this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Where is the advantage if you have to pay more taxes for it? If you look at public projects, do you think housing will stay within budget?
I'd rather pay five percent of my income in taxes and not have to walk by homeless people because they have somewhere to live and not have to worry about being homeless if I lose my job or eventually retire and have to worry about constantly increasing rent or property taxes on a fixed income than pay around a third of my income in rent so Brad and Karen can go on another vacation to the Bahamas this year.
How does that add up? If you pay 33% to Brad and Karen, where does the civil servants get the building sites, construction workers and materials for 5%, ignoring the extra space needed for the formerly homeless?
Do landlords have more than 500% profit margins?
I'm basing this off of real world data taken from socialist projects. Rent in the USSR was 5 percent of income for example.
They do not have 500 percent margins because capitalism is incredibly inefficient and they're only one small actor making money from the situation in a broader ecosystem of developers, construction companies, etc.
If you go for standardized housing with an abundance of construction sites then you also get your 5% rent within capitalism.
The problem is not the landlords but the voters and buyers. The landlords will offer 5% housing if the demand is there, together with construction sites.
The US is objectively an oligarchy based on many longitudinal studies. The problem is the oligarchy, which contains property owners.
That doesn't make landlords the origin of high rents.
If people want less rent, it doesn't help to oppose landlords. All it does is reducing the number of participants which worsens the situation.
Renters can decide elections. Unionize and negotiate with the parties how many construction sites they will create. Then vote accordingly. Then rent will go down.
No, it has nothing to do with how landlords are parasites, it is just explaining that it isnt the voters fault that parasitism is allowed.
It helps to oppose the landlord class and abolish the idea of rent.
The US is empirically not a democracy. Is this going in one ear and out the other?
Landlords are not parasites. If you have enough competition then profits will go down until it's barely rewarding to manage property, which somebody has to do.
Housing just costs so much becsuse of zoning laws and lack of public transport.
Unless you pull of a revolution, competing landlords are key if you want rentable housing.
But you want to abolish the idea of rent. What will happen? People have to own their housing units. This requires credit. People who don't get credit now, where will they live?
Of course you can establish Socialism. But you don't believe that voters can change politics.
What's the most possible change?
I think making the housing market competitive is possible. But it's still difficult because there needs to be a decision about how to handle collapsing housing prices and the defaulting on most mortgages.
The father of classical economics and the father of Marxian economics are in agreement about landlords being parasites but you have been blessed with divine knowledge that says they aren't. Please, impart your wisdom on the masses. /s
Seriously, imagine the ego to think you know better than literally the people behind the two major competing economic analysis systems.
Literally look into how much nicer housing is in places that succeeded at communist land reform. Talk to Vietnamese and Cuban people about how housing is handled. Plenty of them speak English if you're monolingual. (Not vietnamese american or cuban American, people who actually live in the current systems)
You are appealing to authority. They are right in the sense that the owning class will try to maintain their position. Now, what do you want to do? Stage a revolution without weapons from the means of production?
Hegel for sure is proud to know that those two reached the end of philosophy.
I don't question that communism and Socialism can create better housing. My point is that as long as you are in capitalism, you have to play by capitalist rules. This means you should increase competition. It's not the fault of landlords that there is not enough opportunity to build affordable housing.
Blaming landlords is counter-productive because renters don't feel the need to build the power to influence the next election.
Yes, and it is an appropriate appeal. It is the equivalent of pointing at physicists while arguing with a flat earthen.
Okay, so stop doing capitalism. You just said that socialism produces better outcomes.
That won't do anything. Build tenants unions and then find where your landlord lives and have a pleasant conversation with them about collective bargaining and what collective bargaining is the historical alternative to, at the minimum.
I leave the possibility of revolution to the other thread.
You cannot force cheaper rent. The landlords don't have 500% profit margins. All you do is fix the housing situation with nobody left to organize renovations or new constructions because landlords will seek other opportunities.
The resources for housing are too expensive. You have to change that.
It is the voters fault.
Voters are responsible for politics.
Even if they are manipulated, it's still their fault. Like drunk driving.
You are empirically incorrect, studies show the US is an oligarchy. Bribery is literally legal in the US as long as the right procedures are followed.
Yes. As long as you don't believe in Santa Claus, who is there to make a change?
I would maybe research historical examples where land reform has worked instead of continuing to pester me.
Give me a hint. Are there reforms without staging a revolution? How can you dream of revolutions without believing in voters?
You're the one who doesn't believe in the masses.
I don't believe in revolutions, that's a difference.
Let me ask again:
How can you dream of revolutions without believing in voters?
Like, that they historically exist and have resulted in massive gains for the working class, or what?
Do you think not believing voting can affect change is the same as thinking the masses aren't capable of affecting change?
Revolutions needed 2% of the population to fight. Voters are 50% and you need a majority, so in total 25% of the population.
That made revolutions easier historically because you just needed guns and food for those 2%.
Now look at Ukraine, are guns and food enough?
You have to convince the population anyway or there will be a counter revolution. So I think if something is worth changing, it should be changed by voters.
That said, let me ask again, why do you prefer revolutions?
I didn't say I prefer them, I said that historically over and over again they get the goods. The problems you're asking about are questions all successful revolutions have succeeded at grappling with.
What does that mean? Should we perceive landlords as members of the ruling class and make owning property as difficult as possible because rising rent will lead to the revolution which will ultimately reduce rent?
Or should we perceive landlords as cogs in the capitalistic machine and increase their supplies to increase their output to reduce rent?
These both are relying on thinking you're the person in charge of the economy in a system were you aren't.
Then why bother at all?
You have a serious poverty of imagination. Think about how you can do things if you had an organization of people in your same class position.
I don't have much imagination. What can I do?