Replace home with right to a parcel of land for 100 years and then I agree.
You can even go full evolutionary logic and say every creature has the right (and obligation) to fight to get the resources it needs to survive.
I don’t care about the house, I just want land that I can live on.
Even ants and bees give everyone a house, food, and a job (with the majority of the hive/colony population having time off and rest at any given time). These people are advocating for us to be less evolved than an ant. Per EO Wilson, the guy who studied these fellas
They also kill all the males, do they not? 😂
Wel well well, let me add that to my list of interesting ant facts.
The ant species Brachymyrmex has the largest brain size relative to its body size among all known organisms
I find it interesting how in every single video game that involves fostering a population, it’s up to you to make sure everyone is housed. Too logical and efficient for billionaires, I guess.
Might be wrong, but I think in Cities Skylines all you’re doing is zoning the city, and it’s up to the people to build houses and live (or have their house burn down)
Yeah, same for simcity 4
Are there homeless people?
It Cities: Skylines 2, yes.
What I love about those video games is that they teach us very clearly that a command economy leads to prosperity (unless you suck as a player I guess), but then billionaires tell us no, free market capitalism and trickle-down are the way we have to go.
“Trickle-down” was a rebranding campaign.
It used to be called Horse and Sparrow Economics, with the idea being the Horses eat the grain, and Sparrows peck their meals from the horseshit.
The wealth layer has been playing this game against the poors for a long time.
I mean, the moral is that free markets are a fiction when primary accumulation is illegal.
I can’t simply claim a vacant property at the clearance rate. I need to bargain with a landlord at a cartel price. And thanks to public-private collusion, we routinely tax, trade, and subsidize properties at three entirely different figures.
Every economy is a command economy. The question you have to ask is who is in control.
Along those same lines, they didn’t put parking lots in Sim City. They tried, but it completely fucked everything.
The had to set rent to 0 in Cities Skylines abd completely remove the economy in Dwarf Fortress, otherwise the player would be confused why they would build enough vacant luxury condos to house everyone, while more and more of the population went homeless.
weird take. video games have to have a command economy because they are designed to be played. a free market city builder would just be a screensaver.
screensaver
Definitely won’t be a CPU saver though
fun fact, most old screensavers were super resource-intensive.
Yeah, I remember a few of the Win98 ones.
Which one would be harder on the old processors though? Pipes, or the one in which it put a moving magnifying glass or bubbles on an image of the current desktop?
i think pipes was opengl and swirl was software, so probably the latter
On a Pentium 2 without Voodoo, both would be software
Cities are not functionally free market. You could have control of layout, zoning, regulations, infrastructure design and allocation, tax incentives, etc.
Not sure how well this would model a real city where the “freehand” is guided by countless individual decisions.
Yeah, that’s what I find so amusing.
ok i think i get the joke
Funny, because it taught me that that task in reality is impossible, given real nations can’t load an old save file to fix their fuck ups in a simulation far, far simpler than reality.
Of course you could certainly argue that one person wouldn’t be in charge of doing literally everything.
I understand your take but it is not really hard to grab the basic mechanics and make a thriving city in any game.
The basic mechanics are universal.
What throws off the managing part is “enemies”, “natural disasters” and other excitment mechanics.
A managed economy could happen and would be highly efficient, especially because running a nation is a collective endeavour. Individuals fail but groups have memory.
A managed economy could happen and would be highly efficient, especially because running a nation is a collective endeavour. Individuals fail but groups have memory.
Yeah. Imagine how prosperous the United States would be if the current administration was running it as a managed economy.
Imagine if any country could manage itself, by thinking ahead and admiting bad actors could arise, thus preparing in advance for it.
The United States was preparing in advance for bad actors like Trump since 1787 and it didn’t fucking help.
No it wasn’t and it never did.
The constitution itself allows for a very small group of individuals to control the entire country, from the first moment it was written.
It was never truly reviewed to allow a proper redistribution of voting power throughout all the states and it still allows for indirect election of the most powerful state figure, where it should instead by directly elected by popular vote.
The gerrymandering, the filibusting, two chambers system, common law system, etc.
The american government was never created to be a proper one; it was an emulation of the english system but even more botched.
The document itself should have been thrown in the trash and a new one written, the moment the civil war broke. And again it should had been trashed when the market crash happened.
There is only so much an ammendement can do.
with the resources of a real command economy, you could find the best player in the nation and put them at the wheel
Get outside, touch the grass bro
I’ve had similar thoughts about the auction house in World of Warcraft. Since the game caps the amount of gold you can have at a small fraction of the overall economy, no one person can buy everything and then jack up the prices.
Ya
Hey, if you’re interested in this topic, you may wanna read on historical examples of countries where that happened!
In the Soviet Union, for example, housing was guaranteed by the state, and homelessness was abolished. Everyone had a right to at the very least a room in a dormitory. Housing was for the most part obtained through the work union. Jobs were guaranteed and there was no unemployment, and the union at work was in charge of finding a flat for the worker and their family. Monthly rent was around 3% of the average family income by the 1970s, so it was very affordable too. If you’re interested, there’s a book called “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski which goes into detail in these things!
In Cuba, housing is also guaranteed. A friend of mine (I’m Spanish so my friend speaks Spanish too) went to visit the country, and he had a conversation with some university students. On the one hand, the university students couldn’t believe that my friend’s family had two cars, they thought he was rich when in fact that’s rather common for a middle-income family in Spain. On the other hand, they couldn’t believe that my friend, at 22 years old at the time, was still living with his parents while studying at university. In Cuba, if you get a position as a university student, you get assigned housing for free while you study.
So yeah, just some perspectives of countries that actually managed to solve the problem of housing for everyone as a right
I don’t think you can say the Soviet Union solved anything.
I’m afraid I don’t follow you. If homelessness was abolished and essentially everyone in a country with 300 million people was housed, why can’t I say that housing was solved?
Incredible!
If only we applied your thought process to other areas.
For example, did you know that the Soviet Union had less gun violence than the United States does? This must mean we should be more like the Soviet Union!
No, for what it’s worth, no we should not be more like the Soviet Union. They used gun control to quell rebellion and killed millions. Numbers do not paint the picture you think they do, they represent what was recorded. There are plenty of reasons to question those records, if you actually take the time to think about it.
You couldn’t resist the temptation to sneak in that bit about “gun control”. You’ve overplayed your hand.
Overplayed my hand?
No, dipshit — I’ve just got a clear grasp on reality.
They used gun control to quell rebellion and killed millions
What historical event in particular are you talking about?
There are plenty of reasons to question those records
Which records in particular are you talking about? The book I used as a source uses almost exclusively western studies as sources.
No, for what it’s worth, no we should not be more like the Soviet Union
Depends? I’m not saying “let’s replicate every policy of the Soviet Union”, but they did guarantee housing for everyone, free and quality education to the highest level, free healthcare for everyone, and public retirement plans for every individual. Why wouldn’t you want to be more like those things?
And their entire system fucking collapsed. And yes, the U.S. is a part of the reason for that collapse — but if you’re seriously sitting here trying to suggest it was the reason, you are actually fucking dumb. Like, go talk to someone that lived in the Soviet Union — dumb.
Let me make this clear, I’m not giving you a history lesson — I’m also not sifting through Eastern sources because I’m not a dipshit. I shouldn’t have to explain why a govt. that wantonly murders the people that work for it probably doesn’t have records you can trust.
I’ll be trusting Western sources. Not dipshits on Lemmy who have circlejerked on .ml for too long. Fuckin flat earth wannabes.
If you want western sources, go ahead and look through the sources of Albert Szymanski’s “Human Rights in the Soviet Union”, you’ll be surprised. Go ahead and do your reading if you so care about sources.
And their entire system fucking collapsed
Less collapsed and more illegally and antidemocratically dissolved against the wishes of the majority or Soviet peoples as of the Soviet permanence referendum. The Soviet Union survived 27 million deaths in their struggle against Nazism, it didn’t “collapse” because muh economy and housing.
Regardless: I’m not necessarily arguing for the organization of the US state in a similar fashion to that of the USSR, I’m giving you historical sources on countries which effectively SOLVED HOMELESSNES and rent pricing, as per the post. Maybe the US could copy some of that policy without copying the rest if you don’t wanna?
Like, what are the other options? Homes seem mandatory for societal and economic interaction.
I’m enough of a socdem that the hexbear types ban me at first sight when I comment in their communities, but I’m still of the opinion that everyone is entitled to have A home. Something that is reasonably sized given the location, and there may be compromises in location itself (not everyone is going to fit in Manhattan after all). So an apartment in NYC or a single family home in flyover states somewhere. This is just using the US as an example because it’s so culturally dominant, I think everyone knows what NYC is like. Everyone should be able to live in a home that affords them basic human dignity.
Now rich people can still have their mansions or whatever, but they’ll have to pay for the privilege. The rest of us, if content with the aforementioned social housing, wouldn’t have to pay. There would still be premium developments. Premium apartments or houses to rent or buy. But there would be no more profiting off the working class’s basic need for shelter.
I’m a hexbear type and your take is quite reasonable, but I’d just say you’re very, very far to the left compared to a socdem. If you think universal housing is an imperative, you probably already share more with the hexbear types than with the .world types, just my two cents.
I do still support some aspects of capitalism and the free market. I’m of the opinion that society should guarantee everyone the basics and then those who want can build extra wealth for all I care. Just not through outright exploitation.
I don’t know if there’s a specific label for my beliefs, as I’m not too into political theory.
I’m not gonna go all Marxist on you regarding the exploitation of the workers by capitalists in the Marxist sense, but I’ll ask you this: what about the people in the global south? Do you believe that countries in South America, Africa, Middle East or South-East Asia are being exploited by the western world?
Well, obviously. But then we run into the whole issue of trade. If there’s no free trade, the people in those areas would have nobody to sell goods to, which is developing their economies. But under free trade, foreign capital exploits them.
In a way, it’s up to their own governments to protect their people from foreign capitalists. We here in the west/north/whatever can’t force that. But that’s easier said than done in a lot of places. They need to have their own money to build their own nations, but where do you get said money into your country unless you have oil, diamonds or other expensive resources that also attract bloodsuckers?
I suspect that the only workable solution is some sort of international fund that provides resources to poor nations and everyone pays into it. Kind of like here in the EU - richer countries pay more than they receive in benefits, but since it builds up the strength of the EU, they still end up benefiting. Thing is, acceptance into EU requires meeting some standards. Said global fund would also need to have standards for the nations they help - to make sure it’s not all wasted on corrupt warlords in the government. But then who helps the people in those countries?
It’s honestly an issue nobody wants to think about, myself included. How do you help people in those places? How do you force education and wealth on a backwards ass country?
If there’s no free trade, the people in those areas would have nobody to sell goods to, which is developing their economies
The main argument against this is that these areas are not developing. Take the famous Steven Pinker graphs of poverty reduction worldwide, and extract China from them: look at poverty numbers in the world without including China. You’ll see that poverty isn’t being relieved outside China, I.e. these countries aren’t really developing. They’re selling their resources for cheap and obtaining essentially nothing in return. This is known in Marxist economics as “unequal exchange” and I highly encourage you to read on it if you’re interested on the reasons for the underdevelopment of the global south. The wikipedia article itself is a good starting point.
The rest of your comment hinges on this crucial point of assuming theyre actually developing, that’s why I’m only answering to this point.
But there must be ads on every inch of the house until you purchase premium. Cmon, you can’t just exist without suffering. What would be the point of life, if not torture?
To maximise shareholder value of course!
That sounds great, devil’s advocate want to know how we do get projects.
Uhh hives? We could all start burrowing into the ground and living in communal tunnelways connected to nest rooms and grain storages.
In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.
parasites ! weaklings ! your revolution is over ! the bums lost !
The idea of ownership is kinda silly.
Right? “My ancestors beat up your ancestors, so I deserve to live in wealth and opulence, while you deserve to be my slave”
It really is pretty fucked up.
There’s that poem(?) about that
“”"
“Get off this estate.”
“What for?”
“Because it’s mine.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From my father.”
“Where did he get it?”
“From his father.”
“And where did he get it?”
“He fought for it.”
“Well, I’ll fight you for it.”
“”"
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9358361-get-off-this-estate-what-for-because-it-s-mine-where
Tell your ancestors to gitgud.
It’s funny how both the comment you answered to, and your cynical answer to it, are upvoted
“Private property is the smallest unit of warfare.” — The Terraformers (2023) by
Becky ChambersAnnalee NewitzEdit: author name
nice, I like small scale violence
Oh gosh, we love Becky Chamber’s work. This is amazing that we didn’t know this one. Thanks for sharing!
Edit: Seems you might be incorrect. It was written by Annalee Newitz
Ah, shit, you’re right. They’re right next to each other on my mental bookshelf. I was introduced to their works via this talk they gave together, have been reading both their works, and so I have trouble distinguishing them. >.<
It’s okay. At least we learned about a cool author and book!
I could be in support of more regulation/taxation on inheritance. But straight up removing ownership as a concept seems way too flimsy.
Its not the concept of ownership its the concept of private property. Of owning property that you do not occupy. Of housing belonging to anyone other than who presently lives there.
Ah OK that makes more sense than what you said the first time.
should I not be allowed to use a second residence (that may be deemed uninhabitable or not) as a cheaper storage unit? (I hate how much storage units charge)
I mean this in good faith, what’s the alternative? That anyone could enter anyone’s house freely? Or that everything is shared (owned by the state, which would give it too much power).
Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to “personal property”, which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of “private property”, which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Landlords hate this idea.
Here’s a really super basic summary:
https://www.workers.org/private-property/
And here’s a long complicated discussion:
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/anarchism-and-private-property
Part of the problem, I think, is that in common vernacular, ‘landlord’ also applies to people that are renting out a room of their personal house. The pro-landlord propaganda likes to hold them up as the gold standard we’re attacking.
We need to be clear that we’re absolutely not talking about the couple that’s renting out their kid’s old room to get through tough times. They’re also victims of the same system, being forced to sacrifice personal property at the altar of capitalism.
Marx is clear about this, BTW. The distinction between private property (i.e. capital) and personal property, is that personal property is owned for its use value (you own a trenchcoat to protect yourself from the cold, or you own a house to live in it), whereas private property is owned for its monetary revalorization capability (you own a trenchcoat to rent it in a costumes store, you own a house to rent it to someone else). The same object can be used for its use value, and then it’s it’s personal property; or it can be used in the capital revalorization cycle, and then it’s private property.
As always, the poor are human shields for the rich.
Ain’t no war but class war.
Or even honestly, the middle aged couple that was able to upgrade houses without selling, and lets their old house to a young couple for a reasonable rate because it’s paid off. Which, in my rural experience, is really common. I am very grateful to a man that I didn’t and still don’t particularly like, because he rented me a nice property for a very fair rate. I could say similar things about other past landlords. The difference is when it’s not an investment, but a business. Treating housing like a business interaction cheapens human life, and I have lived in that situation as well, to varying degrees. The worst was an apartment in Park City UT that was owned by some yuppies in Massachusetts, part of some sheisty lease/timeshare property LLC, where the building super was just a power tripping asshole with no accountability. I’m rambling, but Landlord Bad is too simple for a complex situation.
Or like if somebody inherits a house while they already have one, and decide to rent it out, that’s fine too.
The private vs personal is introducing vocab to make a difference between ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is private property’. We’re proposing that it’s ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is personal property’.
ao, should people that live on large lots of residential commercial multi use zoning not be able to build a department store on the same property as their house?
I don’t see a problem with multi-use zoning or living above your store, no. My town has an immigrant family that’s running a “department store” of various kinds of secondhand junk out of their barn, and they’re not the problem here. They’ve got everything from used clothing to tractor parts, and I’d much rather have stores like that than having to go to Tractor Supply.
Sure, it could be done unethically, but I don’t think there’s any intrinsic evil about it.
We’re talking about a very minor amount of priviledged people who have the spare property to rent. Even a room. Most impoverished people live in apartments. We do not own them, none of the income taken from us for rent is returned to us (unlike property ownership via a mortgage in which case value is literally returned to you), and we are only able to roomshare or sublet. Neither of which is what youre describing.
Not dismissing that middle class property owning families cant fall on hard times and have to fight to maintain the class position they occupy, just pointing out that the majority of us would do anything to have a home with a spare room to rent out. Thats a dream that many many people in my generation will never come close to achieving.
We shouldn’t have to appeal to the class anxieties of middle class people. The fact that we suffer is a rallying cause enough. There are enough poor people to tear the system down if we all worked together. Its appealing to our shared suffering. Class consciousness and solidarity. Its recognizing our collective struggle and fighting back against power. It doesn’t happen by making concessions to land owners. The threat of having to downsize is nothing compared with the threat of being homeless if you have to go to the hospital. The threat of losing everything if you get an injury. The impoverished and the marginalized live with guns aimed at every one of their vital organs. From birth to death under duress at the hands of the state. I dont really give a fuck what land owners are going through. We’d kill to have to downsize.
We’re talking about a very minor amount of priviledged people who have the spare property to rent.
Proceeds to rant about them for multiple paragraphs without mentioning the corporations that own entire subdivisions of apartment complexes.
Nice aim.
I’m baked and deleted a paragraph because it turned to rambling.
I don’t like corporations owning housing.
How does no private property square with something like a car, that costs money to produce, has less inherent value than a home, and depreciates in value unlike a home?
I think I understand, but it gets murky for me after a point. Not trying to argue, just learn.
The idea is, we abolish the concept of private property, but retain the concept of personal property.
Personal property being stuff that’s used by one person, or ome family, or one small group, and ownership rights come from that use.
So a car would be the personal property of the driver or drivers who use it - the same as a computer or microwave or toothbrush would be the personal property of the person or people who used it. You drive it, you fuel it, you repair it, and that’s what makes it yours.
How to produce and distribute goods (like houses and cars and toothbrushes) without a system of private property, purchase, and ownership is a major site of leftist contention 😆
Word, thank you, and anybody else that commented on my stoned Wondering. I agree in concept but it’s always difficult to imagine in practice because we’ve all just lived with this
If we can’t dream big, all we can do is maintain the status quo. And the status quo kind of sucks.
You don’t own the stall of a public toilet and you can still expect to use it without having people walk on you. It’s like we can all agree to distribute resources and keep rights like privacy without the need of property.
how about instead of restricting all ownership, you instead just limited it.
My idea is that basically once anybody hits 10 million in net worth (for example), then we just say ‘well done, you’ve completed it mate’. Now fuck off down the beach and don’t come back.
Basically tax any further income of any kind at 100%.
how about instead of restricting all ownership, you instead just limited it
But basically nobody proposes this. Communists don’t propose “abolishing property” altogether, we propose abolishing private capital, which is the type of property that isn’t owned for its use value, but instead owned for profit. A commie would say you can own a car to use it, but you can’t own a car to employ someone else to drive it as a taxi and generate a profit for you.
This. Then just put up a scoreboard of who’s excess revenue is providing the most tax revenue to the public, then they can play for first place and we can all benefit off of their sociopathic narcissism. Everybody wins.
While I agree with you, in principle, I much prefer my toilet than a public toilet with partial privacy and partial cleanliness.
I think it’s going to be interesting when we move from private ownership of cars to self driving, shared, how there may be different classes again, like trains of old. It’s inevitable we transition. The gig economy is effectively a more even distribution of resource usage with benefits environmentally. However, we need to ensure it’s more even ownership too, which is looking unlikely at this point.
Self driving cars are not going to stop car ownership, that’s pure CEO fantasy. The logistics of it doesn’t make any sense. Gig economy it’s the opposite of even distribution, it’s companies owning everything and workers owning nothing. Stop drinking the neoliberal kool aid.
Gig economy is better distribution of asset use, as I said. The problem to correct is distribution of ownership, again as I already said. Stop drinking the socialism kool aid. Nobody owning cars is more likely than community ownership.
Car ownership may not go away but it’s likely to decrease. It’s rare in America to not own a car. It’s less rare in cities with good public transport, eg New York, Europe. Self driving, on demand taxis may mean the same effect is carried over to places that currently don’t have great public transport.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon#Private_property_and_the_state
Some good reading to start with.
One of the main things to take away is that there’s a difference between personal property and private property.
Personal property are things like your clothes, your home, the items you use regularly.
Private property are things you own but don’t personally use, don’t take real responsibility for.
For example, if you have the money, you can purchase a factory. But a factory is too large an item for one person to ever claim they personally run the whole thing and take full responsibility for. There’s many people involved in running a factory, from cleaners to accountants, do they not also take responsibility for their part?
If the factory could never run without all of these workers, can the owner really claim that the factory is theirs? It is everyone who works there’s. Why then does the owner get to keep all the money the factory produces? Because they stumped up some cash a few years ago?
The owners are smart enough to pay you for your labour. Maybe even a bonus for a successful year. Some benefits maybe when people start unionising and demanding more. But at the end of the day, the owner still gets the vast vast majority of the profits despite not putting in the vast majority of the work. How is this fair?
I’ve run out of steam now, it’s been a long day, but if you genuinely meant your comment in good faith have a read of the links above.
Concepts of ownership aren’t going to stop you from walking into someone else’s house currently
Anarchists (including us) mostly talk about personal vs private property. For example in an anarchist society nobody is going to take your toothbrush or house, but you aren’t allowed to own a house you don’t live in (yet still charge for) nor a factory where other people work, those things would be communally owned and cared for, or given to someone in need (in the case of a house). So it’s kind of a semi-ownership at least compared to how it is now, you get what you need, not more than that.
Ohhh I see, thanks for the explanation! In that case I agree that private property in the capitalist sense shouldn’t exist.
Sure, happy to explain!
There’s a difference between “private property” and “personal property”. Arguably any personal property is private property but not all private property is personal property. And it’s that private property which doesn’t need to exist.
Everyone gets their own home. The land is shared and distributed among the population according to their needs.
Who decides what amount/type of land one “needs”?
The richest trillionaire (Musk), who gets to bribe and cheat his way into a position of power. Guess how much land he’s gonna give you?
The populus.
I haven’t seen a consensus, have you?
Lemmy loves socialism
The Dude would just say fuck it and not even bother arguing and tell Brandt that the Big Lebowski told him to take any one of his rental properties as The Dude’s own.
that is what he did with the rug lol
thatsthejoke.jpg
i am the walrus
Ultimately it comes down to might makes right. That’s the final argument of kings (the barrel of a gun). For all the progress we’ve made we still can’t escape the account of Thrasymachus.
So by definition, since no human is more powerful than 3 or more (average) humans combined, might makes right should translate to majority rule.
Now if we had a superman flying around that could honestly take on millions of people at a time, then yeah might makes right makes him king. Besides that, it always comes down to fooling the majority.
The argument doesn’t specify how one achieves might. That’s an exercise for the reader. One guy sitting in a bunker with his finger over the red button of a doomsday weapon is rather mighty. A million people all working together in a coordinated hive mind would also be mighty.
The main issue for a group of humans is coordination. In general, smaller groups are easier to coordinate than larger groups. I think this is one of the biggest reasons elites can form and take control over larger groups in society. Wealth has a big effect too but this coordination problem has always existed and so have elites, at least since the dawn of agriculture.
One guy sitting in a bunker with a red button is only possible because of society and our cumulative technology.
I think you missed my point, what I meant is that some having more power than others is a product of modern society, not an inherent value one is born with. So big power imbalances only exist because we let it be possible. We only let it be possible by convincing enough people that’s the only way we can have a functioning society.
I actually think that used to be true until the last few decades.
That’s simply not true. Read about the Egyptian pharaohs or ancient kings like Sargon of Akkad. Huge power imbalances have been with us for thousands of years. They don’t depend on modern technology, just agriculture and organization.
Yes, we invented power imbalances when we got domesticated by wheat. We haven’t solved that yet.
That’s the last 10,000 years, for a good 70,000 years before that we lived without civilization, so civilization is still far more brief in terms of evolutionary timescale.
Yes, I just wouldn’t characterize ancient Sumeria as “modern society.” Modern society, to me, began with the Industrial Revolution.
Your right, should have used the word civilization and pointed out how the Industrial Revolution super charged it.
But my point still stands, big power imbalances within a species is not natural and 100% a human invention.
In the same token, this is how revolutions are successful. The “might” of power in number. The escape from tyranny is realizing that the bottom of the pyramid is a lot heavier than the top.
Yeah thats why this requires revolution to accomplish
As a first step. Really, it’s the easiest step along that path.
The hard part is building the new order among the ashes of the revolution. The leaders of the revolution will in all likelihood want to claim the spoils of victory for themselves. Who could blame them? It’s human nature.
Selfishness is not “human nature”. Is it in the coal miners nature to have black lung? Humans are a product of their environment and our current environment rewards the most selfish behavior it can so you are gonna have a highly selfish population. Capitalism has made us sick but there are those of us who can do better. The selfish human nature you have been taught is a lie meant to justify current systems and dismiss any alternative. Something incredibly important I have learned as a history student is that humans have a great capacity to come together under adversity. It is our greatest strength. Civilizations do not form under abundant conditions, they form when we are forced to work together for a collective good. We can cooperate, we can work together on massive scales for the benefit of all.
Are there any evidence that human selfishness is not innate? I think almost all organisms are selfish, except in the case of parent-child relations sometimes and collective animals, like ants.
Let me put it another way. Selfishness is no more human nature than cooperation is. If we can build a civilization based on rewarding selfishness we can build one off rewarding cooperation.
Yes, both selfishness and cooperation are traits of human behavior but it seems natural that humans only cooperative if it benefits them i.e. Bob helps his village now because Bob is fairly confident the village will help him in the future if he needs help. In situations where there are not enough resources for all, don’t people usually fall back to every-person-for-themselves?
I’ve been watching past seasons of the US reality show “Survivor” and it’s a common strategy to stay in alliances throughout the competition but it’s not uncommon for these alliances to breakdown towards the end in the form of backstabbing, because there can only be a single winner. I’ve only seen a handful of seasons so far and it seems split at best that the winner of a season won with little/or no use of deceit and backstabbing.
My point is, when there’s lots to go around, sure, people will help each other. But when resources are scarce, it’s every person for themselves. And scarcity is a feature of life itself, therefore, human selfishness is natural and I’d guess is prioritized over cooperation when things get really tough.
Thats not selfishness though. It isn’t selfish to contribute to a group that benefits you. Its selfish if you contribute to a system that harms others because it benefits you. These are very different things.
In the various crucibles of civilization people came together precisely because resources were scarce. Yes they would eventually collapse when resources became too scarce to sustain whatever system they had built and infighting wasn’t uncommon but resources are not scarce now. We produce enough food, we have enough homes, we have enough water (for humans not for our current technological setup). The issue we are currently struggling with is not scarcity its distribution. The technology produced by the capitalist era is more that sufficient to provide for us all.
Even collective animals have to fight against selfishness. Worker bees detect and kill upstart queens. Human cells are being destroyed all the time (apoptosis). Cancer is the result when that mechanism fails.
Worker bees detect and kill upstart queens.
Not sure what this has to do with selfishness. Is the worker bee killing an upstart-queen from its own hive? If so, what’s its motivation to kill the upstart-queen? How does this benefit the worker bee, causing the behavior to be selfish?
Human cells are being destroyed all the time (apoptosis)
In the case of body cells and apoptosis, I’d view the actual human being as equivalent to the entirety of the hive/the queen bee, in which case, the process of apoptosis is selfless from the point of view of the cells killing themselves or other cells - in theory it’s for the good of the human being as a whole.
Yes, the upstart-queen is from within the bee’s own hive. The hive permits only 1 queen and others are destroyed. The selfishness is not on the part of the worker who kills it, it’s on the upstart-queen who is trying to replace the main queen.
In the case of body cells and apoptosis, I’d view the actual human being as equivalent to the entirety of the hive/the queen bee, in which case, the process of apoptosis is selfless from the point of view of the cells killing themselves or other cells - in theory it’s for the good of the human being as a whole.
Yes, apoptosis is selfless. Cancer is the selfishness it fights against: a group of cells in selfish rebellion against the body.
Hell I’d take the right to build my own at this point. But I don’t trust the U.S. to be worth living in for any foreseeable future.
I mean we’re staring down the barrel of total civilization collapse by 2050 if we don’t get climate change under control, so I mean, I’m not sure anywhere is gonna be all that good.
However, your point stands.
I mean, better to have 25 more years of relative normativity than 4 or less
By 2050 due to climate change? I don’t think so.
There will be disruption, but collapse due primarily to climate change is further away than 20 years.
Relevant passage from The Dawn of Everything by Graeber & Wengrow:
Let’s begin by asking: what did the inhabitants of New France make of the Europeans who began to arrive on their shores in the sixteenth century?
At that time, the region that came to be known as New France was inhabited largely by speakers of Montagnais-Naskapi, Algonkian and Iroquoian languages. Those closer to the coast were fishers, foresters and hunters, though most also practised horticulture; the Wendat (Huron), concentrated in major river valleys further inland, growing maize, squash and beans around fortified towns. Interestingly, early French observers attached little importance to such economic distinctions, especially since foraging or farming was, in either case, largely women’s work. The men, they noted, were primarily occupied in hunting and, occasionally, war, which meant they could in a sense be considered natural aristocrats. The idea of the ‘noble savage’ can be traced back to such estimations. Originally, it didn’t refer to nobility of character but simply to the fact that the Indian men concerned themselves with hunting and fighting, which back at home were largely the business of noblemen.
But if French assessments of the character of ‘savages’ tended to be decidedly mixed, the indigenous assessment of French character was distinctly less so. Father Pierre Biard, for example, was a former theology professor assigned in 1608 to evangelize the Algonkian-speaking Mi’kmaq in Nova Scotia, who had lived for some time next to a French fort. Biard did not think much of the Mi’kmaq, but reported that the feeling was mutual: ‘They consider themselves better than the French: “For,” they say, “you are always fighting and quarrelling among yourselves; we live peaceably. You are envious and are all the time slandering each other; you are thieves and deceivers; you are covetous, and are neither generous nor kind; as for us, if we have a morsel of bread we share it with our neighbour.” They are saying these and like things continually.’ What seemed to irritate Biard the most was that the Mi’kmaq would constantly assert that they were, as a result, ‘richer’ than the French. The French had more material possessions, the Mi’kmaq conceded; but they had other, greater assets: ease, comfort and time.
Twenty years later Brother Gabriel Sagard, a Recollect Friar, wrote similar things of the Wendat nation. Sagard was at first highly critical of Wendat life, which he described as inherently sinful (he was obsessed with the idea that Wendat women were all intent on seducing him), but by the end of his sojourn he had come to the conclusion their social arrangements were in many ways superior to those at home in France. In the following passages he was clearly echoing Wendat opinion: ‘They have no lawsuits and take little pains to acquire the goods of this life, for which we Christians torment ourselves so much, and for our excessive and insatiable greed in acquiring them we are justly and with reason reproved by their quiet life and tranquil dispositions.’ Much like Biard’s Mi’kmaq, the Wendat were particularly offended by the French lack of generosity to one another: ‘They reciprocate hospitality and give such assistance to one another that the necessities of all are provided for without there being any indigent beggar in their towns and villages; and they considered it a very bad thing when they heard it said that there were in France a great many of these needy beggars, and thought that this was for lack of charity in us, and blamed us for it severely.’
Biard did not think much of the Mi’kmaq, but reported that the feeling was mutual
Amazing. You go there to teach these heathen savages about the mercy of Christ, find that they practice the core virtues you want to teach them better than your own culture, and then you get irritated.
if society doesn’t have enough homes then it should reduce birth rate, change my mind.
One in ten houses in the US are vacant.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/
“Society” has more than enough housing. We just distribute it poorly.
so it’s barely an issue, just like the top 10% of people by wealth
No wonder America has bullshit squatter laws.
Wow, didn’t know this high a % of homes are vacant. In fairness, this is why I said “if.”
looks likes(falling birth rates) its working unintentionally, but the billionaires/gov’ts dont want that, thats why you hear them come up with all these excuses to get people to have more children, or why they arnt haivng children, instead of addressing the actual cause.
Society absolutely does have enough vacant homes.
Falling birth rates are very bad, as it leads to a reduced share of productive labor, meaning our kids will have to work more and we may never retire, all other things being equal.
I said “if”
Less of a decent argument against landlords than it is in favor of better inheritance taxes.
An inheritance tax on such wealth should be 100%
Sure
False dichotomy.
Wow, we got ourselves an edgy teen who opened up the wikipedia article on logical fallacies! Go ahead buddy, show us how many words in Latin you know!
It’s not a dichotomy. It’s just a comparison. There is no suggestion that these are the only two options.
It’s only presenting two options while there are more reasonable options than the two presented. But we could say it’s a strawman since it’s presenting a scenario of an evil landlord in an attempt to make the alternative seem more reasonable.
Either way it’s fallacious logic and it’s all moot since free housing isn’t feasible. Another day, another leftist shitpost.
You wanna name any of these alternatives, or are we just using the fallacy fallacy to wave away arguments we don’t like?
Perhaps, as you claim, free housing isn’t feasible. But you can walk up any road in any street in any city in the world to find a real example of this “strawmanned” landlord.
Maybe raise wages so people can afford to buy a home?
There are economic policies that have been done in the past to do this and they worked. Keynesian policies, taxing the wealthy, various housing plans. There was a housing shortage post WWII and it was solved. We know exactly how to solve this problem because we’ve solved this problem in the past.
Just a lot of people don’t know to vote for it because the options are presented as being a decision between status quo and some commie bullshit by the likes of Fox News. Leftists always seem like they’re trying to be willing strawmen to help the right win elections so nothing will ever change. You’re creating a false dichotomy between status quo and something that obviously won’t work, so people choose the status quo.
Maybe raise wages so people can afford to buy a home?
The state enforcing wage raises is already pretty leftist.
There are economic policies that have been done in the past to do this and they worked
Yes. Massive state-built housing in the Soviet Union, for example, solved homelessness, and ensured that every single citizen in a country of 300 million people were housed. How about we copy that, since it worked?
Keynesian economic policy would give our institutions (and the ruling class) a new lease on life. Unfortunately, these are also the same institutions that spent the last 70 years stripping out everything but the military make-work programmes. I don’t think our leaders, any of them, ideologically capable of recognizing any of the benefits of returning to that compromise.
not really. Nobody asked to be born.
Would you happen to be a landlord?
Marking off ad hominem on my bingo card!
Can you give me a “no true scotsman”?
Just throwing around buzzwords, huh? So, yes?
Ad hominem is a “buzz-wrod” that means you’re attacking the person making the argument because you have no response to the argument itself.
I asked a basic question, you’re response told me everything else I needed to know.
Glad to see you’re still having a great time licking boots.
Incorrect.
Umm repairs, marketing, replacements, renovation/remodeling, taxes. I never rented a property because I thought the margins seemed slim. People who are agreeing with this likely have never owned a home before.
You don’t have to constantly remodel/renovate. Replacements can be reduced by not buying the cheapest thing you can find, I’ve done rental management and let me tell you even non corporate landlords are fucking retarded and waste money constantly replacing the cheapest appliances they can find instead of just getting something that can last. Same with repairs on pipes etc. They always hunt the bottom barrel cheapest dumbass they can find who has no idea what they are doing and ends up increasing the cost exponentially over time vs just doing it right.
Don’t even get me started on the money wasted marketing, it does nothing. Most people just search their desired area from the popular listing sites any dollar spent on literally anything other than just making sure your listing is updated on MLS db is money down the toilet.
I could go on but tldr if your rental isn’t at least in the black it’s probably your own fault.
Low margins just means big corporations have th advantage, because they make profit through volume.
If renting wasn’t profitable at all, landlords wouldn’t rent.
And in many cases they don’t. Which is one reason why ten percent of US houses are vacant.
But that misses the point, which is that housing should not be a for-profit industry.
If you repair a house, if you maintain a house, if you renovate a house, you have the right to be paid for your labor. Any profit you “earn” from rental payments, above that amount, is money you didn’t earn - it’s money you were able to extort from your tenants because you have a piece of paper saying you own the house and your tenants do not.
Whether a landlord makes $1 profit or $10000 profit, that profit is still “earned” by collecting rent on property, not by creating any value for anyone.
Housing is a human right. And rent collection is theft.
Nobody is against modest fees for upkeep. Landlords don’t need to exist for people to pay some fees to maintain a property.
You’re completely missing the point here. Yes, being a landlord in some areas can be practically unprofitable… but those landlords aren’t the problem, the greedy/corporate landlords that buy large amounts of housing for the express purpose of turning a profit are.
That said, I know what upkeep on a house is like, and I understand that it’s not for everybody. But, we should have more people owning homes so that they can cultivate the skills necessary to be less reliant on landlords, or we could have the upkeep and maintenance be part of some social program(s), enabling more people to be homeowners.
