found in darwinism an excuse and scientific justification to be the cockroaches that they were. then fritz comes along and says ‘nope. you guys are actually weaklings who’d be nothing without the artificial democratic institutions put in place to foster the development of worms like you.’ oh he couldn’t stand bourgeois culture, bro.

For apartments and big businesses (especially essentials like food production), I agree with you, they should be partly or fully nationalized or turned into cooperatives after, or before the owner dies.
But for condos, houses and small businesses, I disagree.
If socialists want to win, we have to make ourselves appealing to the middle class, not just the working poor.
Then again, in another few decades the middle class will be dead (it’s all but dead now), and maybe that’s when we’ll finally see revolutionary change.

Why need a transition at all, from owned to state-owned property, if there are next of kin/inheritees?

Capping private landlords is an option, and building state-owned social housing to rent or buy another, whilst leaving those who have bought or built their homes to enjoy the fruits of their labour?

If a tax-free property-renting environment was much more economical all round, then where does such a model exist? I’m thinking Northern-Europe way, or so I recently read somewhere, and are such societies more affluent/better off than our mixed model version… or why bother change over if not?

So build, not buy? and not rent out? How about just capping the amount that landlords can charge? it’s happening here now.

I do not disagree with that, but price-capping or state new-builds is the ethical solution to the problem… do you agree with that?

Claiming dormant properties after X amount of years is also ethical and being done right now, as that opens up the property market by 100s if not 1000s of properties.

Ladies, perhaps…? I’m not averse to ‘gals’, but I earned the right to not be called a girl decades ago! :laughing:

If there are tangible long-term benefits to your housing plan… then no, but if the benefits are negligible, then home-ownership should remain for those that can afford to buy, and what about rent to buy schemes…? they are vigorously encouraged are they not?

… you mean all the reasoning I explained in my opening post?

That’s why.

You’re kindly asking for me to not be patronising towards you, but you really make it difficult.

So… just do what we’re already doing?

In the interests of there drastically needing to be some change, any change, capping rents set by private landlords according to the broken market is something, and of course the State need to pick up the slack in construction where the private market is failing so badly - but let me give you a UK statistic. I found an article that’s just over 6 months old, stating that UK councils are on average 6.2 years behind on a 10 year housebuilding plan… that’s just frankly shit.

The whole thing is such a mess, it needs a rethink, and my solution just so happens to solve multiple issues in one. The current proposed re-tweaks that you’re suggesting are not enough, nor are they as elegant and simple.

I didn’t borrow the idea from somewhere that was already doing it - I am in the business of coming up with new ideas. If my idea is already in existence, I am not aware of it.

You’ve asked why change it twice now. The last few paragraphs of this post are a re-cap since you obviously missed it the first time.

Price-capping and/or state new-builds are better than what we have now, but they’re neither working fast enough, nor are they optimal - nor are they the most ethical in fact.

The right infamously oppose taxation (e.g. to fund new-builds by the State) because it is immoral theft. Some would probably go as far as saying that price-capping what private owners could otherwise charge is theft, at least indirectly.

My solution not only undercuts taxation as a form of a comparatively less justifiable means of State income, but it also removes the laziness of landlords sitting on a title deed to property and watching their bank account grow, while poorer people who can’t afford to own property pay them for being richer than they are. Investment should be in productivity - the service of “allowing someone to live somewhere that’s already built” does not justify the unproductive payoff, even given the odd maintainence service that the landlord pays for to keep their property up to scratch. So my solution is more ethical in two ways than what we’re doing already that you’re suggesting we stick to.

The limited supply of housing relative to the growing demand incentivises less housing being built in the eyes of property owners - the less property constructed, the more they can charge for renting their property and the more its value appreciates once it’s time to sell it. This is partly why your suggestion of “just do what we’re already trying” is not enough. My solution transfers the incentive to building property to sell it to the state - and if we stick with your suggestion of getting to live rent-free in a property as long as you built it yourself, then that’s just more incentive to build. For everyone else, rent (or mortgage) is what almost everyone is used to paying anyway - but instead of paying it to a private landlord, you pay it to the State instead of tax. They need your money for public services anyway - I’m streamlining the process as well as eliminating dissent towards taxation. It makes sense to pay the State to live in the society they’re providing services for, it makes less sense to get less income after tax.

There’s rules about where and how much you can build either way, but one of the reasons State new-builds are disliked is because public motivation is high quantity low quality - to keep within budget - without reward for doing a better job, and this can either drive down house prices of nicer places nearby for multiple reasons. Private builds get rewarded for quality - which will be more popular with neighbours, and the building party can sell a more desirable property to the State for more money. Incentive to build solved.

Businesses that require property to run (even online businesses need property to keep their servers in) can struggle to run purely based on the costs of property. More incentive to start new businesses under my solution, and current businesses can spend more on staff and operation costs with less to pay in both tax and property costs. Incentive for business improved.

Equal opportunity is improved when kids of the rich and successful don’t get the same head-start, and the sense of spoiled self-entitlement that they might suffer from is eliminated: the lesson is strong and clear to work and earn your rewards without getting them for free. Natural talent is less compromised by such unfair advantages, and natural talent getting rewarded the most gets natural talent the most power to change for the better.

“Why need a transition at all”???
Multiple profound and far-reaching reasons.
I’m looking for a single valid reason why NOT to transition to what I propose, and so far there are none.

So a marketing problem then.

A statistic: in the US about 2/3 of homes are occupied by the owner. This means that the remaining 1/3 homes, everyone is renting, and on average 1/2 (of the 2/3) of homes with an owner also own these purely rented properties.

Therefore, (incorrectly to start with) assuming uniformity across this average, only 1/3 of the population own more than one property. So 2/3 of homes are lived in by owners of only that one property or renters. The former 1/3 will get to keep their house rent-free until they sell it or die, after which time it belongs to the State, so ought not to be against my proposal. The latter 1/3 will be adamantly in favour of my proposal. The remaining 1/3 will often include dependents upon the owner of multiple properties, who will mostly fall into the other 2/3 after they leave home - meaning far more than 2/3 will be in favour of my proposal or neutral, and much less than 1/3 against it - all this assuming that people are acting on their own self-interest and not ideologically.

So basically, ideological thinking aside, my proposal will have overwhelming majority appeal. Whether or not it has majority appeal will be up to ideology - an increasing barrier to optimal society. But fortunately, my proposal is backed by many reasons that speak to the heart of those ideologically against any State ownership etc. such as the appeal to equality of opportunity, the optimised incentive to earn your own rewards and not get money for producing nothing, less cost barriers to start new business and run current ones, a replacement or at least a reduction “in the theft” of taxation, incentive to construct new property without additional barriers to planning permission, therefore less need for low cost homogenous State builds and more for nicer properties… these should all also appeal to the ideological left as well.

I’m glad you agree with apartments and big business, but there’s no need to do it before the owner dies - I don’t support theft and a smoother transition over time will prevent shock to our prediction-reliant economy.

On the other hand, if you wanted to take it a step further, you could ban rent and wage serfdom altogether.
A person could sell their business or property but they couldn’t rent them out.
A business owner couldn’t hire you without making you a co-owner.

yeah this isn’t a bad idea, actually. it comes down to where the line is drawn between a public utility and an item of personal property. we use roads and libraries and parks just like we use houses, so what’s the difference. ah, it’s the privilege to personalize the space one lives in, that’s different. that, and the fact that housing can be built very fast for relatively little costs and sold for absurd prices, very little resistance against the creation of such a market was offered by anyone other than card carrying socialists. everybody else, the consumer working class, had no other option; they either rented or took a loan out on credit with interest. in this way they got fucked twice by the capitalist.

state owned housing, on the other hand, wouldn’t put rent money into the pocket of an economic parasite… but redistribute it back to the working classes through the various other public facilities it financed. but you could still buy all that cheesy nick-nack shit you don’t need to decorate and personalize the house you lived in, so the only recognizable difference would be a matter of paper work. sil’s got a point; what does it matter to a home owner that they’re paying an entity called a ‘state’ rather than an entity called a ‘land lord’? the only difference is, the renter might actually get some of that money back in the form of the use of resources it is used to produce… and, by eliminating the prospect of there being land lords, you’d contribute collectively to forcing the capitalist parasites to get a fucking job and do something productive for once instead of ‘laboring so extensively’ to sign a check in which they give a portion of the money owned by the workers, back to them. oh you didn’t know? somebody told you that was the capitalist’s money? pff. that’s a formality, nigga. called property rights. this has nothing to do with production power, product and producer. every bit of that [insert commodity] belongs to the worker who produced it. if he’s got to give it to somebody, it better be to democratic collective he is both a part of and in power to make executive decisions about how that profit is spent. hey if you don’t know, you betta ax somebody.

So let me make it easy for you… Don’t!

Perhaps the rental housing market will fix itself, now that 100s of 1000s of state homes won’t be prioritised to house non-nationals, landlords capped to prohibit them from taking advantage of the previously overburdened system, and empty properties utilised.

I shall read on…

I would say that the housing market is now settling, and all people want is affordable rent or to buy an affordable home… I think your model, under that light, is extreme.