3 ms·

Here's the gist: the government taxed the shit out of the landlords and forced them to sell their land cheaply. Europeans generally see nothing wrong with this

Here's the gist: the government taxed the shit out of the landlords and forced them to sell their land cheaply. Europeans generally see nothing wrong with this strategy, whereas most Americans will feel shivers down their spines. This difference comes from different attitudes around ownership. In places like China and Russia, owning a house means you get to keep the house unless enough people would benefit from you not owning it. In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't. Europe is somewhere in between on that spectrum, and this attitude extends to not just land ownership. For example, a popular ad campaign in Austria is demanding from the employees of BioNTech to leak the base components and production instructions so that other companies can steal those trade secrets and supposedly help generate more vaccines. If you read the comments in one of the videos on this topic, you will see them being mostly in favor of the campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDnZd7UmBco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDnZd7UmBco. It would be difficult to imagine many of my US friends advocating for stealing company secrets. I am not implying that either group has better ethics - they just have different attitudes towards the concept of ownership.

jarjoura 6y ago
| In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't. That's not accurate. The US, state and city governments can most definitely take private land and convert it to public use if enough people benefit from it. https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-domain https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-dom... There are other means as well, a city could purchase something on the open market, or a county could purchase land and convert into a public park, or what ever suits them.
throwawayboise 6y ago
> In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't. Not true at all. Eminent Domain is a real thing. The controversies have generally been when there is a dispute over whether the taking is for a public benefit, e.g. condeming property to make way for a private business.
- ghaff 6y ago
  It is but it's increasingly difficult. Constructing the Interstate Highway System would have be far more challenging today. (Some of our property growing up was taken for this purpose. Don't really know if my parents considered it an OK deal at the time.)
- aerosmile 6y ago
  > Eminent Domain is a real thing. It's technically a thing but totally not a thing in the context of my comment and this topic in general. I doubt you'll make a case that China, Russia, or for that matter, even Austria have stronger private property rights than the US. Remember, the origination story of the US revolves around private land ownership attracting European migrants who were fed up with European feudalism. I am sure there are some carveouts here and there, but they are remarkably minimal to the point that it's sometimes worth making an observation without adding a bunch of footnotes.
  - pchristensen 6y ago
    Other countries, notably Japan but others that escape my memory, have stronger property rights because the government has weaker power of eminent domain. This has more details, see the section about Japan - https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/02/02/civil-service-racism-and-cost-control/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/02/02/civil-service-...
ajsnigrutin 6y ago
I'm your neighbor to the south (slovenia)... here, your house is practically untouchable if you mess up, but most people want other people to be taxed for owning a house. They also want owners of vacant properties taxed a lot more (which they believe would create more rentable apartments, but vacant apartmnts in big cities are rented out without contracts and without tax - usually to students, who prefer a risky cheap apartment, to a contract+more expensive, and vacant houses outside of cities are empty because literally noone wants to live there - you can buy a house with a large yard around it for a price of a used WV Golf in some parts of slovenia, and maybe half a bathroom in our capital). The same people also want people making money by renting out apartments pay more taxes on rent, because they somehow believe that the increase of taxes wont mean increase in rent prices.... i have no idea why. But our largest problem is the same as in many other cities, including San Francisco.... want to build something? You have to buy a run down house, because you're not allower to build stuff on farming area, literally by the city center... and when you build a house, it can be 2 family house max. We need huge apartment buildings, but finding an area where an invester can build ones is impossible, because our municipality and goverment don't allow it.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Do people still have apartment rights left over from ex-YU?
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    There was a law passed in the 90s, where people who were assigned (government) apartments, could buy them from the government for really really cheap, and get government loans to do so (+ we had a lot of inflation, so we're talking 20year loans, where people would pay around an equivalent of ~50eur monthly... basically nothing). So yeah... those who bought the apartments are happy, those who paid for the construction (the rest), and didn't get any, were not, and government currently has just a few "social apartments" for poor people. On the other hand, if the government was a landlord to all those people, that would mean a lot more administration and a lot more work (basically, back to yu-levels, or even worse, because people expected more after the fall of yugoslavia).

jarjoura 6y ago

| In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't. That's not accurate. The US, state and city governments can most definitely take private land and convert it to public use if enough people benefit from it. https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-domain https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-dom... There are other means as well, a city could purchase something on the open market, or a county could purchase land and convert into a public park, or what ever suits them.

throwawayboise 6y ago

> In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't. Not true at all. Eminent Domain is a real thing. The controversies have generally been when there is a dispute over whether the taking is for a public benefit, e.g. condeming property to make way for a private business.

ghaff 6y ago
It is but it's increasingly difficult. Constructing the Interstate Highway System would have be far more challenging today. (Some of our property growing up was taken for this purpose. Don't really know if my parents considered it an OK deal at the time.)
aerosmile 6y ago
> Eminent Domain is a real thing. It's technically a thing but totally not a thing in the context of my comment and this topic in general. I doubt you'll make a case that China, Russia, or for that matter, even Austria have stronger private property rights than the US. Remember, the origination story of the US revolves around private land ownership attracting European migrants who were fed up with European feudalism. I am sure there are some carveouts here and there, but they are remarkably minimal to the point that it's sometimes worth making an observation without adding a bunch of footnotes.
- pchristensen 6y ago
  Other countries, notably Japan but others that escape my memory, have stronger property rights because the government has weaker power of eminent domain. This has more details, see the section about Japan - https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/02/02/civil-service-racism-and-cost-control/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/02/02/civil-service-...

ajsnigrutin 6y ago

I'm your neighbor to the south (slovenia)... here, your house is practically untouchable if you mess up, but most people want other people to be taxed for owning a house. They also want owners of vacant properties taxed a lot more (which they believe would create more rentable apartments, but vacant apartmnts in big cities are rented out without contracts and without tax - usually to students, who prefer a risky cheap apartment, to a contract+more expensive, and vacant houses outside of cities are empty because literally noone wants to live there - you can buy a house with a large yard around it for a price of a used WV Golf in some parts of slovenia, and maybe half a bathroom in our capital). The same people also want people making money by renting out apartments pay more taxes on rent, because they somehow believe that the increase of taxes wont mean increase in rent prices.... i have no idea why. But our largest problem is the same as in many other cities, including San Francisco.... want to build something? You have to buy a run down house, because you're not allower to build stuff on farming area, literally by the city center... and when you build a house, it can be 2 family house max. We need huge apartment buildings, but finding an area where an invester can build ones is impossible, because our municipality and goverment don't allow it.

selimthegrim 6y ago
Do people still have apartment rights left over from ex-YU?
- ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  There was a law passed in the 90s, where people who were assigned (government) apartments, could buy them from the government for really really cheap, and get government loans to do so (+ we had a lot of inflation, so we're talking 20year loans, where people would pay around an equivalent of ~50eur monthly... basically nothing). So yeah... those who bought the apartments are happy, those who paid for the construction (the rest), and didn't get any, were not, and government currently has just a few "social apartments" for poor people. On the other hand, if the government was a landlord to all those people, that would mean a lot more administration and a lot more work (basically, back to yu-levels, or even worse, because people expected more after the fall of yugoslavia).