promethea.incorporated

brave and steely-eyed and morally pure and a bit terrifying… /testimonials /evil /leet .ask? .ask_long?

shieldfoss:

argumate:

shieldfoss:

argumate:

leviathan-supersystem:

i do actually think a communist revolution in Japan or Australia would increase life expectancy- primarily because of free housing and the consequent end of homelessness. Plus the proposed platform of the Japanese Communist Party seems to me to be preferable to the policy of the current Japanese government.

Momentum is building for ending homelessness by giving people homes, there has already been a trial program in Melbourne with promising results.

It’s based on cost reduction instead of ideology, but what can you do.

Are there empty homes in Australia/Japan that could be given to the homeless? “Free housing” kind of requires there to be housing to give away freely and if the housing market is a free market,* then the price of housing already accurately reflects how much is available.

If they’re not giving homes away for almost free, then: There are fewer homes than are demanded or there is a market intervention that makes it bad business to earn a dollar by selling a $4 home for $5.

(My guess is: “Both.”)

My actual guess is: There are probably empty homes available for very cheap, but they’re far away from urban centers where the homeless want to be. All the homes near urban centers are either already lived in or very temporarily empty and giving the temporarily empty to the homeless just means the people who would have bought them e.g. when moving to the city to pursue their career now cannot buy that home.

This is definitely a problem locally - we have (rounded numbers) 2.5 million homes for 5 million people, that is, 1 home for every two people. The average family is 4 people. That is: We have more than enough homes, I could buy a house for less than a single years wage. A shitty house far from everywhere I want to be, but I can. Instituting communism would not solve our homelessness problem because our homelessness problem is caused by the fact that our homeless would rather be homeless than live in their assigned homes, far from their community of fellow homeless. Where they want to be is in the city centers, and no amount of communism will make land value in the city center go down, it will, at most, make it illegal to make housing decisions based on land value (Hint: this is a terrible idea.)

*hahaha i slay :(

Technically there are plenty of empty homes in the city centre, although these tend to be expensive apartments being held by investors.

Homelessness is typically an intersection of various mental health conditions that make it difficult to hold a job or even access welfare payments, thus making it impossible to rent accommodation. It turns out that insisting people solve this before giving them access to housing doesn’t work well, and that putting people in secure homes makes it a lot easier to manage whatever it was that was messing them up in the first place, creating a self-sustaining system.

Apparently this has been tried in Utah to good effect, although I don’t know much about that.

I mean yes there can be various instances of market failure in allocating new housing, but that is not the major issue when homelessness is considered.

Technically there are plenty of empty homes in the city centre, although these tend to be expensive apartments being held by investors.

That would be:

or there is a market intervention that makes it bad business to earn a dollar by selling a $4 home for $5.

Specifically, it is the market intervention that you’re not allowed to kick people out with a days notice. Those investment companies would love to rent those apartments out for any dollar amount higher than the maintenance cost of renting them out, but that makes them harder to sell because they cannot kick out the renters if the new owner doesn’t want them.

But yes absolutely, there are more, other issues than “homes in city centers are expensive for a reason.” That’s just the first, most obvious issue.

Humorous anecdote time:

I remember a day ~10 years ago when I was still a student. I lived in 36 square meters for approximately USD 600.

I received an offer from an alcoholic I met at the train station - he’d rent out his ~80 m2 apartment to me for $300, because it was an apartment assigned to him by the state - that is, for free - in a city he didn’t want to live in. He’d rather go be homeless in the capital with an income of my $300 than stay in this city where he didn’t know anybody and had nothing to do but drink alone and chat with strangers on the train station. Solving his problem wouldn’t take free housing - he had that - it would take “free housing in the location where he wanted,” which, pro-tip, is also where everybody else wants to live so good luck with that.

I didn’t take his offer, but say that I did. I guess the market value of his apartment rent was probably around $800 or so, we’ll go with 800 for easy math. That means that the state pays $800 to him. He then gives $800 worth of housing to me, in return for $300 from me.

In an attempt to solve the homelessness problem, the state has spent $800 to give me, the son of wealthy parents, $500 worth of housing subsidies and him, the alcoholic, $300 drinking money to spend while homeless. A++ governance, vote Communist for more economic efficiencya solution to the housing crisis.

I swear, my anarchist sentiments are not from fuck-you-got-mine, they’re from the fact that the state actively ruins value. Close all services and subsidies, Universal Basic Income starts today.

I swear, my anarchist sentiments are not from fuck-you-got-mine, they’re from the fact that the state actively ruins value. Close all services and subsidies, Universal Basic Income starts today.

Nordic anarcho-welfarists roll call, #2 reporting in!

Also, is there a name for the phenomenon where governmnent attempts to address individual discrimination (such as the landlord kicking out perfectly nice tenants because they don’t like their face) end up creating systematic discrimination instead (such as landlords refusing to take tenants from certain marginalized groups because they don’t want to bear the risk of getting a shitty tenant they can’t kick out)?

(via shieldfoss)

1 month ago · tagged #this is a social democracy hateblog #i'm only angry at the left because i care about the poor · 82 notes · source: leviathan-supersystem · .permalink

  1. almostcoralchaos reblogged this from argumate
  2. unionofrichard reblogged this from leviathan-supersystem
  3. chickadeedeedeedeedee reblogged this from argumate and added:
    @shieldfoss​ Homeless people aren’t moving to the city because they “want to be with their community of fellow...
  4. socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from shieldfoss and added:
    Nordic anarcho-welfarists roll call, #2 reporting in!Also, is there a name for the phenomenon where governmnent attempts...
  5. shieldfoss reblogged this from argumate and added:
    Specifically, it is the market intervention that you’re not allowed to kick people out with a days notice. Those...
  6. greencerenkov reblogged this from argumate and added:
    There’s also an issue that even someone who is in substantial recovery from barriers to holding down a job or being...
  7. argumate reblogged this from shieldfoss and added:
    Technically there are plenty of empty homes in the city centre, although these tend to be expensive apartments being...
  8. obiternihili reblogged this from argumate and added:
    Fucking hell, the latter
  9. leviathan-supersystem reblogged this from argumate and added:
    i do actually think a communist revolution in Japan or Australia would increase life expectancy- primarily because of...
  10. neoliberalism-nightly reblogged this from argumate and added:
    On top of my head I’d say China passing U.S. in terms of lifespan doesn’t mean the same thing you would assume. Because...