I find it interesting how in every single video game that involves fostering a population, it’s up to you to make sure everyone is housed. Too logical and efficient for billionaires, I guess.
What I love about those video games is that they teach us very clearly that a command economy leads to prosperity (unless you suck as a player I guess), but then billionaires tell us no, free market capitalism and trickle-down are the way we have to go.
Funny, because it taught me that that task in reality is impossible, given real nations can’t load an old save file to fix their fuck ups in a simulation far, far simpler than reality.
Of course you could certainly argue that one person wouldn’t be in charge of doing literally everything.
with the resources of a real command economy, you could find the best player in the nation and put them at the wheel
Get outside, touch the grass bro
Even ants and bees give everyone a house, food, and a job (with the majority of the hive/colony population having time off and rest at any given time). These people are advocating for us to be less evolved than an ant. Per EO Wilson, the guy who studied these fellas
They also kill all the males, do they not? 😂
No, the males die naturally https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Caste_Terminology
Damn. What a life.
Girlboss
Wel well well, let me add that to my list of interesting ant facts.
The ant species Brachymyrmex has the largest brain size relative to its body size among all known organisms
So you’re saying Brachymyrmex is gonna inherit the earth? I for one welcome our insect overlords!
Replace home with right to a parcel of land for 100 years and then I agree.
You can even go full evolutionary logic and say every creature has the right (and obligation) to fight to get the resources it needs to survive.
Ya
Hey, if you’re interested in this topic, you may wanna read on historical examples of countries where that happened!
In the Soviet Union, for example, housing was guaranteed by the state, and homelessness was abolished. Everyone had a right to at the very least a room in a dormitory. Housing was for the most part obtained through the work union. Jobs were guaranteed and there was no unemployment, and the union at work was in charge of finding a flat for the worker and their family. Monthly rent was around 3% of the average family income by the 1970s, so it was very affordable too. If you’re interested, there’s a book called “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski which goes into detail in these things!
In Cuba, housing is also guaranteed. A friend of mine (I’m Spanish so my friend speaks Spanish too) went to visit the country, and he had a conversation with some university students. On the one hand, the university students couldn’t believe that my friend’s family had two cars, they thought he was rich when in fact that’s rather common for a middle-income family in Spain. On the other hand, they couldn’t believe that my friend, at 22 years old at the time, was still living with his parents while studying at university. In Cuba, if you get a position as a university student, you get assigned housing for free while you study.
So yeah, just some perspectives of countries that actually managed to solve the problem of housing for everyone as a right
I don’t think you can say the Soviet Union solved anything.
I’m afraid I don’t follow you. If homelessness was abolished and essentially everyone in a country with 300 million people was housed, why can’t I say that housing was solved?
Incredible!
If only we applied your thought process to other areas.
For example, did you know that the Soviet Union had less gun violence than the United States does? This must mean we should be more like the Soviet Union!
No, for what it’s worth, no we should not be more like the Soviet Union. They used gun control to quell rebellion and killed millions. Numbers do not paint the picture you think they do, they represent what was recorded. There are plenty of reasons to question those records, if you actually take the time to think about it.
You couldn’t resist the temptation to sneak in that completely irrelevant bit about “gun control”. You’ve overplayed your hand.
Overplayed my hand?
No, dipshit — I’ve just got a clear grasp on reality.
They used gun control to quell rebellion and killed millions
What historical event in particular are you talking about?
There are plenty of reasons to question those records
Which records in particular are you talking about? The book I used as a source uses almost exclusively western studies as sources.
No, for what it’s worth, no we should not be more like the Soviet Union
Depends? I’m not saying “let’s replicate every policy of the Soviet Union”, but they did guarantee housing for everyone, free and quality education to the highest level, free healthcare for everyone, and public retirement plans for every individual. Why wouldn’t you want to be more like those things?
And their entire system fucking collapsed. And yes, the U.S. is a part of the reason for that collapse — but if you’re seriously sitting here trying to suggest it was the reason, you are actually fucking dumb. Like, go talk to someone that lived in the Soviet Union — dumb.
Let me make this clear, I’m not giving you a history lesson — I’m also not sifting through Eastern sources because I’m not a dipshit. I shouldn’t have to explain why a govt. that wantonly murders the people that work for it probably doesn’t have records you can trust.
I’ll be trusting Western sources. Not dipshits on Lemmy who have circlejerked on .ml for too long. Fuckin flat earth wannabes.
If you want western sources, go ahead and look through the sources of Albert Szymanski’s “Human Rights in the Soviet Union”, you’ll be surprised. Go ahead and do your reading if you so care about sources.
And their entire system fucking collapsed
Less collapsed and more illegally and antidemocratically dissolved against the wishes of the majority or Soviet peoples as of the Soviet permanence referendum. The Soviet Union survived 27 million deaths in their struggle against Nazism, it didn’t “collapse” because muh economy and housing.
Regardless: I’m not necessarily arguing for the organization of the US state in a similar fashion to that of the USSR, I’m giving you historical sources on countries which effectively SOLVED HOMELESSNES and rent pricing, as per the post. Maybe the US could copy some of that policy without copying the rest if you don’t wanna?
Like, what are the other options? Homes seem mandatory for societal and economic interaction.
I’m enough of a socdem that the hexbear types ban me at first sight when I comment in their communities, but I’m still of the opinion that everyone is entitled to have A home. Something that is reasonably sized given the location, and there may be compromises in location itself (not everyone is going to fit in Manhattan after all). So an apartment in NYC or a single family home in flyover states somewhere. This is just using the US as an example because it’s so culturally dominant, I think everyone knows what NYC is like. Everyone should be able to live in a home that affords them basic human dignity.
Now rich people can still have their mansions or whatever, but they’ll have to pay for the privilege. The rest of us, if content with the aforementioned social housing, wouldn’t have to pay. There would still be premium developments. Premium apartments or houses to rent or buy. But there would be no more profiting off the working class’s basic need for shelter.
I’m a hexbear type and your take is quite reasonable, but I’d just say you’re very, very far to the left compared to a socdem. If you think universal housing is an imperative, you probably already share more with the hexbear types than with the .world types, just my two cents.
I do still support some aspects of capitalism and the free market. I’m of the opinion that society should guarantee everyone the basics and then those who want can build extra wealth for all I care. Just not through outright exploitation.
I don’t know if there’s a specific label for my beliefs, as I’m not too into political theory.
I’m not gonna go all Marxist on you regarding the exploitation of the workers by capitalists in the Marxist sense, but I’ll ask you this: what about the people in the global south? Do you believe that countries in South America, Africa, Middle East or South-East Asia are being exploited by the western world?
Well, obviously. But then we run into the whole issue of trade. If there’s no free trade, the people in those areas would have nobody to sell goods to, which is developing their economies. But under free trade, foreign capital exploits them.
In a way, it’s up to their own governments to protect their people from foreign capitalists. We here in the west/north/whatever can’t force that. But that’s easier said than done in a lot of places. They need to have their own money to build their own nations, but where do you get said money into your country unless you have oil, diamonds or other expensive resources that also attract bloodsuckers?
I suspect that the only workable solution is some sort of international fund that provides resources to poor nations and everyone pays into it. Kind of like here in the EU - richer countries pay more than they receive in benefits, but since it builds up the strength of the EU, they still end up benefiting. Thing is, acceptance into EU requires meeting some standards. Said global fund would also need to have standards for the nations they help - to make sure it’s not all wasted on corrupt warlords in the government. But then who helps the people in those countries?
It’s honestly an issue nobody wants to think about, myself included. How do you help people in those places? How do you force education and wealth on a backwards ass country?
If there’s no free trade, the people in those areas would have nobody to sell goods to, which is developing their economies
The main argument against this is that these areas are not developing. Take the famous Steven Pinker graphs of poverty reduction worldwide, and extract China from them: look at poverty numbers in the world without including China. You’ll see that poverty isn’t being relieved outside China, I.e. these countries aren’t really developing. They’re selling their resources for cheap and obtaining essentially nothing in return. This is known in Marxist economics as “unequal exchange” and I highly encourage you to read on it if you’re interested on the reasons for the underdevelopment of the global south. The wikipedia article itself is a good starting point.
The rest of your comment hinges on this crucial point of assuming theyre actually developing, that’s why I’m only answering to this point.
But there must be ads on every inch of the house until you purchase premium. Cmon, you can’t just exist without suffering. What would be the point of life, if not torture?
To maximise shareholder value of course!
The idea of ownership is kinda silly.
I mean this in good faith, what’s the alternative? That anyone could enter anyone’s house freely? Or that everything is shared (owned by the state, which would give it too much power).
Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to “personal property”, which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of “private property”, which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Landlords hate this idea.
Here’s a really super basic summary:
https://www.workers.org/private-property/
And here’s a long complicated discussion:
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/anarchism-and-private-property
I’m baked and deleted a paragraph because it turned to rambling.
I don’t like corporations owning housing.
How does no private property square with something like a car, that costs money to produce, has less inherent value than a home, and depreciates in value unlike a home?
I think I understand, but it gets murky for me after a point. Not trying to argue, just learn.
The idea is, we abolish the concept of private property, but retain the concept of personal property.
Personal property being stuff that’s used by one person, or ome family, or one small group, and ownership rights come from that use.
So a car would be the personal property of the driver or drivers who use it - the same as a computer or microwave or toothbrush would be the personal property of the person or people who used it. You drive it, you fuel it, you repair it, and that’s what makes it yours.
How to produce and distribute goods (like houses and cars and toothbrushes) without a system of private property, purchase, and ownership is a major site of leftist contention 😆
Umm repairs, marketing, replacements, renovation/remodeling, taxes. I never rented a property because I thought the margins seemed slim. People who are agreeing with this likely have never owned a home before.
