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In a socialist country, you would have a government entity (backed by a public bank) build houses and give them to workers or sell them at a loss or with subsid

• pjlegato 2y ago
  In a socialist country, you would have a government entity building various qualities of housing. The best houses in the best locations go to the nomenklatura, to the governor's cousin, to the nephew of the town party boss, and to black market operators who are capable of providing large bribes to those who decide housing allocations. Normal people live three hours outside the city center in a low quality concrete highrise.
  • forinti 2y ago
    All human enterprises are prone to our simian failings.
  • wrfrmers 2y ago
    In a word, "gentrification." (Yes, I know, I'm making a point, ye who lives in the United States of "It's not what you know, it's who knows you.")
• Workaccount2 2y ago
  In socialist countries housing is a cost that provides almost no benefit to the productivity of the state. Because of that there is strong incentive to build the absolute minimum to house the working class. See Soviet and Mao apartments. Shoeboxes with shared bathrooms and kitchens.
  • forinti 2y ago
    I think you might be mixing up different things. Some housing in the USSR had communal kitchens and bathrooms because they were actually older buildings adapted to house more families (hence the "you'll have to share your house" horror stories told in the West). Other buildings were actually meant to be temporary but lasted more than planned. Most of the housing of the Soviet Union was just plain apartment buildings; the flats might be small by some people's standards, but that was dictated by economic constraints. I don't know much about China, but I know some regions had multi-family buildings with shared facilities before the revolution. These too were dictated mostly by economic constraints.
    • wrfrmers 2y ago
      Modern China is an even more interesting story. Their largest state-backed real estate firm collapsed years ago. The reason why China is in a mild recessions instead of a full-blown depression is because the state took control, triaged what they could, and chose losers in such a way as to prevent the worst-case scenario. A solution similar to what the US eventually dragged itself to after the 29 Crash. In a crisis, socialism works, actually.
      • Supermancho 2y ago
        It's definitely not socialism. The governments always aim to take over failing private industries or industries they want to modify for external reasons. After taking actions toward that end, they send the industry (in part or whole) it back to wealthy friends of the politicians in power. Socialism doesn't work at scale, any more than any other system. The possibility of an existing government doing what it thinks is necessary, is never far from anyone's mind.
      • ProxCoques 2y ago
        > In a crisis, state intervention works, actually. There, fixed that for you. Stop calling literally anything that isn't 100% raw free market capitalism "socialism".
    • Workaccount2 2y ago
      The economic constraints you are referring to is the terrible ROI on housing. Ask yourself what economic value a house produces compared to a farm, factory, or research lab. The answer is almost nothing. Socialist states don't like building anything more than the bare minimum to house workers. They get nothing for it (economically and ideologically) and the land saved can be used for actual productive things.