The thing is that property ownership of an amount that you merely need rather than want is a great installer of a sense of belonging, worth and responsibility. But allow it to burgeon into a greedy grasping for more property as a status symbol or merely out of an obsessive lust and the property notion becomes a blight on any society. More for him means less for her (and her & him & ......).Biospace wrote: ↑13 Dec 2022, 5:15pmCugel wrote: ↑13 Dec 2022, 2:41pm
One fundamental change I'd like to make to the dominant economic practice in today's world would be to make all forms of renting illegal. Instead there would be something more like hire-purchase, so as you pay more "rent" over time, you acquire a greater proportion of the ownership; an ownership you never lose unless you voluntarily sell or transfer it to another.
Put another way, this law would mean that private property can only be held for personal use (as a home or for a business). Business use would include renting models but only of the above-mentioned kind that means to renter gradually acquires a degree of ownership of what's being rented - with all the rights and duties associated with that ownership. And renting businesses can't easily become vast owners of property used to milk everyone else of what wealth they have.
The property laws are an artefact of aristocracies and long overdue for revision. Ownership of vast tracts should be illegal because such ownership (and the ability to rent with no hinderances) excludes others from a finite essential resource and gives owners a vast amount of power, which they often use to buy governments so that those governments can be suborned to the purposes of the vast property owners.
Some things should never be allowed to be private property unless highly mediated by interests besides that of the owner. One obvious example is mass media organs, which are now a major propaganda power enabling those owning vast amounts of property, power and pounds to keep things as they are, to their own vast advantage.
Cugel, levelling away.
Land too? What a positive post this is in a world where I hear of nothing but more renting, more transfer of financial wealth to the very richest.
I sense challenges to democracy taking place as $trillion mega-corps increasingly control our governments. Aristotle suggested democracy was a fragile concept, that it would naturally collapse without care and attention.
Laws to restrict the amount you can own automatically increase the amount you can own for 99.999% of the population! Being a finite resource (land-wise, water-wise, ore-wise etc.) more equitable distribution laws enable everyone to belong, to thrive and to co-operate. If you have nothing but rent-debt, none of those are possible, not even cooperation, so you turn to crime or die. Consider the USA.
Cugel, probably a pink livered commie snowflake virtual protestor in need of a good post-burnin' by a Tory executioner following a polis boot&bruise arrest for non-conformist tendencies; and a show trial inclusive of over-fulsome praise for all landlords everywhere obtained by threats of, and actual, tortures.
