- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
There are many things that need change, but fixing the housing prices isn’t complicated, it’s just unpopular. You just need to take make speculating on housing as an asset very expensive. This will drive down the demand from non owner occupiers (businesses). It will also reduce the value of the largest asset most people own. People who invested so much into owning a home with the expectation that it will appreciate aren’t going to support policies that do the opposite.
We already have first, primary, and only home exceptions to many things. There’s no reason Frank and Martha’s house should be any less valuable. The problem is housing as speculation is causing houses to be priced higher than their real value.
We should’ve been taxing homes or land that people own but are not their primary residence, from the start.
It would be super easy to implement, and flexible - if housing prices are too high for 75% of the population, you raise those taxes little by little and the problem eventually sorts itself out. If it’s no longer a problem, you reduce the taxes.
Or you keep those taxes the same and use the money to reinforce social programs to make sure no one in your area ever has to go homeless or hungry again.
Por que no los dos?
Raise taxes on 2nd homes, use the tax to fund social programs
The commenter I replied to said"when it’s no longer a problem" to lower the taxes again, I’m suggesting to not lower them again. People who have multiple homes should be paying maximum taxes on all luxury items- homes, cars, airplanes, income, everything possible, and that money should be used to support social programs.
Maybe we’ll see planned communities pop up that pool resources and create their own “circular economy”. Certain things are incredibly cheap today, e.g. learning how to do things. And technology can make certain basics needed to live very cheap. Food, water, energy, housing, education, safety, medical, community.
If you could e.g. buy some farmland and build a compact apartment block out of e.g. shipping containers (or something even cheaper) then you could produce your own food, have your own school (partially over internet), a doctor / medic, and have workshops to make and maintain whatever you need.
Maybe the “buy in” costs for each person could be pretty low, like 10-20k.
A kind of “democratization” of economy for the basic needs. The global economy is completely out of whack because nobody can compete with mass produced garbage and marketing, so our work is getting worth less and less and we’re getting poorer.
That sounds like a commune with extra steps.
Gasp! Sir, this is a micro-federation of free people! :D
I don’t really care what you call it, it shouldn’t be about ideology but about economy benefit and freedom from economic exploitation. But you’ll definitely be facing anti-socialist propaganda. It’s possible that certain advances in technology allow for a life in relative luxury (e.g. rich in free time, rich in stability, rich in self determination). Things like 3D printers don’t quite get us there, but if you could invent / develop or genetically engineer access to raw materials. You’d still need quite a few “vitamins” like microprocessors etc so you’d still need to import some stuff and export some labour or goods.
So… A commune then… I’m sorry I’m not trying to troll you, but you quite literally are defining a commune.
Not exactly, the proper umbrella term would be “intentional community” and there are many forms that would not fit that label.
PS: Mostly I’d avoid that term because of the negative propaganda. You see OP, everyone agrees shit is ridiculously bad, then you see accusations of being a “tankie” when you suggest any alternative. But there are also many (failed) social engineering ideas that are associated with communes.
We are saying the same thing here man, you’re just not wanting to say commune because it’s too close to the word communism… When a commune doesn’t strictly mean a communist village.
The wikipedia you linked to even says that it’s a synonym for a commune.
Also being a tankie is way different than wanting more progressive legislation. Though I understand your point.
Yes you’re right, unfortunately I failed haha. The wikipedia article even says “Also the alternative term commune is considered to be non-neutral or even linked to leftist politics or hippies.”
You failed at nothing friend. We were just getting on the same page, and giving two labels for the same thing.
That reminds me of this meme
Yeah ok sure, but this site has shown me theres a good reason to distrust someone who call themselves a communist. China and Russia are TERRIBLE examples of where the world should head, yet a LOT of the communists on this site are Tankies
My example is explicitly not “state-socialism” (where all economic power is concentrated in the hands of very few) and most socialists think Russia is a far right government. Unfortunately the hardened battle lines make it very hard to discuss the failures of either state socialism or plutocracy, while pretty much all agree that massive concentration of economic power is shit.
But on a small scale like a planned community these things actually do work much better.
solarpunk!
Definitely! But most solarpunk I’ve seen isn’t realistic about the amount of land you need to produce enough calories for food.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
While I agree that in general the demands of wealthy nations are frequently excessive, there was a time in those nations where, as the meme describes, relatively poor families could own a home and support a family on a single income. That disappeared not because everyone stated wanting more, but because of constant, intentional inflation of house prices and depression of wages (relative to inflation) by capitalists.
Any attempt to redirect blame onto the people this affects, by accusing them of “wanting too much” plays into the hands of those capitalists.
deleted by creator
Lmao I’m sorry do only “westerners” have phones? Or clothes? Do people outside the west not have trinkets that they don’t really need? Of course they fucking do. Moving to a poorer country only works if you move with significant capital… If you are from America and you have no money, moving to Venezuela just means you still have no money but now you live in Venezuela, not sure how that’s supposed to help.
Not sure what your point is re politicians. They bear culpability alongside the capitalists, yes.
deleted by creator
When you or I bought our phones doesn’t matter because even if I bought a top of the line phone once per year that wouldn’t buy me a house. I don’t, fwiw, and I’m privileged enought to be able to afford to buy a house - but I also don’t make the mistake of thinking that being frugal is what got me here. Individuals in America and the UK (can’t speak for anywhere else, I’ll limit it to where my experience lies) do not have a choice they can make that will get them the things they need at a reasonable price. It is not their fault for wanting too much or anything else.
To me the point is more that the post WW2 boom and the resulting ability of a cashier to buy a home and support a family was somewhat an aberration, not a new normal. Something similar could happen again if the conditions were right (much more modest house building via major zoning reform, free education, healthcare, and childcare, high taxes on the wealthy) but we’re not actually achieving those necessary things politically, so here we are. And even if we did achieve all that, new homes won’t look like current new homes because 4000 ft2 suburban homes are fundamentally unsustainable.
I agree with that, certainly. I think at least the ability for everyone to buy a home should be normal.
Yeah… so, the record high inequality is just nothing to think about, because suddenly we don’t deserve to own a house for one life’s worth of work…? What a joke take
deleted by creator
We have the ability to feed everyone in the world, but we don’t. We could house everyone, but we don’t. We could heal everyone, and we don’t.
Capitalism was great for raising a huge portion of humanity out of poverty. It has its limits however, and we are reaching them. It’s time to find a new way of doing things, not for profit, but because those things need to be done.
I’m disabled and can’t work in my early 30s now. The numbers for disability benefits haven’t been adjusted for inflation since world war 2. Obviously I can’t afford to live anywhere else.
We’re a crumbling empire, we have an exploding homeless population and the billionaires like it that way. There’s laws in many places here in the US where you can’t use any kind of force to remove homeless people from your private property, if you call the cops in those places, they don’t do anything about it.
Part of the problem is that the billionaires want us all to be terrified of each other and to hate our neighbors so that we beg for authoritarianism…even worse than the authoritarianism we have now.
You can’t remove squatters or trespassers, but god forbid if you light up a joint, they’ll throw you in prison for that.
Man I’m glad I was born and raised in a working class town now. Prospects looked pretty dire here when I was a kid. Local industry fell flat in the 1990s and into the 2000s so tonnes of my fellow millennials left to go to uni and get jobs in cities. That kept the cost of living here low and I was able to buy my first house at 22.
Now those deserters are saddled with student debt and unaffordable rents with no prospect of ever buying their own home. Recently the local industry started taking off again in a big way. I’m already making a pretty good wage but I’m also in track to have a Masters Degree and a high paid job after 3 years with a house that should have its value skyrocket over the next decade.
I really enjoy that West is crumbling. You guys did dun dirty to us Iranians in the past 10 years, pressuring our economy and crippling it. Now you are experiencing a literal ‘Karma, Bitch!’.
It’s not far-fetched that, once Iran manages to have America fuck off the middle east, it will become the next superpower (for the 5th time over the past 2 millennia I believe and don’t say ‘Persia is not Iran’, you will show how uneducated you are, because Persia is a province in Southern Iran, it’s a Netherlands/Holland situation) and I hope I am alive to see the fall of West. Because you Westerners have been nasty to me, insulted me, been racist against me, etc. You deserve nothing but a nice fall from grace.
Let’s raise our cups to the fall of ‘jorsumeh’ that is the West.
Agree. I am that 30 y o still living at home. Work full time, 2 jobs and STILL cannot afford a rent without it decimating me to the ground. Its nothing to do with my budget: i get close to 3k/mo yet if i try to rent some place, i will pretty much have only about 400/500 left a month…. In a european capital. What is the point of renting in these conditions? And yes i know rationally its possible with my salary but i choose its more fruitful to help parent and be able to save rather than live ln the verge every month without being able to do much.
I am in my late 30s and was only just able to buy this month. It’s the cheapest place I could find in my city, and the mortgage repayment will clean me and my SO out to the point where we can’t afford to run a car. We’re both in full time employment with an MSc.
deleted by creator
Newest generation, ~2012 to about now. Before that was Z, Millenials, X, Boomers, Greatest, and Silent.
Maybe gen a will be the ones with the balls to actually rise up, set everything on fire, and kill the people responsible for destroying everything. Because of the rest of us are just sitting around complaining.
And yes, I admit, I’m in that category.
deleted by creator
The funny thing is that we have politicians here in Australia that complain about “woke” environmentalists standing up for the environment by sitting down on the road. They’re trying to have them labelled as terrorists for simply sitting down in the street.
Meanwhile in France, Farmers who are angry about stopping of diesel concessions are setting things on fire, blocking streets with tractors and dumping manure and dirt into the street to block public servants responsible into buildings.
The point is two fold, French have always done protests better. And the west conservatives have a massive raging boner for eroding ones rights to protest.
I support protesting wholeheartedly, but blocking a road is among the most moronic ways to protest I can think of.
They are blocking emergency vehicles, people going to work, people doing errands, visiting family, goods being transported etc.
There is a reason people get pissed off and pull them off of the road themselves. It does absolutely nothing to further their cause.
It doesn’t even effect the people they protest against.Imagine missing your kids show, mothers dying breath or the flight to your long awaited vacation and family visit because someone couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to protest than sitting down and being an absolute butthole.
Isn’t the inconvenience literally the point though?
I don’t call people potentially dying an inconvenience.
They have no moral right to decide wether or not people make it to where they are going.So what do they hope to achieve?
If it is awarenes, then there are much better ways of doing itJust wondering if you’ve ever participated in a protest or this is just an academic exercise. In my experience well behaved protests are basically ineffective. It’s true that you can actually end up vilifying the cause in the eyes of people that you’ve inconvenienced.
But that creates social pressure on our leaders to address the problem. Either by compromise with the protests demands or clearing them out by force.
I get that it may block the direct path of an ambulance potentially. But most gps algorithms when they see a ton of stationary phones in the street interpret that as traffic and try to route around it.
At the end of the day, yes there is the small potential for harm to a few individuals, but (hopefully) the benefits to a larger group offset that.
I went to UT and there were protests in the street all the time. It always inconvenienced me and I actually came to blows with a few of the protesters, but they should know that’s a possibility going into it. There’s really no right or wrong here. There’s only large organized group against a few impacted drivers.
I appreciate your arguments but respectfyully disagree.
A GPS guided detour should not be necessary for vital social functions to operate.
I also dislike the small potential for harm to a few individuals when there are better ways to get the point across.Block construction.
Occupy offices and locations.
March.
Send letters and run awareness campaigns.
Vote.Do anything you can that makes people see you. Just don’t block the road. To me that is too risky. If everybody would protest like that to achieve their political goals we would live in total anarchy.
Hope my opinions make sense even though you might disagree.
Totally. No animosity here. Never considered occupying an office.
I have been educating my child on unions and workers’ rights. When he’s old enough, we move on to the proper engineering and maintenance of guillotines.
Have you considered teaching him welding and bulldozer operation?
deleted by creator
Programming your foot up a billionaire’s ass
i’d rather complain than be complacent at least
Ah, gen Z
Us millenials tried that. It was called Occupy Wall Street and we got tear gassed, beaten, and driven away. And then there was a massive effort to erase what they could from media and history, and tarnish the rest.
It was a massive turning point for our generation. It broke us. We went from angry to depressed. We couldn’t beat them. They have the power of massive physical violence behind them, AND control of the media.
Gen Z is trying via unionization, which is a tactic much more likely to succeed. Don’t try to overthrow those in power, they’re too powerful for that. Build up your own power first in whatever manner possible, and then use their own levers of control against them.
Unions need to make a move on the media next. Shawn Fein has been very good at this but it needs more action.
Occupy Wall Street started strong but quickly decended into uncoordinated nonsense. The initial message was simple, popular, and actionable about how it’s bullshit that global austerity and government cutbacks were hurting the 99% whilst the 1% who caused the crash got off scott free with massive bailouts and tax cuts.
Because it was a “leaderless” collective action it quickly got occupied itself by all sorts of weird and wacky movements who diluted the message and gave the right wing media all the ammo they could ever want to paint the whole thing as “just some crazy hippies chatting shit about communism” or whatever.
It’s pretty typical of movements on the left unfortunately. Everyone wants to be super inclusive so all ideas are equally important and you can’t just dismiss ideas as not being relevant without creating a load of infighting. The alternative however means people with bad ideas (ones who often have more time and energy to boot) can easily take over the conversation and your whole message gets diluted, confused, and easily disarmed by the media.
I think the left’s problem isn’t inclusiveness (in things like this) it’s the inability to give power to “strong” leadership. The same mental firewalls that prevent those on the left from falling victim to mountebanks keeps them from letting others speak on their behalf.
It also creates mental roadblocks for anyone on the left who tries to lead. “How can I speak for these people? I am not one of them.” That’s not a limitation of inclusiveness it’s just empathy. So when anyone on the left challenges a left wing leader with anything, really that leader–if they are truly left leaning–will not fight back without near certainty about their position.
This makes it easy for a left wing leader to denounce the illogical and/or racist positions from those on the right but extremely difficult to take a stand on issues where everything sucks like Israeli/Palestinian conflict or immigration. This leaves them open for charlatans to point to them and say, “See? They’re weak!” Which is the exact thing the right hates and fears from left wing leaders.
Maybe inclusiveness wasn’t the right word to use, but your second and third paragraphs are exactly what I meant. It’s because we want to make sure everyone’s voices are hard and ideas are considered that movements end up standing for everything and nothing at the same time. To me creating that space and opportunity for all ideas and people is inclusivity, which is a great thing overall but can make affecting change difficult when your opposition all fall into line behind “strong” leaders.
We need a raised militia in open, violent rebellion against the police and national guard. Anything less than that is theater.
I hear Texas is already on it.
Lol I’m a millennial too I definitely remember that and it’s not what I’m talking about at all. They just stood around yelling for the most part.
It looks like if gen Z’s massive wave of unionization doesn’t work that’ll be the case. Gen A is likely the water war generation unless we clean up our act enough for it to be gen ß
fails self-restraint check
gen β, not ß
- edited to correct a tragic ragey blunder
We cannot name one gen Alpha and the next Beta, that is too mean
No, the Troika changed it when Germany took control of Greece 10 years ago.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Good old Gen SS
I can’t believe I have never seen this joke made in any context before
SS seems powerful, sure but the godlike powers of SSS class generations could put black holes to shame with their inescapable might.
SSSS class generations can harness the power output of a galaxy
self-restraint, not self-restaint
:)
It is getting to the point that is the only option. Voting doesn’t matter, protesting doesn’t matter, complaining doesn’t matter. Millennials were raised that those are the processes, we have come to realize they don’t work and our kids are being raised with the understanding that that doesn’t work. If they want things to change, and it literally HAS to, that is what needs to happen. Either accept the status quo or forcefully change it. If I understand history, that is the most American thing you can do.
I’m gonna be honest, I’m a zoomer (ahhh yes I’m a zoomer, I’m a zoomer, yippee! Everyone look at me, I’m the zoomer) and, looking towards the future, my future, I’m already kinda there. I just think we both haven’t quite hit the critical mass where everyone else is at that point, yet, and I think that the narrative about, you know, why things suck, I think that’s been co-opted with a mixed level of success, forcing people to feel “fine” with their circumstances, or, forcing people to feel personally responsible for their circumstances, as the case may be. I also think there’s a good amount of cynicism about standing up to the US government and institutions, since we’ve been fed a shitload of stuff against that, and then, you know, we’re all fucked and have limited resources and whatever. I also think people are probably too nice for their own good, most people just kind of want to chill, even if that means they’re actually not allowed to chill because they have to work 2 jobs and have no energy and one financial emergency could wipe them out instantly.
I dunno, I feel pretty cynical, but I also feel like things will probably get at least a little bit worse, before they get better. I just hope they get worse in the right way, instead of in the whole like, world ending kind of way. Or, localized apocalypse, kind of way, more likely.
I’m not advocating violence, of course, because that’s illegal both on this platform and in real life.
However, the history of humanity has demonstrated that powerful people need to be publicly executed in order for there to be sea change in economic inequalities. When enough people have nothing to lose, said executions become inevitable.
deleted by creator
Assuming change involves violence you simply advocate for the change and “defending” your way of life or “taking back” or “sheparding society”. Violent Neo Nazis use this kind of rhetoric all the time to get people to do stupid shit and then escape accountability for winding them up. The absolute best way though? Thoroughly make your case and spread your ideology. When enough people feel like things aren’t going right and they can’t make change any other way, violence is the natural next inflection point.
That all said. We really should be trying to do things peacefully. Political violence is fucking nasty and modern civil wars see things like militias taking control of small towns or neighborhoods to kill everyone they find because they think they voted the wrong way. If we could avoid that I’d be grateful, I really don’t need to witness a second factional battle with hundreds of people on either side right down a main street in a city.
I certainly don’t want civil war. I would, however, like to see a few billionaires fear for their life enough that they would lossen their death grip on the future health and wellbeing of the rest of the world’s inhabitants.
It’s really hard for me to imagine a scenario where large groups of people are fighting on principle to protect billionaires.
Yeah the thing about violence though? You don’t get to decide when it stops.
The only way to avoid this that I have ever been able to imagine would require our global society to somehow abandon the concept of currency. But that’s insane, of course, so we’re probably screwed…
Not insane. Insane is making up a system of what is worth keeping alive and then sacrificing life on Earth for that system. If we want to survive as a species, we might have to embrace a sort of gift economy.
Thanks for your reassurance. You know, given that the entire purpose of operating as a society is for everybody’s individual benefit, it seems kinda weird to reject a “gift economy” out of hand, doesn’t it? Basically, if each and every member of a society doesn’t benefit from how that society is organized, then said society has failed at it’s most primary function.
Currency is just standardized gifts.
A general strike of 3 days with 10% of the population participating would do a LOT more than public executions of billionaires.
That said, there’s no fucking way you will get 10% of the population to agree on ANYTHING anymore because every single communication channel, forum, and social space is FILLED with people who actively create hostile, circular and unproductive environments. Either for the hell of it or at the behest of their corporate masters, the result is the same.
We can’t do it the easy way, so we will suffer until the only choice is the hard way.
All so 8 people can own half the fucking world.
I’m not advocating violence, of course, because that’s illegal both on this platform and in real life.
No it’s not.
-
This platform’s policies do not have the force of law.
-
Advocating for violence in general isn’t illegal; only specific threats are. (Trump, for example, is an idiot-savant at walking that fine line.)
Yeah no, lemmy.world’s admins and mods are already infected with the alt-right taint, calling for eating the rich can and will get you banned.
Also the advocating for violence rule has always been weird, because it’s rarely against the rules to advocate for war, even if it’s literally violence and also much much worse due to the scale and horror of it.
-
Don’t advocate violence. Instead, imply advocacy for violence.
It’s not “let’s kill the rich”, it’s “it’d be a damn shame if someone killed the rich”
It’s not “you’re morally obligated to burn that pipeline”, it’s “you’re morally obligated to burn that pipeline in Minecraft”
Wanna reenact the French revolution
In Minecraft
Install the guillotine mods
Die.
Whenever I hear someone say “what are people supposed to do?”, that is what I remind myself is the default.
When the rich have taken everything that they want, that is all that is leftover for literally everyone else.
A magic utopia is not the default. That took effort to build, and now the ultra-wealthy are putting in effort to tear it down, so it is ludicrous to think that without effort that things will magically go back to the way they were. That is neither how inertia nor entropy work.
Sorry this is upsetting, but it is the Truth. When Trump wins, it will get even worse, not better. Maybe we should do something about it.
deleted by creator
Strong men make easy times. Easy times make weak men. Weak men make hard times. Hard times make strong men. Strong men…
