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Ehhhh... I don't really know where to start here. We have viewpoints and value systems that differ on the most basic level. I don't give a single fuck for the h

Ehhhh... I don't really know where to start here. We have viewpoints and value systems that differ on the most basic level. I don't give a single fuck for the historical system. The historical system is a system of rich and poor, of serfs and lords, full of exploitation at every level. Forget about it. 'Living on other peoples taxes' is total nonsense. It posits a world within which my work allows you to be lazy when that is not the case at all. You can be lazy regardless of whether or not I work in the vast majority of cases. Very few jobs are actually essential and even fewer are useful to the 'lazy' person (because they would not be wealthy enough to patronise restaurants, take luxury holidays, drive flash cars, etc.) The UK has a ton of housing stock. It exists, it's there. We need a bit more, but generally, people work in order to pay a wealthy landlord; they don't work because the home needs any labour in order for it to persist. We do need some level of labour in order for society to continue. But I argue that we don't need to force people by withholding (yes, withholding. not failing to present them - land ownership is a withholding of the commons) basics from them. People will work anyway because they want more. The bottom level doesn't have to be serf status. Money is a distraction. It is the current way of distributing resources. It doesn't have to be. There is a distinction between giving people the opportunity to work and therefore increase their wealth; and forcing them to work by withholding things and renting it back to them. The former is great! The latter is evil.

mindslight 11y ago
Money itself isn't so terrible. It's a fungible unit of value. People are always going to engage in private transactions. Getting rid of money would just make the second side of the transaction more subjective and therefore less efficient. (yes, markets getting more efficient combined with the baked in assumptions are why the system is coming unglued. but that doesn't mean trying to make them less efficient will fix it) The real problem is, as you said, extremely high rent (even if you "buy") just for a place to exist. This puts labor in an extremely weak negotiating position (people being worried about losing their jobs!), which any true free market proponent should be against. Imagine how things would change if a minimum wage worker made enough in a few months to cover their expenses for a year IF they mostly stayed home, ate inexpensive food, didn't buy more clothes/gadgets, etc. Run the numbers with current prices and you'll see that this isn't some planned economy dream, but pretty close to current conditions if the rent paid to banks (on money they're mostly allowed to conjure from thin air) were taken out of the picture! Gosh after several months of work and no longer under duress, workers might even be in a position to demand a raise!
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  Spot on. I'm not against money per se; I take issue with the fact it's used at every level rather than only where it makes sense. It doesn't make sense to use pure supply and demand for land at the very bottom level of human sized parcels. It makes sense to say that a studio should be cheaper than a 1BR should be cheaper than a 2BR and so on; but not that the studio should be allowed to tend towards its absolute maximum price (e.g. roughly minimum wage). Why? You don't even need a moral argument. It's simply inefficient, a huge drag on the economy. It means people spend 90% of their time scrambling just to exist and never do anything more. It is like if I had to spend 90% of my CPU power just to run the OS. Bonkers. It benefits no-one but landlords who in many cases are in a zero risk situation (you own a home and then you still own a home; the monetary value is really a game, it's not a real risk).
  - mindslight 11y ago
    > It doesn't make sense to use pure supply and demand for land at the very bottom level of human sized parcels I don't think you even have to go this deep. The banks are the ones that create new money, multiplying deposits tenfold based on the valuation of the assets they're writing notes on. But that valuation is set entirely by the selling prices! So in this circular situation, the only downward pressure on housing is what the banks will loan (especially with further down-payment-erosion like PMI), which is set by the carrying cost of the capital (interest) times what people are willing to pay per month. There is no risk of default since on paper, the asset is worth slightly more than the loan. I think if you were to revoke financial primacy and eg disallow repossession of residences in bankruptcy, you'd see a pretty quick correction as there would then be an actual risk that someone would take a loan to buy a house and then decide servicing that debt was pointless. But there's no political capital, since everyone that has bought property (even and especially with a mortgage) wants to see the bubble keep going up forever.
Ntrails 11y ago
My point on historical systems is not that they are right, but that something better has never been implemented. Probably means it isn't an easy problem, and that the solution needs to be defined properly - rather than proclaimed "there must be a better way". I'm not trying to straw man or anything, i'm genuinely interested. Living without making any contribution to taxes is a net drain. That's not nonsense, at all. Whether you want to enable that choice for anyone is most definitely a choice/view. The NHS, housing, police state, roads, etc all this shit costs labour and money. The fact that pensioners are the largest benefit drain and are predicted to increase significantly as a population is of note. Lazy isn't really the point. The argument isn't even about being lazy, you can be lazy as long as you aren't funding it using "other peoples" labour. That's what you'll find a decent proportion of the population are against. So is the plan to nationalise ownership of all housing to allow free accommodation for all? Or simply to cap rents on a national/regional/other level? Distribution of capital and inheritance is a root cause of the problem at the moment in terms of housing prices. Those who can afford the deposit and those who cannot. Not easily solved. Similarly lending practices strongly favour buy to let. I'm torn on the withholding thing. I see both sides (and I've spent plenty of time on the dole, and been sanctioned on more than one occasion). I met all sorts of people at workshops and training sessions. I saw a fundamentally broken welfare system, I saw a lot of people paid to push paper, I saw people who thought they were exploiting it, and I saw some people who were both down on their luck and genuinely fascinating. I'm not actually against a citizens wage (whatever it's called) - I think it'd be really interesting. I'm just not sure how viable it is long term. I'd happily vote for greens again if they had a shot at implementing it. We doubtless have very different value systems / views though.

mindslight 11y ago

Money itself isn't so terrible. It's a fungible unit of value. People are always going to engage in private transactions. Getting rid of money would just make the second side of the transaction more subjective and therefore less efficient. (yes, markets getting more efficient combined with the baked in assumptions are why the system is coming unglued. but that doesn't mean trying to make them less efficient will fix it) The real problem is, as you said, extremely high rent (even if you "buy") just for a place to exist. This puts labor in an extremely weak negotiating position (people being worried about losing their jobs!), which any true free market proponent should be against. Imagine how things would change if a minimum wage worker made enough in a few months to cover their expenses for a year IF they mostly stayed home, ate inexpensive food, didn't buy more clothes/gadgets, etc. Run the numbers with current prices and you'll see that this isn't some planned economy dream, but pretty close to current conditions if the rent paid to banks (on money they're mostly allowed to conjure from thin air) were taken out of the picture! Gosh after several months of work and no longer under duress, workers might even be in a position to demand a raise!

stegosaurus 11y ago
Spot on. I'm not against money per se; I take issue with the fact it's used at every level rather than only where it makes sense. It doesn't make sense to use pure supply and demand for land at the very bottom level of human sized parcels. It makes sense to say that a studio should be cheaper than a 1BR should be cheaper than a 2BR and so on; but not that the studio should be allowed to tend towards its absolute maximum price (e.g. roughly minimum wage). Why? You don't even need a moral argument. It's simply inefficient, a huge drag on the economy. It means people spend 90% of their time scrambling just to exist and never do anything more. It is like if I had to spend 90% of my CPU power just to run the OS. Bonkers. It benefits no-one but landlords who in many cases are in a zero risk situation (you own a home and then you still own a home; the monetary value is really a game, it's not a real risk).
- mindslight 11y ago
  > It doesn't make sense to use pure supply and demand for land at the very bottom level of human sized parcels I don't think you even have to go this deep. The banks are the ones that create new money, multiplying deposits tenfold based on the valuation of the assets they're writing notes on. But that valuation is set entirely by the selling prices! So in this circular situation, the only downward pressure on housing is what the banks will loan (especially with further down-payment-erosion like PMI), which is set by the carrying cost of the capital (interest) times what people are willing to pay per month. There is no risk of default since on paper, the asset is worth slightly more than the loan. I think if you were to revoke financial primacy and eg disallow repossession of residences in bankruptcy, you'd see a pretty quick correction as there would then be an actual risk that someone would take a loan to buy a house and then decide servicing that debt was pointless. But there's no political capital, since everyone that has bought property (even and especially with a mortgage) wants to see the bubble keep going up forever.

Ntrails 11y ago

My point on historical systems is not that they are right, but that something better has never been implemented. Probably means it isn't an easy problem, and that the solution needs to be defined properly - rather than proclaimed "there must be a better way". I'm not trying to straw man or anything, i'm genuinely interested. Living without making any contribution to taxes is a net drain. That's not nonsense, at all. Whether you want to enable that choice for anyone is most definitely a choice/view. The NHS, housing, police state, roads, etc all this shit costs labour and money. The fact that pensioners are the largest benefit drain and are predicted to increase significantly as a population is of note. Lazy isn't really the point. The argument isn't even about being lazy, you can be lazy as long as you aren't funding it using "other peoples" labour. That's what you'll find a decent proportion of the population are against. So is the plan to nationalise ownership of all housing to allow free accommodation for all? Or simply to cap rents on a national/regional/other level? Distribution of capital and inheritance is a root cause of the problem at the moment in terms of housing prices. Those who can afford the deposit and those who cannot. Not easily solved. Similarly lending practices strongly favour buy to let. I'm torn on the withholding thing. I see both sides (and I've spent plenty of time on the dole, and been sanctioned on more than one occasion). I met all sorts of people at workshops and training sessions. I saw a fundamentally broken welfare system, I saw a lot of people paid to push paper, I saw people who thought they were exploiting it, and I saw some people who were both down on their luck and genuinely fascinating. I'm not actually against a citizens wage (whatever it's called) - I think it'd be really interesting. I'm just not sure how viable it is long term. I'd happily vote for greens again if they had a shot at implementing it. We doubtless have very different value systems / views though.