I'm getting reports further down, I have no idea if what anyone says is true or not. It's borderline rule 5, but not quite there. This is a strong reminder to hate the argument, not the arguer.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Y'know what always annoys me about this type of statement (aside from it being socialism and not communism lol) is the amount of tax it takes isn't even that much in the grand scheme of things, PLUS it generally pays for itself in not having to imprison people or treat emergency room visits, etc.
People just have a very hard time grasping governmental budgets, though. The cost of paying for 200k housing sounds like a lot but man is it not compared to some of the other shit we waste money on.
That's just how taxes work when done right: you take some money from everyone to make everything better so that it's cheaper for most people to be alive.
SNAP, for example, benefits the economy to the tune of at least $7 for every dollar invested. That's the kind of return on investment that makes greedy fucks like Pitbull cream their pants.
I heard preschool is around $8 per dollar, although it's maybe even higher than that. Basically, ya. Frustrating when people can't see the forest from the trees.
Thwy write their own time sheets including overtime. So they can crack half a million if they're greedy (with multipliers, like 9th+ hour on a holiday)
They need to base politicians salaries off minimum wage. If they only earned a salary based off 4-5x the minimum wage, that shit would never be lagging as bad as it is now
this only works if they stop them from being able to hold investments in companies, and markets, they pass laws for, as well as getting rid of political donations. If we don't do that their salary going down would only negatively affect the small number of congress members that want actual change to things.
I have a solution, make it legal to kill politicians who hold investments or take bribes. They become outlaw and anything done to them is just the consequences of their actions.
Why 4x minimum wage? How could they represent the poorest people in a country if they make quadruple the money?
If they cant live with minimum wage, its their problem to solve
It's [supposed to be] a demanding position. Relative to the skills we should be demanding these people to have, the pay they currently get is actually not that impressive.
It's not the already obscenely rich accumulating more wealth to the detriment of everyone else, which is the inevitable consequence of the current system of laissez faire capitalism.
Thats the thing, im past the stupid naming and everything. I just want policies that help people and not billionaires. Call it marxism, stalinism, whatever the fuck you want.
It's a pathetic attempt to rile the old people who remember the cold war propaganda against communism and socialism. While young people are like "So what?"
I have a 20-something son who basically grew up with MAGA shitting on everything. From his perspective ( and his friends), they don't see anything wrong with trying out Socialism/ Marxism/ Communism. They feel like the current system of "Democratic Capitalism" has led to the rise of vicious MAGA Nazis, and weak Democratic defenders of our Nation, with the majority of Americans suffering to some degree, so why are we fighting so hard to preserve it?
When we emerge from the other side of this, don't expect America to go back to anything resembling what it was before.
Exactly. In a way, we agree with MAGA, it's time for a change. They took the initiative, and turned the country in their direction, which is evil, by any definition.
The Establishment Democrats were asleep at the wheel while this played out over 40 years, despite many warnings and steady escalations. Now, we have arrived at their Promised Land, and it is as ugly as they promised, and as a student of history, I promise you it WILL get a lot uglier, likely far beyond any of our imaginations.
We can't return to the Status Quo, because that WAS the problem. We need to create a new Paradigm, one that will not be afraid to ferociously defend Liberty from Traitors, Crooks, and worse.
Yeah sadly that doesnt work here in eastern europe because communism and even social democratism(what this actually is) is associated with the ussr which was a truly horrible regime.
Eastern Europeans are some of the most gullible people on earth. Stalin never even claimed that the USSR had achieved communism, yet somehow every grandma in his "state socialist" empire thinks full communism was reached and the state withered away like Marx predicted. They believe lies he never even told.
I understand that's the power of propaganda, but damn... It's been 40 years and most of them never bothered to sit down and learn what a communism is. I can't imagine being that willfully ignorant.
Stalin never even claimed that the USSR had achieved communism, yet somehow every grandma in his “state socialist” empire thinks full communism was reached and the state withered away like Marx predicted. They believe lies he never even told.
He did claim to be communist though - as in, he is ideologically driven to attempt to bring about communism. So calling the USSR "communist" is 100% correct. And naturally, what do you call life under communists? Communism! (This is wrong, but it's an understandable switch-up).
Well, that's where I have to disagree with Stalin's official narrative. I don't think he was a communist, I think he was an opportunist with no ideology beyond personal empowerment. I think he'd have said he believed in anything if it gave him more power.
Marx said after the workers seize the state, it should become unnecessary and wither away. Stalin was the primary person in charge of overseeing this process. He should have been encouraging the development of community governance. Helping set up neighbourhood watches so he could defund the police. Granting power over workplaces to the trade unions. Encouraging the gift economy to grow to the point that the ruble could be cancelled. These were always the steps in the plan to get from the USSR to a communist system.
Stalin didn't want to do that, because it would have made him less powerful. Instead of defunding the police, he expanded their powers. Instead of empowering the trade unions, he put down workers' revolts. This is the opposite of communism.
I feel like this doesn't get called out more often as the straw man that it is. Right-wingers just love mocking the left for supposedly wanting "free" stuff.
Amen brother. Anyone who says “that’s just the way it is” is giving up. That’s not the way it is, that’s the way it was MADE. By powerful evil people, and we can remake it.
This is one of the main reasons Republicans don't like education. They want to dismantle it and go to a charter system. That way they can profit off education and keep people stupid.
We have never found a perfect political/economic system. That’s why it’s so important that we continue to evolve what we have to be better. I feel like this has stalled out in this country and we are seeing the fallout live.
You realize there are currently concentration camps in the US eating Americans' tax dollars right?
The problems that the soviet union had weren't exclusive to communism, they were exclusive to corruption.
While either system can become corrupted by bad actors, ideologically, capitalism rewards selfishness, and individualism, while communism encourages sharing and community.
At its base, capitalism is literally impossible without exploitation of the surplus value workers create. Capitalism cannot exist without profit, and profit cannot exist without stealing money from workers.
And Guantanamo Bay, black sites, Alligator Auschwitz, and the American prison population confirms the downsides of capitalism?
One shit iteration of "communism" that by definition didn't meet any of the requirements to be called communism can't be held up forever to be the boogeyman to prevent progress.
Communism (from Latin communis 'common, universal')[1][2] is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement,[1] whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]
The USSR:
Common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange - not achieved, state owned but not common owned
Allocates products in society based on need - not achieved
Absence of private property - partially achieved, state owned
You are at beast don't know what you're talking about. Иисправительно-трудовые лагерея (ЛАГ in GULAG) are specifically, namely, explicitly concentration camps that used forced labour to kill people. It's very distinct from the regular prison system, which used inhuman conditions to kill people at lower rates.
I don’t like contributing to Twitter in any way, but Nitter + screenshot undermines it enough to warm my heart. And informs others they can do the same!
You're right, is Social Democracy. But that's where we are, politically these days. The largest socialist organization in then U.S. (the DSA) is ostensibly not socialist in policy. Anything slightly left of RAGING corporate handouts and bombing brown people is COMMUNISM now.
The entire concept of rent needs to die in a goddamn fire. Legislation needs to kill the entire idea, not further legitimize it.
We need massive, punitive increases in residential property taxes, with commensurate owner-occupant exemptions: You will not see a tax increase on the property you live in, but any investment property you own is going to see you saddled with a huge tax bill. This might come as a shock, but Corporate landlords don't occupy their properties. They are not able to claim the owner occupant credit.
But, if you own a second property and lease it to me, we can convert our arrangement from a rental to a "land contract". I, the occupant, become the legal owner. I continue to make payments. You don't get to increase those payments over time; they are fixed for the duration of the agreement. If I leave in the first three years, you retain 100% equity in the property. If I stay beyond three years, our agreement converts to a mortgage, and I start gaining equity.
Basically, the only properties that will still be able to be feasibly rented are the remaining units in duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, where the landlord lives in one of the units.
There will always be a market for relatively short term living spaces; a gap currently filled by rentals.
Any person who is not living in a place temporarily, eg, for school or a temporary job posting or something, should have the ability to buy a home at an affordable price, without fail.
The housing market is saturated with house flippers and people with more money than sense looking to become a landlord so they can have an "income property".
IMO, all rentals should be either run, controlled, or at least strictly overseen by a specific branch of government dedicated to the task. Anyone who wants to become a renter has to get their rental property approved for renting, and approvals only happen if more rentals are strictly required.
Land contracts fulfill the role of short term housing (6-36 months) at least as well as renting, with additional benefits if short term extends to long term. In the short term, there is no significant difference in the two, with the exception of the Owner-Occupant Tax Exemption I have been proposing. That exemption ensures that land contracts will be cheaper, yet more lucrative than renting.
Rent is inherently exploitative. No amount of government oversight can overcome the intrinsic problems with renting. The entire concept needs to be actively suppressed. Government oversight can't fix the inherently exploitive problems with rent. That's just trying to polish a turd.
What we need is an economic climate that favors owner occupancy and strongly discourages commercial use of residential property. With that environment, landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert their tenants into buyers.
Renting is an option and convenience for a lot of people, that's why it exists. Some people don't want to be tied to a mortgage and might have reasons they only need a place for 6 or 12 months - temporary employment, contracting, studying or whatever.
Anyway renting can work as a model. Germany has a very large proportion of property which is rented. But they have strong tenant protections and place limits on rent hikes, evictions and so on.
I don't think an outright freeze is a good idea but rent controls and tenant laws would help. As would making casual letting (airbnb etc) a bullshit onerous proposition so that more housing stock is sold or converts into long term rent which lessens rent pressure.
Yeah, I prefer to rent because buying here is only reasonable (because of taxes, notary costs, etc) if you will live in that place for more than about 8 years. I usually move before that.
Renting is an option and convenience for a lot of people, that's why it exists
Those people are called "landlords".
Some people don't want to be tied to a mortgage and might have reasons they only need a place for 6 or 12 months - temporary employment, contracting, studying or whatever.
I think I failed to convey the fact that land contracts provide that exact function. The occupant can unilaterally cancel the contract in the first three years, walking away free and clear. Just like ending a rental agreement. I'm not interfering with short-term housing or tying people to homes they don't want. I'm protecting short term tenants from exploitation, even if they decide to make their temporary plans into a permanent home.
Anyway renting can work as a model. Germany
I don't know about Germany, but corporate entities are rapidly buying up residential properties in the US. Many are using the same third-party algorithm to establish their rent prices. No amount of government regulation of their business model can effectively suppress the effects of such widespread collusion. They are actively working around rent controls and other tenancy protections.
The solution is to make traditional renting unfeasible for the landlord. Replace it with a system where investors are effectively forced to convey ownership interest if they want to profit from providing housing.
"Renting" will not be feasible for corporate investors once we establish an owner-occupancy exemption to residential property taxes. When we establish that exemption, we are free to peg the property tax rate to the owner-occupancy rate. Any year the rate is below 80%, the effective property tax rate for investors increases by 20%. It doesn't start dropping again until the owner occupancy rate exceeds 90%. Corporate landlords will be forced to sell outright, or get their tenants under a land contract instead of a rental agreement. Vacant properties will incur the full wrath of the tax man.
I can only speak of personal experience but I rented when I went to university. I rented during my first 3 jobs. I rented when I relocated to another country. I rented when I was contracting for 6 months in another city (I had already purchased a house elsewhere). In every case I had no intention of buying a(nother) house. I rented because I wanted to, not because of greedy corporate overlords forced me to.
Most people renting are in similar situations. They want to be somewhere for a year or two, to make plans or move on, but not be tied down with debt or obligations if they want to leave. There is nothing stopping them buying a property but there is a commitment and obligation they don't want to get into.
So rent is not going away any time soon. Legislation is necessary to curb the worse abuses, but pretending people don't want to rent is is a failed argument.
This is the third time I have pointed out that "land contracts" can fulfill the purposes you are describing.
In every situation you mentioned, a "land contract" would have performed exactly the same function is "renting".
I understand you:
Rented when you went to university
Rented when you took a job
Rented when you took another job
Rented when you took a third job
Rented when you took a contract in another city.
The only difference you would have experienced between "renting" and "land contract" is that the top of each of those five agreements would have said "Land Contract" instead of "Rental Agreement".
Yes, a Land Contract has additional terms and conditions that only apply if you stay more than three years. You are not obligated to stay those three years. You can unilaterally end the contract before those three years.
You should be able to understand that "Renting" is more convenient for the landlord. Not the occupant. The people who knowingly want "rental agreements" are landlords not tenants. Landlords want to be able to hike rental payments every year; land contracts have the monthly payment fixed from day one. A "rent freeze" is a fundamental component built directly into a land contract.
There is nothing stopping them buying a property but there is a commitment and obligation they don't want to get into.
"Land Contracts" do not have the additional commitments and obligations you are describing. Those are components of traditional purchase agreements. They are not components of Land Contracts.
Again: You can walk away, free and clear, in the first three years. You have the option of staying longer, in which case your payments begin to generate equity in the property. But you are not obligated to say, and you can also renegotiate the contract after three years if you really don't want that equity.
(Practically speaking, you would be able to walk away entirely after those three years as well. If you did, your landlord would have to cut you a check to buy out your acquired equity before he could take on another tenant)
So rent is not going away any time soon.
No. "Short Term Housing Needs" are not going away soon. I am not suggesting they should. The need for temporary housing is perfectly reasonable, and I am preserving the means of filling that need, even as I kill "renting".
Why am I so concerned about land contracts? I'm not. I don't actually give a fuck about land contracts at all. What I want is for corporate landlords to be assessed property taxes that are so high that they are forced out of the market. The best way I know how to do that is to run up everyone's property taxes, and exempt owner-occupants from paying them. That tax hike alone is all we really need. To get that tax hike, I have to explain to you that I won't be cutting off the supply of short-term housing.
"Land Contracts" are what landlords are going to use to adapt to that tax hike. A landlord who tries to "rent" is going to have to pay a massive property tax bill. That same landlord can issue a "land contract" instead of a rental agreement. The monthly payment for that land contract will be lower, but because the property tax hike is exempted for the "owner occupant", they will actually earn more than they would renting.
Tenants will start earning equity instead of paying everything to a landlord. There will be a "rent" freeze, simply because that is an inherent component of land contracts. Corporate landlords lose their ability to hike rent year after year. Short-term housing is still available. Wins across the board.
edit: wouldn't land contracts required idiotic amounts of identification as opposed to renting which requires none?
No. It's an agreement between two parties. They require no more identification than any other agreement between two parties.
Technically, the agreement should be registered with the county as it affects the deed of the property, but that isn't strictly necessary for the first three years.
So what you're saying, is you're renaming the word to "rent" to "land contract" and move a few conditions around and somehow it's not rent? It is rent, by a different name.
Rent is usually an annual contract, with penalties for early termination, and is subject to hikes each and every year.
Land contracts are a purchase agreement that can be canceled unilaterally by the buyer in the first three years. Land contracts have a fixed payment for the life of the contract: "rent control" is incorporated into them directly.
But, you're missing the underlying reason why we are talking about land contracts at all. The underlying factor is a massive hike in property taxes, which is only effectively implemented against corporate investors. We are establishing an owner-occupant exemption that will effectively lower property taxes for owner occupants, but will not be available to corporate landlords.
The underlying objective is to drive these corporate parasites out of the housing market. The only reason we are talking about land contracts at all is to assure you that the needs of tenants are not being ignored as we destroy these corporate parasites. (It also has a secondary effect of giving borrowers some leverage over lenders. While the lender is negotiating to keep the borrower in their home, the owner-occupant exemption is in place. As soon as they begin foreclosure proceedings, the property tax rate skyrockets.)
For the short-term tenant, yes, it is just rent by another name.
For the long-term tenant, it is an effective route to home ownership.
For the corporate landlord, it is the first stage of being choked out of the residential property market.
For the small-time landlord, it is a transition to "private lender".
For the on-site landlord, in one unit of a duplex, triplex, or quadplex, it is a competitive advantage on actual rent.
I think OP is just hyping up Mamdani and his policies and showing how some idiots think that things like free transit and free childcare are bad things. But tbh so many examples have already been posted, it's not exactly news.
Mr Worldwide himself claims to be anti-communist, but I think that's just his Cuban heritage speaking. Dude's been funding an education program for poor kids starting in his old neighborhood that is now nationwide. While it's not communism and it's not even public money being spent, it's very much in the same vein as Mamdani's ideas: The goal is to improve equal access to necessities.
He said back in 2016 that he doesn't support Trump's joke of a campaign and unlike a lot of Latinos, he's pro-immigration (the "fuck you, got mine" mentality seems to be pretty common among Latinos living in America, they don't wanna see any immigrants despite being immigrants themselves). He's also stated that he loves America, but wants to stay out of politics. He just wants it to be the United States, not the Divided States, according to his Howard Stern interview. I went through the painful process of scrolling back to early November 2024 in his Xitter profile and I couldn't see a single political statement. A bunch of disgusting preachy motivational quotes about hard work leading to success, but nothing political.
Long story short, he's got a lot of ego showing in his public persona, his music is very, eh... It's pop music. It's made to appeal to as many people as possible so that's why it feels like it has little personality. But dude himself seems to be very genuine and friendly according to literally every encounter ever described on reddit. The annoying high energy persona is probably just marketing.
Another person around your bracket with degrees in philosophy and theology who somehow got sucked into a career in big biz. I'm happy to pay more taxes. And talk about socialism. I completely agree with you.
And where I live in the EU I'm already paying 49% of my income in taxes + 21% VAT on most goods. I'd still pay more if we needed it (even though, like most countries, what we really we need better taxes on the truly wealthy and corporations). Yeah I'm better off than most, but our Gini coefficient means most (although not everyone of course) does ok.
We have nice roads/public transit, good schools, great healthcare. The taxes I and people like me pay are why everyone can have nice things. If people didn't have nice things I'd be stand right beside them with the pitchforks and torches. I don't say that lightly; some of the protests I've attended in favor of taking in more asylum seekers have gotten nasty.
You guys (I used to be one of you guys before I immigrated long ago) have some serious structural problems that prevent effective protest.
I posted on Bsky that people in America should call a general strike and keep striking until things get better, but I know damn well that people are rightly very afraid to lose their jobs or be put in jail, even prison. And because your healthcare, mortgage/rent, even keeping your children, every damn thing is tied to being not-in jail/prison and making money, I understand why people don't get in the streets as much, the most recent, massive nation wide demonstrations - that the media barely covered - aside.
If you got skilllzzz the place I live has a pretty sweet immigration deal. We have had three American families move into our little neighborhood in the last 18 months using it. DM me if you want to know more.
There are a lot of good reasons to criticize socialists states like the USSR, namely the silencing of political dissent and gulags. But standard of living isn't one of those good reasons.
Why you gotta bring him into this lol, that's not even him in the screenshot and by all accounts Pitbull isn't that bad a human being. His biggest crimes being sexist lyrics followed by being born to Cuban immigrants (meaning he too hates "communism" but probably in name only)
well i still agree he's garbage but i don't use twitter so i saw the verified checkmark and assumed. oops. i thought they only gave that out to notable people.
This is also socialism (not communism, he's an idiot). I hate that socialism/communism = evil got shoved down our collective throats so goddamn hard in the middle of last century that people still fucking believe it without thought. Whatever keeps the capitalist hellscape grinding us into the dirt I guess, the old guard on both sides are still happy as hell to villainize social programs paid for by fucking tax dollars, and the tubes are too ignorant to understand that when everyone benefits that includes themselves.
I had an argument with an American once over whether health care should be free or not. They're so brainwashed into thinking that they'll somehow be disadvantaged by a universal healthcare system even when they're paying out their ass for private health insurance, and at the same time blaming patrons of their restaurant who don't tip enough for their poor income while happily accepting minimum wage from their employer. It's absolutely mental.
We Americans have that hammered into our heads every day of our lives. Along with "God loves us but doesn't want us to have sex." and "America is the greatest, freeest [intentional mis-spelling] country on Earth".
Takes a while to realize all of this is bunk. Many never realize it.
It's true, this place fucking sucks. Welcome to America where you're free to fuck off and die, here's your bill, and if you dare have an abortion we'll throw your routing carcass in jail and bill the infant for it.
This so-called "fear mongering" isn't directed to the broad US population, it is targeting the preexisting bias of lowest common denominator target audience of the right.
provide more affordable groceries. depending on where they would be, they'd either provide food for food deserts, or create competition for other grocery stores, which should lead to cheaper food overall.
This would be a pretty solid idea for Australia, since we basically just have a local supermarket duopoly, then some foreign or small supermarkets, so it would be a breath of fresh air to have a lack of price gouging, although sadly I doubt it'd be as successful as AusPost, but we'll see.
While I don't disagree with this sentiment, it can be taken too far:
Covering every disease to the point where everyone gets unlimited exotic multimillion dollar treatments
Giving everyone unlimited delivery of high end chef prepared food
Giving everyone access to the best colleges to study whatever they want (no one will study to be a plumber or chimney sweep, roofer, berry picker etc.)
So within the necessities to stay alive and aligned with the means and needs of the society I can agree. Where this all falls apart is that inevitably some tribunal will decide this and inevitably someone will take control of said tribunal to funnel the best food/health care/education/jobs to their cronies, as anyone who lives in a former Soviet state like myself can attest to.
Why would you not want to live in a post scarcity society? There would be no downside except you don't get to feel you are better than someone else because of the stuff you posess or the money you make. Your comment reads very much like "fuck you I got mine"
Of course I want to live in a post-scarcity society.
Unfortunately I don't live in a post-scarcity world. There are limits to everything. Energy, labor, minerals, fertilizer, economies, governments, etc. Due to abundant energy from fossil fuels we have started to believe that anything is possible and that's great, and I hope we do manage to continue via AI and automation and new technologies to get closer to post scarcity. But we aren't there today.
The other thing I don't like about post scarcity utopias like the Venus Project (and yes, I've spent a lot of time researching them), is that when it comes to governance, the current plan just seems to be old fashioned communism with a ton of handwaving about how technology will solve everything else. Communist societies of the past also had access to technology, and they didn't produce anything resembling post scarcity. As a matter of fact, if anything, they mainly produced more scarcity most of the time when compared to capitalist ones.
So for the time being I think the best we can do is to allow capitalism to do what it does best (innovation, scaling, bringing down costs), and let socialism do the things that capitalism can't handle (economic externalities like climate change, basic human needs that profit motives greatly mess up such as health care and education, solving food and housing insecurity, etc.).
Someday maybe we will get there with enough automation and some fancy resource management software, but I do very much fear the wrong people slanting those systems in their favor. Good governance and oversight will always be paramount to making any system work, and just hand waving about technology won't be enough.
You believe a great deal about capitalism that isn't true. Capitalism is very much not about bringing down cost, socialism is. Capitalism hates innovation, if capitalists have something that makes them money they'll commit bloody mass murder rather than change it, look at the oil industry, the tobacco industry, US healthcare, the whole PFAS debacle etc, etc, etc.
Ask anyone who's lived under communism and they'll tell you otherwise. I live in a formerly communist country and have thousands of people around me who can directly compare. The only people who had it better under communism are the bottom 5-10% or people who didn't want to work. If communism makes things cheaper, it's because almost everyone has so much less money. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no real experience in the matter.
That's not to say that capitalism can't go off the rails. Without proper oversight, it will descend into monopolies and fascism, as we are seeing today. But in a well functioning system that has socialist and pro worker legislation as we see many places in Europe, the best of both capitalism and socialism can be brought out. I don't know why everyone has to always try to go to one extreme or the other when the best system is always somewhere in the middle.
Communism as it has been tried was indeed flawed af. We're going to need something else if we want to survive and be much more extreme than that. Your old communism was still a money economy, with the inherent problems thereof, functioned badly with greedy and fearful people at the top.
It's always funny to me that when you tell them capitalism sucks you are a fan of 20th century East bloc regimes. No I'm not a tankie. Tankies are extremely stupid.
Yeah, the hard part is deciding where the line is. This is why I'm a Social Democrat rather than a full libertarian or communist. The places that do socialism well (like Scandinavia) do it by using it where it's most effective and using capitalism where it's most effective. This is a never ending debate, which is absolutely needed to get this line drawn in the correct place.
Price gouging has been a major problem at Canadian grocers since COVID. Basically prices went up with supply chain issues / inflation but have not been adjusted for improvements in inflation since then.
These are for profit entities. They would steal a quarter from the poor and hungry if they could.
That's the fundamental flaw to capitalism - not that it concentrates wealth and power (because that is perhaps human nature) but that it celebrates it.
It conditions us to think that concentrating wealth is not only morally right but something we should all aspire to. That competing is morally superior to sharing.
Ultimately, if capitalists accrue so much wealth and power that they can buy out the interests that would seek to regulate them through democratic will, we then relinquish our democracy for feudalism.
I think that price gouging is mainly a result of allowing too much consolidation via buyouts and mergers, and not actively enough perusing antitrust and anti price fixing enforcement.
I suppose if it's allowed to get too bad, the government could try to compete in the market, but governments are almost never the most efficient way to do things and can rarely effectively compete on efficiency against a functioning open market. In my eyes, regulation of the open market via labor law, protecting unions, trust busting and anti collusion enforcement is a far better way for government to solve this problem.
Unfortunately a government that's not functioning well enough to do this kind of oversight will almost certainly fail at trying to compete against in the open market as a grocery store too. At which point you are just running subsidized food banks, which is also fine by me but I don't think subsidizing all food for everyone will work in most government budgets.
I think the problem is that the antitrust ship has already sailed.
I don't think a government run grocery store would be looking to compete on the open market. It would be more along the lines of subsidized food for lower income households on food stamps, practically speaking. That is much more sutainable than one that's open to the general public.
If a government run grocery store could provide a fair price for items we are currently being gouged on, I doubt they would be able to keep up with consumer demand. Essentially middle class and above will have to keep putting up with commercial prices.
I'm not sure what the difference is between this and just providing food stamps. I think food stamps would probably work out to be more efficient in the end unless for profit stores turn out to be massively inefficient.
There are "food deserts", or large areas where it isn't profitable to open a grocery store, so no one does. The people that live there have no healthy food options. The state owned stores would operate in those unserved areas where no business currently wants to operate.
Most importantly, it's not ALL grocery stores like the fear mongers like to pretend. It would be something like 4 stores in the entire city.
Freezing rent will directly lead to less housing. But then they're building more housing units, which will hmm. Well, it won't directly harm me, so I welcome this experiment. Perhaps it will work this time, somehow.
Free public transit and childcare are pretty much win-win propositions, although both will possibly incur some bureacratic problems. Such as setting wages etc. which the free market won't be able to help with anymore when they're fully paid-by-taxes public services. Then it just becomes a question of how well those problems are addressed.
This is why they figured out in Lakota culture many years ago that it's not safe to use sarcasm in your language. Some people might not get it and that makes them feel left out. Others may think dumb things are true so it can only make your whole culture dumber and unable to know what is true or misinformation. The entire sarcastic subtype of comedy is basically just not done, condoned, or laughed at which I think it's pretty awesome
There's a lot of good ideas in there, but rent freezes aren't one of them. Limiting what you can charge for a service just means less people will want to provide that service.
Yes landlords will just take their houses overseas.
Even if you just talk about building new homes, freezing rent just caps the profits that can be pulled out of a project. If it's profitable right now, why shouldn't it be with same income tomorrow?
And normal people have a right to not care about people leeching off of actual workers.
And if you're talking about homeowners, I still don't care. You don't deserve imaginary free money for owning land. Its for living in, not an investment.
The issue here is, and this has happened before, investors will either sell the property, meaning those not in a position to buy are screwed, or they will do the bare minimum to keep the building functioning, as there is no incentive to improve the building.
Good. Investors rather than inhabitants owning homes is a huge part of why rent and property prices have skyrocketed.
they will do the bare minimum to keep the building functioning
They already do that in order to maximize profits.
there is no incentive to improve the building.
Ever heard of this new thing called laws and regulations? It's the only "incentive" that actually DOES work to correct the behavior of greedy slumlords.
Letting them keep increasing the already obscenely high rents just means more profits for them in return for no benefit for anyone else.
They already only do the bare minimum. You practically have to take your landlord to court to get any meaningful fixes in your apartment. All new developments are built like shit, developers cut corners anywhere they can. After the building is built the developer "vanishes" so there isn't anyone to sue when there is something seriously wrong with the building. They just open a new throw away LLC later and put up another shit building. You must not live in NYC
Problem easily solved. Is a building not being utilized? Seize it and pay the owner fair market value, then have the city administrate it and charge just enough rent to cover expenses of maintenance and improvement and administration.
To give the current owners the chance to do the right thing, and make a small but reasonable gain from their property.
And to make it more palatable to the general public. It's a lot easier to convince people to go along with it if you're seizing empty unused properties that are only empty and unused because the owner refuses to rent them if they're not making excessive profit.
If rent is frozen and it becomes unprofitable those units won't stay empty. You'd need more than just a rent freeze but housing could become affordable again if it wasn't treated like an investment or profit venture. Get all the corporations to hate it and prices will fly down.
Lol yeah, no. The prices would come down rather than be held indefinitely with no hope of occupants. I admit this will effect the people with 2 properties before the massive corporations. But its better than just allowing this irrational market.
Or just do what Finland did successfully, and build some actually good public housing.
Housing is a basic human right. Perhaps the most basic. And it should afforded to everyone living in a modern society. Inserting a profit motive into that just makes everything unimaginably worse.
Why wouldn't they be able to make a profit? The demand for housing wouldnt be any lower, they just can't increase rent above what it was.
The barrier of entry would be lowered by greedier land lords deciding to sell rather than not being able to raise rent, so people who are slightly less greedy and willing to make only maybe a 300% profit instead of a 1000% profit would take over. Corporate landlords get flushed out to make room for smaller mom & pop owners.
If the existing investors have to sell at a loss because there's no profit to be made, someone gets to buy them for cheaper, making it profitable again.
good, less landlords.
Not only would freezing rent show us which people suck, but it will force the people who suck to sell their extra properties, since if they won't use them then the property is just losing them money.
I'm getting reports further down, I have no idea if what anyone says is true or not. It's borderline rule 5, but not quite there. This is a strong reminder to hate the argument, not the arguer.
Up until the communism part I thought they were endorsing him.
I mean, maybe they are a communist, and like the ideas and are endorsing him!
dont you mean marxist part.
If Communism is when wages go up and cost of living goes down, what is Capitalism?
assets get concentrated, rent goes up
That's just the efficiency of the free market. Mamdani would ruin a perfect system.
This system is already about as perfect as I can handle
Next step: Everything goes to shit for normal people, they vote for fascists. Fascists take over, and people get concentrated as well, into camps.
What’s the rent there like and what happens to my student l*ans and is life outside the camp worth living anyway?
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Some classic pasta right there.
Brought to you by Carl's Jr
My favorite part lol
cost of living goes up quality of living goes up (for some) and the poor get poorer
Existence, privatized.
Y'know what always annoys me about this type of statement (aside from it being socialism and not communism lol) is the amount of tax it takes isn't even that much in the grand scheme of things, PLUS it generally pays for itself in not having to imprison people or treat emergency room visits, etc.
People just have a very hard time grasping governmental budgets, though. The cost of paying for 200k housing sounds like a lot but man is it not compared to some of the other shit we waste money on.
That's just how taxes work when done right: you take some money from everyone to make everything better so that it's cheaper for most people to be alive.
SNAP, for example, benefits the economy to the tune of at least $7 for every dollar invested. That's the kind of return on investment that makes greedy fucks like Pitbull cream their pants.
I heard preschool is around $8 per dollar, although it's maybe even higher than that. Basically, ya. Frustrating when people can't see the forest from the trees.
FYI, the user in the screenshot is not Pitbull the artist.
We can refer to him, the artist, as "Mr. Worldwide" to reduce confusion.
Still sounds like a greedy fuck so the point stands 🤷
Whoa. Is this true?! What? No. Please no.
34k-ish sworn members. They have more boots and better arms than a lot of small nations.
“But at 8 million, also a larger population than some nations”, @[email protected] added defensively.
It might just be cost? Idr the exavt statistic, and i know most cops get paid 6 figures, which i assume mos[ soldiers do not.
Based on the ads I see on the subway, NYPD correctional officers start in the mid‑US$50Ks.
Thwy write their own time sheets including overtime. So they can crack half a million if they're greedy (with multipliers, like 9th+ hour on a holiday)
Yeah, but then they can't line their pockets with tax money if it actually benefits people.
*social democracy
How the fuck is a higher minimum wage anything but our current system?
I’m not convinced it’s not satire
$20 is socialism and $30 is communism. I'm sure Karl Marx said something like that.
Why oh why do we peg it to a number rather than to a metric, even if it were Big Macs ffs??????!
They need to base politicians salaries off minimum wage. If they only earned a salary based off 4-5x the minimum wage, that shit would never be lagging as bad as it is now
this only works if they stop them from being able to hold investments in companies, and markets, they pass laws for, as well as getting rid of political donations. If we don't do that their salary going down would only negatively affect the small number of congress members that want actual change to things.
I have a solution, make it legal to kill politicians who hold investments or take bribes. They become outlaw and anything done to them is just the consequences of their actions.
Why 4x minimum wage? How could they represent the poorest people in a country if they make quadruple the money?
If they cant live with minimum wage, its their problem to solve
It's [supposed to be] a demanding position. Relative to the skills we should be demanding these people to have, the pay they currently get is actually not that impressive.
4 times as demanding sounds kinda funny. 254000× or whatever sounds like religious fairy tales. To the guillotines.
Wtf are you talking about? Congress's salary is only ~178k.
Congress is the 4. Private sector is the ∞.
No one in this thread had mentioned private sector. Try to stay on topic.
It's not the already obscenely rich accumulating more wealth to the detriment of everyone else, which is the inevitable consequence of the current system of laissez faire capitalism.
For some reason the quotes around the word free make it seem not satirical to me.
I don’t care what you call it, I want that. Call it doodoo pickle butting, if it offers that, sign me up for everyone else too.
Thats the thing, im past the stupid naming and everything. I just want policies that help people and not billionaires. Call it marxism, stalinism, whatever the fuck you want.
It's a pathetic attempt to rile the old people who remember the cold war propaganda against communism and socialism. While young people are like "So what?"
I have a 20-something son who basically grew up with MAGA shitting on everything. From his perspective ( and his friends), they don't see anything wrong with trying out Socialism/ Marxism/ Communism. They feel like the current system of "Democratic Capitalism" has led to the rise of vicious MAGA Nazis, and weak Democratic defenders of our Nation, with the majority of Americans suffering to some degree, so why are we fighting so hard to preserve it?
When we emerge from the other side of this, don't expect America to go back to anything resembling what it was before.
One can only hope so. What we had before wasn't great either and pretty much lead to how things are now.
Exactly. In a way, we agree with MAGA, it's time for a change. They took the initiative, and turned the country in their direction, which is evil, by any definition.
The Establishment Democrats were asleep at the wheel while this played out over 40 years, despite many warnings and steady escalations. Now, we have arrived at their Promised Land, and it is as ugly as they promised, and as a student of history, I promise you it WILL get a lot uglier, likely far beyond any of our imaginations.
We can't return to the Status Quo, because that WAS the problem. We need to create a new Paradigm, one that will not be afraid to ferociously defend Liberty from Traitors, Crooks, and worse.
Yeah sadly that doesnt work here in eastern europe because communism and even social democratism(what this actually is) is associated with the ussr which was a truly horrible regime.
Eastern Europeans are some of the most gullible people on earth. Stalin never even claimed that the USSR had achieved communism, yet somehow every grandma in his "state socialist" empire thinks full communism was reached and the state withered away like Marx predicted. They believe lies he never even told.
I understand that's the power of propaganda, but damn... It's been 40 years and most of them never bothered to sit down and learn what a communism is. I can't imagine being that willfully ignorant.
I have some trump supporting neighbors I'd like to introduce you to.
He did claim to be communist though - as in, he is ideologically driven to attempt to bring about communism. So calling the USSR "communist" is 100% correct. And naturally, what do you call life under communists? Communism! (This is wrong, but it's an understandable switch-up).
Well, that's where I have to disagree with Stalin's official narrative. I don't think he was a communist, I think he was an opportunist with no ideology beyond personal empowerment. I think he'd have said he believed in anything if it gave him more power.
Sounds a lot like trump
To elaborate on the evidence for this:
Marx said after the workers seize the state, it should become unnecessary and wither away. Stalin was the primary person in charge of overseeing this process. He should have been encouraging the development of community governance. Helping set up neighbourhood watches so he could defund the police. Granting power over workplaces to the trade unions. Encouraging the gift economy to grow to the point that the ruble could be cancelled. These were always the steps in the plan to get from the USSR to a communist system.
Stalin didn't want to do that, because it would have made him less powerful. Instead of defunding the police, he expanded their powers. Instead of empowering the trade unions, he put down workers' revolts. This is the opposite of communism.
I'm surprised it's not more associated with France since social democracy is what the have going on.
Call it butt sex and then we can also claim this was the gay agenda we kept hearing about.
'"Free" stuff is actually paid by our taxes, checkmate liberal!'
'...uh, yeah?'
It's funny that they never complain about the "free" roads or the "free" police.
I feel like this doesn't get called out more often as the straw man that it is. Right-wingers just love mocking the left for supposedly wanting "free" stuff.
I find it fascinating how nowadays, basic human decency is called "woke" and "communism".
It’s the primary symptom of being infected with the broke mind virus, which effectively all republicans suffer.
I think this is why we'll never have a UBI/leisure society/Star Trek style utopia. We are miserable biological apes and revel in other's misery.
And yet, railing against observed reality is ...???
Amen brother. Anyone who says “that’s just the way it is” is giving up. That’s not the way it is, that’s the way it was MADE. By powerful evil people, and we can remake it.
Please don't assume masculinity, but yes.
I would phrase as 'that's the way it is because of constant work to make it that way, and it was not and will not always be that way'.
Amen sibling?
Hmm, I can't hear that in Hulk Hogan's voice, but for you, I'll make the exception. 😜
Well, i don't.
Fantastic. I'm hungry, when can I come over?
If you're actually hungry I can help you find food.
Now.
And also lower intelligence in general.
https://reason.com/2014/06/13/are-conservatives-dumber-than-liberals/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609000051
https://kb.osu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/96b98535-9a94-47d5-9568-03a4e36ff426/content
Just a few...
This is one of the main reasons Republicans don't like education. They want to dismantle it and go to a charter system. That way they can profit off education and keep people stupid.
You forgot "woke communism"
i wish communism was as cool as republicans make it sound
It's even cooler
I'll believe it when I see it. Not to say that I'm not willing to give it a shot, fuck knows what we're doing now isn't fucking working.
We have never found a perfect political/economic system. That’s why it’s so important that we continue to evolve what we have to be better. I feel like this has stalled out in this country and we are seeing the fallout live.
The gulags in Siberia confirms!
You realize there are currently concentration camps in the US eating Americans' tax dollars right?
The problems that the soviet union had weren't exclusive to communism, they were exclusive to corruption.
While either system can become corrupted by bad actors, ideologically, capitalism rewards selfishness, and individualism, while communism encourages sharing and community.
At its base, capitalism is literally impossible without exploitation of the surplus value workers create. Capitalism cannot exist without profit, and profit cannot exist without stealing money from workers.
Stop taking everyone for an American.
Also: you just had to shoehorn in a whatabout the USA in there hadn't you. Got no other arguments? 😁
Then don't read that part, it doesn't change the rest of what I said.
Whereas your entire comment was a whatabout the soviet union?
Just had to argue against a strawman, eh? Weird ass thought process when I was just meeting you at your own level, bruv.
And Guantanamo Bay, black sites, Alligator Auschwitz, and the American prison population confirms the downsides of capitalism?
One shit iteration of "communism" that by definition didn't meet any of the requirements to be called communism can't be held up forever to be the boogeyman to prevent progress.
The USSR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
Someone has filled your head with propaganda.
The gulags were the just the name of their prison system and most of them were actually west of the Caucasus.
Oh, and America now imprisons more people (by numbers and per capita) than the USSR ever did.
Also America's prison system is for profit, encouraging them to incarcerate as many people as possible.
The gulags were concentration camps my dude, people got sent there for breaking laws like "criticism of the government". Most "prisoners" died there.
Also, you just couldn't not make a "whatabout the USA" lol. Such a trope.
You are factually incorrect.
You are at beast don't know what you're talking about. Иисправительно-трудовые лагерея (ЛАГ in GULAG) are specifically, namely, explicitly concentration camps that used forced labour to kill people. It's very distinct from the regular prison system, which used inhuman conditions to kill people at lower rates.
What we really should have:
Fully automated luxury gay space communism!
Powerbottomin to end poverty and sickness
I'd be down for that
What's next? "Free" school, "free" parks, "free" police, "free" firefighters, "free" military, "free" health inspections? Pay up, freeloader!
Woah woah woah stop there Lenin
You are a special kind of stupid (and brainwashed) if you think any of those things listed are bad
And also completely unrelated to Communism.
Conservatives posting his Ws all the time. They're his best advertisers.
+1 for nitter screenshots.
I don’t like contributing to Twitter in any way, but Nitter + screenshot undermines it enough to warm my heart. And informs others they can do the same!
Taxed and have it spent on genocide abroad.
Taxed and spent on you.
It's your choice.
cool marxism sounds awesome where's my hammer and sickle
Welfare is not equal to handing over the means of production to the working class. So what mamdani is doing is not socialist.
You're right, is Social Democracy. But that's where we are, politically these days. The largest socialist organization in then U.S. (the DSA) is ostensibly not socialist in policy. Anything slightly left of RAGING corporate handouts and bombing brown people is COMMUNISM now.
hold on i thought communism is when government does stuff and the more stuff it does the more communism it is.
on the other hand these are reforms that marxists and communists should definitely support even if this is just basic social democracy.
And he doesn't even have the conviction to make the communism fully automated, nor luxury, nor gay. What a disgrace!
/s
this but unironically
I thought it was gay space communism, not gay automated communism? HAS MAMDANI LIED TO US ALL?!
I don't agree with freezing rent.
The entire concept of rent needs to die in a goddamn fire. Legislation needs to kill the entire idea, not further legitimize it.
We need massive, punitive increases in residential property taxes, with commensurate owner-occupant exemptions: You will not see a tax increase on the property you live in, but any investment property you own is going to see you saddled with a huge tax bill. This might come as a shock, but Corporate landlords don't occupy their properties. They are not able to claim the owner occupant credit.
But, if you own a second property and lease it to me, we can convert our arrangement from a rental to a "land contract". I, the occupant, become the legal owner. I continue to make payments. You don't get to increase those payments over time; they are fixed for the duration of the agreement. If I leave in the first three years, you retain 100% equity in the property. If I stay beyond three years, our agreement converts to a mortgage, and I start gaining equity.
Basically, the only properties that will still be able to be feasibly rented are the remaining units in duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, where the landlord lives in one of the units.
There will always be a market for relatively short term living spaces; a gap currently filled by rentals.
Any person who is not living in a place temporarily, eg, for school or a temporary job posting or something, should have the ability to buy a home at an affordable price, without fail.
The housing market is saturated with house flippers and people with more money than sense looking to become a landlord so they can have an "income property".
IMO, all rentals should be either run, controlled, or at least strictly overseen by a specific branch of government dedicated to the task. Anyone who wants to become a renter has to get their rental property approved for renting, and approvals only happen if more rentals are strictly required.
Land contracts fulfill the role of short term housing (6-36 months) at least as well as renting, with additional benefits if short term extends to long term. In the short term, there is no significant difference in the two, with the exception of the Owner-Occupant Tax Exemption I have been proposing. That exemption ensures that land contracts will be cheaper, yet more lucrative than renting.
Rent is inherently exploitative. No amount of government oversight can overcome the intrinsic problems with renting. The entire concept needs to be actively suppressed. Government oversight can't fix the inherently exploitive problems with rent. That's just trying to polish a turd.
What we need is an economic climate that favors owner occupancy and strongly discourages commercial use of residential property. With that environment, landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert their tenants into buyers.
Renting is an option and convenience for a lot of people, that's why it exists. Some people don't want to be tied to a mortgage and might have reasons they only need a place for 6 or 12 months - temporary employment, contracting, studying or whatever.
Anyway renting can work as a model. Germany has a very large proportion of property which is rented. But they have strong tenant protections and place limits on rent hikes, evictions and so on.
I don't think an outright freeze is a good idea but rent controls and tenant laws would help. As would making casual letting (airbnb etc) a bullshit onerous proposition so that more housing stock is sold or converts into long term rent which lessens rent pressure.
Yeah, I prefer to rent because buying here is only reasonable (because of taxes, notary costs, etc) if you will live in that place for more than about 8 years. I usually move before that.
Those people are called "landlords".
I think I failed to convey the fact that land contracts provide that exact function. The occupant can unilaterally cancel the contract in the first three years, walking away free and clear. Just like ending a rental agreement. I'm not interfering with short-term housing or tying people to homes they don't want. I'm protecting short term tenants from exploitation, even if they decide to make their temporary plans into a permanent home.
I don't know about Germany, but corporate entities are rapidly buying up residential properties in the US. Many are using the same third-party algorithm to establish their rent prices. No amount of government regulation of their business model can effectively suppress the effects of such widespread collusion. They are actively working around rent controls and other tenancy protections.
The solution is to make traditional renting unfeasible for the landlord. Replace it with a system where investors are effectively forced to convey ownership interest if they want to profit from providing housing.
"Renting" will not be feasible for corporate investors once we establish an owner-occupancy exemption to residential property taxes. When we establish that exemption, we are free to peg the property tax rate to the owner-occupancy rate. Any year the rate is below 80%, the effective property tax rate for investors increases by 20%. It doesn't start dropping again until the owner occupancy rate exceeds 90%. Corporate landlords will be forced to sell outright, or get their tenants under a land contract instead of a rental agreement. Vacant properties will incur the full wrath of the tax man.
I can only speak of personal experience but I rented when I went to university. I rented during my first 3 jobs. I rented when I relocated to another country. I rented when I was contracting for 6 months in another city (I had already purchased a house elsewhere). In every case I had no intention of buying a(nother) house. I rented because I wanted to, not because of greedy corporate overlords forced me to.
Most people renting are in similar situations. They want to be somewhere for a year or two, to make plans or move on, but not be tied down with debt or obligations if they want to leave. There is nothing stopping them buying a property but there is a commitment and obligation they don't want to get into.
So rent is not going away any time soon. Legislation is necessary to curb the worse abuses, but pretending people don't want to rent is is a failed argument.
This is the third time I have pointed out that "land contracts" can fulfill the purposes you are describing.
In every situation you mentioned, a "land contract" would have performed exactly the same function is "renting".
I understand you:
The only difference you would have experienced between "renting" and "land contract" is that the top of each of those five agreements would have said "Land Contract" instead of "Rental Agreement".
Yes, a Land Contract has additional terms and conditions that only apply if you stay more than three years. You are not obligated to stay those three years. You can unilaterally end the contract before those three years.
You should be able to understand that "Renting" is more convenient for the landlord. Not the occupant. The people who knowingly want "rental agreements" are landlords not tenants. Landlords want to be able to hike rental payments every year; land contracts have the monthly payment fixed from day one. A "rent freeze" is a fundamental component built directly into a land contract.
"Land Contracts" do not have the additional commitments and obligations you are describing. Those are components of traditional purchase agreements. They are not components of Land Contracts.
Again: You can walk away, free and clear, in the first three years. You have the option of staying longer, in which case your payments begin to generate equity in the property. But you are not obligated to say, and you can also renegotiate the contract after three years if you really don't want that equity.
(Practically speaking, you would be able to walk away entirely after those three years as well. If you did, your landlord would have to cut you a check to buy out your acquired equity before he could take on another tenant)
No. "Short Term Housing Needs" are not going away soon. I am not suggesting they should. The need for temporary housing is perfectly reasonable, and I am preserving the means of filling that need, even as I kill "renting".
Why am I so concerned about land contracts? I'm not. I don't actually give a fuck about land contracts at all. What I want is for corporate landlords to be assessed property taxes that are so high that they are forced out of the market. The best way I know how to do that is to run up everyone's property taxes, and exempt owner-occupants from paying them. That tax hike alone is all we really need. To get that tax hike, I have to explain to you that I won't be cutting off the supply of short-term housing.
"Land Contracts" are what landlords are going to use to adapt to that tax hike. A landlord who tries to "rent" is going to have to pay a massive property tax bill. That same landlord can issue a "land contract" instead of a rental agreement. The monthly payment for that land contract will be lower, but because the property tax hike is exempted for the "owner occupant", they will actually earn more than they would renting.
Tenants will start earning equity instead of paying everything to a landlord. There will be a "rent" freeze, simply because that is an inherent component of land contracts. Corporate landlords lose their ability to hike rent year after year. Short-term housing is still available. Wins across the board.
Rent needs to die in a goddamn fire.
sounds overcomplicated, why not just rebrand the so called "land contract" into renting?
edit: wouldn't land contracts required idiotic amounts of identification as opposed to renting which requires none?
Because landlords dont want land contracts. They make more on rent.
All we have to do is set up an owner-occupant exemption to a massive property tax hike. Landlords won't be eligible for that exemption.
Landlords will use land contracts to get around that hike. They'll be pushing for tenants to become owners in order to avoid the tax man.
No. It's an agreement between two parties. They require no more identification than any other agreement between two parties.
Technically, the agreement should be registered with the county as it affects the deed of the property, but that isn't strictly necessary for the first three years.
So what you're saying, is you're renaming the word to "rent" to "land contract" and move a few conditions around and somehow it's not rent? It is rent, by a different name.
Yes, and no.
Rent is usually an annual contract, with penalties for early termination, and is subject to hikes each and every year.
Land contracts are a purchase agreement that can be canceled unilaterally by the buyer in the first three years. Land contracts have a fixed payment for the life of the contract: "rent control" is incorporated into them directly.
But, you're missing the underlying reason why we are talking about land contracts at all. The underlying factor is a massive hike in property taxes, which is only effectively implemented against corporate investors. We are establishing an owner-occupant exemption that will effectively lower property taxes for owner occupants, but will not be available to corporate landlords.
The underlying objective is to drive these corporate parasites out of the housing market. The only reason we are talking about land contracts at all is to assure you that the needs of tenants are not being ignored as we destroy these corporate parasites. (It also has a secondary effect of giving borrowers some leverage over lenders. While the lender is negotiating to keep the borrower in their home, the owner-occupant exemption is in place. As soon as they begin foreclosure proceedings, the property tax rate skyrockets.)
For the short-term tenant, yes, it is just rent by another name.
For the long-term tenant, it is an effective route to home ownership.
For the corporate landlord, it is the first stage of being choked out of the residential property market.
For the small-time landlord, it is a transition to "private lender".
For the on-site landlord, in one unit of a duplex, triplex, or quadplex, it is a competitive advantage on actual rent.
I don't think you read what you were replying to.
I agree but that's not going to happen overnight and there needs to be a lot of work done beforehand. People need help now.
Freezing rent isn't going to happen overnight either. Neither of these is a short-term solution that will help people immediately.
We need long-term, systemic solutions to these problems, not Band-Aids.
I know the dude is probably way more anti-Castro than I am but damn, "Tax hikes = Straight up communism"
Bro, STFU you don't know shit about shit. YOU go try to live in NYC on $60,000 a year. Dick. Stay in Miami you fucker.
This isn't even the same Pitbull lol
Oh, that's not "Mr Worldwide"?
Nope
Weird. I wonder why OP thinks we give a shit if it's just some random moron on twitter.
I think OP is just hyping up Mamdani and his policies and showing how some idiots think that things like free transit and free childcare are bad things. But tbh so many examples have already been posted, it's not exactly news.
Mr Worldwide himself claims to be anti-communist, but I think that's just his Cuban heritage speaking. Dude's been funding an education program for poor kids starting in his old neighborhood that is now nationwide. While it's not communism and it's not even public money being spent, it's very much in the same vein as Mamdani's ideas: The goal is to improve equal access to necessities.
He said back in 2016 that he doesn't support Trump's joke of a campaign and unlike a lot of Latinos, he's pro-immigration (the "fuck you, got mine" mentality seems to be pretty common among Latinos living in America, they don't wanna see any immigrants despite being immigrants themselves). He's also stated that he loves America, but wants to stay out of politics. He just wants it to be the United States, not the Divided States, according to his Howard Stern interview. I went through the painful process of scrolling back to early November 2024 in his Xitter profile and I couldn't see a single political statement. A bunch of disgusting preachy motivational quotes about hard work leading to success, but nothing political.
Long story short, he's got a lot of ego showing in his public persona, his music is very, eh... It's pop music. It's made to appeal to as many people as possible so that's why it feels like it has little personality. But dude himself seems to be very genuine and friendly according to literally every encounter ever described on reddit. The annoying high energy persona is probably just marketing.
Why'd I go through all this trouble? Well I remember some threads bashing him on reddit and a lot of people said he's actually very different from his media personality. Also, a lot of people wouldn't have respected the poll results and given a concert on a remote island in Alaska.
Yeah, I feel duped into thinking this was Pitbull the musician and not some random dummy. He sounds cool from your description.
God forbid someone tries to increase the quality of life for people
I propose a new rule: if you're American and wealthy, you don't get to talk about communism. At all.
I might make an exception for wealthy Americans with an education in politics or economics, or both.
Another person around your bracket with degrees in philosophy and theology who somehow got sucked into a career in big biz. I'm happy to pay more taxes. And talk about socialism. I completely agree with you.
And where I live in the EU I'm already paying 49% of my income in taxes + 21% VAT on most goods. I'd still pay more if we needed it (even though, like most countries, what we really we need better taxes on the truly wealthy and corporations). Yeah I'm better off than most, but our Gini coefficient means most (although not everyone of course) does ok.
We have nice roads/public transit, good schools, great healthcare. The taxes I and people like me pay are why everyone can have nice things. If people didn't have nice things I'd be stand right beside them with the pitchforks and torches. I don't say that lightly; some of the protests I've attended in favor of taking in more asylum seekers have gotten nasty.
You guys (I used to be one of you guys before I immigrated long ago) have some serious structural problems that prevent effective protest.
I posted on Bsky that people in America should call a general strike and keep striking until things get better, but I know damn well that people are rightly very afraid to lose their jobs or be put in jail, even prison. And because your healthcare, mortgage/rent, even keeping your children, every damn thing is tied to being not-in jail/prison and making money, I understand why people don't get in the streets as much, the most recent, massive nation wide demonstrations - that the media barely covered - aside.
If you got skilllzzz the place I live has a pretty sweet immigration deal. We have had three American families move into our little neighborhood in the last 18 months using it. DM me if you want to know more.
The checkmark is an idiot self-identification tool.
Ah, yes, famously communists love to... open grocery stores?
They actually do. They will all have the same stuff and it will have a low price.
That is basically step two after forming a council.
The stuff: empty shelves.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/cia-rdp85m00363r000601440024-5.pdf
The CIA itself said otherwise in 1983
There are a lot of good reasons to criticize socialists states like the USSR, namely the silencing of political dissent and gulags. But standard of living isn't one of those good reasons.
And Cuba provides a good modern model:
https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/cubasi/article/75/feeding-the-revolution
https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2019/11/28/cubas-urban-farming-shows-way-to-avoid-hunger
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_Cuba
Lol Cuba provides a good modern model, I'd laugh if it wasn't such a horrible regime. I guess you hate LGBT+ or you think it's okay to do so.
But I'm just taking in the wind here, bye Stalinists and other tankies, one day you'll get it.
Strawman
All of them are fucking awesome! Sign me up!
remember when pitbull was successful and talented?
neither do i
I mean, he IS objectively wildly successful and talented at accruing capital in spite of his music being lowest common denominator excrement..
No that's usually because he's like involved with shit people somehow
Why you gotta bring him into this lol, that's not even him in the screenshot and by all accounts Pitbull isn't that bad a human being. His biggest crimes being sexist lyrics followed by being born to Cuban immigrants (meaning he too hates "communism" but probably in name only)
well i still agree he's garbage but i don't use twitter so i saw the verified checkmark and assumed. oops. i thought they only gave that out to notable people.
Those are now paid and unregulated lol, the place is a shitshow.
This is also socialism (not communism, he's an idiot). I hate that socialism/communism = evil got shoved down our collective throats so goddamn hard in the middle of last century that people still fucking believe it without thought. Whatever keeps the capitalist hellscape grinding us into the dirt I guess, the old guard on both sides are still happy as hell to villainize social programs paid for by fucking tax dollars, and the tubes are too ignorant to understand that when everyone benefits that includes themselves.
I had an argument with an American once over whether health care should be free or not. They're so brainwashed into thinking that they'll somehow be disadvantaged by a universal healthcare system even when they're paying out their ass for private health insurance, and at the same time blaming patrons of their restaurant who don't tip enough for their poor income while happily accepting minimum wage from their employer. It's absolutely mental.
We Americans have that hammered into our heads every day of our lives. Along with "God loves us but doesn't want us to have sex." and "America is the greatest, freeest [intentional mis-spelling] country on Earth".
Takes a while to realize all of this is bunk. Many never realize it.
It's true, this place fucking sucks. Welcome to America where you're free to fuck off and die, here's your bill, and if you dare have an abortion we'll throw your routing carcass in jail and bill the infant for it.
Technically, you're only free to die if it's slow and painful. If you try to hurry it along they'll imprison you for attempting suicide. :-/
/s
That sounds awesome, thanks Pitbull!
dale
But what does Ja think?
This so-called "fear mongering" isn't directed to the broad US population, it is targeting the preexisting bias of lowest common denominator target audience of the right.
Why state owned grocery stores?
provide more affordable groceries. depending on where they would be, they'd either provide food for food deserts, or create competition for other grocery stores, which should lead to cheaper food overall.
This would be a pretty solid idea for Australia, since we basically just have a local supermarket duopoly, then some foreign or small supermarkets, so it would be a breath of fresh air to have a lack of price gouging, although sadly I doubt it'd be as successful as AusPost, but we'll see.
To lower prices presumably.
No necessity should be for-profit (exclusively).
If it is required (by nature, civilization, or by law) it is literally extortion to make a profit on it.
While I don't disagree with this sentiment, it can be taken too far:
So within the necessities to stay alive and aligned with the means and needs of the society I can agree. Where this all falls apart is that inevitably some tribunal will decide this and inevitably someone will take control of said tribunal to funnel the best food/health care/education/jobs to their cronies, as anyone who lives in a former Soviet state like myself can attest to.
He was asked what he'd do if the grocery store thing fails, and he said, "If it doesn't work, we'll just stop doing it."
Sad state of affairs that something as basic as this is so refreshing and not completely normal.
Why would you not want to live in a post scarcity society? There would be no downside except you don't get to feel you are better than someone else because of the stuff you posess or the money you make. Your comment reads very much like "fuck you I got mine"
Of course I want to live in a post-scarcity society.
Unfortunately I don't live in a post-scarcity world. There are limits to everything. Energy, labor, minerals, fertilizer, economies, governments, etc. Due to abundant energy from fossil fuels we have started to believe that anything is possible and that's great, and I hope we do manage to continue via AI and automation and new technologies to get closer to post scarcity. But we aren't there today.
The other thing I don't like about post scarcity utopias like the Venus Project (and yes, I've spent a lot of time researching them), is that when it comes to governance, the current plan just seems to be old fashioned communism with a ton of handwaving about how technology will solve everything else. Communist societies of the past also had access to technology, and they didn't produce anything resembling post scarcity. As a matter of fact, if anything, they mainly produced more scarcity most of the time when compared to capitalist ones.
So for the time being I think the best we can do is to allow capitalism to do what it does best (innovation, scaling, bringing down costs), and let socialism do the things that capitalism can't handle (economic externalities like climate change, basic human needs that profit motives greatly mess up such as health care and education, solving food and housing insecurity, etc.).
Someday maybe we will get there with enough automation and some fancy resource management software, but I do very much fear the wrong people slanting those systems in their favor. Good governance and oversight will always be paramount to making any system work, and just hand waving about technology won't be enough.
You believe a great deal about capitalism that isn't true. Capitalism is very much not about bringing down cost, socialism is. Capitalism hates innovation, if capitalists have something that makes them money they'll commit bloody mass murder rather than change it, look at the oil industry, the tobacco industry, US healthcare, the whole PFAS debacle etc, etc, etc.
Ask anyone who's lived under communism and they'll tell you otherwise. I live in a formerly communist country and have thousands of people around me who can directly compare. The only people who had it better under communism are the bottom 5-10% or people who didn't want to work. If communism makes things cheaper, it's because almost everyone has so much less money. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no real experience in the matter.
That's not to say that capitalism can't go off the rails. Without proper oversight, it will descend into monopolies and fascism, as we are seeing today. But in a well functioning system that has socialist and pro worker legislation as we see many places in Europe, the best of both capitalism and socialism can be brought out. I don't know why everyone has to always try to go to one extreme or the other when the best system is always somewhere in the middle.
Communism as it has been tried was indeed flawed af. We're going to need something else if we want to survive and be much more extreme than that. Your old communism was still a money economy, with the inherent problems thereof, functioned badly with greedy and fearful people at the top.
It's always funny to me that when you tell them capitalism sucks you are a fan of 20th century East bloc regimes. No I'm not a tankie. Tankies are extremely stupid.
That's why I mentioned exclusivity.
There should be high end private grocers. There should be plastic surgeons. These should be allowed to be privately owned
Plastic surgeons are a necessity for some, no?
Yeah, the hard part is deciding where the line is. This is why I'm a Social Democrat rather than a full libertarian or communist. The places that do socialism well (like Scandinavia) do it by using it where it's most effective and using capitalism where it's most effective. This is a never ending debate, which is absolutely needed to get this line drawn in the correct place.
Price gouging has been a major problem at Canadian grocers since COVID. Basically prices went up with supply chain issues / inflation but have not been adjusted for improvements in inflation since then.
These are for profit entities. They would steal a quarter from the poor and hungry if they could.
That's the fundamental flaw to capitalism - not that it concentrates wealth and power (because that is perhaps human nature) but that it celebrates it.
It conditions us to think that concentrating wealth is not only morally right but something we should all aspire to. That competing is morally superior to sharing.
Ultimately, if capitalists accrue so much wealth and power that they can buy out the interests that would seek to regulate them through democratic will, we then relinquish our democracy for feudalism.
I think that price gouging is mainly a result of allowing too much consolidation via buyouts and mergers, and not actively enough perusing antitrust and anti price fixing enforcement.
I suppose if it's allowed to get too bad, the government could try to compete in the market, but governments are almost never the most efficient way to do things and can rarely effectively compete on efficiency against a functioning open market. In my eyes, regulation of the open market via labor law, protecting unions, trust busting and anti collusion enforcement is a far better way for government to solve this problem.
Unfortunately a government that's not functioning well enough to do this kind of oversight will almost certainly fail at trying to compete against in the open market as a grocery store too. At which point you are just running subsidized food banks, which is also fine by me but I don't think subsidizing all food for everyone will work in most government budgets.
I think the problem is that the antitrust ship has already sailed.
I don't think a government run grocery store would be looking to compete on the open market. It would be more along the lines of subsidized food for lower income households on food stamps, practically speaking. That is much more sutainable than one that's open to the general public.
If a government run grocery store could provide a fair price for items we are currently being gouged on, I doubt they would be able to keep up with consumer demand. Essentially middle class and above will have to keep putting up with commercial prices.
I'm not sure what the difference is between this and just providing food stamps. I think food stamps would probably work out to be more efficient in the end unless for profit stores turn out to be massively inefficient.
There are "food deserts", or large areas where it isn't profitable to open a grocery store, so no one does. The people that live there have no healthy food options. The state owned stores would operate in those unserved areas where no business currently wants to operate.
Most importantly, it's not ALL grocery stores like the fear mongers like to pretend. It would be something like 4 stores in the entire city.
Yeah, that's a good case for this.
Because he's reading from his open positions of awesome stuff
Love the air quotes around "free" stuff literally everyone needs or benefits from combined with tax hikes.
Yeah, bro, that's what pays for it, you've figured it out! The cunning plot to provide basic social services supported by a balanced budget!
No, communism is moneyless. No minimum wage in communism
Freezing rent will directly lead to less housing. But then they're building more housing units, which will hmm. Well, it won't directly harm me, so I welcome this experiment. Perhaps it will work this time, somehow.
Free public transit and childcare are pretty much win-win propositions, although both will possibly incur some bureacratic problems. Such as setting wages etc. which the free market won't be able to help with anymore when they're fully paid-by-taxes public services. Then it just becomes a question of how well those problems are addressed.
Lol
This is why they figured out in Lakota culture many years ago that it's not safe to use sarcasm in your language. Some people might not get it and that makes them feel left out. Others may think dumb things are true so it can only make your whole culture dumber and unable to know what is true or misinformation. The entire sarcastic subtype of comedy is basically just not done, condoned, or laughed at which I think it's pretty awesome
Learning this myself the hard way.
Your headline is a restatement of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
There's a lot of good ideas in there, but rent freezes aren't one of them. Limiting what you can charge for a service just means less people will want to provide that service.
Yes landlords will just take their houses overseas.
Even if you just talk about building new homes, freezing rent just caps the profits that can be pulled out of a project. If it's profitable right now, why shouldn't it be with same income tomorrow?
You think landlords are going to move overseas so they can landlord somewhere else?
Honestly, if there actually are people like that, then good riddance. They sound like slum lords. Parasites.
Because costs only go up, that's why. It may not be profitable tomorrow at all.
Then sell your property.
to whom? unless the rent can change (which it realistically shouldn't if the law is written well) it still won't be profitable
People make bad investments all the time.
and they have every right to complain about the government making a half decent one into a horrible one
And normal people have a right to not care about people leeching off of actual workers.
And if you're talking about homeowners, I still don't care. You don't deserve imaginary free money for owning land. Its for living in, not an investment.
Go buy some stocks and stop being selfish.
Then lift the freeze once there's no profit left anymore, or just keep the freeze for existing buildings. Limit the rent increase etc.
The issue here is, and this has happened before, investors will either sell the property, meaning those not in a position to buy are screwed, or they will do the bare minimum to keep the building functioning, as there is no incentive to improve the building.
Good. Investors rather than inhabitants owning homes is a huge part of why rent and property prices have skyrocketed.
They already do that in order to maximize profits.
Ever heard of this new thing called laws and regulations? It's the only "incentive" that actually DOES work to correct the behavior of greedy slumlords.
Letting them keep increasing the already obscenely high rents just means more profits for them in return for no benefit for anyone else.
Sell to whom?
Owner-occupiers typically.
That sounds like it's solving the problem, then.
The banks, of course. They'll buy anything.
And what do they do with that investment?
They already only do the bare minimum. You practically have to take your landlord to court to get any meaningful fixes in your apartment. All new developments are built like shit, developers cut corners anywhere they can. After the building is built the developer "vanishes" so there isn't anyone to sue when there is something seriously wrong with the building. They just open a new throw away LLC later and put up another shit building. You must not live in NYC
Problem easily solved. Is a building not being utilized? Seize it and pay the owner fair market value, then have the city administrate it and charge just enough rent to cover expenses of maintenance and improvement and administration.
So why not skip the rent control and go straight to this?
To give the current owners the chance to do the right thing, and make a small but reasonable gain from their property.
And to make it more palatable to the general public. It's a lot easier to convince people to go along with it if you're seizing empty unused properties that are only empty and unused because the owner refuses to rent them if they're not making excessive profit.
Fair market value is much, much lower 9n rent controlled property
Cost of what?
Lol keep going, keep going! What happens when there are fewer landlords?
You either buy an apartment, or live somewhere else.
Demand shrinks, dont forget to mention that. What happens when demand shrinks?
How is demand going to shrink?
If rent is frozen and it becomes unprofitable those units won't stay empty. You'd need more than just a rent freeze but housing could become affordable again if it wasn't treated like an investment or profit venture. Get all the corporations to hate it and prices will fly down.
As I said elsewhere, they will be sold to owner occupiers most likely.
Which is a massive problem for those not in a position to buy.
Lol yeah, no. The prices would come down rather than be held indefinitely with no hope of occupants. I admit this will effect the people with 2 properties before the massive corporations. But its better than just allowing this irrational market.
Probably by people buying apartments or moving away
Or just do what Finland did successfully, and build some actually good public housing.
Housing is a basic human right. Perhaps the most basic. And it should afforded to everyone living in a modern society. Inserting a profit motive into that just makes everything unimaginably worse.
Less people wanting to provide the "service" of rent seeking? Could you elaborate on why that wouldnt be a good idea?
Because you're kinda boned if you're not in a position to just buy a property, that's why.
Seems like that would lead to a lot more affordable houses becoming available to people who couldnt previously own them.
Youd end up getting more landlords anyway because the barrier of entry would be lowered for that as well.
All rent freeze does is caps profits for existing landlords, and they make enough profit as it is.
How would the barrier of entry be lowered? Are you suggesting new investors are going to buy properties they can't turn a profit on?
Why do you think it would work like that?
Why wouldn't they be able to make a profit? The demand for housing wouldnt be any lower, they just can't increase rent above what it was.
The barrier of entry would be lowered by greedier land lords deciding to sell rather than not being able to raise rent, so people who are slightly less greedy and willing to make only maybe a 300% profit instead of a 1000% profit would take over. Corporate landlords get flushed out to make room for smaller mom & pop owners.
If the existing investors have to sell at a loss because there's no profit to be made, someone gets to buy them for cheaper, making it profitable again.
They're not going to sell for less than what they can make off the property though, are they?
Then they'll continue renting these properties at the new rates? Works too.
I'd say that depends on the degree of boned. Maximum boned means you're free to take a property by force.
And what, leave the apartments empty? Have them earn zero money, rather than some money?
public ownership with rents based on the costs of maintaining the properties properly
That is actually a far better idea than rent control, yes.
As per my other replies, typically sell the property to an owner-occupier, which is a big problem if you can't afford to buy a property.
A run of market sales would drive down the price.
And if you can't afford to rent, then got being able to buy is not a significant difference.
My city already tried this and kinda failed(5% raise limit). It only pumped up the price in the end.
How?
because if you can't increase rent with inflation you need to start it higher to begin with.
good, less landlords. Not only would freezing rent show us which people suck, but it will force the people who suck to sell their extra properties, since if they won't use them then the property is just losing them money.
it will actually make them charge more, or find ways of making you stay temporary. they said rent freeze is coming, they can demand payment upfront