A Boring Dystopia

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Rent is theft (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by zedgeist@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

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[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It intrigues me now, how you would "fix" this and make it so that people don't have to work to have housing?

First things first: there are already a bunch of people who don't have to work for their housing. A big part of those may have to work for an income so that they can pay for upkeep. But get rich enough and that can get payed by dividends. Or they're landlords who get enough income from rent. Those rich people don't have to work at all for their housing.

we already have social housing in my country.

That's cool for the people who get it. But I'd be surprised if your home country has no homeless people and vacant housing at the same time.

We have universal healthcare, we have a bunch of social programs for people in need and we have automatic unemployment paid from social insurance. People on disability don't work, people's pension is covered by the state.

Do those people on social programs actually have a comfortable life, though? Or is it rather "too little to live, too much to die"? I'm quite sure that landlords still make a lot of profit from rent in that country.

What measures should we add to make it so you don't have to work for your home?

Introduce a usufruct model of owning, where the people who live in a home actually own it (either as a family home, or multiple homes owned by a coop). The important bit is that rent-seeking is abolished in housing. Then you might still need to work for upkeep, but that's a diminishino part of what people need to pay for rent, nowadays.

and if the election goes my preferred parties way, it will be fixed in the next cycle.

If your country is capitalist, I highly doubt that they will implement this. Profits are still required by capitalist states.

However all these things are being paid for, concrete doesn't pour itself, steel doesn't manufacture itself, building don't build themselves, so how do you propose we make it so that we don't have to pay for our homes?

I said "work as to not go homeless". You're bringing "paying" into it. There's already a lot of place to live. Ideally, I'd see a communist society where this kind of stuff is planned on the basis of needs, rather than being speculated on in markets for profit

[+] kameecoding@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

That sounds like an assumption and you know what they say about that.

I'd be happy to hear which country isn't currently capitalist. And the other thing is less of an assumption and more of a rule.

Who decides who owns the house though? Is it first come first serve? How is that not capitalism just with extra steps?

... the people who live there own it. Capitalism would require the ability to keep others from using the house while you don't use it. You wouldn't be able to sell the house/appartment.

If my family lucks into a place that becomes a highly desirable location how is that fair to generations coming after?

Your family requires a place to live, doesn't it? You're describing capitalism, btw. Why should your family be thrown out if they still need the house?

Also who paid for this house in the first place and how if not with the fruits of their labor, aka work ?

The community built it. Or it was already there (houses already exist, you know). I should have specified that I have a problem with wage slavery in order to pay some landlord in order to live somewhere. That's completely different than investing resources and labour to build a house.

You didn't answer the simple question of how you achieve this magical utopia where people don't have to work to avoid being homeless, you just said a bunch of nice theoretical ideas with no realistic way to implement them?

Give people places to live and let the community build housing based on need, rather than profit. Nothing magical about that. I'll specify again: I don't want to abolish doing mental/manual labour, but working for a boss so that they pay you a wage based on the profit they made on your labour: Wage slavery. And the answer isn't simple. Otherwise, we'd be living in this world already.

Okay, do you know what "need" is? Who decides what a need is?

The people do. I think doing so in consumer councils would be a good idea, but I'm not the arbiter of how to achieve this. Do you think that human needs are unknowable?

Do you need to live in the city you live in currently or do you want to live there? Because if it's centrally planned enjoy packing your stuff, you are going to bumfuck nowhere if you are not needed where you are, it's only fair.

Who saidanything about central planning?

Or imagine this, you live in this magic house that you got for free for 30 years, your kids move out and shit hits the fan, your spouse dies, well all of a sudden you don't really need that house do you? All those memories you have from there, well sorry, someone else needs that house more, time to move out to a housing you actually need.

Well, who says that I'd want to live in that place that's way too big for me now where everything reminds me of my dead spouse? Maybe I'd like to live with my kids, or they move in and I get a place in an outhouse. I'm sure the community and I'll reach a mutual understanding where they'll understand my needs/wishes and we'll reach some form of solution, beneficial to everybody. Is that so much of a stretch, given that I'm part of a community?