people really out here thinking houses maintain themselveshttps://twitter.com/Alysonesque/status/1005989848577073152 …
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are rents artificially high, relative to the condition of housing, in the USA? I think so, altho it varies from unit to unit, but there are a ton of reasons for this (eg land use regulation) which don't have anything to do with the desires of landlords
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A lot of the people in politics pushing to maintain or even further tighten land use regulation are in fact landlords, so I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with the desires of landlords.
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Landlords directly profit from housing scarcity so it’s no surprise they want to make it harder for other people to break their monopolies
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firetrucks and streetlamps also cost $ to maintain, but we’ve decided that those are important enough to warrant public funding. Why should housing be any different?
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A tiny fraction of inhabited streets actually have streetlamps; emergency services are a situation where we rarely actually need them, but need them to be in excellent working order when we DO need them. I argue medical care falls into same category--but not housing or food...
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...because housing and food we need *all the time,* and we can handle a wide range in quality, price, and selection, according to our taste and means. For people who struggle with these "all the time" expenses, we DO allocate public funding--but we could do a better job of it.
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This isn’t really the important question. What matters is whether or not we should *aspire* to providing these things, or if we want our society to be one in which it’s possible to be homeless or to starve.
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every society *starts* as one in which it's possible to be homeless or starve and so far I'm not aware of many which have entirely escaped that situation--maybe they just didn't aspire hard enough though
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That’s not quite what I’m talking about. I apologize if this is derailing the convo, but again, the fact that a problem hasn’t been solved yet isn’t really relevant to whether or not you want to do it.
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right--but the fact that people really want to solve a problem isn't always relevant to the problem actually being soluble
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...and where intractable problems are concerned, it can get really frustrating to keep hearing "maybe you just don't want the solution enough"
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I don't think it's unreasonably utopian to imagine major productivity improvements in construction, maintenance and utility work, which could eventually make basic housing (if you're not too picky about the location) too cheap to meter.
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There are still places where people have to work hard every day to get drinking water, but in most of developed world it's effectively free. Not because of some enormous redistribution or transformation of society, just because we're so rich & have such efficient infrastructure.
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It turns out this doesn't even preclude companies that own water infrastructure being profit-motivated and making money.
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Careful. This is a tough reality for the snowflake socialist millennials.
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