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Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

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Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#611

Post by TotalCrackpot »

ImJamal wrote: post #594
TotalCrackpot wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am living under my address, I am occupying that place, so I am not fine with providing my address. But I am fine with people living in abandoned houses.

How do you define abandoned? If I leave for 1 day is that abandoned? What about 1 week, 1 month or 1 year?

I think it depends on local customs and local agreements, it can differ. I guess I could consider a house abandoned if no one lives there for a year or 2. While for a mine, I think I would consider it abandoned the moment previous miners left it, such that other can get into the mine and mine some resource.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#612

Post by kerkeslager »

rudnevr wrote: post #264

I live in Spain and own property in Spain. There's clearly a gap between imaginary noble okupas addressing housing crisis via occupation of unused bank property and reality of weed smoking anarchists and their collaborating deoccupying mafia harassing mostly not-so-rich middle class, who can't afford the security measures the rich can. It's not a small problem, there's like 12K cases per year last time I checked. Eve…

> There's clearly a gap between imaginary noble okupas addressing housing crisis via occupation of unused bank property and reality of weed smoking anarchists and their collaborating deoccupying mafia harassing mostly not-so-rich middle class, who can't afford the security measures the rich can.

Ah yes, the not-so-rich middle class who can afford to own houses they leave vacant.

Is it your opinion that smoking weed makes someone's political opinions disingenuous or that smoking weed means they deserve to be homeless?

What's your solution to the lack of housing? Anarcho-capitalist HN is always worried about the unintended consequences of laws but never seems to be concerned about the intended consequences of the law, or have any other ways to solve that problem. It begins to sound like you just don't care about homelessness.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#613

Post by its_ethan »

TotalCrackpot wrote: post #604
its_ethan wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I'm getting the impression from your comment that you have some overly idealistic beliefs, and that you're perhaps unwilling to engage honestly with ideas that are counter to your own, but in any case.. Re: The Dawn of Everything You're saying you don't agree with him because of a book you read - but that book has legitimate historians making some pretty bold criticisms: "cherry-picked and selectively pre…

> In general, I'm getting the impression from your comment that you have some overly idealistic beliefs, and that you're perhaps unwilling to engage honestly with ideas that are counter to your own, but in any case.. I like precise logical argumentation, that's not idealism, I don't make any unnecessary assumptions > I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history,…

> I like precise logical argumentation

That's not quite how your comments elsewhere in this thread read lol

> This is not true, many civilizations were against private property rights and private property rights were never universal

Wanna name a couple of those civilizations that didn't have property rights that managed to thrive and grow beyond a population of like 10,000? If you're going to point towards something like Greenland or China where land is owned exclusively by the state and leased out.. that's the same thing as private property rights, the people who lease that land out have rights with respect to that land. Countries literally can not exist without property rights, and if you're gonna say "yea and countries shouldn't exist it's all just made up borders anyway, mann..." then you're username is incredibly fitting lmao

I also never said that these rights were universal, just that they show up. A lot. And if you want to claim that reason is because of some oppression, go for it. I happen to think this is wrong, and the fact that basically every time these rights are revoked things go to shit tells me that's because they exist for a reason. See

> No one is coerced to join those rebels.

Brother, they showed up with guns and took over buildings by force; they destroyed the land records for everyone, not just their specific "members" - if that's not coercion, what is? Please recognize that you may just be enamored with the ideals of what the group said on paper, and are therefore rationalizing their extremist actions that end up being counterproductive to any positive goals.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#614

Post by kerkeslager »

Aurornis wrote: post #358
rudnevr wrote: post #264

I live in Spain and own property in Spain. There's clearly a gap between imaginary noble okupas addressing housing crisis via occupation of unused bank property and reality of weed smoking anarchists and their collaborating deoccupying mafia harassing mostly not-so-rich middle class, who can't afford the security measures the rich can. It's not a small problem, there's like 12K cases per year last time I checked. Eve…

> There's clearly a gap between imaginary noble okupas addressing housing crisis via occupation of unused bank property and reality of weed smoking anarchists and their collaborating deoccupying mafia harassing mostly not-so-rich middle class, who can't afford the security measures the rich can. I had a friend who bought a house that needed a lot of work. Before he could get started on the remodel, someone broke in t…

> It’s more fun to imagine these people as noble warriors against an unjust society, rather than seem them as people abusing the laws for personal gain at the expense of random victims.

Allow me to present a third option: maybe these people aren't noble warriors, they're just victims of an unjust society trying to meet their basic human need for housing. People like your friend are certainly unjustly harmed in this situation, but the people who don't even have their basic needs met are far more harmed.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#615

Post by kerkeslager »

jjav wrote: post #586
kaskakokos wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Spain, I have friends from both ends of the spectrum: those speculating with houses and those who cannot afford to buy one. We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum: people buying property purely for speculative investment. For example, consider the housing crisis in Majorca [1]. Since we have enough mo…

> But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum No, not really. Theft is not the answer. Consider laws restricting how many houses a person can own, or maybe an increasing property tax on each unit. These are good solutions. Condoning theft has no other side to the story, it's always wrong.

> No, not really. Theft is not the answer.

Well HN's favored solution seems to be not caring that people are homeless until they start scaring rich people, at which point you lock them up in "mental health" institutions that are less about helping them and more about keeping them away from rich people.

My solution is not letting people own homes they don't live in, but that's going to crash a lot of rich people's investments, so we can't have that. Making sure the rich get richer is apparently more important than meeting citizens' basic needs.

So frankly, theft is the best answer currently available. I'd prefer they stole from the people actually causing the problem, the rich who buy up housing and make it unaffordable. But when they don't, maybe the middle class being stolen from shouldn't be so confused about why that's happening.

Ultimately I'm not sure why you don't have the same moral outrage about rich people buying up people's basic needs and holding them for ransom so they can get richer, as you do about poor people stealing to meet their basic needs.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#616

Post by kerkeslager »

solids wrote: post #449
kaskakokos wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Spain, I have friends from both ends of the spectrum: those speculating with houses and those who cannot afford to buy one. We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum: people buying property purely for speculative investment. For example, consider the housing crisis in Majorca [1]. Since we have enough mo…

Maybe the housing crisis is related to the lack of legal security that owners have, which severely reduced the offer and obviously increased the prices. The housing law that the current government passed wasn’t very clever…

Wait so lack of legal security reduced supply... by what mechanism? How do you think this works?

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#617

Post by southernplaces7 »

fergonco wrote: post #14

It actually fosters innovation, like https://www.desokupa.com/ , a mix of bullies and lawyers that "mediate" to get the properties back.

This was amusing. I appreciate the spirit of entrepreneurial innovation but one look at the entire group of employees and owner of this business gives a strong indication of how their mediation might go...

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#618

Post by maeil »

jjav wrote: post #586
kaskakokos wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Spain, I have friends from both ends of the spectrum: those speculating with houses and those who cannot afford to buy one. We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum: people buying property purely for speculative investment. For example, consider the housing crisis in Majorca [1]. Since we have enough mo…

> But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum No, not really. Theft is not the answer. Consider laws restricting how many houses a person can own, or maybe an increasing property tax on each unit. These are good solutions. Condoning theft has no other side to the story, it's always wrong.

Until such laws are instated -if they ever are - then "theft" is very much an answer .

I'm sure smarter people than me here can come up with a good number of examples where you would agree that "condoning theft" is a good thing. Such ethical problems are never black and white.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#619

Post by kerkeslager »

misja111 wrote: post #607
ghostDancer wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain there are lots of empty apartments, from the bubble and IIRC are more than 2 million empty , but prices are still going up, most of the market is on the hands of foreign funds who are emptying the cities with their prices. There's a lot of speculation with housing in Spain. Not to talk about the campaign in the media about squatting, sowing fear continuously. The supply is artificially being held by the owne…

Then the government should make it less attractive for speculators to hold those homes, e.g. by introducing taxes for empty properties. And on the other hand they could make it more attractive for them to rent them out, e.g. by improving owner's rights.

Introducing speculator taxes and then making it more attractive to be a speculator (landlord) just means that speculators pass the speculator taxes on to renters.

Letting people get rich off holding people's basic needs for ransom is never going to be part of the solution to homelessness.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#620

Post by TotalCrackpot »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #608
TotalCrackpot wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, I'm getting the impression from your comment that you have some overly idealistic beliefs, and that you're perhaps unwilling to engage honestly with ideas that are counter to your own, but in any case.. I like precise logical argumentation, that's not idealism, I don't make any unnecessary assumptions > I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history,…

Those hunter gatherers still had territory. Sometimes it was claimed and defended by a tribe and not individuals, but still the same. Only in places of complete abundance did people not make claims.

They did not have private property with landlord and employers. They had common property and usually some kind of gift economy.
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