this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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No, I'm not really fine with banks profiting of mortgages, but I am more fine with it than I am private individuals. This is for a couple of reasons:
Banks are easier to regulate.
Banks are more directly related to the life of a currency, they're responsible for the buying of government bonds which enables the money supply to be increased.
A disparity between the wealth of banks and the wealth of private individuals is already an stable established norm.
It's not common for banks to be owned by private individuals.
Banks can be owned by unions.
Land is a finite resource, and I'm not sure anyone has cracked how best to manage it. I like some of what Vietnam does, where if you live in a rural area and can prove that you know how to raise crops (via a standard test) the government will allocate you a plot of farmland to farm. This has resulted in 70% of their population being farmers, and 86% of the population owning their own homes. So ultimately I think the state and probably a state bank, or state land bank, should probably be responsible for managing mortgages.
The word mortgage actually breaks down to death's pledge by the way. It's the kind of thing designed to take someone a lifetime to pay off.
It's all pretty dark, and really I think housing should be a human right. I think if people were responsible for their own homes we'd see better upkeep, and that to some degree housing, shelter, and land should be seen as a nexus point between the citizen and the nation which is made up of the geographical area parceled out and built on to live in.
The less public housing is made, and the more like a private speculator's market it becomes, the greater wealth disparity we'll see. Housing is tied up with homelessness which is a key indicator of how in decline citizen's feel their society to be. Leaving that up to the free market is insane, and represents just how "sold out" our lives can be.
It's part of maintaining the physical, financial and mental health of the population. We shouldn't leave it up to profiteers.
I can understand having a death's pledge to the state. I can't understand paying off someone else's death pledge with your life, so that they can buy more and more houses and do more of the same. What are these, soul collector's?
Societies with a narrower wealth disparity (a smaller gap between the richest and poorest) tend to be better off, more unified, more humanitarian, more democratically capable, and less tolerant of injustices. Making sure the rental system doesn't become a speculative investment market is an important aspect of a society's success, empathy, and of the quality of life and peace of mind of citizens.
Sorry if I sounded harsh to you earlier. Hopefully one day in the future, neither of us will rent.
It’s all good, and thank you for your response. You really gave me a lot to chew on, I’ve never really considered a lot of what you brought up about bank owned mortgages, specially the bit about regulation and pre established wealth disparity.