Why would anyone pay property tax if property rights stop being enforced? Unless you are actually just giving only the government property rights, allowing the writing and enforcement of evictions, which just makes the government the sole owner of all land the thus the new landlord. Even then, why pay tax when I can just go squat in anyone’s house or building while they aren’t home and it comes down to whoever is stronger getting to stay. Also no point paying tax if someone can just come take it from me. Unless you mean the police actually will enforce property rights for some people but just not others, which just means only those who can afford to employ the police have secure property while the poors just get to duke it out. Unless what you are actually saying is only don’t enforce property rights on secondary building ownership, and then only if that secondary building is not owned by a business that is not providing residential living space. Or are we also breaking up all multi-locatiln businesses the same way?
If everyone risks losing their home every time they leave for work or to get groceries, and only the strongest get to keep the best shelters, the social compact is broken and forming warring territorial clans and insular communities is the end result. Property rights are kind of a keystone for a functional society operating at a size larger than a rural village. It would cause less damage to just make owning more than a single family dwelling illegal, and force everyone to acquire a mortgage to wherever they currently live. This may partially lock your population to wherever they happen to live without finding someone to swap similarly valued dwelling units wherever you want to move to, but there are ways to lessen that impact. Alternatively, the government just seizes all property and doles it out according to whatever the government’s desires are for an area.
Not to be pedantic, but you did write just the broader enforcement of property rights and not private property rights, and I approached it from that broader perspective. Under your clarification, your house does not cease to be your personal property when you leave it for work, but only if the government uses their monopoly of violence to enforce it. And yes, it was a stretch of rhetoric, but not made dishonestly.
The concern is that under this ideal scenario, what happens if you leave you house for a longer term? How does this take temporary moving into account? Examples: I get temporarily transferred for a year to a new city by my job and I fully intend to return to my home after this assignment. Rental homes/apartments aren’t a thing, so I must either buy a dwelling there for a year, or stay in a hotel for a year. If I buy a dwelling, I now own two properties as long as I can afford to pay both mortgages. More likely, I am forced to sell my long term home because I cannot rent it out for that year I am gone. If I do keep it, can I own two separate pieces of personal property or does one become private property because it is not in habitation? I have deprived someone of buying one of them by owning both, and ownership of empty dwellings is usually complained about just as much as renting them. Will my personal property rights be enforced on my vacant home for that year? Should the government allow someone to move in and use my house for that year without my permission or compensation, and only resume enforcing my rights when I move back in? Am I forced to sell and hope that I can rebuy my home when I return? A similar dwelling in an adjacent area may not factor against the sentimental value of a family or generational home. Are any of these parts different if I become temporarily disabled and move in to another person’s home for care. What about a year in the hospital or rehabilitation facility? I don’t think any of these concerns are all that absurd, even if they would affect a small percentage of the population.
You were also seemingly arguing that allowing non-residential private property rights would/should still be enforced so that the capitalist class gets to keep commercial property, unless you are classifying personal, private, and capital property as three distinct categories. Since generally the argument is that private residential property is being used as a rung of capital, I was viewing these as similar enough to be lumped together. It does seem that maybe you were hinting at this being a first step, keep the capital class from revolting while we take out the rentier class, and then move on the remaining private property in swallowable chunks as power is consolidated, which is another reason to view it at a somewhat extreme angle.
First, your username finally clicked and I feel slow for missing it for so long. I actually love it.
Nextly, to also be fair, the existence of a difference between private and personal property isn’t widely known, and China’s implementations of these concepts are even less well known unless someone has been more than toes deep into communist/socialist discussion. Even a lot of “communist” posters don’t have a good grasp on it and can’t really articulate the original intent behind “abolish private property”.
I would like to point out that there are currently enough homes in the US for everyone, and far more vacant homes than our entire homeless population right now. We have major density problems and collusery artificial scarcity that has long crossed over into being illegal and immoral, so we need to be building homes on the scale we did in the post war period. Houses should be much further down the commodity end of the commodity/investment scale, but until we reach a true post scarcity environment (Star Trek levels of post scarcity), I don’t foresee full decommoditization of housing working sustainably.
Lastly, while the communist state really isn’t coming for your toothbrush, obstensively communist countries have overshot going after the landlords and replaced most residential personal property with government landlords. Soviet khrushchevka blocks are a trope for a reason, even if overused.
And thank you for the actual engagement and conversation on this, I appreciate your insights.
I want limited government focused only on common defense, common good, and keeping the markets free. I feel this is best accomplished through a simple and loophole free tax codes that ensures the wealthy pay their fair share and that all wealth levels are engaged with skin in the game. I believe that this should include a land tax, and that a consumption/sales tax works better than income or wealth tax. These taxes should fund a UBI for all and centralized healthcare, replacing the bureaucratic tangle of our various social safety nets and welfare programs. All monopolies, duopolies, and oligarchies need to be crushed to keep markets free, because the invisible hand needs a paired visible hand to prevent regulatory capture by capital. Drugs should be decriminalized, 2nd amendment rights should be respected, reproductive control should be respected, the government has no business in who married who, religion should be kept to one’s self, and environmental regulation should just ensure clean water, clean air, and long term watershed protection. The market should drive pretty much everything else, with the understanding that unlimited growth is as bullshit as assuming a frictionless sphere in physics. All of these “socialist” programs actually result in functional limited government and maximum individual freedom. It’s not a communist utopia, but I consider it functional Utilitarian Georgist Libertarianism.
Your European bias is due to size and scale differences. In the post war period, America took the idea of the German Autobahn and ran with it in spades. The US has always been absolutely massive, and the Interstate Highway project allowed expansion on that same scale. It is not uncommon for people to live and hour or more away from work, and/or outside of “town”. This applies to both rural towns and city suburbs. Add to this the lack of mass transit, and it means that our car culture developed as an extension of the person, and of the home. The phrase “I live in/out of my car” is common here, and I’m talking about people that have an actual place to live. Just think in terms of spending 2-4 hours in your car each day, and it doesn’t sound so weird.
The same thing happens in Europe and Asia where there is long distance mass transit, the only difference is where it takes place. If you or your whole family are going to be on a train for 2 hours (or more), no one is going to blink an eye at taking a snack or meal on the train. They even serve meals. Cars don’t have a snack trolly or meal service, so the drive through and drive in became our version.
The old adage “a hundred years is old in the US, and 100 miles is a long distance in Europe” is the most appropriate lens to look at it.
Those are all very complicated questions. The Israelis being closer to the afore mentioned American and Australian natives than their European settlers, having historical roots in the Levant since well into the BC’s being one of them. Further complicated by the fact that Palestine lost that land after going to war to reject the two state system, multiple times. The only acceptable option according to Palestinian governments (leaving intentions of the civilians out of it for the obvious reasons that their individual preferences can’t be known) up until recently was the complete destruction of Israel, and no country is going to just roll over and cease to exist because their neighbors want them to.
This is not to justify a might makes right viewpoint, or to give a pass for war crimes on either side. The years of heavy handed treatment definitely exacerbates this. I honestly don’t know of any country that would handle the situation better in the same circumstances, so it’s hard to find a good path forward. The closest situation I can think of is Britain and Ireland, and I don’t think there would be a Repulic of Ireland if their only stated objective had the complete annihilation of the British from the isles instead of just independence of the island.
Every square inch of land on earth has “changed hands” so to speak, multiple times by multiple peoples, mostly non-peacfully. How far back does a “land back movement” plan to go? The only fair option would be to DNA test bones from before the last glacial maximum and find descendents with the highest genome similarly and reshuffle all existing populations back based on their earliest ancestors. Or move all humans back to Africa and leave the rest of the world to the native wildlife. Or is it just the US and Canada because they were the most recent? Will we include Mexico and make them give the country back to the Aztec, or do they get a pass because Spain isn’t considered as bad as those pesky Brits? Do we try and find populations of tribes conquered and replaced by the Aztec?
Do we have the authority to freeze all national borders as they are right now in perpetuity to preserve national and racial identities? Are you in favor of the world going to war against Russia to prevent colonial genocide against Ukraine? What do we do with the current peoples existing on their lands now? Do we break every country on earth up into ethnic tribal lands, or City-States? European colonialism of Africa and the Americas was broadly terrible at the time with many lasting issues, but it’s not exactly unique in human history, so I am honestly curious what the end goals look like.
Not sure where you get genocide denial out of what amounts to “humans have been genociding each other since the Homo genus common ancestor split off”. I am asking if anyone actually expects any country on earth to decide that decades, or more likely centuries, in their past they conquered the land they now claim from another people group and now we feel bad about what our ancestors did so we are giving the country back to the most direct descendants of that group.
Are there actual expectations that the US is actually going to give everything or anything east of the Mississippi back to the native tribes, and/or Texas back to Mexico? Do we expect Canada to give BC back to their indigenous tribes? Obviously current relations with both groups need to be fixed because there are ongoing issues, nor should we celebrate the atrocities that happened during any of the colonial movements.
The Americas are also different from the colonialization of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East because the colonists moved there and stayed there instead of setting up exploitation of resources to send back, thus allowing “decolonizing” of those places to happen. And then decolonizing caused further problems by the colonizers drawing borders on their way out. This isn’t to advocate that they stayed colonies, nor do I think these places would have peacefully self-assembled into their own countries if Europe had just dropped everything and left. Human nature would have still had different land and resource wars happen as the native populations filled back in the power gaps.
Genocide is still as bad now as it was then, and even less acceptable because of our modern and “enlightened” morals. This applies to all ongoing genocides and ethnic cleansing attempts. I’m saying the cat is out of the bag on this though, and no government realistically fears any land back movement causing them to support any other country’s existence.
Ah, yes, I understand. I did sadly expect there to be nothing articulable backing up this nebulous land back idea beyond apparently a general “US (or maybe just people of European descent in general) bad, and so we must somehow undo centuries of colonization by just giving some undefined land back to undefined people, which is totally possible because sovereign countries voluntarily give up their territory all the time”. I thank you for the enlightening discourse on this topic.
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'Motormat' drive-in restaurant, Los Angeles, 1949 (lemmy.world)
Free Palestine (lemmy.ml)
Hmmmm (lemmy.ml)