San Jose: New law would make city first to allow “tiny homes” for homeless

What then?

Government creates property rights, which is what Land really is about, and there appears to be a limited supply to go around. Thereby only citizens of a country who pay taxes should have the right to own Land. Does this make sense?

> There's nothing wrong with downsizing, but just call it what it is: a mobile home or a trailer.

You can call it whatever you like. There is a certain amount of class warfare between Tiny Housers and people living in RV parks which I won't try to justify.

> Companies have been engineering mobile homes for decades to be highly efficient, long lasting, and fuel efficient for towing.

This is not true at all.

1. It is not legal to live in trailers.

2. Most mobile phones are not capable of being 4 season dwellings because they don't meet air tightness and insulation levels of traditional houses.

3. Mobile homes were originally not supposed to be for permanent trailer parks. RV living is a hack like THs are. I think it started after the Great Depression, which would be analogous to the Great Stagnation we're in that produced the popularity of Tiny Houses.

4. The most important thing is the use case for a TH is totally different to an RV or mobile home. A TH is supposed to be lived in full time and quite rarely traveled around with. 90% of tiny housers would only move their house once a year and many of them never will. The people who have them light enough for frequent travel are the exceptions.

5. A properly constructed Tiny House will last > 60 years like a traditional house. RVs don't have that longevity.

> Slapping a bunch of heavy wooden shingles on one and calling it a "tiny home" is just feel-good hipster nonsense.

Traditional housing has identical materials and procedures to Tiny Houses. I suppose a house is just a bunch of material slapped together as well.

I think if you stepped inside a well built and designed Tiny House, your skepticism would fade away. They really are different to mobile homes. The sills are thicker, the furnishings are more homely, the walls aren't plastic. There are some really nice mobile homes out there but they just don't have the same use case.

One negative thing I shall say about Tiny Housers is that some of them think they 'chose' this lifestyle being they're superior beings. A minimalist lifestyle is fine but it is primarily about economics.

Similar arguments were made against dismantling the institution of slavery, and they were just as incoherent at addressing the root moral evil.

Your name sounds Irish actually. Have you ever lived in an areas with a large foreign population? Do you have any experience of those cultures apart from the television and holidaying.

You have to understand this is nothing to do with individuals. This is about groups and they don't behave like individuals somehow.

I've worked with a chap from the Congo, model citizen. Also a South African with a temper who couldn't work to save his life. I've worked with a guy from Pakistan and it was a car wreck because his views on women could only be described as vile, I literally saw him watching a woman being stoned to death for adultery and he thought it was hilarious. You don't want to live next door to somebody like that with your family.

There are good people everywhere. This is defined by me as whether those people are like us. It is just that you have to discriminate when people are doing evil things, sometimes in prodigious quantity. There's no two ways about it. Values really are that different in different places. There are parts of our world in which the rape of children and slavery are not illegal because they are so common and even when they are made illegal the practices continue. There are tribes that literally practice human sacrifice and cannibalism, still, in this world. These are their cultural values!

That means borders, and if you don't allow borders on the outside of a country then they develop themselves on the inside of a country. Look at the USA, they have gated communities because there exist predominately minority group areas with high crime rates.

A border is basically a filter for people. If you are saying this is immoral you need to explain why castle walls and border patrols are a recurrent feature of humankind since forever. The borders are literally in the landscape around us in Europe. This is something that goes way deep and it won't be shifted by waving your hands philosophically.

I read a book last year I think you would enjoy. The Culture of Make Believe by Derek Jensen. If you've got time I highly recommend it.