"How will I pay my bills"
(Democratic) Socialism, UBI, and fair wages.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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it's insane how deep propaganda has drilled into the heads of people where you have to specify the socialism is democratic
New to lemmy?
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(3 replies)
I mean, you can go one further and establish public utilities that ration resources per capita instead of charging a vig on top of the production cost.
Why do I need UBI and wages if I can just claim a vacant apartment and be guaranteed power/telecom, of which their are millions nationally?
We could divert the tens of billions (converted to energy/man hours) we're throwing away on AI subsidies and everyone can live a comfortable middle class life free of charge.
AI subsidies?
Why do I need UBI and wages if I can just claim a vacant apartment and be guaranteed power/telecom, of which their are millions nationally?
Because almost all of those homes are vacant for a reason. They are in disrepair, or under renovations, or actively looking for someone to occupy them, etc. Of course, there are some places in rural Kansas which are just vacant - but then, these are already dirt cheap. Iirc, there are some towns which will give you the house for free if you live there for X number of years.
So let's say anyone can request a residence for free from the government if they would like. What happens? Well, first of all, all vacant housing stock immediately disappears in almost all places because - all things being equal - most people would prefer to live alone, rather than living with their family (when they are an adult) or with roommates. And the government can't force people to live with someone they don't like - that's a political non-starter - so if someone ends up residing in a 5 bedroom house, they can just keep rejecting potential roommates the government sends their way. If your goal was to end homelessness, this market trend will immediately stymie your goal - you will still need to build more housing, which will take more time, and people will still be homeless.
Meanwhile, it becomes agonizingly difficult to move anywhere. Want to move to a new city? Well, you'll be on a years-long waiting list to find a place to live. If it is a city that a lot of people want to live in, then the waiting list will just perpetually keep getting longer. Want to move out of your parents house? You'll need to find a friend who already has a place, or get on a years-long waiting list.
What if you have special needs, like you are wheelchair bound? Now you need to wait even longer for a place which is wheelchair accessible. Sure, the government might prioritize such cases - but what about cases that don't neatly fit in a box? Suppose you have a best friend who needs help looking after their child. You want to help out, but you live on the other side of the city, an hour away. So you can never help your friend as much as you want because of the commute, and their child will be grown by the time you could get a place closer to them.
Markets are good because they force people to make choices that balance their desires against everyone elses, which creates a highly efficient mechanism for rationing scarce resources like housing. So people can live alone if they want, or find roommates to save money if they want. They can spend more to live in a hip neighborhood if they want, or spend less to live in a cheaper neighborhood. They can decide how much they value not walking up stairs every day, and choose to pay more for an apartment with an elevator or on the ground floor.
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(2 replies)
Yes but yokels in the flyover states will say no, so you're not allowed to do this.
You give the yokels far too little credit. Quite a few of them are convinced it is the liberals who want to means test away their quality of life and expose them to the predation of foreign markets.
And they're often right. DLC liberals were perfectly fine with Midwestern deindustrialized, education privatization, military expansion, and corrosive financialization. The problem is that they're boxed in, with nowhere to go. Conservatives ensconced them in a media monopoly, screaming a partial truth - that liberal business interests have fully compromised their wing of government. That's made selling "we're all you've got" an incredibly powerful message on the right. Even as the Congressional paymasters tip both parties generously.
But think of the market!
Landlords are parasites.
They're the foundation of society, I say!
property is theft
Private property yes, personal property no
The way i distinguish:
property in that you have a piece of paper saying something is yours and you can prevent people from using that thing or extract value from it, while not using it yourself. That’s theft.
But possession, ie. having things that you use, a house you live in etc. that’s not theft unless other circumstances that lead to the possession are theft.
We're on the same page then.
It's all about terminology. I like the concept of usofruct where your right to own something is bound to either use it directly or collect its fruits (in a literal or figurative sense). So a landlord wouldn't own a house but the people living there would. This has it's roots in Roman law where ownership had three aspects: usus, fructus and abusus (misuse, destroy, ...)
cars have paper attached to them, should people be forced to use cars to keep them?
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That's exactly what the comment you are replying to said.
So you can never leave your house because as soon as you do you stop extracting value from it yet are preventing others from doing so themselves. So no one should be allowed homes or anything personal. As you can’t always be using something your entire life.
You're making up a rule that isn't a part of the definition of personal property.
Your home is still the place you live at even if you're not currently in it. You address doesn't change the moment you step out of your house does it? You use it by it being your place of residence, and that happens at all times.
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This is so obvious I don't understand why it needs highlighting. Nobody here is suggesting you cannot have stuff.
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A while ago my wife and I were debating on renting our home out and buying a different one. Just to break even on the house expenses it wasn't worth it.
Maybe I am wrong, but I don't understand how landlords make a lot of money unless they don't fix the house ever.
I think the idea is that even if you only break even after mortgage and expenses, you gain equity in the house and eventually own the house which you then have at your disposal. You can continue to rent it out without the expense of the mortgage, or sell it and cash in.
The landlord I know that makes a shit ton of money inherited the homes from their parents.
Yeah this is it, the ones who aren’t paying a mortgage on the house they’re renting out. That or corporate landlords.
you make money if you don't have a mortgage.
I was able to refinance my home at 2.8% during COVID. Now I'm paying less than $2k for a 2200 sqft home. I've got neighbors who are paying $4-6k for equivalent housing.
My mom, who bought her home in the 90s, has the mortgage fully paid off and only owes real estate taxes (around $12k annually) on a 5000 sqft property.
A lot of landlords simply inherited their homes or had enough credit to buy cheap units during the dips.
They also do a shit job of maintenance. But it can't be overstated how much of this property is either owned on extremely low interest credit or fully paid off.
My landlord makes 48k a year off where I'm living. I can easily see how he's making money.
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(2 replies)
Get a real job idiot.
Sell your properties, retire to the Caymans
I don't get why u just blame landlords.
You know what other countries are doing? Building multilevel longterm concrete compact apartment complexes.
What does US do? Nothing.
I'm telling you, those places are full of depression, conflict, traffic, ample(read: no) parking and those with all kinds of life struggles. People (the ones I know) need some space to maintain a healthy style of living. I can hear the lady yawning through the walls at my place. I yearn for a home with no shared walls sooooooo badly lol.
We dont need compact apartment complexes, we have plenty of houses being hoarded by companies and landlords so they arent on the market and the few that are can have artificially high prices. There are "Cash for your house now!" signs everywhere where I live plus they keep mailing us too, and those are usually either landlords or house-flippers.
It's a multi faceted problem. There needs to be gov program to start building apt complexes . This will reduce demand on houses and drive prices down simultaneously