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

idealista.com

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

#921

Post by kerkeslager »

dang wrote: post #913
kerkeslager wrote: post #912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand moderating discussion is extremely hard. I understand that it seems fair at face value for you to just enforce politeness and not enforce ideologies, but that's not actually possible. You are taking a side here, if you decide to censor me, and not the ideologies I'm arguing against. I am not perfect and I should have been a bit more polite in some of the posts you link. People post absolutely reprehensib…

I don't buy that argument because: (1) plenty of HN users post comments from plenty of ideological positions without breaking the site guidelines and (therefore) without getting moderated; and (2) users breaking the site guidelines from all different ideological positions do get moderated. That doesn't fit with "you're taking a side". In my experience the causality goes the other way: when people get moderated they h…

Perhaps then, the crux of your and my disagreement is that I do not think you are successfully optimizing for kindness. I believe that you intend to optimize for kindness, but you're not, you're optimizing for politeness.

You'll note that increasingly my posts here are on homelessness. There are nearly 600,000 homeless in the US alone, many of whom will die from homelessness-related problems. Many posts on this site both spread misinformation about that problem, and argue against any and all real solutions to that problem. That isn't kind, but it isn't moderated. And treating those comments as if they are not reprehensible, might be kind to the poster, but it's unkind to the 600,000 homeless in the country where a lot of HN users live.

Kindness isn't a simple thing: sometimes kindness to one person needs to be balanced with kindness to other people.

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

#922

Post by dang »

kerkeslager wrote: post #921
dang wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy that argument because: (1) plenty of HN users post comments from plenty of ideological positions without breaking the site guidelines and (therefore) without getting moderated; and (2) users breaking the site guidelines from all different ideological positions do get moderated. That doesn't fit with "you're taking a side". In my experience the causality goes the other way: when people get moderated they h…

Perhaps then, the crux of your and my disagreement is that I do not think you are successfully optimizing for kindness. I believe that you intend to optimize for kindness, but you're not, you're optimizing for politeness. You'll note that increasingly my posts here are on homelessness. There are nearly 600,000 homeless in the US alone, many of whom will die from homelessness-related problems. Many posts on this site…

Kindness, as I understand it, has to do with how you treat the people you personally come into contact with. On HN, that means how you relate to other users.

I get that you're using the word differently and that's fine, as long as we understand what each other means by it. It seems like you're defining your political position (on homelessness in this case) as 'kind' while the opposing position is 'unkind'. Presumably someone of the opposite view might take issue with that, but I don't.

Since it's in your interest to argue for your views in a way that is personally kind to the people you're arguing with, I don't see any tradeoff between our two usages.

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

#923

Post by jjav »

kerkeslager wrote: post #919
jjav wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > What is it about this issue that makes so many people wish to treat landlords harshly? > Compassion. I don't feel like that's the true motivation. Where is the compassion for the middle class worker who can just barely afford some house, just to have it stolen (see parallel threads in this discussion for accounts of that happening) then? If it was actually compassion, we'd be advocating for the government to prov…

> If it was actually compassion, we'd be advocating for the government to provide adequate services to all homeless, paid for by taxes with progressive taxation so the rich also pay into the solution. I think that is the solution which pretty much everyone who has compassion for the squatters is advocating for. I'm comfortable saying that almost nobody thinks squatting is a good solution to this problem. The problem…

> But until then, I'm quite okay with society dealing with the ugly consequences of its ugly failure to provide homes for its people.

This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over.

While I don't know anything about the legislative process in Spain, I guess it is not too different from elsewhere, so you probably need broad support from the masses (middle class) to make big changes.

We already established (elsewhere in this discussion) that the rich don't feel any impact from squatting. They have private security forces, so it is a non-issue to them.

So if we want the government to provide for adequate services, middle class support is needed. If we allow all middle-class property to be stolen by squatters, there will be zero support from the middle class to provide any help to the thieves. Like it or not, basic human nature.

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

#924

Post by kerkeslager »

jjav wrote: post #923
kerkeslager wrote: post #919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was actually compassion, we'd be advocating for the government to provide adequate services to all homeless, paid for by taxes with progressive taxation so the rich also pay into the solution. I think that is the solution which pretty much everyone who has compassion for the squatters is advocating for. I'm comfortable saying that almost nobody thinks squatting is a good solution to this problem. The problem…

> But until then, I'm quite okay with society dealing with the ugly consequences of its ugly failure to provide homes for its people. This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over. While I don't know anything about the legislative process in Spain, I guess it is not too different from elsewhere, so you probably need broad support from the mass…

> This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over.

This is a totally naive approach. I have 0 hope that the rich will "help us out" no matter what we do--rich people don't become rich by being generous. Either we use our majority to make them be productive members of society and pay their fair share, or we get nothing from them. This idea that we're going to concede to them on a few issues and they'll suddenly stop hoarding resources is a total fantasy.

> We already established (elsewhere in this discussion) that the rich don't feel any impact from squatting. They have private security forces, so it is a non-issue to them.

I disagree. The middle class has largely been disfranchised from owning the homes they live in, so the idea that there's some massive section of the middle class that owns second homes they leave empty doesn't hold much water. The people you're talking about aren't middle class.

> So if we want the government to provide for adequate services, middle class support is needed. If we allow all middle-class property to be stolen by squatters, there will be zero support from the middle class to provide any help to the thieves. Like it or not, basic human nature.

Thank you for the strategic advice, but no thanks. This strategic advice you're giving sounds suspiciously like you trying to represent rich people as middle class, and represent rich people's goal of enforcing property rights as a step toward achieving goals that you don't even support. That may not be your intent--for all I know, you completely support the progressive taxation and regulation of landlordism necessary to provide (free) homes for the homeless. But if that's the case I think you're being naive: the promise that if we just give the rich people what they want they'll magically become generous and start giving back has been part of the conversation for decades, and those promises are never kept.

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

#925

Post by kerkeslager »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #823
kerkeslager wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

If you don’t have your basic needs met there are options beyond squatting and exploiting laws surrounding it. I’m sure Spain has public services that are much better than the US if the train network is any proxy for effective governance. There’s presumably training opportunities to upskill both formal and informal. All this to say the person who is squatting is probably not someone who lacks any other option but some…

> If you don’t have your basic needs met there are options beyond squatting and exploiting laws surrounding it.

Links?

> I’m sure Spain has public services that are much better than the US if the train network is any proxy for effective governance.

Maybe you should be less sure.

> There’s presumably training opportunities to upskill both formal and informal.

Just because something can be presumed does not mean one should presume it.

> All this to say the person who is squatting is probably not someone who lacks any other option but someone who is exploiting a condition and potentially tied to organized crime to boot.

Seems like what you think is probable isn't based in much evidence.

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

#926

Post by RestlessMind »

kerkeslager wrote: post #914
RestlessMind wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > not everyone can be a homeowner > Why? Criminals who were behind the bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to buy a house with. Families moving to another city for 1-2 years because one of the parents found a lucrative job assignment (I literally have some extended family members in this situation). People who declared bankruptcy recently and cannot have any assets in their name by definition. Grad st…

> Criminals who were behind the bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to buy a house with. Criminals who were behind bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to pay rent with either. This isn't logic. We shouldn't be releasing people from prison with no way to house themselves because that's practically guaranteed to push them back into crime. Solutions to that unavoidably involve giving them hou…

> Well, right now your examples just sound like lots of people are forced to rent by current systems which are designed to maintain rental properties as investments.

Rather, right now your arguments seem to be based on some idealized utopia with fancy assumptions - perfect liquidity in housing market without any friction of transaction costs, perfect society with ideal treatment of prison population, perfectly rich grad students who can buy housing etc. If such things were possible, other initiatives based on ideal human nature would have succeeded as well (eg. communism).

I will flip your argument back to you - show me a place where the system is NOT designed to maintain real properties as investments.

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

#927

Post by jjav »

kerkeslager wrote: post #924
jjav wrote: post #923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But until then, I'm quite okay with society dealing with the ugly consequences of its ugly failure to provide homes for its people. This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over. While I don't know anything about the legislative process in Spain, I guess it is not too different from elsewhere, so you probably need broad support from the mass…

> This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over. This is a totally naive approach. I have 0 hope that the rich will "help us out" no matter what we do--rich people don't become rich by being generous. Either we use our majority to make them be productive members of society and pay their fair share, or we get nothing from them. This idea that w…

> > If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over.

> This is a totally naive approach.

I would've thought this was the entirely uncontroversial part of my premise!

Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over?

We're going to fundamentally disagree there. The whole premise of politics is to find ways to make alliances to achieve goals. If you make most people hate your cause, you won't get very far.

> the promise that if we just give the rich people what they want they'll magically become generous and start giving back has been part of the conversation for decades, and those promises are never kept.

Of course. That's just a variant of trickle-down economics, which is nonsense. The rich will keep it all very happily and never give anything back.

> The people you're talking about aren't middle class.

And yet, they must be. The actual rich are immune from house occupations. Their houses are either in private enclaves where you can't possibly get in, or in the case of standalone houses they have private security coverage where you can't possibly get in.

This is how it is in the US. I realize the article is about Spain, so perhaps the very rich act different in Spain and they just let their multiple properties sit unguarded for long times.

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

#928

Post by kerkeslager »

RestlessMind wrote: post #926
kerkeslager wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Criminals who were behind the bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to buy a house with. Criminals who were behind bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to pay rent with either. This isn't logic. We shouldn't be releasing people from prison with no way to house themselves because that's practically guaranteed to push them back into crime. Solutions to that unavoidably involve giving them hou…

> Well, right now your examples just sound like lots of people are forced to rent by current systems which are designed to maintain rental properties as investments. Rather, right now your arguments seem to be based on some idealized utopia with fancy assumptions - perfect liquidity in housing market without any friction of transaction costs, perfect society with ideal treatment of prison population, perfectly rich g…

> Rather, right now your arguments seem to be based on some idealized utopia with fancy assumptions - perfect liquidity in housing market without any friction of transaction costs, perfect society with ideal treatment of prison population, perfectly rich grad students who can buy housing etc. If such things were possible, other initiatives based on ideal human nature would have succeeded as well (eg. communism).

No, this is just a perfect solution fallacy. We don't need perfect liquidity, frictionless transactions, or rich grad students to make this work. We need no landlords and no speculative investment in housing: the rest will take care of itself, due to basic free market principles because that's massively increasing supply with a demand that's bound by population. And it doesn't have to happen perfectly, just well-enough. If you don't believe in supply and demand I'm not sure you have much grounds for accusing me of communism.

> I will flip your argument back to you - show me a place where the system is NOT designed to maintain real properties as investments.

I am truly confused how you think this is flipping my argument back at me.

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

#929

Post by kerkeslager »

jjav wrote: post #927
kerkeslager wrote: post #924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over. This is a totally naive approach. I have 0 hope that the rich will "help us out" no matter what we do--rich people don't become rich by being generous. Either we use our majority to make them be productive members of society and pay their fair share, or we get nothing from them. This idea that w…

> > If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over. > This is a totally naive approach. I would've thought this was the entirely uncontroversial part of my premise! Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over? We're going to fundamentally disagree there. The whole premise of politics is to find ways to make alliances to achieve goals. If you mak…

> Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over?

No, I'm saying that we don't need rich people to help our cause, because non-rich people are the super majority.

> And yet, they must be. The actual rich are immune from house occupations. Their houses are either in private enclaves where you can't possibly get in, or in the case of standalone houses they have private security coverage where you can't possibly get in.

There's a lot of rich between "private enclave with security force" and middle class that can't afford a second home to sit empty that you're ignoring.

Sure, multibillionaires are above it all. But I think you're drastically underestimating how rich one has to be to have even one empty home. If you own the home you live in you're already on the upper side of middle class. And if someone breaks into the house you live in, there's no place in the world where that person has legal protections.

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

#930

Post by jjav »

kerkeslager wrote: post #929
jjav wrote: post #927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over. > This is a totally naive approach. I would've thought this was the entirely uncontroversial part of my premise! Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over? We're going to fundamentally disagree there. The whole premise of politics is to find ways to make alliances to achieve goals. If you mak…

> Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over? No, I'm saying that we don't need rich people to help our cause, because non-rich people are the super majority. > And yet, they must be. The actual rich are immune from house occupations. Their houses are either in private enclaves where you can't possibly get in, or in the case of standalone houses they have pri…

> No, I'm saying that we don't need rich people to help our cause, because non-rich people are the super majority.

So, we agree on that.

We just have different perceptions of who "the rich" are.

A software engineer making $100K/yr (in a low cost of living part of the US, not in silicon valley) is not "the rich", but these people often have multiple apartments. I know first hand since many my of my friends are in this demographic.

> Sure, multibillionaires are above it all.

It doesn't take a multibillionaire to own more than one house/apt. It just takes a middle class income person in many parts of the country.

> And if someone breaks into the house you live in, there's no place in the world where that person has legal protections.

Ended up watching a few news reports from Spain to understand these home invasions better.

Here's one example where an 80 year old woman left the house she was actively living in for only two days to visit her son elsewhere. After coming back two days later the house had been invaded. The police say they can't do anything. That they supposedly have to wait 24 hours (then changed to 48 hours) and start a judicial process. Even though this was her primary residence and was only gone two days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OudfBAUR0Mk

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