It’s frustrating how there’s no way to say “anything people need should be provided free or at-cost” without sounding like a loony radical, but it’s true.
If businesses could figure out how to make you pay for the air you breathe, it would come in a variety of qualities and flavours, and I would have been banned from r/air long ago.
The profit incentive can barely even be trusted with stuff we don’t need. Never let necessities turn a profit.
I’m aware that I’m essentially calling for a global restructuring of society when I say this, and I’m used to the fact that it’s not likely to occur.
Glancing at the first numbers to come up in searches, it seems like there are about 3 Aussies for each residential dwelling currently in existence. It seems like there’s already about enough to share, if these weren’t unequally allocated. Just saying!
Sidebar - I wish others wouldn’t downvote people I’m just trying to have a normal conversation with. Makes everything feel needlessly strained and rude. It always feels like people are crowding around trying to make simple disagreements into fights, doesn’t it?
Other than getting private equity out of housing (easy answers first, shadow banks shouldn’t own houses) it seems like we should be able to come up with a way to create a lot more highly basic housing at high speed and minimal cost, even if the housing was a bit brutalist it’d have a cooling effect on the cost of mid-range homes.
Of course, at some point we butt up against the fact that when your economic system treats real estate as an investment, you can’t also undermine that subtle class system without damaging your economy. At some point the way we do things just depends on a maximum sustainable amount of suffering to keep the markets ticking along.
I know a guy who lives in a condo like that in Seattle, apparently the building is managed as a co-op. I think it’s a model that has promise in urban settings or in more remote work zones, an idea I really like by the way. As soon as remote work started to become feasible at scale I started asking myself when you’d start to see a flight from cities.
I think a lot of people are really set in the mindset of wanting to live where stuff happens, but I could see a case for housing developments in cheaper areas geared more towards young parents - build what they need and maybe a train into town, and there’s no reason it couldn’t work. People still want to have kids, but it has to be made more economically realistic.
Combine that with tiny houses, wind and solar development, all mixed in with allotments, and I think you could make a case for that as a development model that works. It’d be really spread out, but it’s hardly as if a place like Australia lacks room. Run trains and trams through it, and you’d hardly need that many roads even.
It’s frustrating how there’s no way to say “anything people need should be provided free or at-cost” without sounding like a loony radical, but it’s true.
If businesses could figure out how to make you pay for the air you breathe, it would come in a variety of qualities and flavours, and I would have been banned from r/air long ago.
The profit incentive can barely even be trusted with stuff we don’t need. Never let necessities turn a profit.
You have been banned from c/Conservative.
I just explained why everyone can’t have a free house though.
I’m aware that I’m essentially calling for a global restructuring of society when I say this, and I’m used to the fact that it’s not likely to occur.
Glancing at the first numbers to come up in searches, it seems like there are about 3 Aussies for each residential dwelling currently in existence. It seems like there’s already about enough to share, if these weren’t unequally allocated. Just saying!
This might shock you but some people dont want to share a house.
The statistic you’re looking for is how many vacant houses there are. Spoiler: there’s not enough.
If there were, prices wouldn’t be what they are. Just saying!
Sidebar - I wish others wouldn’t downvote people I’m just trying to have a normal conversation with. Makes everything feel needlessly strained and rude. It always feels like people are crowding around trying to make simple disagreements into fights, doesn’t it?
Other than getting private equity out of housing (easy answers first, shadow banks shouldn’t own houses) it seems like we should be able to come up with a way to create a lot more highly basic housing at high speed and minimal cost, even if the housing was a bit brutalist it’d have a cooling effect on the cost of mid-range homes.
Of course, at some point we butt up against the fact that when your economic system treats real estate as an investment, you can’t also undermine that subtle class system without damaging your economy. At some point the way we do things just depends on a maximum sustainable amount of suffering to keep the markets ticking along.
I agree.
Planning policies that promote lower cost housing.
I like the idea of condos which are exclusively owner occupied. Like renting to a tenant for more than 3 months or something is prohibited.
Also developments exclusively for tiny homes.
Also I feel as though, in the era of work-from-home, small country towns where land is as cheap as dirt, should be more desirable.
I think there’s a lot of scope the build out the lower end and take the heat out of the upper end.
I know a guy who lives in a condo like that in Seattle, apparently the building is managed as a co-op. I think it’s a model that has promise in urban settings or in more remote work zones, an idea I really like by the way. As soon as remote work started to become feasible at scale I started asking myself when you’d start to see a flight from cities.
I think a lot of people are really set in the mindset of wanting to live where stuff happens, but I could see a case for housing developments in cheaper areas geared more towards young parents - build what they need and maybe a train into town, and there’s no reason it couldn’t work. People still want to have kids, but it has to be made more economically realistic.
Combine that with tiny houses, wind and solar development, all mixed in with allotments, and I think you could make a case for that as a development model that works. It’d be really spread out, but it’s hardly as if a place like Australia lacks room. Run trains and trams through it, and you’d hardly need that many roads even.
Put a few 20 somethings in a sunny sea side town with free power and cheap home ownership and things will start to happen in that town.