Capitalism has you thinking that these are our only options
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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I'd gladly live in one of those apartments in the first picture if it meant that everyone could have a home
If everyone thought like this, everyone would have a home.
And 50 or so people would own all of the rest of the land and do nothing with it because we're too fucking stupid to realize that a system that wants us all to live in 50m² micro apartments is a load of shit, and strung together by a greedy few.
There is enough land for us all to live comfortably, but a fraction of a percent don't want anyone to use most of the land for anything useful so hey let's just give up and take almost-squalor because at least it not squalor!
Fuck both these pictures.
What if we made the commie block apartments 140 m² each?
I don't think: "ah, buildings again. I'd rather live in camps featuring trash scent."
The communist housing blocks are also not super high on my list of "why I don't want to live in a communist dictatorship"
Imagine we could take care of the poor while at the same time not revert to a totalitarian dictatorship. Like if we could do both?
That's complete nonsense though, obviously. We get either to take care of the poor and go full Stalin or not and not. /s
Not sure why or from where this quote comes from. In germany and poland we have many such apartment houses that are very affordable
It comes from America, where capitalist simps preach the virtues of idiots who buy companies and act like it makes them paragons of humanity.
Where living in such apartments would be hell because they'd expect them to be built out of sticks and cardboard, as it is common in the USA. Someone sneezes in the south end on the 2nd floor, the guy on the 12th floor north end goes bless you.
Buildings in Europe are built from proper building materials, concrete, steel, glass, and bricks. Not cardboard and sticks and paper. Hence living in them is actually much nicer than one used to US buildings would expect.
What is this trying to say???
That low income housing is good but people like when homeless people suffer.
Or that people living in block housing is preferable to some living in suburbs and some being homeless.
We could have both you know. Suburbistan for those that like it and apartments for those who like it. And homelessness for no one.
Whats with all the soviet propaganda in lemmy memes?
Housing homeless is Soviet?
No, many countries do it right. But the meme implies this. Top picture is commie blocks, bottom picture is what you see in some western countries that do not get their social policies right. And the whole statement is a straw man as homelessness is not related to capitalism alone. This is typical propaganda.
Hi, person living in one of the richest most capitalist countries (Switzerland). We have such blocks.
So no.
This is kinda like saying we need more farms to solve hunger.
The cost of housing is very detached from supply. For rentals, companies bought up housing and just jacked up the price, because renters are a semi captive client base.
New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.
Even for home buyers, they’re facing a major up hill battle going against existing home owners who have access to the capital of their current homes, and even worse corporate home buyers.
This isn’t to say supply isn’t an issue and we can ignore it, but we need to stop housing from just being an investment vehicle. Otherwise we’re just going to get garbage housing at prices no one can afford.
New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.
The argument I hear against this is that the 36 people who move into the luxury apartments moved from somewhere, and so 36 other apartments become available. The reduced demand for the vacated apartments then drives their prices down.
Of course, housing as a market is super distorted for a bunch of reasons so this effect is muddled. But I think it would be a net negative to fully disregard supply and demand in a market-based economy and preserve 12 affordable units in favor of 36 luxury ones.
Largely agree with all your other points though.
Rich people don't really move into these luxury apartment. They buy it as an investment, use it as a holiday home, etc.
I hate how when there is any picture of Soviet blocks it's always shot in autumn or winter when it's overcast. I live in an ex Soviet country and when these bad boys are maintained they can outperform new apartments, be it in functionality, amenities or price.
I am simply not believing that 50 year old apartment blocks are outperforming new ones by any metric.
I'm glad you're happy and there are plenty of 100+ year old homes in my country that are just fine but they are not outperforming anything.
Even communism aside, this is actually not uncommon. One of the advances we've made in construction is knowing how to save even more money, making the right sacrifices and meeting the minimum bars of code compliance, to maximize our margins.
I don't know how you say this unironically as criticism. That's arguably one of the biggest advantages people claim capitalism has: managing finite resources. It's not a good thing to waste manpower and resources for no real gain.
An apartment complex went up outside my work and it's made of wood. That's against fire safety code but they found some creative work arounds to convince the inspectors it was legal. (And of course the inspections are all toadies who have been put in place to rubber stamp developer plans.) Very efficient until it burns down and kills everyone inside.
So it doesn't actually meet minimum standards?
It meets the law but it sure as hell doesn't meet the safety.
Laws usually follow industry standard safety guidelines.
That’s naïve
for no real gain
What gain? More profits for the ultra rich? A dying planet?
People living in comfortable apartments is no real gain in capitalism because it means less ROI. But it is a huge gain to everyone's quality of life if they can live comfortably.
Market mechanisms are very powerful in optimising resource allocation - but they aren't optimising for maximum quality of life, they're optimising for maximum ROI. Which lands in the pockets of the ultra rich, which then allocate the accumulated capital in only those endeavours providing maximum ROI, and the cycle goes on and on until so much wealth is extracted from society that the middle class collapses and the planet dies - and the ultra rich with them, for they depend upon the plebes to work for them in order to have an ultra rich lifestyle in the first place.
I mean if we were trying to house people we should be aiming for inexpensive and non-wasteful building choices, shouldn't we? When we're handling basic human needs we send boats full of rice and beans, not a bunch of badass chefs.
Why not? Why not let people have nice things?
I mean it's kind of a scarcity thing. Resources aren't infinite. I have no problem with letting people have nice things and would certainly want minimums to be pretty decent, but when you're getting people off the street or something then efficiency means lives saved.
I agree!
Did you know that in the USA more buildings are vacant than there are homeless people? So the amount of housing that needs to be built is exactly zero. It' s not an amount of resources problem, it's an allocation of resources problem.
It is still a resource problem. There's a reason NIMBYs exist. Homeless populations have substance, legal and mental issues. The property is pretty much a write off the moment you hand it over.
This is probably where we'll disagree: I believe that all people living in a humane way is more important than investors' real estate portfolio valuation.
I wasn't even talking about investors or the homeowners you'd plan to confiscate from. I was talking about turning neighborhoods into slums overnight. Pest infestation and drug use.
Again, there are more vacant homes than homeless. It's not taking away people's homes. Homes where people actually live in, I mean. Most real estate investments, the owner hasn't visited once in years.
And you'd be surprised at how much people improve once they have stable housing. Finland has had a "housing first, no conditions" programme for a while now with very impressive results.
Obviously people will initially be afraid of "bad people" coming to their neighbourhood. I understand this. But I believe their feelings of discomfort are less important than the immense suffering of the homeless.
Would you seriously place property valuations as more important than humanity and human dignity?
yes they are, they outperform american's cardboard house
That wasn't the debate, so your input was pointless
still a fact tho
Literally to whom does this apply? Get in touch with reality.
Many people in the USA