5 ms·

How can you be said to own anything if you are forced, basically 'extorted' by government, into occupying your own house or not? I guess it is whether you belie

• vkou 10y ago
  The same way you can be said to own property, while having to pay an annual property tax. You only have property rights because your taxes pay the government to enforce them. Vancouver has a crippling detached housing shortage.
  • beamatronic 10y ago
    It seems the test of whether you "own" something is whether you can sell it. You can sell your a home you "own" without owning it "free and clear"
    • Daishiman 10y ago
      Even if you can sell a bunch of different things there are still things you are legally liable for, and for the most part those things end up making a lot of sense.
• deleted 10y ago
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• beamatronic 10y ago
  There is a saying, if you want to find out who owns your land, stop paying the mortgage. The same is true with property taxes. A few years ago I looked to see if there was anywhere in the US that you could buy property and truly own it in perpetuity. There were a few places in Nevada at the time but they may have changed the law by now to eliminate this.
  • ars 10y ago
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title
  • jonknee 10y ago
    Property taxes are a good deal though. Even in rural areas you usually get a road that goes to or near your property. Police will come if you're in trouble. The fire department too. In cities the benefits are way more obvious.
    • orthecreedence 10y ago
      OR you could take the money from property tax and use it to pay for private police! And private firefighters! And you could build/maintain your own private road! Imagine how much time and money you'd save.
• deleted 10y ago
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• spenczar5 10y ago
  You've mentioned lots of stuff, but I'm responding to this bit: > How can you be said to own anything if you are forced, basically 'extorted' by government, into occupying your own house or not? I guess it is whether you believe in property rights. This is a tool to soften the impact of speculation on less-wealthy people trying to live in Vancouver. I agree that it limits property rights, in the sense that it imposes a tax on a particular way of using something that you own. But rights aren't an on/off switch in this case. Freedom to do whatever you want gets balanced against the community's judgements for what should be protected. Vancouver (or at least Vancouver's government) decided that they want to protect people from being tossed around by the forces of real estate speculation. That does not mean they've ditched property rights entirely. Thinking of it that way, without nuance, is sloppy.
• ng12 10y ago
  It's not a new concept. Most cities tax property you live in differently than property you rent out, or property used for a business differently than property used for a residence.
• ht85 10y ago
  Authorities have always had a say on real estate matters, but I think this is different. I don't know how you can say it's "extortion". This is a tax aimed at wealthy people, who can afford to own homes they rarely use and are taking the space away from people who could use it. I think taxing waste is generally a good example of socialism.
• notgood 10y ago
  You can always sell it and then use the money to live in the liberal paradise/country you dream of.
  • eggy 10y ago
    No need to sell since I don't own property in Vancouver, and given this legislation, I never would buy there. Given most of the owners are Canadian, and only a small percentage are foreigners, I find some of the related news on this xenophobic more than for the better of the community.
• likeapaper 10y ago
  Just out of curiosity are you Canadian, from the US, or other? I ask because there is a cultural difference between what people in the US and Canada expect from their government. The essence of the problem is the low occupancy rate and rapid inflation of housing prices in Vancouver, fueled largely by foreign nationals buying Vancouver property as an investment rather than actually living there. This prices Canadians out of the market. Generally the Canadian attitude to government focuses on asking it to solve these kinds of problems in an "interventionist/activist" model: intervene in the market to affect change. In the US, I found people generally prefer the government to focus on "freedom-to": erring on the side of providing people with too much liberty to do as they please, rather than too little. I think this is just a cultural difference and not so easy for Americans to understand. I hope this comment was helpful in conveying the Canadian perspective.
  • msie 10y ago
    "fueled largely by foreign nationals buying Vancouver property as an investment rather than actually living there. This prices Canadians out of the market." The majority of property is bought by Canadians. The last time I looked it was 15% foreign, 85% Canadian.
    • likeapaper 10y ago
      You're right, I somewhat simplified the problem. You're definitely right with the overall numbers: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/bc-government-releases-preliminary-data-on-foreign-home-purchases/article30790277/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/bc-government-releases-p... However those numbers are for home sales overall, not a survey of who owns unoccupied homes. In addition, in many ways it's not much better if a house is foreign-owned or not if it's empty, since it still takes much-needed property supply off the market and artificially drives up housing prices.
  • eggy 10y ago
    I am American, and thank you for your viewpoint. Does a 'Canadian attitude to government' translate into enforceable legislature? Even in the US, it's a mix of attitudes, but one consistent law needs to prevail. I have lived overseas for 8 years, and in Montreal for a year. As a libertarian I do believe you should be free to do things, unless those things impinge on somebody else's freedoms. Being priced out by foreign investment does not seem to be a reason to have government intervention. Empty houses en masse should lead to big drops in property values after the initial buying spree spike. Keeping your home up to code and paying taxes is one thing, but enforcing occupancy is another. How about if you travel 6 months out of the year for work? Why should you be penalized/fined for not staying home? What is the period of occupancy - 4 days a week; 1 week per month; 2 months per year? Who decides, and how to gauge it? I always think of the following ab adsurdum-like argument: Most crimes occur at night. Government is responsible for everyone's safety. Curfew is mandated for your own good from sundown to sunrise. Just a thought.
• notatoad 10y ago
  The government has always enforced rules on how you can use the things you own. How is "you can own a house in vancouver, but you can't let it sit empty" any different to "you can own a supercar, but you can't drive it at 200m/h on public roads"? other than one is a new rule, and one is a common rule
  • eggy 10y ago
    As I wrote above if your freedom does not harm or impinge others freedoms. Speed limits are for all riders safety including your own, and there are people who don't believe in speed limits. You own the car, but not the roads they are driven on: they are public. You supposedly own your house.
• chx 10y ago
  > How can you be said to own anything if you are forced, basically 'extorted' by government, There are a huge amount of things you can't do with your own property. You can't erect a 300m tall tower. You can't make loud noise at 4am. You can't operate a tannery in the middle of the city. And so forth. If society believes this tax is a bad idea they can protest and vote them out.
  • eggy 10y ago
    Which was what I said without the examples: as long as your freedoms don't take away from the freedom of others. I am for paying taxes to have a standing army, so I don't have to protect my own border, but I guess the line between libertarianism and socialism is that I don't want government trying to legislate intelligence, or non-precedentedly passing prophylactic measures for "my own good"; I'd like to decide those things on my own. I fail to see how policing occupancy is just in this case, but there are those who have decided their are limits to how much wealth you can have and how you can spend it. They know what's best for you. So if the owner sells the $1 million dollar home, what a "poor" person can snatch it at $750k? I'd like to see the logical conclusion to this thinking. Given these are 85% Canadian-owned, how is it a measure against the 15% foreign-owned properties? And isn't xenophobia part of that type of legislation?
    • chx 10y ago
      > Which was what I said without the examples: as long as your freedoms don't take away from the freedom of others. One could argue that living somewhere is a fundamental freedom. In a situation like this, when there are no places to rent, trying to force the empty ones to be available for rent is a way to ensure that fundamental freedom. The government -- in normal places, we are not talking Trump here -- is carefully evaluating the limitation of rights vs the freedom of others and they found this a good idea. Once again: if the voters disagree, they can protest and vote.
• vacri 10y ago
  Without a government, there'd be no way to register your claim to land in the first place. The concept of owning a bit of area on the earth is entirely abstract.
• orthecreedence 10y ago
  You "own" what you own because the government protects it from the hoards of barbarians constantly trying to take it from you. In exchange for this protection, you pay taxes. Yes, it's a classic protection racket. If you don't like it, there are various places in the world where you're welcome to grab a gun, stake your claim, and pay nobody any taxes at all. You can enforce your own "property rights." But this has been done before, and inevitably people got tired of fending off the barbarians all day and decided they'd rather do other stuff, like read books or fix cars or whatever it is they like doing MORE than worrying about getting killed every day, so they form governments and pay their god damn taxes. Also, a 1% "I'm rich enough to buy property in a really expensive place and not live there" tax is fairly minuscule.
• imh 10y ago
  I agree that it's not great, but I think it's still necessary, given all the infrastructure and public services there are. My question is whether there are better ways to do it than as a percentage of property value. Is there a fairer way to do it so that the family with the view pays as much for public services as their neighbor without one? Would that be fairer?
  • kspaans 10y ago
    That depends on if you think fairness is the value people get out the services, or the ability of people to pay for those services.