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Why should corporations be allowed to purchase homes in the first place? Remove that or heavily tax it.
by bmitc 4y ago
Why should corporations be allowed to purchase homes in the first place? Remove that or heavily tax it.
- bawolff 4y agoI don't think its that unreasonable that big apartment complexes are owned by corporations.
- feet 4y agoIs a large apartment complex considered a home? I've never lived in an entire complex, only one unit
- tluyben2 4y agoI have a friend who buys apartment complexes and houses on the company for his employees to live in; that seems not to be reasonable. In fact, it became more reasonable with wfh; now his colleagues living farther away, who he wants in the office 3 months a year, can live for cheap for both sides and without any long term contracts. Definitely cheaper and more convenient than hotels in his area.
- mikrl 4y ago>I have a friend who buys apartment complexes and houses on the company for his employees to live in When railroad and heavy industry did this exact thing in the 19th century we called them robber barons and broke up their obscenely powerful and corrupt monopolies via antitrust legislation.
- tluyben2 4y agoAnything can be abused, but I don't know the history; I have heard of robber barons, but not in the context of housing and Google doesn't seem to give me more than just their own enormous mansions. It would depend on if it's abused or not, wouldn't it?
- feet 4y agoYou can look up the history of company towns
- yamtaddle 4y agoYou load sixteen tons, whattaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter don'cha call me, 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store - Merle Travis, "Sixteen Tons" The TL;DR of why this is bad is that when employees are paying, or are indebted to, their employers, even in a roundabout way, it's really easy for that relationship to become very abusive. The company towns also often payed in scrip, which was basically credit at the company store, and, gee, wouldn't you know it, the company owns all the land to the horizon, so there are no other stores in reasonable travel distance! And if you need a little credit because your pay's terrible after your rent (to the company) comes out, and the prices at the store are marked way up, why, they'll be happy to extend some.... That's the extreme version, but it's bad enough that even inching that direction is something worthy of concern. One ought be wary any time money's flowing from an employee to an employer. The robber-baron version is basically the thing you see in capitalist-dystopia sci fi like The Outer Worlds, but it actually happened.
- mrguyorama 4y ago>The robber-baron version is basically the thing you see in capitalist-dystopia sci fi like The Outer Worlds, but it actually happened. Also a significant portion of the country seems to be actively attempting to let it happen again. High school made them read The Great Gatsby and they all imagine themselves as Gatsby and the other obscenely wealthy people instead of the 99% of awful and perpetually dying lives most people experienced.
- mister_tee 4y agoQuick PBS summary of company towns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7AOWLOOT-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7AOWLOOT-U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons
- mcculley 4y agoI am trying to imagine how such a proscription would work. Would there be a list of things corporations are disallowed ownership? Who would the seller be required to determine if the entity is appropriate? Or would the local property tax clerk just not allow registration by a non-human entity?
- Eisenstein 4y agoThere are lists of chemicals people cannot own, why can there not be lists of things corporations cannot own?
- mcculley 4y agoI am wondering about the details. Would you prohibit anything that could be used as a residence? Office buildings would be permitted? I live in an apartment unit in a 24 story tower. It is owned by a corporation and I lease it. Would only condos owned by humans be permitted?
- Eisenstein 4y agoMe, personally? I don't know -- there are smarter people than I who can come up with lists. I was remarking about the idea itself.
- mcculley 4y agoThese details seem to make the idea unworkable to me.
- Eisenstein 4y agoUntil someone comes up with a proposal I guess we will never know.
- mcculley 4y agoI responded to a proposal with no apparent thought behind it.
- klgkjghkjh 4y agoHow would apartment complexes be sold then?
- kelseyfrog 4y agoSell them to land trusts, co-operatives, and housing unions. There are creative and viable alternatives.
- astrange 4y agoMost of those are bad; at least if a landlord is only interested in money they’ll take your money. In the “decommodified” forms, you can’t live there unless the manager personally likes you. With government public housing you can lose it if you break the law (hope you never smoke weed) or if the populace elects a racist government and you’re a minority. Commodifying housing helped black people in the South because they could actually buy prefab houses from Sears.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoSorry, but I'm not sure where you got government housing from. I specifically omitted it to avoid that dialog option.
- astrange 4y agoThat’s the one people usually want. Co-ops of course are much more racist than that.