It's the Economy Stupid

You have been shown that there is a debate. Looks like you’re the illiterate one.

Cutting the capital gains rate is a great example of why the Clintons time in office doesn’t look good in the history books not even 20 years later. Taxing capital gains at a lower rate than regular income is one of the most wrong headed ideas in the history of US tax policy.

I agree, but then I think property is theft. But, I don’t think the federal government should be deciding this for communities. And, in the real world, that just privatizes zoning. HOAs and all. Changing zoning to allow for what your’e talking about would be pretty much impossible, or a big taking by the government and require compensation. New developments in wealthy areas would just include private covenants or other agreements. I’m not sure what you want, but if it’s something like affordable housing in wealthier areas, bad as this is, it’s probably still better to just lobby the cities to change zoning.

And, if you want to stop people from building battery acid factories in less wealthy areas, then you’ll be glad to have public zoning.

More than person on this site has claimed property is theft. Are you doing so seriously or is this some weird joke I don’t get?

Pretty certain microbet is serious about it. He is an anarchist after all.

I’m not writing my great political treatise yet, but I believe in a mixed system which includes a lot of space for anarchism. I think “Property is theft” is an important thing to consider though. People in our system, or any system, tend to view the status quo as more or less right and ordained, but what is and isn’t ownable is a custom, law or otherwise element of the social contract. It’s negotiable and not a law of nature.

I don’t know if the expression first originated here, but it’s attributed to Pierre-Josef Proudhon from his 1840 book What is Property? An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and Government. That’s a book I should read, but have not and have resisted reading Proudhon directly, because although he has a lot of cool theories, he wanted to kill all the Jews.

This part just isn’t true. There are no examples in the archaeological or anthropological literature of a single culture without property. It varies by degree for sure but all human societies have the concept of property.

Ummm. No. There is no debate. People who support rent control should be ridiculed and shamed. Even worse, these are national proposals. I mean rent control. Who supports rent control in 2019? It is such a bad idea. Bad in theory and has been tried. Bad in practice. Even worse AOC wants rent control and to go after “slum lords”. This is literally Hugo Chavez economics. Rent control.

Donald Trump should run endless ads with just the words rent control. Rent control supporters should be treated with same mockery as 9-11 truthers.

None of this is, you know, an argument of any kind.

Right? It isn’t even worth posting the theory or evidence. It is like arguing with someone who thinks the Earth is flat.

I wish I could say I am stunned that there are so many defenders here. No policy is too ridiculous if mouthed by AOC or Bernie.

“It varies by degree” contradicts “This part just isn’t true”. And Proudhon, and anarchists, socialists and communists, specifically differentiate between personal property, the means of production and land. But, the expression is meant to be challenging.

(are there examples in the literature of cultures without theft?)

Clovis,

I sorta think you’re starting another thing where you encounter something you’re completely unfamiliar with and you just assume no one else has thought deeply about it and they’re all just a bunch of numbskulls — and then you’re wrong.

One of the most popular anarchists nowadays is an anthropoligist named David Graeber and he reflects on his professional study of a technologically undeveloped society in Madagascar a lot in his writings and talks on Anarchism.

That is an important distinction. There are many societies where property does not extend past the concept of some limited personal property. Hunter gatherers generally have no concept of land ownership, and of course, means of production.

Not that I can think of for the same reason. All cultures have at least limited personal property so all acknowledge the idea of theft.

There are lots and lots of very good reasons that people should be able to say NIMBY. The whole anti-zoning for affordable housing thing is a hudge con by libertarian dickbags with Koch money. It really depresses me to see so many people on the left trying to eliminate the only democratic control that exists over land use, and buying into something that has transparently been dumbed down to a handful of meaningless slogans that at best only apply to edge cases.

I didn’t say anything about anarchism? I’m refuting one point about Property.

Also, it’s pretty unfair to say I’m completely unfamiliar with the concept of property in other cultures given I literally spent more than a decade studying material culture among hunter gatherers in grad school.

Ok, sorry, but “That part just isn’t true” was a pretty aggro start.

I meant just that the idea of property is not “natural”. The word natural opens up a huge can of worms in that the idea of human universals is hotly contested in anthropology. I think they exist. One would be property. Other examples are Kinship, music and art. Other anthropologists think they don’t.

Paul Krugman “libertarian Koch sucking dickbag” on how to make housing more affordable.

Relates to the “mixed” part of my political philosophy. I think there’s a place for the wild wild west, but also for communities to decide what gets built that will significantly affect their lives. The federal government should have some general rules that prevent objectionable things allow rich people or white people or w/e to absolutely dominate limited resources and exclude people, but outside of that, outside of stepping in when things have gone very wrong, these things should be local issues imo.

The economics of rent control are astoundingly simple. It’s disingenuous to present the failure of rent control to add more affordable housing to an area as a failure. It’s not the objective. It’s obviously meant as a measure to preserve affordability for people already renting, not to lower rents for people outside a community who want to move in or to spur new construction.