The Guardianista proving yet again that soviet thinking did not die with the Berlin wall.
Just think for a moment what the state of play might be if Britain was a place with free state housing for all. Like a free education, it would be based on the idea that every child in Britain has a right to prosper, or even to just get by. People have the right to sleep at night, free from the fear or actuality of cold, abuse, or prostitution.
The stupid here, it hurts.
Of course, like those lords opposing universal education in the 1870s, people may scream murder about the free market.
Perhaps, because, unlike Poppy, we are well aware of just how this will pan out.
But this ignores how, over time, most sensible people have come to accept that the extents of a free market should be constrained to prohibit things we consider grossly inhumane – like slavery – or where we see such constraints to be financially beneficial.
Because having to pay for one’s own housing is just like slavery. The stupid here, it hurts.
I could go on about how evil this proposal is, how the state would encroach into every aspect of our lives – dictating where we live and with whom, but it has all been said before. I suggest the rather stupid and historically ignorant Poppy Noor sits down with a glass of wine and watches Dr Zhivago, for there she will see exactly where this vile idea ends up.
The only thing left to say is; over my dead fucking body.
Slavery was a product of the state.
And isn’t forcing people to work to provide housing for others a form of slavery?
There was sort of free housing for all during the war. You could get ‘billeted’ on any place the housing officer said.
Well sort of. Even after the war I reme3mber my mother ad me being put up in an old woman’s house to live for a while. Till my father came back from the military.
The whole idea of free housing would have to be built (pun intended) on all houses being equal. No one, even if the houses were free, would want to live in a two-up, two-down terrace house in Batley or Oldham or Gateshead. So who would get those? You can bet it won’t be the well-heeled and the well-connected. No southerners are going to be happy to be shipped up from Guardianista central to live among the immigrants and welfare-seekers in a Northern post-industrial town no matter how noble the cause of equality.
It would take hell of a long time to build identical boxes for everyone, without even beginning to work out the economics.
Once you get into equality you have to apply equality equally, or do Guardian hacks think they are exempt from rubbing shoulders with the old and poor? Do they get to keep the leafy suburbs and the lesser folk have to give up what they have?
Most people, aspiring to better themselves, want to move away from areas they perceive as not great for them or their kids. Sure, house prices are ridiculous: they are when all is said and done just bricks and mortar for the most part. But the ambition to do better keeps people going, sometimes no matter what it costs. To give up and sit back and look round your minimal-spec state-approved dimension front room is not what many normal, non-Guardian people think is best.
Askance, not necessarily. Free Housing as a basic right can be “Free Minimal Housing.” I.E., it would provide basic housing in terms of utilities and protection from the elements, but not a whole lot more. Basically people who were out of work and simply couldn’t afford even the poorest rentals in the city would live there. They wouldn’t be in any sense made deliberately uncomfortable, they simply wouldn’t be funded well enough to make it a desirable first choice of living if a person could work and afford something better.
I take your point Michael, but…
First of all there is the problem of who decides when the time is right for someone to move on from this low-cost/free shelter? Imagine if a ‘homeowner’ was addicted to some drug and that was where most of the addict’s money went. Why move on in that case if all the addict needed was somewhere to have a mattress and a roof? (and no, I am NOT saying all homeless, needy people are addicts. far from it, but they exist.) Someone then may have to intervene and guess what, the MSM will then triumphantly fasten on the cold, heartless officials who are pushing people out of their only home. True, there may be some who can’t wait to get out and will vacate for someone else in need, but given the way some people cling to whatever they can get that might not be as many as required. Cue building more low cost/free homes to keep the supply open.
Second, there will be teens thinking they can get out of their ‘oppressive’ parents’ home because someone will give them something on demand. We are back to councils and social services evaluating whether a 16 year old girl who has fallen out with her parents deserves a home. I hate to say it, but some stroppy kids storm out of the house even when all they have to go to is a mate’s family sofa until temperatures cool at home.
Third, we are into the whole thing of where do you build these shelters, however laudable they may seem? They will probably be on the poorer edges of town (the sort of place I had for a few years as a stepping stone to a better house, but a district soon spoiled by the local council bringing in people they had ejected from their estates for bad behaviour. Thus we had an influx of anti-social elements, which brought down the potential house prices and limited my stepping, as it were). ‘Brownfield sites’ need clearing and de-contaminating, and waste land is often devoid of services. Even some council home dwellers don’t want people on lower income near what they have, but do they get a choice?
My argument would be that such noble thoughts as handing out free/low-cost shelters or whatever looks good on paper, but hard to position in what we must consider a real world.
Valid points and concerns, but all ones that *might* be able to work around with some care. Things like “bad behavior homelessness” and “runaway homelessness” could be dealt with through weeding them out in a pre-home interview/checkup, and age limits could be set on runaways to prevent an influx of 13 year olds who just want their own place to smoke pot and play video games all day.
Would it cost more to run that way though? Yep.
And absent a market and pricing, how would the clever people in charge know how many houses, how many bedrooms, and where to build?
Slavery is the antithesis of a free market.
Free market means voluntary exchange as agreed exclusively by the parties to the exchange. And it relies on property rights.
People who are against free market or Capitalism do not understand what it is, or agree with property rights.