CNN report on evictions in Houston area

[Cotton McKnight]

oh shit? I have political clout? fuck me thats funny cause every time i call or email ted cruz or john cornyn or pete olson i get a nice form letter telling me im full of shit.

I think some of you think of landlords as these heartless multi millionaires or corporations that have 1000s of properties. most landlods are just regular people with regular jobs that maybe have 1-5 homes for rent to try and make extra money. Of course there are dicks, like everything else. No one should be evicting people right now. But the government should have done any number of things to help stop this.

Click to shrink...

What we should be concerned about are the real estate companies that are licking their chops right now. If you thought your local landlord sucked, get ready for a non-local corporation not giving a crap that you are more than 5 days behind on rent. It is just going to get harder for younger generations to be able to have affordable housing.

There is a reason why Trump only passed eviction protection and not mortgage protection, he doesn't give a crap about the tenants. He just wants them still there for when a corporation favorable to the administration takes over those rent deferred tenants housing.

 

[Mulligan]

We all need other people to help us and provide essential goods and services. People should not go without food, shelter, education, or healthcare. But as you said the folks who provide these things should be compensated for their time and labor. And as I said previously there are landlords who provide these things themselves.

Not all landlords are LLCs that pay someone to manage their properties who then in turn schedule and pay other people to do essential maintenance and repairs. That is extractive, the people who own that LLC contribute nothing.

Click to shrink...

The entire idea that a landlord is actually providing a service is just wrong. They don't provide a service through landlording, they extract and exploit wealth from the community by commodifying a basic human need.

We can directly see the negative results of commodifying that need through the homeless crisis. By capitalizing on a basic human need, landlords and the system of capitalism has extracted wealth from the community and forced many who are unable or incapable of providing enough funds to be forced out on the streets. Capitalism and land ownership essentially creates a monopoly of sociopathy to extract wealth and promote suffering at the expense of a basic human need.

 

[captive]

So you make more money and then like 91% of Americans by doing a job most Americans can't do and you consider yourself a regular person?
and and people do vilify the banks all the time the banks fucking suck

Click to shrink...

yea over 30% of American households make over 100k a year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/

even individually I would have to make over 158k to be in the top ten percent of earners in the US. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/
seems like you need to do some more research before spouting off numbers and acting like some of us are richy rich.

Housing is two goods:
A fixed-supply one, with demand-dependant pricing (land)
A normal one, with bounded pricing (construction, made up in turn by labor and materials, none of which are particularly supply constrained)

With less money in the supply equation, the cost of construction is more or less constant, but the price of land goes down.

What happens?
That the land, which you probably very well know is the largest part of the costs in the areas we're talking about, is priced accordingly to the normal market - the money available to the people that actually want to live in said place

This is, obviously, in a situation that's not further complicated by messy HOAs and ridicolous owner-friendly zoning laws, which can make the entire housing behave like a fixed-supply market since nothing further can be built in the area

Basically, developers are a normal market process that gets corrupted by being able to sell mostly to landlords, or are not involved in the market at all due to zoning laws

Click to shrink...

housing and land for that matter are not in fixed supply. In my area, there are new housing developments going up every month. Houston has expanded exponentially since i was a kid. This keeps both home sale prices and rental prices lower, considerably so than california or new york
Not to be said that perhaps we should be building up and not out, but thats a different issue.

They are the same thing. They hoard up land and then don't sell that land when housing for the area is extremely necessary until it is profitable for them.

Landlords hoard property, and then make money off of the basic necessity of housing.

It's the same goddamn thing. They feed off each other.

Click to shrink...

no they're not and its myopic to think so.

there are roughly 70 million owner occupied single family homes based on the statistics i can find, and 14 million single family rental homes. But yea landlords are HOARDING HOMES!!!1!1one

so say the government buys up all this land, then what? the government is hoarding it? Thats apparently our definition. That anyone that buys land to develop it is hoarding it. Should land just be free? Everyone grab a painted stake and stake off your land?

Most people can't even afford the home they have assuming they even own property, so please forgive us for not feeling sympathetic that some chose to use their money to perpetuate a systemic issue.

Click to shrink...

see above, the US is quite wealthy. Yes there is still a ton of inequality that needs to get fixed. But im also not going to apologize for owner financing mobile homes to people.

What we should be concerned about are the real estate companies that are licking their chops right now. If you thought your local landlord sucked, get ready for a non-local corporation not giving a crap that you are more than 5 days behind on rent. It is just going to get harder for younger generations to be able to have affordable housing.

There is a reason why Trump only passed eviction protection and not mortgage protection, he doesn't give a crap about the tenants. He just wants them still there for when a corporation favorable to the administration takes over those rent deferred tenants housing.

Click to shrink...

also this.

once again this thread reminds me of the 100k a year thread. People of ERA being like yea your rich all my problems are your fault, meanwhile multi millionaires and billionaires laugh because its exactly what they want. The middle class and poor fighting each other instead of coming after the rich and uber rich.

 

[Aureon]

housing and land for that matter are not in fixed supply. In my area, there are new housing developments going up every month. Houston has expanded exponentially since i was a kid. This keeps both home sale prices and rental prices lower, considerably so than california or new york
Not to be said that perhaps we should be building up and not out, but thats a different issue.

Click to shrink...

Land outside the city borders being citiyfied is certainly a thing, but "land is not in fixed supply" is.. a statement you may want to rethink.

 

[Cotton McKnight]

also this.

once again this thread reminds me of the 100k a year thread. People of ERA being like yea your rich all my problems are your fault, meanwhile multi millionaires and billionaires laugh because its exactly what they want. The middle class and poor fighting each other instead of coming after the rich and uber rich.

Click to shrink...

It makes me sick, I'm a REALTOR and I flirt with the idea of owning rental properties. The farther to left I go the farther I get from wanting to be a landlord. At this point I would be happy owning a few storage unit complex's instead.

 

[Deleted member 18400]

Where do you live? In Boston we have a ton of landlords that rent out slums to students and low income/early career people that don't maintain shit. Why bother when people don't have a better choice and someone new will pay more for the same broken shit next lease cycle?

It got to be 39F in my bedroom in the winter because my room was an addition with shit insulation. The climate zone was in the hallway (where heat was much better retained) and controlled all the steam radiators in the apartment. They gave me an electric heater from 20 years ago they had laying around and told me to deal with it. Debated calling DHS but it was hard to time exactly when it would happen. Got to pay about 1000 a month for a room share to be freezing

Landlords exist to make profit, some might be alright but it leads to perverse incentives

Click to shrink...

In standard run of the mill fucking apartment complexes in lower michigan, chicago, dallas texas and colorado. Probably about 10 of them over the last 15 years. I've never lived anywhere with conditions like you described and I wouldn't be called "wealthy" by anyone's standard.

And yeah Landlords exist to make profits. Fucking McDonalds fry cooks exist to make profits, what kind of nonsense are you eve spouting? Are you saying Landlords should go through the trouble of owning property and renting it for free? Or at zero net gain? So why the fuck would they even want to do that?

Are you saying instead no one should be allowed to rent any sort of property? Only the government or some other imaginary benevolent system that would do all the work of providing places to live and up-keeping them for no gain?

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Quite the entertaining debate you all have going on in here. Carry on.

 

[Kthulhu]

see above, the US is quite wealthy. Yes there is still a ton of inequality that needs to get fixed. But im also not going to apologize for owner financing mobile homes to people.

Click to shrink...

But most people are not wealthy by US standards and that is only getting worse. Landlords renting out anything larger than a spare room are ultimately perpetuating the issues we have with housing even they aren't the biggest offenders.

 

[Deleted member 7130]

You can rent for next to nothing in the bonies. No one is stopping you from doing the shack living in Montana wild. If you call a condo in downtown LA "Human Survival", then IDK wtf you know about struggling.

Click to shrink...

Yes, because I said all rentals should be highly and equally opulent. /s You give away your own mentality that the poorer someone is, the more they deserve to be in struggle conditions. It's similar to some fox news "Can you believe the poors have refrigerators?!" type of thinking.

 

[Mekanos]

"ALAB" doesn't quite roll off the tongue like ACAB.

The free market should not commodify human life.

 

[Mulligan]

yea over 30% of American households make over 100k a year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/

even individually I would have to make over 158k to be in the top ten percent of earners in the US. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/
seems like you need to do some more research before spouting off numbers and acting like some of us are richy rich.


housing and land for that matter are not in fixed supply. In my area, there are new housing developments going up every month. Houston has expanded exponentially since i was a kid. This keeps both home sale prices and rental prices lower, considerably so than california or new york
Not to be said that perhaps we should be building up and not out, but thats a different issue.

no they're not and its myopic to think so.

there are roughly 70 million owner occupied single family homes based on the statistics i can find, and 14 million single family rental homes. But yea landlords are HOARDING HOMES!!!1!1one

so say the government buys up all this land, then what? the government is hoarding it? Thats apparently our definition. That anyone that buys land to develop it is hoarding it. Should land just be free? Everyone grab a painted stake and stake off your land?

see above, the US is quite wealthy. Yes there is still a ton of inequality that needs to get fixed. But im also not going to apologize for owner financing mobile homes to people.

also this.

once again this thread reminds me of the 100k a year thread. People of ERA being like yea your rich all my problems are your fault, meanwhile multi millionaires and billionaires laugh because its exactly what they want. The middle class and poor fighting each other instead of coming after the rich and uber rich.

Click to shrink...

Yes. Land and housing should be free because as an anarchist, I believe that a community, not a government should have rights to all land and property. People and communities know what's best for their needs and they will use the property to create something for the community. We can see the successes of communal/anarcho rule by countless cultures throughout history who did not have issues with homelessness and food insecurity that we have right now.

Also, I was clearly not talking about homeowners, I was talking about property owners and landlords that don't do work that is comparable to the amount of wealth they extract from communities. A group of electricians and plumbers do more for a community by installing the main service cables and water mains to a new building than the landlord who, "owns," said building.

 

[Darren Lamb]

In standard run of the mill fucking apartment complexes in lower michigan, chicago, dallas texas and colorado. Probably about 10 of them over the last 15 years. I've never lived anywhere with conditions like you described and I wouldn't be called "wealthy" by anyone's standard.

And yeah Landlords exist to make profits. Fucking McDonalds fry cooks exist to make profits, what kind of nonsense are you eve spouting? Are you saying Landlords should go through the trouble of owning property and renting it for free? Or at zero net gain? So why the fuck would they even want to do that?

Are you saying instead no one should be allowed to rent any sort of property? Only the government or some other imaginary benevolent system that would do all the work of providing places to live and up-keeping them for no gain?

Click to shrink...

My point was that you shouldn't assume that everyone has a wonderful rental situation when there is an incentive for landlords to not do all the things you described. Where I am, if you can keep apartments filled, it doesn't matter if you are lax on upkeep and maintenance. You can extract profit until you want to sell, and the market is so hot that even a poorly maintained building and it's land will be worth a lot more than when they bought it.

I am happy your experience was different

 

[Deleted member 18400]

My point was that you shouldn't assume that everyone has a wonderful rental situation when there is an incentive for landlords to not do all the things you described. Where I am, if you can keep apartments filled, it doesn't matter if you are lax on upkeep and maintenance. You can extract profit until you want to sell, and the market is so hot that even a poorly maintained building and it's land will be worth a lot more than when they bought it.

I am happy your experience was different

Click to shrink...

This ENTIRE thread is people assuming that all Landlords are evil corrupt money hungry tyrants that run slums.

And yet I'm being lectured about how I shouldn't assume everyone's landlord is good.

 

[Heromanz]

This ENTIRE thread is people assuming that all Landlords are evil corrupt money hungry tyrants that run slums.

And yet I'm being lectured about how I shouldn't assume everyone's landlord is good.

Click to shrink...

No it's not but there is about how shitty landlords are

 

[BronzeWolf]

Uh...no I'm pinning the blame on the system, which landlords are a big part of. The 'labor' of landlords is inherently extractive and exploitative. I knew you would start bullshit comparisons with agriculture and other production industries lol, predictable AF. Growing food and making medicine is not inherently exploitative (though under capitalism it often ends up being that way through the use of trafficked labor and practices of drug companies and the medical industry). You can compensate a farmer for his labor fairly, you can compensate a pharmacist or doctor for their labor fairly.

The 'labor' of a landlord is just wielding their capital to buy up housing stock and then use that property to extract wealth from the local populace for as long as possible. They aren't producing a good with their labor or providing a necessary service, instead they are entering into communities and creating adverse situations that they then use to profit. There are definitely people involved in the housing process who do actual labor (like people who do repairs) but that's separate from landlording and would exist without the exploitation of landlording.

Click to shrink...

If tenants were to pay their own construction-liability-maintenance labor, they would not be able to afford it. Without investment injection, cost of ownership goes up, not down.
If free housing is given, you are just displacing those labor costs to the whole of the population.

I think it's fairly telling you think temporary housing is not a "necessary service". As in... can't you think of a myriad of reasons why people would like to NOT own property? We live in an ever increasingly mobile society, both because of job, taxation, immigration and work from home conditions. That's without mentioning that society itself is ever more fluid, with divorces, new types of families and social structures becoming increasingly common.

The average american changes houses every 7 years, and moves out every so often too.

I'm not saying landlording is the only way to offer temporary housing, but rather it's one of the most efficient ways to do it.

It's not a complex issue. It's very simple. Capitalism and late stage capitalism in particular is about creating inequality and profiting off that inequality in every facet of society. Property ownership is just another part of that sociopathic system.

If you support that system, you're part of the problem.

Click to shrink...

There always seems to be someone that somehow thinks they juts discovered boiled water in terms of economic displacements. Just because you think it's simple, doesn't mean it is. Just because painting a pie in the sky and trying to morally reprimand people that call you out for that pie in the sky does not help you convince me that said pie is real one bit.

I must admit it's difficult for me to see what part is sociopathic when an old lady decided to rent me her spare bedroom when I was studying, but ok, you know best.

The entire idea that a landlord is actually providing a service is just wrong. They don't provide a service through landlording, they extract and exploit wealth from the community by commodifying a basic human need.

We can directly see the negative results of commodifying that need through the homeless crisis. By capitalizing on a basic human need, landlords and the system of capitalism has extracted wealth from the community and forced many who are unable or incapable of providing enough funds to be forced out on the streets. Capitalism and land ownership essentially creates a monopoly of sociopathy to extract wealth and promote suffering at the expense of a basic human need.

Click to shrink...

"Monopoly of sociopathy", "promote suffering". I notice how always terms that are much better used to real actual domestic and violent situations are translated to economic transactions. Just because you know these words exist, doesn't mean they apply to the concept you are trying to explain.

What you are advocating is that these people just take the housing into their hands consequences be damned. When has that worked out?

Yes. Land and housing should be free because as an anarchist, I believe that a community, not a government should have rights to all land and property. People and communities know what's best for their needs and they will use the property to create something for the community. We can see the successes of communal/anarcho rule by countless cultures throughout history who did not have issues with homelessness and food insecurity that we have right now.

Also, I was clearly not talking about homeowners, I was talking about property owners and landlords that don't do work that is comparable to the amount of wealth they extract from communities. A group of electricians and plumbers do more for a community by installing the main service cables and water mains to a new building than the landlord who, "owns," said building.

Click to shrink...

I suspected we would get much insight of real life and the present world from an anarchist...

 

[Mulligan]

If tenants were to pay their own construction-liability-maintenance labor, they would not be able to afford it. Without investment injection, cost of ownership goes up, not down.
If free housing is given, you are just displacing those labor costs to the whole of the population.

I think it's fairly telling you think temporary housing is not a "necessary service". As in... can't you think of a myriad of reasons why people would like to NOT own property? We live in an ever increasingly mobile society, both because of job, taxation, immigration and work from home conditions. That's without mentioning that society itself is ever more fluid, with divorces, new types of families and social structures becoming increasingly common.

The average american changes houses every 7 years, and moves out every so often too.

I'm not saying landlording is the only way to offer temporary housing, but rather it's one of the most efficient ways to do it.



There always seems to be someone that somehow thinks they juts discovered boiled water in terms of economic displacements. Just because you think it's simple, doesn't mean it is. Just because painting a pie in the sky and trying to morally reprimand people that call you out for that pie in the sky does not help you convince me that said pie is real one bit.

I must admit it's difficult for me to see what part is sociopathic when an old lady decided to rent me her spare bedroom when I was studying, but ok, you know best.

Click to shrink...

You keep focusing on the money transaction part as some saving grace to people. The part that was a saving grace to you was her willingness to give you a room.

In an anarchist system, as long as you contribute to the community and not to your own pockets to the detriments of others, you would be given a home without question.

It's the sociopathy of the system that forces people to pay for a basic need that is wrong.

 

[BronzeWolf]

You keep focusing on the money transaction part as some saving grace to people. The part that was a saving grace to you was her willingness to give you a room.

In an anarchist system, as long as you contribute to the community and not to your own pockets to the detriments of others, you would be given a home without question.

It's the sociopathy of the system that forces people to pay for a basic need that is wrong.

Click to shrink...

We are not getting an anarchist system in place in our lifetimes. So this discussion is a waste of everyone's time, you should've started from there.

You said "anyone who supports this system is part of the problem" so any landlord and any tenant participating is a sociopathic piece of shit, apparently. So either follow to your conclusions, or drop off the shoe box with your terms.

Also of course her saving grace was giving me room. I wouldn't have studied there if it wasn't for that person or others like her. I'd stayed in my hometown and not get schooled or at least, not take the opportunity to increase my education to the level I was able to make a career out of it. You might want to introduce equal opportunity and accessible education to the mix, but that only complicates the situation further, and that goes against your simplistic approach that "it is a simple issue"

 

[Mulligan]

We are not getting an anarchist system in place in our lifetimes. So this discussion is a waste of everyone's time, you should've started from there.

You said "anyone who supports this system is part of the problem" so any landlord and any tenant participating is a sociopathic piece of shit, apparently. So either follow to your conclusions, or drop off the shoe box with your terms.

Also of course her saving grace was giving me room. I wouldn't have studied there if it wasn't for that person or others like her. I'd stayed in my hometown and not get schooled or at least, not take the opportunity to increase my education to the level I was able to make a career out of it. You might want to introduce equal opportunity and accessible education to the mix, but that only complicates the situation further, and that goes against your simplistic approach that "it is a simple issue"

Click to shrink...

Why can't we get an anarchist or Marxist system in our lifetimes? What exactly is stopping us from creating a communal system that doesn't steal wealth from a community and kill the environment? Could it be because wealthy business owners and landlords don't want to lose their power?

You said "anyone who supports this system is part of the problem" so any landlord and any tenant participating is a sociopathic piece of shit, apparently. So either follow to your conclusions, or drop off the shoe box with your terms.

Click to shrink...

ACAB does not mean all cops are personally bastards. ALAB does not mean all landlords are personally bastards. To jump to that conclusion shows that you are either making an argument in bad faith or you really don't get it. If you operate and support a system that does not help the community and oppresses the community through profiteering, coercion, and extraction, then you are a bastard. That does not mean you are a bad person, it means that work in a system that is sociopathic and your actions themselves are sociopathic.

A nice cop is still a nice cop working in a violent system and until that system is destroyed, that cop is a bastard.

 

[Darren Lamb]

This ENTIRE thread is people assuming that all Landlords are evil corrupt money hungry tyrants that run slums.

And yet I'm being lectured about how I shouldn't assume everyone's landlord is good.

Click to shrink...

You literally asked who has a landlord like that, and I mentioned I did. Not sure why you're getting riled over this

 

[Heromanz]

We are not getting an anarchist system in place in our lifetimes. So this discussion is a waste of everyone's time, you should've started from there.

You said "anyone who supports this system is part of the problem" so any landlord and any tenant participating is a sociopathic piece of shit, apparently. So either follow to your conclusions, or drop off the shoe box with your terms.

Also of course her saving grace was giving me room. I wouldn't have studied there if it wasn't for that person or others like her. I'd stayed in my hometown and not get schooled or at least, not take the opportunity to increase my education to the level I was able to make a career out of it. You might want to introduce equal opportunity and accessible education to the mix, but that only complicates the situation further, and that goes against your simplistic approach that "it is a simple issue"

Click to shrink...

But landlords who prey on colleges students is why landlords suck 101. and like colleges are some of the biggest landlords scum there is like student housing one that gigantic reason why student debt is such a big problem here.

 

[Gwenpoolshark]

People here should check out Evicted by Matthew Desmond. The eviction epidemic is kind of the invisible second partner of mass incarceration in this country in terms of holding the poor down and fucking them out of everything they have.



Also reminds me of this: the most effective filmmaking Michael Moore has ever done.

 

[Deleted member 11413]

If tenants were to pay their own construction-liability-maintenance labor, they would not be able to afford it. Without investment injection, cost of ownership goes up, not down.
If free housing is given, you are just displacing those labor costs to the whole of the population.

I think it's fairly telling you think temporary housing is not a "necessary service". As in... can't you think of a myriad of reasons why people would like to NOT own property? We live in an ever increasingly mobile society, both because of job, taxation, immigration and work from home conditions. That's without mentioning that society itself is ever more fluid, with divorces, new types of families and social structures becoming increasingly common.

The average american changes houses every 7 years, and moves out every so often too.

I'm not saying landlording is the only way to offer temporary housing, but rather it's one of the most efficient ways to do it.



There always seems to be someone that somehow thinks they juts discovered boiled water in terms of economic displacements. Just because you think it's simple, doesn't mean it is. Just because painting a pie in the sky and trying to morally reprimand people that call you out for that pie in the sky does not help you convince me that said pie is real one bit.

I must admit it's difficult for me to see what part is sociopathic when an old lady decided to rent me her spare bedroom when I was studying, but ok, you know best.



"Monopoly of sociopathy", "promote suffering". I notice how always terms that are much better used to real actual domestic and violent situations are translated to economic transactions. Just because you know these words exist, doesn't mean they apply to the concept you are trying to explain.

What you are advocating is that these people just take the housing into their hands consequences be damned. When has that worked out?



I suspected we would get much insight of real life and the present world from an anarchist...

Click to shrink...

Landlording is not the only form of temporary housing, there are forms that are not nearly as exploitative and extractive, also landlording is not efficient by any measure except how much wealth those with capital can extract from those without. Yes sometimes people need temporary housing, but the vast majority of people who rent aren't in that situation, and whenever they DO end up moving within the same geographic area it is due to housing insecurity. The housing problems are what force them to move, not the other way around. 7 years is not 'temporary housing' that's nearly a decade.

 

[Deleted member 11413]

People here should check out Evicted by Matthew Desmond. The eviction epidemic is kind of the invisible second partner of mass incarceration in this country in terms of holding the poor down and fucking them out of everything they have.



Also reminds me of this: the most effective filmmaking Michael Moore has ever done.

Click to shrink...

Evicted is one of the beat sociological texts written in the past 10 years, painstakingly researched and extremely illuminating

 

[Amnixia]

This is such a naive take. If you abolish landlords, then people that are in transitioning states wouldn't have the ability to camp (rent). What about
1. Professionals moving?
2. Divorcees?
3. Newly married?
4. Young families
5. Immigrants?
6. Widowers
7. Victims of natural disasters
8. Persons in violence situations.

You are not supposed to rent FOREVER, it's a short-term housing solution that the government is incapable of dealing with. Owning real estate is a long term affair, and many people are not ready in their life season to commit to that. Landlord is neither that easy, nor guaranteed profitable at all, and parking your money on an non-liquid asset posseses a huge risk that the tenant is not carrying. As a landlord you are liable for all of the following:

1. Property taxes
2. Insurance and if you don't pay insurance, the risk of losing your whole asset by natural disaster, theft, or arsony.
3. Vacancy, delinquency and damage
4. Neighbor Liability
5. Market risks (area could collapse)
6. HOA costs
7. Maintenance and repair costs.

Renting is almost always cheaper than owning.
Most landlords aren't making the returns on their capital that they could be doing in other investments.

So yeah all landlords do is use their capital to purchase real estate is such an idiotic take. Using capital to provide services WHAT A CONCEPT. This capital is put at risk. You know what would happen if you abolished landlording? Real Estate prices would go UP and people would rent illegally.



You can rent for next to nothing in the bonies. No one is stopping you from doing the shack living in Montana wild. If you call a condo in downtown LA "Human Survival", then IDK wtf you know about struggling.

Click to shrink...

Calling someone else's opinion idiotic yet coming to the table with "just live in a shack in the wild" nice one my dude.

Also: renting is cheaper then owning? Ok, so the whole point of being a landlord is making money so that one is easily debunked.
While the returns could be higher in other ventures the risks there are higher too, people are always "in the market" for housing.

And the alternative, proper social housing, would solve the issues we face now.

And your reactions to others: maybe luxury housing shouldn't exist? :)

 

[Doukou]

Land outside the city borders being citiyfied is certainly a thing, but "land is not in fixed supply" is.. a statement you may want to rethink.

Click to shrink...

I can't believe someone actually said that.

 

[Mulligan]

I can't believe someone actually said that.

Click to shrink...

It also ignores that the fixed supply land is usually being developed into housing that isn't affordable to most of the people living in that area.

I'm an electrician that works on exclusively new affordable housing construction projects in NYC. I've worked on over 20 projects in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan in just 4 years, and I can only remember one of them that had truly affordable rents for the surrounding neighborhoods. Every other project had rents that far exceeded the average for the area and two in particular had, "poor doors," for the few actually affordable units in both buildings.

 

[subpar spatula]

Yes. Land and housing should be free because as an anarchist, I believe that a community, not a government should have rights to all land and property. People and communities know what's best for their needs and they will use the property to create something for the community. We can see the successes of communal/anarcho rule by countless cultures throughout history who did not have issues with homelessness and food insecurity that we have right now.

Also, I was clearly not talking about homeowners, I was talking about property owners and landlords that don't do work that is comparable to the amount of wealth they extract from communities. A group of electricians and plumbers do more for a community by installing the main service cables and water mains to a new building than the landlord who, "owns," said building.

Click to shrink...

You really want a anarchist culture? That doesn't fly today. Like, imagine groups of people being peaceful then one group going, "hey, we have guns and nukes... Let's take them over". There's a reason why those cultures faded or died out: they are not sustainable in the real world when people compete via nations, economy, etc. People also don't want to contribute unless incentivized. There's a reason why loads of people don't want to do farming or labor jobs because they are incredibly hard on the body. To want them to do this as a contribution is silly. That type of scenario just paints for a rebirth of various types of proto-capitalistic endeavors.

 

[Ryuelli]

People and communities know what's best for their needs and they will use the property to create something for the community.

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HOAs are proof that this just ain't the case.

 

[Doukou]

You really want a anarchist culture? That doesn't fly today. Like, imagine groups of people being peaceful then one group going, "hey, we have guns and nukes... Let's take them over".

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Yes imagine that. Good thing that's unique to anarchist culture.

 

[subpar spatula]

Yes imagine that. Good thing that's unique to anarchist culture.

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Damn. You 100% got me.

 

[Mulligan]

HOAs are proof that this just ain't the case.

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HOAs are a product of capitalism. Their primary purpose is to segregate and oppress the poor in order to maintain high property values.

 

[Doukou]

Damn. You 100% got me.

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I can not 100% get you because that is slavery which goes against my anarchist beliefs

 

[Mekanos]

You really want a anarchist culture? That doesn't fly today. Like, imagine groups of people being peaceful then one group going, "hey, we have guns and nukes... Let's take them over". There's a reason why those cultures faded or died out: they are not sustainable in the real world when people compete via nations, economy, etc. People also don't want to contribute unless incentivized. There's a reason why loads of people don't want to do farming or labor jobs because they are incredibly hard on the body. To want them to do this as a contribution is silly. That type of scenario just paints for a rebirth of various types of proto-capitalistic endeavors.

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What makes you think nuclear weapons would exist under anarchism?

Anarchists and socialists seek to build a society without hierarchal power structures that can be easily hijacked and manipulated by a powerful few. True democracy. You cannot have true democracy under capitalism. Those cultures faded and died out because imperialist and capitalist superpowers decided they were in the way.

If your argument is "anarchism isn't sustainable longterm without the abolishment of capitalism," then congratulations, you agree with socialist and anarchist theory.

People also don't want to contribute unless incentivized. There's a reason why loads of people don't want to do farming or labor jobs because they are incredibly hard on the body. To want them to do this as a contribution is silly.

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Yeah, in ancient times tribes had to report to their CEO if they didn't meet the yearly fishing profit margins.

 

[subpar spatula]

What makes you think nuclear weapons would exist under anarchism?

Anarchists and socialists seek to build a society without hierarchal power structures that can be easily hijacked and manipulated by a powerful few. True democracy. You cannot have true democracy under capitalism. Those cultures faded and died out because imperialist and capitalist superpowers decided they were in the way.

If your argument is "anarchism isn't sustainable longterm without the abolishment of capitalism," then congratulations, you agree with socialist and anarchist theory.



Yeah, in ancient times tribes had to report to their CEO if they didn't meet the yearly fishing profit margins.

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Nuclear weapons exist now. Where is this portal to another non-technologically-progressed world?

 

[Mekanos]

Nuclear weapons exist now. Where is this portal to another non-technologically-progressed world?

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Yeah I guess there's nothing that can be done about nuclear weapons, if workers owned the means of production they'd just let the nukes grow on trees, give them back to God's green earth.

 

[Mulligan]

You really want a anarchist culture? That doesn't fly today. Like, imagine groups of people being peaceful then one group going, "hey, we have guns and nukes... Let's take them over". There's a reason why those cultures faded or died out: they are not sustainable in the real world when people compete via nations, economy, etc. People also don't want to contribute unless incentivized. There's a reason why loads of people don't want to do farming or labor jobs because they are incredibly hard on the body. To want them to do this as a contribution is silly. That type of scenario just paints for a rebirth of various types of proto-capitalistic endeavors.

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I disagree.

This ignores primitive and early agricultural societies which were primarily formed around anarcho-communism. There was no profit motive, just the motive to maintain a living by working together.

You can even see this in recent history with Rojava in Syria. Due to the Civil War, money and profiteering could not be the focal point of society. Rojavan nationals created a direct democracy that focused on giving all of its citizens basic needs through community councils.

 

[subpar spatula]

I disagree.

This ignores primitive and early agricultural societies which were primarily formed around anarcho-communism. There was no profit motive, just the motive to maintain a living by working together.

You can even see this in recent history with Rojava in Syria. Due to the Civil War, money and profiteering could not be the focal point of society. Rojavan nationals created a direct democracy that focused on giving all of its citizens basic needs through community councils.

Click to shrink...

Homoapiens may have wiped out the Neanderthals. Those who had farms got more tribes to farm for them and they became Kings. You then needed people to track food who were then paid. You then had society which had layers of wealth to where Romans had small cramped apartments for the poor while the rich had slaves and bigger houses.

As much as you want this to happen. It doesn't. There is enough evidence throughout history to show how easily this model is exploited either through the production workers becoming lords or the enforcement agencies becoming Shogun's.

Yeah I guess there's nothing that can be done about nuclear weapons, if workers owned the means of production they'd just let the nukes grow on trees, give them back to God's green earth.

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That doesn't work that way, though, as you would still need heirarchy within the production system that eventually leads to inequality.

Human beings are complex psychological creatures. Greed is powerful. Not working is powerful if you can have others do it. Like, yeah, we seize production but that doesn't prevent anyone from running the operation through our labor.

 

[Mekanos]

That doesn't work that way, though, as you would still need heirarchy within the production system that eventually leads to inequality.

Human beings are complex psychological creatures. Greed is powerful. Not working is powerful if you can have others do it. Like, yeah, we seize production but that doesn't prevent anyone from running the operation through our labor.

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You might have lower levels of hiearchies within productions (though even automation would be able to eliminate a lot of that), but you wouldn't have oligarchs owning thousands of them. There is no motive or power structure to consolidate power under a horizontal system. "Greed is powerful" because humans have lived under societies of forced scarcity and instilled in them a compulsion to compete with each other through propaganda and material conditions. Human nature only exists to be molded by the societies and circumstances people live in.

We have enough food and shelter to take care of every human being on Earth several times over, so there is no need to perpetuate systems that require forced scarcity to thrive on.

 

[subpar spatula]

You might have lower levels of hiearchies within productions (though even automation would be able to eliminate a lot of that), but you wouldn't have oligarchs owning thousands of them. There is no motive or power structure to consolidate power under a horizontal system. "Greed is powerful" because humans have lived under societies of forced scarcity and instilled in them a compulsion to compete with each other through propaganda and material conditions. Human nature only exists to be molded by the societies and circumstances people live in.

We have enough food and shelter to take care of every human being on Earth several times over, so there is no need to perpetuate systems that require forced scarcity to thrive on.

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Ah so when robots do all the work. Got it.

There's a lot of idealism within this idea. Y'all got an extreme uphill battle.

 

[Mulligan]

Ah so when robots do all the work. Got it.

There's a lot of idealism within this idea. Y'all got an extreme uphill battle.

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The very basic idea of anarchism is that there are more than enough resources for everyone to live a happy life and we don't need the power and hierarchical structures we have now that create wealth through forced scarcity by extraction and exploitation of oppressed peoples.

It's not idealistic. It's truth in a world that constantly lies about there not being enough for everyone.

 

[Mekanos]

Ah so when robots do all the work. Got it.

There's a lot of idealism within this idea. Y'all got an extreme uphill battle.

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I said automation would play a role, I didn't say it would singlehandedly enable socialism/anarchism.

I'm glad you're here to thumb your nose at people hoping for a better world. Almost like what conservatives do to liberals!

I'll gladly be labeled an idealist though. I fully believe you can't be a socialist without being hopeful. I have no choice but to have hope.

 

[Cipherr]

Man this thread is weird asf. Government failing the whole ass country.

 

[samoyed]

People also don't want to contribute unless incentivized.

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If this was true in the way you're implying, no one would volunteer. Society itself provides the incentive. We are social animals who acquire self esteem and self worth from "contributing" or feeling like we're a valuable member of our community, which is a built in "incentive" in civilization, the profit motive came later.

People, unsurprisingly, want to participate in society. It is part of the basic drive to life.

There's a reason why loads of people don't want to do farming or labor jobs because they are incredibly hard on the body.

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Yes, but it does not follow that people don't want to "contribute", it just means they want their contribution to be worth their time and efforts and the market cannot provide that worth without holding a gun to their head.

Consider a household of four where one person cooks for the family. Where is the "incentive"? It comes from the family and feelings of responsibility/duty/love/etc. Now consider another household of three where a cook is employed and performs the same labor as above, but for wages instead of the social relationships of the family. Two households, the same amount of labor being done, one without the profit motive involved and one with. You can extrapolate this logic to families that grow their own food vs buying it, and so on.

 

[captive]

Land outside the city borders being citiyfied is certainly a thing, but "land is not in fixed supply" is.. a statement you may want to rethink.

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have you ever seen the map where we could fit the entire world's population in different population density? Even if we did the Houston method, we could fit the entire population from the Texas border to Canada in a wedge shape that's like 1000 miles wide.

For all intents and purposes unless the world population grows exponentially we have plenty of room.

But most people are not wealthy by US standards and that is only getting worse. Landlords renting out anything larger than a spare room are ultimately perpetuating the issues we have with housing even they aren't the biggest offenders.

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says who? Have you ever considered that there are people that prefer to rent? I recall at least two separate threads on this forum where people say they prefer to rent over owning a home.

anarchist, I believe that a community, not a government should have rights to all land and property. People and communities know what's best for their needs and they will use the property to create something for the community. We can see the successes of communal/anarcho rule by countless cultures throughout history who did not have issues with homelessness and food insecurity that we have right now.

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Then you live in LA LA land and aren't worth having any further discussion with.

 

[Ryuelli]

Houston has expanded exponentially since i was a kid.

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I can confirm this, at least as far as the metro area goes. When my family moved to the Katy/Cypress area in '99, it was all rice fields and horse ranches. Now we have to drive 20 minutes to find that, and I give the areas west of/past 99 10 years before they're full of suburbs too.