sun 09 sep 2007 18:10:08 — raamgracht
i sound like a commie
thinking more about that what i said earlier ...
to be healthy, a city must have a sufficient supply of affordable rental housing always available.
which means there must be sufficient turnover of the population. people other than students must be allowed and encouraged to come and go. the two go hand in hand: for sufficient availability you need sufficient churn, and for sufficient churn you need availability.
but if there were such a thing, people could not get filthy rich in the real estate business.
in effect this means that as long as "the real estate business" exists as we now know it, cities can never be healthy.
"property" itself is essentially an agreement among the powerful. as evidenced by the fact that the disempowered don't seem take the idea of property so seriously. (but unlike the bankers, they will spend more time in jail for robbing you.)
so let's assume for the sake of argument that there are going to be some laws and some kind of governing body.
let's say there were a law that you are allowed to "own" housing only if you live in it. otherwise it's a rental.
any space you own "before the revolution", but don't live in, must be converted to rental housing owned by the community.
if that were the law, it would kinda put a dent in the number of people trying to get mad rich through housing speculation, which is bad for the city anyway.
then you might not need rent control as it is now.
sheesh. am i becoming a communist?
communism traditionally becomes totalitarianism. but then again, so does property. i hate all kinds of economic and political oppression, including the communist kind. i'm really just trying to think of ways to set people free.
but as i've said elsewhere: none of my suggestions work as long as people keep acting all greedy and predatory like. all my suggestions for improving civilization require that we first start generating better human beings.