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The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

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Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#101

Post by roenxi »

kbutler wrote: post #32
rcpt wrote: post #22

You may not like what he said around WW2 but anyone who recently moved to the Bay Area will love his take on landlords, from 1909: > Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labor and cost of other pe…

Property taxes? At least where I live, land values are assessed annually, and the owner is obligated to pay a percentage of that value. Those tax funds are used for the very improvements mentioned, as well as usage-based utility fees for the services.

I really like property taxes in principle, so I want to expand on the argument for why they are a good idea.

Ignoring the built property, land is an asset that basically doesn't decay with time, can't be physically carried away, provides its own storage and there is always someone who could be using it (in cities). Most of the value isn't in the land either, it is the services, infrastructure and community around the property that create the value.

Almost all other assets decay if you don't use them. That enforces a level of equality in the long term, where effective owners can out-compete ineffective owners, because assets are usually replaced every 20-30 years in a Ship of Theseus style process.

It makes sense to have a 1.25% or thereabouts annual tax on land, so owners essentially have to repurchase it once a generation. We shouldn't allow the system to reward people because their great-grandparent bought property. We should reward them because they are responsible owners of that property, contributing to their community or somesuch to the point they can pay that tax.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#102

Post by tedunangst »

whack wrote: post #93
nkurz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than "for what it's worth", that's an important difference. The full quote puts a very different spin on Churchill's position. The article: "When some British officials objected to his proposal for “the use of gas against natives,” he found their objections “unreasonable.” In fact he argued that poison gas was more humane than outright extermination: “The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life shou…

If the use of gas is so reasonable, one wonders why he only supports using it against "uncivilized tribes".

How did you conclude that?

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#103

Post by dantheman »

landryraccoon wrote: post #70
ColanR wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the benefit of actual living quarters for the tenants? Who besides a landlord is going to rent 4 walls and a roof to someone who needs it? Seems similar to saying that hotel owners 'contribute nothing to the general welfare'.

> What about the benefit of actual living quarters for the tenants? Would you argue that patents and copyright should last infinitely long because the world is richer forever due to the one solitary act of the inventor? Landlords hold a monopoly over the land they own as much as copyright holders own a monopoly on the IP they own. I think it's quite reasonable to ask if that monopoly deserves to be forever. I agree w…

Intellectual property isn't really property -- it's a restriction on what others can do with their property.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#104

Post by sullyj3 »

thereisnospork wrote: post #80
ColanR wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the problem in SF that the wages have gone up hugely for a small subset of the population? If that's the case, then the landlord is just following a standard negotiation tactic [1], since this is their livlihood. [1] https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/dont-leave-mon...

> Isn't the problem in SF that the wages have gone up hugely for a small subset of the population? Wages of the renting population is irrelevant to the 'fair economic price1' of an apartment. The equilibrium/fair cost of a latte doesn't go up because a few millionaires move into a neighborhood, it might go up because of a barista labor-shortage, a coffee bean-tariff, or other supply-side effect. You're not wrong that…

There's no such thing as a "fair price". There's just what people are or aren't willing to pay.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#105

Post by [deleted] »

dantheman wrote: post #103
landryraccoon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the benefit of actual living quarters for the tenants? Would you argue that patents and copyright should last infinitely long because the world is richer forever due to the one solitary act of the inventor? Landlords hold a monopoly over the land they own as much as copyright holders own a monopoly on the IP they own. I think it's quite reasonable to ask if that monopoly deserves to be forever. I agree w…

Intellectual property isn't really property -- it's a restriction on what others can do with their property.

[deleted]

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#106

Post by claudiawerner »

dantheman wrote: post #103
landryraccoon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the benefit of actual living quarters for the tenants? Would you argue that patents and copyright should last infinitely long because the world is richer forever due to the one solitary act of the inventor? Landlords hold a monopoly over the land they own as much as copyright holders own a monopoly on the IP they own. I think it's quite reasonable to ask if that monopoly deserves to be forever. I agree w…

Intellectual property isn't really property -- it's a restriction on what others can do with their property.

By the same argument, land isn't really property, it's a restriction on what others can do with that area of the earth. I'd say that this is an argument against property in general rather than an argument against intellectual property, but my modus ponens is probably your modus tollens.

Intellectual property was created by capital with help of the state, and all other forms of property were created prior to capital but were instrumental for it with its support by the state (police and armies and enclosure). Only when capital realized that it needed to expand did it monopolize ideas as "intellectual property"; but make no mistake, it did exactly the same in the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe to common property.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#107

Post by coldtea »

ficklepickle wrote: post #96
coldtea wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from the Guardian, not some right wing newspaper: "Most recently, postal workers said they were so frightened delivering in Eastwood after being mugged for their parcels that they no longer went out alone. “They are terrified because of the level of intimidation,’” said Champion. She went out on a round with two postal workers: “If I wasn’t with two post people, I would have been running away. I was really sh…

Is it the chicken or the egg, though? Do they behave this way because they are inherently inferior or because they have been marginalized by society for hundreds of years? I truly believe that being rejected by society leads to antisocial behaviour. It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain some of it.

>Is it the chicken or the egg, though?

Obviously it's not the people as human beings at fault. There is no "bad DNA" involved. Nobody is "inherently inferior".

>I truly believe that being rejected by society leads to antisocial behaviour. It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain some of it.

Sure. But whether it's the chicken or the egg matters when accessing the overall situation. When many from a group of people causes problems where you live, you don't care as much for the historical origins of their behavior, you first and foremost want the problems to stop.

Now, if those people complaining where also historically part of the problem (e.g. historically rejected/oppressed the Roma), we could care less about their complaints.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#108

Post by thelasthuman »

towaway1138 wrote: post #2

Meh. It's sad, but the structure of the universe is probably such that one cannot become a leader of millions without being a villain.

Would you support a equitable society free of hierarchy (and then free of these leaders that must be villans)?

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#109

Post by thereisnospork »

maxlybbert wrote: post #90
thereisnospork wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't the problem in SF that the wages have gone up hugely for a small subset of the population? Wages of the renting population is irrelevant to the 'fair economic price1' of an apartment. The equilibrium/fair cost of a latte doesn't go up because a few millionaires move into a neighborhood, it might go up because of a barista labor-shortage, a coffee bean-tariff, or other supply-side effect. You're not wrong that…

> The equilibrium/fair cost of a latte doesn't go up because a few millionaires move into a neighborhood, it might go up because of a barista labor-shortage, a coffee bean-tariff, or other supply-side effect. In my economics class, I remember drawing a supply curve and a demand curve, and labeling the intersection “equilibrium.” If a millionaire moves into my neighborhood and buys so many lattes on a regular basis th…

We are viewing the analogy differently: a millionaire doesn't drink meaningfully more coffee1 than a normal person (perhaps better coffee) but can pay more for it, paralleling the housing needs/wants of a ""tech bro"" and a teacher.

To use your version, the problem is that the coffee shops aren't allowed to make more coffee. If they could they would continue to do so (because money), at the point where they make the most total profit (not margin!) which occurs with an increase in supply. Since they now have more demand, fixed costs drop to a lower percentage and your millionaire drives down the cost of lattes, not up. Or does your neighborhood millionaire drink so much as to disrupt the global coffee bean + brewing equipment supply market?

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#110

Post by mnm1 »

Churchill isn't the only one or at all unique. What major imperialist leaders wouldn't fit the label "war criminal"? Or much worse: the founding fathers of the US weren't exactly saints either. The systematic pursuit of slavery over hundreds of years makes war criminals and their acts almost look like child's play. This in no way is limited to the past. Leaders today fit that description just as much. People love war criminals. That's why they vote for them.
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