311–320 of 320 posts
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There’s no utopia but that doesn’t mean you can’t bend society in one direction or another.
Nobody is talking about utopia Society has always (yes always) “bent” toward dominating hierarchies because individuals want the stability of being part of the dominating group.
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Same is true for most eco villages, back to the land farms, etc. It’s a mix of the lifestyle not being exactly what people thought plus them getting culty. In many cases it’s more the latter than the former.
What happens is people get tired of other people not working very diligently, but still getting an equal share.
a) these communities often depend on consensus decision making. Problems that require collective action get nearly impossible when the society gets too big
b) People underestimate how much they depend on greater society in a modern context
c) It’s normal for future generations to have evolving values. The original idealistic notions tend to lose their luster to those who were born into it
There are others more unique to communes, but I highlighted those because they also make it hard for the inverse libertarian ideal to work as well. Meaning it has to do as much with human nature as any ideology.
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> nail house term was invented in China after all I do not see how this is related to property rights? In urban China you do not own your home, it is a 70yr right to use the land. Some of their construction is good, but not private homes. Because you do not own the land, the quality of your home is up to the developer, who basically follows no code and cheapens out on everything. Also the Chinese code is very loosely…
First, property rights are a thing in China, early on local governments ignored them and the central government came down hard on that (hence nails houses that wouldn’t exist in the USA because we have eminent domain here). Second, the leases are assumed to be renewed, and there are many different lengths from 30-40 years to older ones to 99 years for the ones today (not sure wheee you get 70 years, I’m sure thats a…
While nail house is the Chinese version of holdout [1], and it exists everywhere. In China it is never regarded positively but always linked with forced eviction [2]. The eminent domain rule requires market rate compensation, which is not possible in many cases because of state ownership and the dual rural-urban land system. It is basically how China financed its growth for around three decades, get rural lands paying out penny, then sell it to some developer for a fortune.
For the land use right duration I believe it has always been 70 yrs [3]? Renewal or not is not a big problem right now, because real estate took off in the 90s, so we still have four decades to go and see.
For foreigner China can be a bit on the rosier side, because of their subtle reverse-racism? Like in universities the dorm for international students is better than the domestic ones, and where expats live is usually a nicer part of the town. Nevertheless, among my Chinese colleagues one the top reasons for immigrating to US is always better and cheaper housing. A couple years back I was surprised to learn that a modest ~700 sqft apartment in Shanghai or Peking easily went for $1M! Since then they had an almost 50% crash post covid but still, impressive.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwelling_Narrowness
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_requisition_in_China
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law_in_China#Obtainin...
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First, property rights are a thing in China, early on local governments ignored them and the central government came down hard on that (hence nails houses that wouldn’t exist in the USA because we have eminent domain here). Second, the leases are assumed to be renewed, and there are many different lengths from 30-40 years to older ones to 99 years for the ones today (not sure wheee you get 70 years, I’m sure thats a…
Ah my bad, my brain was reading Snail House [0], a popular fiction that got adapted to an even popular tv series and its theme is on living in Chinese apartments. While nail house is the Chinese version of holdout [1], and it exists everywhere. In China it is never regarded positively but always linked with forced eviction [2]. The eminent domain rule requires market rate compensation, which is not possible in many c…
Here is the nytimes article about the Wenzhou leases, they were 20 years (I got that detail wrong):
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/business/china-wenzhou-la...
China did forced evictions back in the 90s and they were received very poorly, so they whiplashed in the other direction of never doing forced evictions. Western media just focuses on the former though, not the corrections.
I am as much as a critic about China as I defend it. Its problems are overbuilding, the hukou system is still trash, no property tax that would discourage speculation and empty apartments, etc… But property rights are still strong, the government feels it’s very important, and development occurs at a rapid clip, the China I left 10 years ago is already very different and no longer as poor.
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Abundance only solves scarcity if scarcity is the problem, but the actual problem is economic exclusion, which will always be able to outpace abundance because abundance has physical limits while exclusion does not.
Scarcity of housing is a severe problem, one that has caused the economic exclusion by preventing new people from entering the locations with lots of jobs. It really is housing and scarcity at the bottom of all the other symptoms we see.
Inelastic labor supply into soggy labor demand is the issue. One that is solvable, but only if we acknowledge the problem. Of course, most people with a fortune have their fortune predicated on not understanding the problem, so every venue of discourse which can be bought (which is most of them) struggles to understand the problem. But that doesn't mean you should struggle to understand the problem.
The story here isn't college grads as much as young people in general. We are eating our young. We stopped building new housing, which turns housing into a transfer of wealth from those who don't have it (the young) to those who have been holding it (the not young). We have eliminated entry level positions, saddled college graduates with massive amounts of debt by defunding universities, and created great security fo…
Everywhere I look in my area we are building new housing. But more people keep moving to the desirable locations with jobs etc. EDIT: I live in one of the 10 fastest growing metro areas of the US. In the last 4 years my county added over 60,000 homes but about 130,000 new people moved here. I drive around and see new development after new development. But more people move here because of the good jobs, schools, etc.…
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Perhaps they should vote, unfortunately they don't. They are unreliable as a base so politicians ignore them and their needs.
Vote for whom? The political establishment is locking out an entire generation of younger politicians too. Asking those who have only been able to vote for a few years to have solved the problems, in a system where power is gained only through the accumulation of decades of experience, is, well blaming the victims. The greed of older generations, their lack of compassion and understanding, and their narcissism are al…
-GenXer
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Nonsense. Supporting adult children after they've finished education equates to putting family last , not first. Some youths need a forcing function to reach their full potential.
People in other countries don’t do this. Some live at home until they are married
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Forget white collar. Figure out a career that makes use of your hands. Or make enough money to retire in the next couple years.
Unironically the most simple (note; not easy) way to become a multi-millionaire. Do a trade in your 20s, leverage that into running your own trades business in your 30s, and have a >10m valuation business by your 40s. Really regret not doing that myself.