Earlier today, I posted an obviously controversial status via Facebook. It read:
"Why do we have to pay to live in a house? Whose labor are we employing when we pay our monthly dues to a landlord or mortgage broker? It's not like food, which requires labor to harvest and distribute. It's not like electricity, which requires labor to spread. It's just a fuckin' house or apartment, that's just fuckin' sits there and someone makes money off of it at your expense. I don't understand this world."
This is the debate that followed:
C.B.: Someone worked to buy the house though, just as someone worked to build it and was compensated for their labour by the owner.
The landlord and the mortgage broker have to pay rent too.
Me: and it's just a giant pyramid scheme that runs itself in circles around nothing. People should be paying as much for a house as it takes to build, and then based on the materials used to build it, and no more. There shouldn't be this cycle of a 'lack of responsibility.' Renting should be somewhat like hitch-hiking in my opinion. The only thing the rentee should be paying for is his or her part of the electricity, internet, phone, and cable bill. But we have this great big system that puts a landlord into debt, so they have to extort someone else in order to pay it off.. if houses were priced at the amount they took to build, and the type of materials etc etc.. there would be no such thing as mortgages unless your buying a giant mansion on a middle-class income.
J.B.: So, today I learned contractors and tradesmen don't need money and owners should give their houses away as well as abandon their businesses.
P.K.: Houses are indeed already priced at the amount they cost to build.Raw materials is a small fraction of the price. You also have:
1) Land value
2) Engineering (can't build the thing if it's going to end up falling over and killing everybody inside, now can you?)
3) Carpenters, Electricians, and other tradesmen
4) Transportation for materials
5) Utility interconnection
6) Safety inspections
7) PermittingThese things all cost a lot of money. As it turns out, the bulk of the population is willing to go into debt in order to have a nice, modern home, and that's why it works.
D.E.: You know Peter is right about that. Still, at the risk of sounding New Age-y, there is a lot of sustainable housing made mainly of organic matter that is very cheap to build. Some can also be easily insulated, withstand most weather anomalies, running plumbing and electricity is easier and they look neat.
Me: J.B., I wasn't trying to say that's what home owners should do at this moment in time. The system we've designed is far too convoluted to do so, and that's the point I'm making. There's no responsibility; it's always someone owing someone something somewhere. You can't be a rentee and go to the home-owner and say, "it's not fair that you make me pay more than my utilities," because the home-owner will be correct and only fair in saying, "well, I owe the mortgage brokers money, so regardless of what you think I should charge, I'm in no position to simply charge you for nothing but utilities."
In a truly humanistic system, however.. once a home-owner actually OWNS the home, and no longer owes anyone else money.. why not simply rent out a place and charge only for utilities and any potential damage or mess that is made by the rentee? Forcing them to start paying you despite your lack of debt is just ridiculous. It's like clearing a boulder from the path. Sure, you may have been the one who worked hard to move the boulder.. but it doesn't make sense to push the boulder back into the middle of the road and tell someone that because you had to move it, so do they. That's just fucking ridiculous.
M.P.: Just a few things to add to your list of things in their world that need fixing Kyran: We should have unlimited resources, always have sunny weather (but none of the related problems), no diseases, not have to work and immortality. I mean, it just makes no sense that we don't have this things? Must just be because humans are corrupt.
Me: wait.. when did I say any of those things?
M.P.: You didn't, I felt that your list of things that need fixing was incomplete so I added a few for you.
Me: Haha, you're trying to polarize my argument by sensationalizing it. That's pretty condescending, dude.
And I guess what my argument comes down to, P.K... is that no one should own land. Nobody puts labor in to build the land, yet we still feel the impulse to monetize what is there regardless. But I do understand why the labor involved in building a home of any sort should be compensated for monetarily.
M.P.: I think you already sensationalized it. Unless I missed something, you said that people should go through the mountains of work, headaches and money to build and own a house just so as soon as they can break even and then give away the house to someone else to live in for absolutely no incentive, and that it should be a normal thing to do. That is either sensationalism or glasses so rose tinted that they are closer to a blindfold.
Wow that was terribly written. Long day, my apologies.
C.B.: Surely incentives exist that aren't monetary in nature, Mason.
Me: Not everything can, nor should be boiled down to the abstract symbolic value of money. Although it may have it's place, it should not be the be-all and end-all which we see it by in our society.
M.P.: Of course there are, but monetary is the one that makes sense in the context of housing the 7 billion people on this world. Do you really think that a society bigger than a community of a few dozen people could ever work just by giving away houses because everyone convinced the homeowners that it'd be a swell thing to do?
C.B.: Each larger society is made up of those smaller communities, which are made up of individuals.
Me: Actually.. it would probably assist the 7 billion people in the world.. because.. you know. They'll actually be able to live somewhere, regardless of their income.
C.B.: Systemic change is not always best implemented on a systemic level, but on an individual level. Good ideas catch on quite easily, even bad ones do apparently.
Me: And everybody has got to start seeing outside the box of the 'system' and 'what's in it for me' and all that bullshit. That's such a filtered and cold way to think. Why not forward the REAL common good, and start helping people out as best you can on an individual level?
M.P.: It's a shame then, C.B., that [most] people do not at all behave like individuals. We are social creatures. Not loners, not herds. Kyran, if nobody paid rent or to buy preexisting houses, chances are nobody would make any more new houses because they'd just try and grab one that already existed. besides, what's so wrong with paying money for a house anyways? Money is a measure of a contribution to society. Building a house is a large contribution to society, so is letting people live in your house. You should be rewarded for that.
Me: "chances are nobody would make any more new houses because they'd just try and grab one that already existed." I don't see what's wrong with that. Certainly cuts down on costs, used materials, and space.
M.P.: Well, people grabbing the already existing houses works if the population isn't changing and houses don't experience wear and tear, neither of which is true.
The debate is ongoing, and more content will be added as it becomes available.
No comments:
Post a Comment