this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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I had to rant in a couple of comments because I drives me crazy when people defend leeching.
On a more constructive note: Housing cooperatives. I think they should be more widespread. Some people come together to build a house and then live in it for the cost it takes to actually support it. No crazy big apartments with a reasonable amount of people (roughly one bedroom per person), shared luxury such as gardens, in house shops, hell even a pool if you want. There is no leeching, just collective ownership.
What if some people do not fit into some pre-made construction of how some dictator imagines a "nice living situation"? Every person is an individual with individual needs. Presuming, that a single bedroom is big or small enough for every single person is absolutely undermining the fact of how diverse people actually are, as are their visions of their own lives.
Cooperatives are democratic, the members vote on what it means to have a nice living situation.
If there are ten people with ten different expectations, they would all vote for something, in summary/conclusion, "in the middle", which would make nobody happy. The best would be, if everyone could choose for themselves and that is the case right now, except many people perhaps cannot afford, what they'd wish for. Still, better than having a "democracy", where nobody is truly happy.
The case right now is, if you can't afford what you want, you can't choose it. They don't get to choose for themselves, the market chooses for them!
If I have to choose between market decision making and democratic decision making, I'll choose democracy. At the very least, a democratic process leaves no one homeless.
Housing cooperatives (wiki) are quite great. Where I'm from they are rather common, but unfortunately the 'buy in' costs have increased a ton in the last couple decades. Even then, paying e.g. a third of what a comparable owner apartment costs, still makes it a lot more affordable for many people.
Wait, do I understand correctly that in your place, the buy-in costs are roughly a third of the value (insured value or similar) of the appartment?
It was my rough estimate, from looking at both years ago. You do have a higher monthly payment, beyond shared expenses, but that varies greatly depending on things like how much debt the cooperative has.
A wealth and property cap would make way more sense and solve way more problems.
This species isn't ready for it yet, though, and continues to suffer accordingly.
Future generations are laughing.
The property cap is a lot easier in practice. You can't hide land!
Why not both?
If you want to collectively own houses, nobody is stopping you.