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There's no basic human right to have a roof over your head, for the simple reason that someone has to make the roof. Saying "I have a right to have it [without
by sershe 4y ago
There's no basic human right to have a roof over your head, for the simple reason that someone has to make the roof. Saying "I have a right to have it [without building it yourself]" is saying "I have a right to force someone to build it for me". I dunno about you, I'm uneasy about forced labor.
Even beyond that, there's certainly no right to have the roof over your head wherever you want - there is simply not enough space for everyone to have it. Commoditization of housing basically lets the scarcity be managed via market mechanism, the best we have - what creates the problems, like making scarcity worse, is /absence/ of commoditization - where someone decides that things should be a certain way, e.g. via zoning, design reviews, environmental rules, etc. If we could commoditize more in these areas (e.g. something like carbon tax for congestion/sewer use/... instead of a committee deciding; removing free public parking and letting the market resolve that and probably save space and reduce car use; etc.), there'd be more housing. If we commoditize less, scarcity would just be managed via different means - like corruption, connections, etc.
- mythrwy 4y agoWhile I agree (in the abstract) policies that make that roof unaffordably so that others might realize wealth without working seem a bit shortsighted. A lot of people without roofs over their head is a recipe for social instability which affects everyone.
- sershe 4y agoMaybe; it's different than saying it's a "human right" though.
- mythrwy 4y agoGood point. A roof might not be a human right. But a piece of earth might be.
- sershe 4y agoYeah, I agree with that. I think the best answer to that is georgist; one could argue that an average piece of land is extremely cheap, so there's no problem, everyone can get one; but if people want a specific piece of land, and many people want the same ones, a distribution mechanism is needed.
- larsiusprime 4y ago> I'm uneasy about forced labor. I'm with you! But what I'm not okay with is gatekeeping of the resource that REALLY makes real estate valuable -- LAND. Nobody made the land. I'm okay with paying for the labor and capital that goes into housing construction. I'm not okay with somebody extracting massive amounts of value out of the economy just because they own title to the land. If you want to look at the stats for why real estate has become such a huge asset class, read this: http://gameofrent.com/content/is-land-a-big-deal http://gameofrent.com/content/is-land-a-big-deal
- adamdusty 4y agoOkay but what's your solution? The reason land is valuable is because many people want it in specific areas. I genuinely don't have an answer to the question.
- sershe 4y agoI agree with that, I am actually georgist. Of course, again, human right to land won't satisfy people calling for "housing as a human right". There's tons of cheap land everywhere, including close to cities, and in major cities. It's really "housing with amenities near where I like the weather, jobs and culture is a human right"
- usgroup 4y ago> There's no basic human right to have a roof over your head, for the simple reason that someone has to make the roof. I guess someone has to provide food and security too. Would you say that these also are not basic human rights?
- closeparen 4y ago"Right to security" thinking got us mass incarceration. Most progressive places are backing off of that one now. Perhaps 25 years ago. Food is an excellent model for what I'd like to see around housing: extremely mature and sophisticated commodity market, government thumb on the scale of abundant and stable supply at low prices, subsidies for people whose incomes are genuinely below the cost of efficient production. To the extent that food is a human right, it is incredibly important that we have GMOs, large-scale factory farms, global supply chain, etc. Food being a human right would make it all the worse to insist on only socially-optimal production: everything local, everything organic, everything vegan, community meetings to argue about who deserves to eat. But that's exactly what the "housing is a human right" crowd fights to preserve and entrench for housing.
- polio 4y agoThis characterization of rights seems somewhat melodramatic. A government is capable of providing its citizens with rights without forcing individuals at gunpoint to provide them. The way this happens is that the government creates an organization that is dedicated to the provision of these rights, and then individuals can voluntarily join it. The government can set the wage, or produce summery marketing material, or issue medals to encourage participation in civic practices.
- sershe 4y agoWhere does the government get the money? It still checks out to forced labor, once or N times removed. Not that I'm saying it's never acceptable - it's a trade-off, but we should call it as what it is, if used - a gift from others, a privilege. Not a human right. And, we should be strongly biased against it by default, not trivialize it.