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Owning property is an extremely democratic pathway to financial independence. And it's only gotten more and more democratic as the financial world evolves. Yes
by vinceguidry 8y ago
Owning property is an extremely democratic pathway to financial independence. And it's only gotten more and more democratic as the financial world evolves. Yes it sucks to spend the first 5 or so years of your years in an unaffordable city getting established in an industry. But it's not the worst lot in the world. You can meet your spouse there and then start a family out where it's cheap. Won't be long before everyone's working from home.
Not a bad life.
- k__ 8y agoWhy? To me it seems like the exact opposite of democracy. Wouldn't it be more democratic to let the state own it so every citizen can have a vote over this rather limited resource?
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- AzzieElbab 8y agoThis seems opposite to my understanding of democracy. Also, in my experience, state distributed housing lifted misery and corruption to some astounding levels
- k__ 8y agoAnd now we have cities that get too expensive for the people that were born there...
- dingo_bat 8y agoSo? What is the argument exactly?
- k__ 8y agoCountries have very limited space and growing populations. Does it really make sense to give the biggest chunks to people with the most money?
- ekianjo 8y agoits called gentrification. Nothing new.
- anonuser123456 8y agoWhen the value proposition no longer makes sense; move?
- k__ 8y agoThe question is, should "the value proposition", in terms of finances, be the criteria? Should the people who are rich be the only ones who can decide where to live?
- jadedhacker 8y agoDemocracy means that people have equal representation. Money based systems are literally the opposite of that. A man with a billion dollars has a billion votes.
- AzzieElbab 8y ago"Money based system" is a bad sci-fi. State managed distribution is real history, at least for me. It did not work well
- jadedhacker 8y agoWhat went wrong in your case?
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- ekianjo 8y agoequal political representation and in general equal rights no matter where you come from. Democracy says nothing about everyone being poor or something. Its a political system, not an economical one.
- jadedhacker 8y agoThis is a new concept under capitalism: the hard wall between economics and politics. It favors the liberal bourgeoisie professional-managerial class. Unfortunately, politics and economics are basically one and the same. Some people win, others lose. The only defensible goal is to make as many people win as possible. Capitalism does not do that.
- jadedhacker 8y agoImagine if no one paid rent to people that do almost nothing. You'd have hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars in your pocket every month minus some extra taxes. If repairs needed to happen, the state could fix the property because no one, not even people that are bad with money, should live somewhere unsafe. It'd end up saving money in higher educational attainment (lead paint) and health outcomes (pneumonia, cracked stairs, broken elevators, screwed up water etc) as the slumlords are banished.
- pkaye 8y agoBut then you will have to pay higher taxes to pay for all this housing and maintenance.
- jadedhacker 8y agoYes, but how much of the housing price is physical maintenance and how much is "location location location"? With the latter eliminated, I'm guessing the concordant increase in taxes will far from compensate for the fall in the price of a positional good. Also, even if the taxes were equal to the current price, but things got fixed faster than most landlords, that's still a win. Don't forget about how much harder it will be to evict someone and ruin their life when there isn't a profit motive involved. So many benefits.
- burfog 8y agoSo, if not by price, how exactly would you allocate the most desirable housing? The obvious choices look awful: lottery, first-come-first-served (sucks for newcomers), bribes (realistic)...?
- jadedhacker 8y agoHow are those choices different from money? The money version is only more liberating if you're rich. First-come-first-serve does suck for newcomers, but do they have a right to displace someone that has lived there forever on a whim? It's not obvious at all. It would make sense to attempt to build enough to keep people moving though.
- oh_sigh 8y agoWouldn't it be more democratic if we let the state own all of Bill Gates' money and stocks, so every citizen can have a vote of that rather limited resource?
- k__ 8y agoNo, only real estate, because we can't create new land.