67 replies to this topic

[arjan]

I don't think so. As a society it is an absolute waste of resources. I propose to use all money we use for rent (and mortgages for that matter) and instead spend it on healthcare, education, clean technology and clean energy.

[Russell H]

A house is a possession. You have to either buy it or pay the owner for the right to use it.

You might as well say that we shouldn't have to pay for clothes or household goods.

[Ogul]

/sigh. The money doesn't vanish into thin air, it all eventually goes into those things you mentioned. I think real estate can get overblown, but it does serve a purpose. It allows people to positively value things that are important to them, like location, lighting, size, amenities, etc. If you don't mind a run down, tiny apartment that is miles away from anything, then you can get that fairly cheap. If you want a huge, high-tech, down town condo, you need to pay a lot more for that.

If we had, as you suggest, a socialized housing system, then how would that work? Everyone lives in drab, identical block housing? Or who gets mansions and who gets one-room apartments is determined entirely by random lottery? It wouldn't make any sense.

I think there's a place for socialized systems, but they are in areas that have less to do with choices and personal preferences, and more to do with basic necessities. Now I do think that there should be a free option for housing, I mean I think that it's criminal that we have all of these foreclosed homes all over the country sitting vacant, and yet hundreds of thousands of homeless people, or people that live in an apartment that could benefit from, and pay into a home, just not at the inflated rates being demanded at the moment. I think it would be fair to offer the option of free housing to all, but very bare-bones facilities, and most people that could afford to move elsewhere would likely wish to do so.

[David Meadows]

I don't think so. As a society it is an absolute waste of resources. I propose to use all money we use for rent (and mortgages for that matter) and instead spend it on healthcare, education, clean technology and clean energy.

Is it that time of the month again?

[Sabrina Peyton]

A house is a possession. You have to either buy it or pay the owner for the right to use it.

You might as well say that we shouldn't have to pay for clothes or household goods.

So we can steal stuff then?

[Russell H]

A house is a possession. You have to either buy it or pay the owner for the right to use it.

You might as well say that we shouldn't have to pay for clothes or household goods.

So we can steal stuff then?

I meant that saying we shouldn't have to pay rent or mortgages is as silly as saying we shouldn't have to pay for clothes or household goods.

[craggy]

I mostly pay rent so that I don't get kicked out my flat.

[Robert B]

I thought everyone here lived in their parents' basements? Who here pays rent?

[Russell H]

Not me. Mortgaged since 2001.

[garjones]

I am a landlord so people pay me rent.

[Ricardo_C]

I am a landlord so people pay me rent.

Don't rent to Arjan!

I pay taxes because they buy me civilization. I pay rent because it buys me independence. If I didn't pay rent, I'd have to live in my in-laws' basement. In a government-subsidized system, not paying rent means someone else tells me where I can and cannot live.

[Jim Ohara]

I don't think so. As a society it is an absolute waste of resources. I propose to use all money we use for rent (and mortgages for that matter) and instead spend it on healthcare, education, clean technology and clean energy.

Where do you think the rent money goes?

[Ogul]

Where do you think the rent money goes?

Come on Jim, you know as well as anyone that every landlord (or group of landlords,) has some form of sealed enclosure in which to store the accumulated rent money, such that it may be swam within, as depicted by Scrooge McDuck in the late Twentieth Century docudrama "Duck Tales".

[craggy]

we should pay rent so people might solve a mystery, or rewrite history.
woo-ooh-ooh

[Arjan Dirkse]

I pay rent to the social housing corporation, who paid money in the first place to build all those houses. And who need the money to keep the cycle going; building new apartments for new people who need a place to live. If I wouldn't pay the rent then the housing corporation could never have built all those houses.

[Henry Blanco]

I thought everyone here lived in their parents' basements? Who here pays rent?

Wrong forum.

[Johnny Henning]

I often wonder - I mean look at our physical behavior and what we do every day. Go to work, or go to school, get a job, get a house, have kids, retire, pick up groceries, read books and see movies.

Then I think, if you removed money from all this activity, it wouldn't necessarily change anything. I mean, just from a physical perspective - a perspective based on the actual requirements for any action to take place - money doesn't do anything. You don't need money to physically put gas in your car. You don't need money to physically build anything or grow any food or enter any establishment. The money has no physical purpose.

So, then I have to ask myself, what purpose does money serve and what should it serve? I believe the purpose should be to promote merit in social transactions. To encourage ethical and beneficial behavior in a society by rewarding healthy transactions.

However, in fact, as we all know, it often promotes exactly the opposite. It seems much more designed for social control - imposing a sort of implicit serfdom on all social transactions, aims and behavior for those who require it.

[Arjan Dirkse]

I often wonder - I mean look at our physical behavior and what we do every day. Go to work, or go to school, get a job, get a house, have kids, retire, pick up groceries, read books and see movies.

Then I think, if you removed money from all this activity, it wouldn't necessarily change anything. I mean, just from a physical perspective - a perspective based on the actual requirements for any action to take place - money doesn't do anything. You don't need money to physically put gas in your car. You don't need money to physically build anything or grow any food or enter any establishment. The money has no physical purpose.

So, then I have to ask myself, what purpose does money serve and what should it serve? I believe the purpose should be to promote merit in social transactions. To encourage ethical and beneficial behavior in a society by rewarding healthy transactions.

However, in fact, as we all know, it often promotes exactly the opposite. It seems much more designed for social control - imposing a sort of implicit serfdom on all social transactions, aims and behavior for those who require it.

It's partly a distribution tool. If we weren't limited by money in getting our groceries, the first person who got to the bakery would buy all their bread and there would be none left for the other customers.

[Johnny Henning]

How would he buy it? There's no money remember? So why would the baker give him all the bread when he knows he'll have other people coming in that day? And bakers who don't provide to the most people would just find themselves stuck with a lot of bread... and so on - you can push the analogy too far because, obviously, a moneyless society is hard to comprehend and would not operate the way ours does. It could be better or worse.

See my point? Why would the first person in want all the bread when he couldn't sell it? With no money, there is no greed for money.

But that's not my point. Obviously, the people who use money don't see it as a distribution tool. In fact, I don't think many of us spend much time wondering or really assessing the value of money and what it is for. We just use it without thinking too much about it even though it is the central fulcrum driving almost all of our social behavior and determining our physical situations.

[garjones]

I think a more realistic question comes from Arjan Dirkse's post (not being formal, there are two Arjan's here).

Is the better model the social housing and rental system used in a lot of mainland Europe. They didn't get the property market hit the likes of the USA and Ireland did, it really is more directly related to supply and demand.

The UK has a different issue, and why prices didn't collapse to the same extent, they don't build enough houses. The average house price in the UK is £228,000, the average salary if £25,000. When I first started working with a bank the rule of thumb was a mortgage limit was 3.5 times your salary, that means the average price should be £87,000.

I bought in 2001 before the last big speculatory rise and got a small flat for £43,000 which at the time was at the limits of my borrowing ability. I've now paid it off fourteen years early and the value has more that doubled so it isn't my personal gripe. My brother who is two years older than me and lives in London held off, he still rents at 41 years of age and despite earning a decent salary, saving and working hard can't see any way he can enter a market with an average cost of £406,000.