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What most people have yet to realise is that home ownership is a quite negative phenomenon. The dual of owning a home is the ability to deny others access to ho

What most people have yet to realise is that home ownership is a quite negative phenomenon. The dual of owning a home is the ability to deny others access to housing. People who are particularly attached to the capitalist system will suggest crazy solutions like a limit on the number of houses per person, but the real solution has always been government ownership of all land. There is no advantage to privately owned land except the ability to horde it and create waste, or rent it out and create inefficiency.

dgfitz 2y ago
> The dual of owning a home is the ability to deny others access to housing. How do you figure? Are we out of land? I would argue we are not, at all.
- James_K 2y ago
  What is owning a home? It is having the power to legally demand other people leave it. Hence owning a home requires the ability to rent out a home, and to to rent out many homes and drive up the price. Likewise we have much land, but it has not been developed because people own it. In a system of government ownership, they would eventually be outbid on the lease for their land and it would be developed into a larger amount of affordable and higher density housing. Instead people own that land and are able to keep it underdeveloped at the cost to everyone else, then use this leverage to enrich themselves through the increase in house prices. There is no positive argument for the private ownership of land over public ownership.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    > What is owning a home? It is having the power to legally demand other people leave it. A home is where people feel safe and secure with their family, or by themselves. I reject the premise of your re-definition of owning a home.
    - James_K 2y ago
      Well as nice as the sentimental definition you gave is, the legal definition of home ownership revolves around a set of rights granted to you by the government over a plot of land. I could feel safe and secure with my family a t Pizza Hut, but I don't own Pizza Hut.
      - dgfitz 2y ago
        The legal definition of marriage is also morose. I don’t intend to observe the goalposts you tried to move.
  - donavanm 2y ago
    Just say “ownership is theft” if thats what your argument reduces to. That said, I think the concepts around georgism and dynamic value based taxes are a bit more interesting and address the “land banking” concerns you inserted.
    - James_K 2y ago
      > dynamic value based taxes I hate having to explain this to people, but a tax based on the value of something is called rent. Georgism is a system where the government owns all land and leases it out, but then the call the rent a "tax" to make it more palatable to people who are afraid of public ownership.
      - donavanm 2y ago
        Thats a pretty reductive world view. I suppose “the monopoly of force and law implies control, and quote-unquote ownership, by the state.”? So, mission accomplished? The state already compels me to pay annual taxes based on the value of my titled real estate, my car, my income, my foreign assets, etc… I guess Im just renting it all from the state? Mind you Im no John Birch-man here. I actually pay 42% of my income in taxes, and think real property _should_ be taxed more effectively here in AU. But jumping all the way to “ownership is theft, and taxes are double secret ownership” doesnt seem particularly useful.
        James_K 2y ago
        > Ownership is theft You are trying so desperately to put those words in my mouth, but I will not say them as I don't know what they mean. > taxes are double secret ownership I'm not making an ideological point here, simply pointing out that the proposed systems are isomorphic in their objectives and execution. They both aim to increase the productive use of land by charging a periodic fee to the occupants of said land based on the market value of the land. There are two differences: the first is one of language (rent vs. tax), and the second on how the rate of this fee is determined. Under socialised land, the market price of land is the same as the fee charged. Under Georgism, the fee is charged by a bunch of politicians looking at the market price of land and trying to figure it out based on that. Given that the two systems are essentially identical, but the second brings in undue political meddling, I see no reason to prefer it to the first solution outside of the practical situation that many people are afraid of public ownership and therefore would be more likely to vote for the worse option. Do you have any real argument for Georgism over public ownership?
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    > It is having the power to legally demand other people leave it Renting gives you that power too
Etheryte 2y ago
I'll bite, why do you think a limit on how many homes a person can own is a bad thing? Let's clearly separate homes and other real estate here, so shop floors, factories, warehouses, etc are out of the equation. Since you mention inefficiency, how many homes can one person realistically reasonably use?
- James_K 2y ago
  I think it is better than the current situation but worse than the optimal situation, that is government ownership. What's more, ignoring commercial land ignores that many commercial enterprises would benefit from the proposed solution in the same way people living in houses would, yet there is no mechanism by which you could limit one company to a single building of operation. > how many homes can one person realistically reasonably use? This question is why I consider the solution of a limit on ownership stupid. A person can reasonably use however many houses which they can afford to rent. It isn't up to me to decide what counts as reasonable use. It is simply a question of whether other people would be willing to pay more for some other purpose. Suppose someone wishes to purchase an entire abandoned town and can do so at a relatively low rate due to it being abandoned, I see no reason to deny them them this, yet a limit on home ownership would do precisely that. One should also note that a land tax is another inferior solution to the problem. It is effectively a government lease on land which doesn't allow the rent charged to be determined by market forces. What makes total government ownership of land the most practical solution is that it most closely follows market principals. Usage of land is contingent on productive revenue from that land in excess of the revenue generated from alternative usages. Any other solution will fall short of the optimal allocation of resources which the market provides.
gruez 2y ago
>but the real solution has always been government ownership of all land. They have that in China. How's that working out for them?
- defrost 2y ago
  Sounds made up .. how do you explain nail houses in China? https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china... Maybe take the BS elsewhere?
  - gruez 2y ago
    Please do some research before accusing people of "BS". >In general, rural collectives own agricultural land and the state owns urban land. However, Article 70 of The Property Law allows for ownership of exclusive parts within an apartment building, which endorses the individual ownership of apartments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law_in_China >Individuals cannot privately own land in China but may obtain transferrable land-use rights for a number of years for a fee. https://maint.loc.gov/law/help/real-property-law/china-real-property-law.pdf https://maint.loc.gov/law/help/real-property-law/china-real-...
    - defrost 2y ago
      Rural collectives own agricultural land is not "government ownership of all land" which you asserted to be true. Moreover, the devil's in the details: ( In China, your maint.loc.gov ) According to the 2007 Property Rights Law, when the term for the right to use land for residential purposes expires, the term will be automatically renewed Which means that residential land use rights persist, as they do in the US, and while mineral rights remain with the state it's not the case that all land ownership in the US comes with mineral rights, these may have been signed awy by prior owners or retained by the State or Federal Government whe first transferred. Both countries are more complicated than you sweepingly make things out to be.
  - donavanm 2y ago
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
Problem is, homes have two functions: a place to live and a wealth preservation vehicle. As a result, many homes are owned by those who have no need to live in that particular place. Bitcoin can substitute some wealth preservation functionality, because it has the same scarcity property as the land, thus improving the housing situation.
- James_K 2y ago
  Assets which purport to preserve wealth (outside of a bank account) usually end up as some kind of pyramid scheme. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of housing as the victims have no choice but to buy in, and take out increasingly large loans to pay off the previous generation's buy in. Bit coins are quite similar in structure, though they lack the forced buy in, which is why many of them are now attempting to target pensions funds and even lobbying to create official government reserves. (About half of all corporate spending in the last US election was crypto.)

dgfitz 2y ago

> The dual of owning a home is the ability to deny others access to housing. How do you figure? Are we out of land? I would argue we are not, at all.

James_K 2y ago
What is owning a home? It is having the power to legally demand other people leave it. Hence owning a home requires the ability to rent out a home, and to to rent out many homes and drive up the price. Likewise we have much land, but it has not been developed because people own it. In a system of government ownership, they would eventually be outbid on the lease for their land and it would be developed into a larger amount of affordable and higher density housing. Instead people own that land and are able to keep it underdeveloped at the cost to everyone else, then use this leverage to enrich themselves through the increase in house prices. There is no positive argument for the private ownership of land over public ownership.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  > What is owning a home? It is having the power to legally demand other people leave it. A home is where people feel safe and secure with their family, or by themselves. I reject the premise of your re-definition of owning a home.
  - James_K 2y ago
    Well as nice as the sentimental definition you gave is, the legal definition of home ownership revolves around a set of rights granted to you by the government over a plot of land. I could feel safe and secure with my family a t Pizza Hut, but I don't own Pizza Hut.
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      The legal definition of marriage is also morose. I don’t intend to observe the goalposts you tried to move.
- donavanm 2y ago
  Just say “ownership is theft” if thats what your argument reduces to. That said, I think the concepts around georgism and dynamic value based taxes are a bit more interesting and address the “land banking” concerns you inserted.
  - James_K 2y ago
    > dynamic value based taxes I hate having to explain this to people, but a tax based on the value of something is called rent. Georgism is a system where the government owns all land and leases it out, but then the call the rent a "tax" to make it more palatable to people who are afraid of public ownership.
    - donavanm 2y ago
      Thats a pretty reductive world view. I suppose “the monopoly of force and law implies control, and quote-unquote ownership, by the state.”? So, mission accomplished? The state already compels me to pay annual taxes based on the value of my titled real estate, my car, my income, my foreign assets, etc… I guess Im just renting it all from the state? Mind you Im no John Birch-man here. I actually pay 42% of my income in taxes, and think real property _should_ be taxed more effectively here in AU. But jumping all the way to “ownership is theft, and taxes are double secret ownership” doesnt seem particularly useful.
      - James_K 2y ago
        > Ownership is theft You are trying so desperately to put those words in my mouth, but I will not say them as I don't know what they mean. > taxes are double secret ownership I'm not making an ideological point here, simply pointing out that the proposed systems are isomorphic in their objectives and execution. They both aim to increase the productive use of land by charging a periodic fee to the occupants of said land based on the market value of the land. There are two differences: the first is one of language (rent vs. tax), and the second on how the rate of this fee is determined. Under socialised land, the market price of land is the same as the fee charged. Under Georgism, the fee is charged by a bunch of politicians looking at the market price of land and trying to figure it out based on that. Given that the two systems are essentially identical, but the second brings in undue political meddling, I see no reason to prefer it to the first solution outside of the practical situation that many people are afraid of public ownership and therefore would be more likely to vote for the worse option. Do you have any real argument for Georgism over public ownership?
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  > It is having the power to legally demand other people leave it Renting gives you that power too

Etheryte 2y ago

I'll bite, why do you think a limit on how many homes a person can own is a bad thing? Let's clearly separate homes and other real estate here, so shop floors, factories, warehouses, etc are out of the equation. Since you mention inefficiency, how many homes can one person realistically reasonably use?

James_K 2y ago
I think it is better than the current situation but worse than the optimal situation, that is government ownership. What's more, ignoring commercial land ignores that many commercial enterprises would benefit from the proposed solution in the same way people living in houses would, yet there is no mechanism by which you could limit one company to a single building of operation. > how many homes can one person realistically reasonably use? This question is why I consider the solution of a limit on ownership stupid. A person can reasonably use however many houses which they can afford to rent. It isn't up to me to decide what counts as reasonable use. It is simply a question of whether other people would be willing to pay more for some other purpose. Suppose someone wishes to purchase an entire abandoned town and can do so at a relatively low rate due to it being abandoned, I see no reason to deny them them this, yet a limit on home ownership would do precisely that. One should also note that a land tax is another inferior solution to the problem. It is effectively a government lease on land which doesn't allow the rent charged to be determined by market forces. What makes total government ownership of land the most practical solution is that it most closely follows market principals. Usage of land is contingent on productive revenue from that land in excess of the revenue generated from alternative usages. Any other solution will fall short of the optimal allocation of resources which the market provides.

gruez 2y ago

>but the real solution has always been government ownership of all land. They have that in China. How's that working out for them?

defrost 2y ago
Sounds made up .. how do you explain nail houses in China? https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china... Maybe take the BS elsewhere?
- gruez 2y ago
  Please do some research before accusing people of "BS". >In general, rural collectives own agricultural land and the state owns urban land. However, Article 70 of The Property Law allows for ownership of exclusive parts within an apartment building, which endorses the individual ownership of apartments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law_in_China >Individuals cannot privately own land in China but may obtain transferrable land-use rights for a number of years for a fee. https://maint.loc.gov/law/help/real-property-law/china-real-property-law.pdf https://maint.loc.gov/law/help/real-property-law/china-real-...
  - defrost 2y ago
    Rural collectives own agricultural land is not "government ownership of all land" which you asserted to be true. Moreover, the devil's in the details: ( In China, your maint.loc.gov ) According to the 2007 Property Rights Law, when the term for the right to use land for residential purposes expires, the term will be automatically renewed Which means that residential land use rights persist, as they do in the US, and while mineral rights remain with the state it's not the case that all land ownership in the US comes with mineral rights, these may have been signed awy by prior owners or retained by the State or Federal Government whe first transferred. Both countries are more complicated than you sweepingly make things out to be.
- donavanm 2y ago

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

Problem is, homes have two functions: a place to live and a wealth preservation vehicle. As a result, many homes are owned by those who have no need to live in that particular place. Bitcoin can substitute some wealth preservation functionality, because it has the same scarcity property as the land, thus improving the housing situation.

James_K 2y ago
Assets which purport to preserve wealth (outside of a bank account) usually end up as some kind of pyramid scheme. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of housing as the victims have no choice but to buy in, and take out increasingly large loans to pay off the previous generation's buy in. Bit coins are quite similar in structure, though they lack the forced buy in, which is why many of them are now attempting to target pensions funds and even lobbying to create official government reserves. (About half of all corporate spending in the last US election was crypto.)