unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

Maybe we could build some cheap tenements and stuff all the poor people into that. Never tried that before.

Or we could build outward so the poor people can go live there and still commute to the city, with the added bonus of more insufficient infrastructure between their homes and their jobs. Great for reducing pollution and rush hour madness.

Only to still get priced out by landlords and scummy flippers. Better move further out!
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
Okay so we should do nothing then?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

I didn't say that.

I don't think centralizing poor people into ghetto apartments will help. I also don't think "expanding housing out into the bush" (because "other-house-expensive") will help to create an environment for affordable housing either. That'll create other problems too such as the extra pollution and road burden I mentioned.

Are there no other ways..
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
We should limit immigration to our country, and build more. Basic supply and demand. The Chinese built cities from nothingness and filled them with people.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3412
the chinese had a billion people living in agrarian poverty making several dollars a week. building cities was part of transitioning to a modern-industrial society and made total sense.

not relevant to america.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

Apart from areas where droughts are an issue, we probably have enough land and resources for our population plus some. One of the problems is that these resources are being sucked up by the few. One giant, vampiric Nestle mess. Bezos going to space while the lower echelon employees get to deal with the nonsense imposed on them is a decent analogy.

Big pandemic economic downturn, yet McDonald's and others offer more money to employees because "nobody wants to work." They could have done this all along, of course.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
I have no love for the the rich but you can't blame them for everything. Or at least you should add the caveat that middle class Americans need to do some cutting back on their waste also.

Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2021-08-04 13:14:57)

https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

You can blame the rich for a lot more than that probably. De facto celebrity status, influence, power to bend the ear of policymakers. Massive companies under their belt telling the middle class that they needed all that stuff, that they should be straining their own finances to emulate the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

At the helm so to speak.
uziq
Member
+492|3412
i don't think you can blame the rich for everything, but they are palpable proof that society isn't working. i agree with the basic line that 'every billionaire is a policy failure'. wealth is created in large part by workers, or in advanced economies by specialists. labour is integral to wealth creation, in any case. a billionaire who makes $100,000+ a day has become completely untethered from reality and the entire mechanism of wealth creation.

the rich have become exceedingly good at gaming the global capitalist system. they use their resources to evade tax and to funnel wealth into private and labyrinthine avenues. all of that money could have a social and collective 'use', even in the sense of just being circulated in a local/national economy by average middle-class workers spending it. instead, capitalism directs wealth upwards, where it sits in fancy foreign bank accounts and occasionally is used to construct and float immensely wasteful (and environmentally destructive) super-yachts, etc, etc.

the super-rich are easy targets but they really represent everything that is wrong in the current model. your average working stiff pays all of their taxes and dues (is compelled to do so by law), whilst the upper echelon exists in a different stratosphere where none of the same rules apply to them. and we call this 'democracy'?
uziq
Member
+492|3412
i also love the meme that states that bezos/musk/branson et al are all agog and amazed at their ability to take 'us' into space, in 2021, and use that as specious justification for their immense private wealth. the 'efficacy' of business and the market! taking humans into low-altitude orbit, at immense expense, 50 years after several states did it via public means. wowsers! we should keep these billionaires around! move over carnegie, rockefeller and stanford!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I didn't say that.

I don't think centralizing poor people into ghetto apartments will help. I also don't think "expanding housing out into the bush" (because "other-house-expensive") will help to create an environment for affordable housing either. That'll create other problems too such as the extra pollution and road burden I mentioned.

Are there no other ways..
Well you don't have an answer.

There are plenty of people who you could give a mansion and a million dollars, or a fully functioning farm. Six months later they'd still be starving and broke.

Inner city tenements or out of city tenements are the best and cheapest options at this point.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Apart from areas where droughts are an issue, we probably have enough land and resources for our population plus some.
Depends what you mean by 'our' population.

If you mean Americans then about one earth will do, but everyone else needs to starve. Right now the Amazon is being raised so Americans can stuff four times as many steaks and cheeseburgers as they need instead of only twice as many.
Why settle for gross overconsumption when you can achieve obscene overconsumption?
We've reached the point where the mass of living farm animals farmed for food now exceeds that of humans and all wild animals combined. Thats nuts and its going to fuck us.

If you mean all of us then with continued burning of fossil fuels to farm and produce fertiliser and pesticides then right now we can just about feed the global population - for now until global warming really kicks in.
I'll make a guess and say stopping use of fossil fuels and global warming combined will mean half the current population needs to starve to death.
Meanwhile America won't tolerate a cut to its gross overconsumption and booming population standard of living, China won't accept less than equality with America.

The next 50-100 years are going to be a blast.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

What are you even on about, in either of those posts. I was replying to mac who said to cut off immigration and build more houses. Obviously agricultural efficiency, power supply, and fuel consumption are things that need to be addressed sooner than later. Paraphrasing what I said before about a flaw to moving part of a city population out into the sticks to address expensive urban housing/rent: without additional infrastructure, and an efficient way to shuttle people in and out to work, it's just more polluting cars on the road stuck in rush hour traffic jams.

I've made plenty of mention of wasteful lifestyles, don't @ me. In the tech thread I criticized the stupid anti-computer regulation. It barely scratches the surface, while larger entities proudly flaunt their energy waste. Do you think I could order a $3000 gaming rig in California to play Minecraft if I tell the government there that I'm offsetting carbon in a two-line blurb in the obligatory eco-smugging on my website? Stock photo of someone smiling vaguely into the distance next to clipart of a leaf. Or do I need to get a massively air-conditioned retail warehouse with 30 meters of big screen TVs on display for that kind of gravitas.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
Listened to a left wing podcast today. They were discussing the eviction moratorium and such. (Funny that my phone recommends the word moratorium after I type eviction. I don't think I have ever wrote those two words together on my phone.)

The podcast made several points that I don't hear often outside of "Social Justice Twitter".

1. The small landlords who rely on rental income to pay for their second or third home probably shouldn't in fact own a second or third home. Homes aren't investment instruments and even if they were, the government has no special obligation to protect specific investment instruments. And many small landlords are just as vicious and cruel as large property investment firms. The focus on the "poor small landlords" is bizarre and tied up in culture war.

2. Even if homes are in fact investment instruments, sometimes investments fail or go bad for any number of reasons outside of the control of owners. The government again doesn't have an obligation to protect a specific class of investments and small landlords should realize that their investment wasn't a guaranteed sure thing. There are many examples of the public good overriding the interest of specific classes of investors in this country. The eviction moratorium is just another case in a history stretching back to Theodore Roosevelt.

Thoughts?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

Obligatory "many dogs are vicious and violent. We should ban dogs." I think just doing away with renting could be more than a little problematic, with precedential impact on other rental services.

Rental homes can be a valuable thing for people who would rather not live in an apartment complex, but don't want to commit to buying a house in an area. Rent-to-own should perhaps be a more accessible thing, with streamlined pathways for long term renters of a property and incentives for the rentiers.

Certainly protections should be balanced out, but I don't really see American politics realistically declaring war on the four-houses-and-a-hotel pattern class anytime soon.

Should we do anything about predatory mortgage lending? Also make it easier for people to buy their first homes, or even move into new homes?
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

Obviously if houses were as comparatively cheap as they were once upon a time, maybe we wouldn't need rentals.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
I am not advocating banning rentals. (???)

I do support the bailouts rent relief programs for landlords that was passed. I am just frustrated with people clogging my group timelines complaining about "nobody is working , nobody is paying their rent." You know all of that is going to turn into energy to cut social programs completely unrelated to the eviction mortarium. And all of that negative energy was created in defense of checks notes the rights of boomers to own 2 homes they can barely maintain in the best of times? The least needy group of people in the world want to overthrow their state and local governments for that?

Now for an actual discussion about how to fix the situation...

Newbie wrote:

Rent-to-own should perhaps be a more accessible thing, with streamlined pathways for long term renters of a property and incentives for the rentiers.
I do like this concept but in practice it would be something almost only offered by big banks and investment groups backed with generous federal aid. MoM aNd PoP boomer landlords would still dearly hold onto the rental units they own and many communities would still stagnate. The whole idea of "giving corporations money to build homes they then use to rope people into predatory rent-to-own schemes" does sounds very American. I can see it happening. And I guess it would be progress if they were adding units.

The solution I hope for is for the government to just build more NYC style housing projects.
https://rew-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/rentregulated.jpg
https://assets.dnainfo.com/photo/2017/2/1485987940-289942/extralarge.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Qbridgenycha.JPG
The NIMBYs would scream of course if we just starting dotting landscape with these things but according to something I read we are at a 5 million unit defict. You can stick a few hundred people into one of these and be good to go. Maybe if we want to get fancy, we can create mixed use buildings and lease the lower parts to 7/11 and other corporations to recoup the cost.
https://irei.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/pg30-1.jpg

Newbie wrote:

Those NYC housing projects are notorious for crime and violence.
Yeah but that isn't the building's fault. We stick college kids into smaller more cramped spaces just fine.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

I didn't say you were advocating banning rentals. (???)

Exploring how bad neighborhoods got bad why tenements were bad (m'kay) is a lengthy topic, and some of it does actually connect to the buildings themselves. But yeah, let's just build some "first class" slums with one bathroom per 20 families.

Nothing screams "actual discussion" like:
MoM aNd PoP boomer landlords
Good start.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
Please further explain how you would fix the crisis. I understand you mentioned considering buying a home so I suspect you have strong opinions.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

People tend to separate the ridiculously wealthy landlords from the whole mom & pop stuff in discussions because a couple past retirement age living off the meager rentals from a couple of properties (while still paying them off) are indeed on a different wavelength than the ridiculously wealthy. Overgeneralization is very typically on the reddit/imgur/whatever level where people inevitably roll out the guillotine memes.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Please further explain how you would fix the crisis. I understand you mentioned considering buying a home so I suspect you have strong opinions.
I wasn't offering A Solution because I don't know exactly everything it would entail, and it would differ from place to place. But building a bunch of cheapo hives or moving everyone out into the sticks so that they can commute into the city aren't Good Solutions.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Obviously if houses were as comparatively cheap as they were once upon a time, maybe we wouldn't need rentals.
Pretty well everyone needs to go through a period of rental early in their careers, as they go through probationary periods in their jobs, as they move around for career progress, and as they build up a mortgage deposit. People aren't going to just buy a home on day one.

The eviction moratorium was fairly stupid in a supposedly free market. If the govt thinks people with no income should have accommodation the govt should pay a rent subsidy, not expect the private sector to do so.

If there is a wave of evictions then landlords will either have to reduce their rent until its affordable in the market or sell their property and the new buyer can figure it out, thats how the market works.
They'll also probably have to give up on the idea that rental will more than cover the mortgage cost and deliver them a house for nothing, bad luck.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I wasn't offering A Solution because I don't know exactly everything it would entail, and it would differ from place to place. But building a bunch of cheapo hives or moving everyone out into the sticks so that they can commute into the city aren't Good Solutions.
Then you've got nothing.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

Dilbert_X wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I wasn't offering A Solution because I don't know exactly everything it would entail, and it would differ from place to place. But building a bunch of cheapo hives or moving everyone out into the sticks so that they can commute into the city aren't Good Solutions.
Then you've got nothing.
ThEn YoU'Ve GoT NoThInG.

"Is the destination this left or the one after that?"
"I don't know, but could we please get out from under this tanker trailer?"
"Oh you're no help."
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6732|PNW

Dilbert_X wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Obviously if houses were as comparatively cheap as they were once upon a time, maybe we wouldn't need rentals.
Pretty well everyone needs to go through a period of rental early in their careers, as they go through probationary periods in their jobs, as they move around for career progress, and as they build up a mortgage deposit. People aren't going to just buy a home on day one.

The eviction moratorium was fairly stupid in a supposedly free market. If the govt thinks people with no income should have accommodation the govt should pay a rent subsidy, not expect the private sector to do so.

If there is a wave of evictions then landlords will either have to reduce their rent until its affordable in the market or sell their property and the new buyer can figure it out, thats how the market works.
They'll also probably have to give up on the idea that rental will more than cover the mortgage cost and deliver them a house for nothing, bad luck.
Arguably more necessary now, sadly. Median and inflation-adjusted home pricing over a 70 year period: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/

Fold into wage stagnation. Can you blame people for being mad?

I agree that the government here should have done more to help people who were hurting the most from a COVID economy. But why are we sitting here arguing about which barely-made-it and just-getting-there groups need to be screwed over by the most? Which prominent wealth bracket raked it in hand-over-fist, exactly. I get it though, easier to punch down while billionaires traipse around in space rockets.

I'm not convinced that basic stuff like food, shelter, and medicine should hinge on something as volatile as ThE MaRkEt.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
If you'd paid attention, I said the govt should provide rent subsidy if it thinks thats the right thing.
If poor mom and pop investors, who were just trying to make a packet of money for themselves, don't make as much as they thought they were going to bad luck.

You live in America, food, shelter and medicine are absolutely controlled by the market, if you don't like it set up a meth lab.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!

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