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 standbourgeois 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!
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.
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.
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.
Most business owners started out using home and property ownership as collateral for their business loans. Under your proposition, people without great sums of cash or hefty business investors wouldn’t be able to start most businesses.
It’s fine, the question was rhetorical, because I knew that you would know that any definition of the word that you provided would be completely and validly disputable.
Hence, redefine the question if you don’t want to clarify exactly what you’re implying by the loaded term “extreme”. I’m well aware of what it’s supposed to mean, but if we don’t get everything square on the table we leave ourselves vulnerable to problems of ambiguity and assumption - which never gets anyone anywhere in my experience (and yours I bet). Stating firmly and plainly what you mean is the only way around this. If you don’t want to play then either you should retract your opinion, or submit yourself to a wild goose chase and admit that’s your intention.
Precision will get to the bottom of things. Intuitive vagueness will have us dancing around on the surface, servicing nothing and nobody.
A good point. Thank you, Wendy.
To start with I would presume that starting a business would require less collateral in the first place - with rents and taxation being consolidated and therefore much less significant.
Your argument is centred around the need for some token asset value to suffice as requisite capital for any potential business starters to persuade creditors to loan enough to fund said startup. Whether or not it happens to be property seems circumstantial to this end.
So given the presumed lesser required collateral under my proposition, and the same private creditor system for funding, in the absense of using property my proposition would need some replacement asset or other leverage to justify others risking their own capital to fund your new business venture.
I’ll have a think on this one - perhaps it is the death of my idea - perhaps you have other potential solutions yourself?
Just say you don’t want to answer the question already? as there’s nothing loaded or vague about the question, but merely a follow-on inquiry from your prior post… you are free to refute my accusation, after-all.
Home and property ownership are the only largely valuable commodities, commodities that gain equity appreciating rather than depreciating that most people own during a lifetime. Cars or other big ticket vehicles lose thousands of dollars of their value when they leave the dealership’s lot, also they are usually not purchased outright so under the chains of a loan already and are not considered any type of asset until they are paid off. I can’t think of any one, widely owned commodity that gains equity 98% of the time as quickly as property that can help guarantee a business loan in the tens of thousands of dollars. Home and general property ownership is also used as collateral for personal loans for weddings, births, college, family reunions, etc. So property ownership helps to pay for many big ticket items.
Oh, I owe you an apology, Sil, for getting overly worked up and becoming fairly rude in our past exchanges…I’m sorry about my behavior. From here on out, I will try to contain myself, but radical craziness makes me radically crazy.
So in the eyes of Wendy I am radical and in the eyes of MagsJ I am extreme. Well, I intended to think outside the box so I wasn’t going to come out with something moderate.
MagsJ, why does it seem like I am done here? Assuming it’s just reverse psychology to get me to answer, I’ll humour you: now that I’ve made it clear that I do not go willingly into discussions involving emotionally charged wording, I can clarify that I don’t think my model is extreme. This is why it depends what you think “extreme” is, because our own subjective ideas as to what it means may differ. To me, the housing market has a loooong way to go to settle to being affordable like things used to be - in the UK, inflation has made prices about 20 times more than they were 60 years ago, but house prices are about 100 times more than they were 60 years ago. To me - that’s extreme! Maybe that’s why you think something that would actually undo this is extreme.
Wendy, yes it is true that the current model requires some type of large value commodity that will appreciate in order to “interest” those who have capital in lending it to those who don’t. This is what transfers the risk from the creditor to the debtor, which is what keeps the rich rich, even though it’s the debtor who is the one starting the business to actually do something productive rather than sitting on their property wealth. At the moment, houses are all that really fit this bill, unless you already have a growing business, and the rich aren’t going to give away their riches unless they have financial security and hopefully get more in return for their investment however things turn out - or they won’t stay rich. So by this logic, there needs to be at least some commodity whose market is broken in order for an economy to function, with enough new businesses being set up.
So what downfall awaits us, after property owners slowly die naturally over time, and the “necessary flaw” to such an economy as our current one disappears and people can’t leverage loans to start businesses anymore?
Well, it won’t just be entrepreneurs who no longer have properties to use as collateral - creditors also won’t have the wealth in their properties in order to give out as loans. “Necessary” inequality will decrease. Disaster!
3 things:
I already mentioned the fact that property costs will no longer be jacked up to current market rates, so loans will be less necessary to start new businesses in the first place.
There will be more incentive to start up cooperatives, pooling the money of many towards a collective investment, and giving many more people the incentive to make a new business profit rather than just a small number of capitalists.
Who now has the property? Government. They can loan wherever necessary, and in a way that isn’t vulnerable to the kinds of financial gymnastics that were a major cause of the last global recession - there is no conflict of interest when government employees giving out loans don’t stand to potentially profit grossly in some short term scam, before they run off with their loot, everyone else goes under and the taxpayers pick up the pieces.
…not one of the hardest words to define, and from an objective viewpoint there is only one meaning of the word extreme in this context, and so it shouldn’t be up for subjective scrutiny.
I think that many would think that your idea is extreme… the fact that you cite self-entitlement as a reason seems resentful on your part… you may not be, but it reads as such.
And yet any supposed ease in defining such a word evidently doesn’t translate in practice - this thread being example enough. Which is of course the whole reason I brought it up… never mind.
And I thank you for your opinion, speculation, and appeal to popularity.
