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Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#51

Post by softveda »

I am Australian. What you are trying is impossible in this country. The last time a political party announced some policies like restricting negative gearing in last election they lost the "unlosable" election. Your premise is actually wrong. People can buy and own a house in this huge country of Australia, just not easily in inner to middle ring suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Even that would be better as there is fuck ton of inheritance coming down the line in next 10-20 years.

Australians like backyards and outdoor and hate to live in appartments. I would say change your social movement to policies like encouraging "work from home" with better NBN, better transport and high speed rail to de-centralise work etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#52

Post by akamaka »

andrewstuart wrote: post #40
wombatmobile wrote: post #31

The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune, and buy enough politicians to change the laws to reflect your own concept of how society should work. The problem you may face next is the consequences of what you have done. Where will all those investment funds that were destined for housing end up instead? What will be the effects of that shift? Who will buy the politicians next, and what will…

>> The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune The irony is that had I made a vast fortune, I would likely not care about this issue. I've noticed that people who own houses don't give a second's thought to this issue, or they don't see it is a problem. In fact, the opposite - if you own a house then you want to opposite of what I am campaigning for - you want prices to keep skyrocketing to…

I think a good approach for you to take here is Paul Graham’s “do things that don’t scale”.

Buy your own land, build a multi-unit building, and then rent it out to people at a fair price.

You’ll come away with a much greater practical understanding of the issues at hand than you’ll ever get by trying to organize people over the internet, and you’ll have tangibly helped yourself and a few other people.

Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#53

Post by andrewstuart »

softveda wrote: post #51

I am Australian. What you are trying is impossible in this country. The last time a political party announced some policies like restricting negative gearing in last election they lost the "unlosable" election. Your premise is actually wrong. People can buy and own a house in this huge country of Australia, just not easily in inner to middle ring suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Even that would be better as…

Do you own a house?

Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#54

Post by solresol »

tsbischof wrote: post #49

Solving this problem means providing a workable solution to the people in power, which in this case is homeowners. Can you find a solution which lets them keep their financial gains but also shifts the status quo? If not, they will fight you and win. One wonky approach might be to introduce some form of government seizure over time, like a scaling progressive rule based on the quantity of property owned that is actua…

> introduce some form of government seizure over time

And if you don't want your property seized because it's valuable to you, maybe you could pay the government a percentage of the price of the land to prevent that from happening.

... which is interesting, because Australia already has a land value tax. All we need to do is increase it.

Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#55

Post by smitty1e »

andrewstuart wrote: post #40
wombatmobile wrote: post #31

The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune, and buy enough politicians to change the laws to reflect your own concept of how society should work. The problem you may face next is the consequences of what you have done. Where will all those investment funds that were destined for housing end up instead? What will be the effects of that shift? Who will buy the politicians next, and what will…

>> The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune The irony is that had I made a vast fortune, I would likely not care about this issue. I've noticed that people who own houses don't give a second's thought to this issue, or they don't see it is a problem. In fact, the opposite - if you own a house then you want to opposite of what I am campaigning for - you want prices to keep skyrocketing to…

> The irony is that had I made a vast fortune, I would likely not care about this issue.

Part of the issue is that our efforts are unlikely to have any lasting effect.

Founding the movement on an enduring ethical basis is a tricky feat.

Your quoted phrase is both honest and indicative of the challenge in making any changes that will outlast the individual who implements them.

Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#56

Post by dang »

justsaying9 wrote: post #26

I read through the replies here, and as expected, none of them have an actual solution to this problem; which is to be expected, since this is a geek website where none of these people understand markets or economics, (and only half understand computers), so you're asking the wrong crowd. The actual answer is: do nothing at all. Simply sit back and wait for one year. I promise you, the problem will solve itself. It's…

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for flamewar. We have to ban such accounts, because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll use HN as intended in the future. The guidelines are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#57

Post by PaulHoule »

The first thing that comes to mind is that "changing the world" is not usually a good goal.

This book

https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Out-Where-Want-Life/dp/162636...

has a pretty good explanation of why that's so, and I was recently reading this book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1890109533

which makes the same case for people who are interested in polyamory. In that case you've got to navigate something pretty complicated just to make the world better for some group of maybe 3..10 people and even though it's in the context of "broken institutions" you really have to attend to your immediate environment.

Re: Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?

#60

Post by throwaway9139 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #40
wombatmobile wrote: post #31

The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune, and buy enough politicians to change the laws to reflect your own concept of how society should work. The problem you may face next is the consequences of what you have done. Where will all those investment funds that were destined for housing end up instead? What will be the effects of that shift? Who will buy the politicians next, and what will…

>> The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune The irony is that had I made a vast fortune, I would likely not care about this issue. I've noticed that people who own houses don't give a second's thought to this issue, or they don't see it is a problem. In fact, the opposite - if you own a house then you want to opposite of what I am campaigning for - you want prices to keep skyrocketing to…

Hi, Australian here living in Sydney. I'm a very happy renter. Renting in Sydney annually is way under 5% of the cost of owning a house. Even if I could afford to buy a house in Sydney, I wouldn't dream of it. It's much more economically sensible to rent. The money I save in opportunity costs from renting is huge. I can invest the difference between rent and mortgage repayments and don't need to be concerned with maintenance and other costs of owning.

Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwl3-jBNEd4 for more info.

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