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Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?
37 points by andrewstuart on Dec 12, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 75 comments
HN: I am asking your advice on how to build a social movement to change society. What can you suggest to help me?

I'm deeply angry about a particular social issue and feel helpless. So what can I do? I've concluded the only thing I can do is try to create on online community and movement.

So I come here to my community Hacker News, where there is infinite skill and capability in building online community, campaigns and movements and I ask for help.

It seems to me that any social movement needs a catchy name, so I've created that (see below).

The next thing I have done is create a subreddit with the name of the social movement (again see below).

I also created a website a while back, although does not use the catchy name I created, so it needs updating (again, see below).

But really the things I've done above are just guesses. I have no idea how to create a social movement and change the world.

Thanks!

I have the subject matter below, to avoid this post being seen as HN spam:

****************************************

The subject of the social movement:

The catchy name "Real Estate Rebellion".

The goal: I want to end housing as a financial investment in Australia.

The issue: I'm deeply angry about what has happened with house prices in Australia.

Ordinary people - teachers, nurses, public servants will never be able to buy a house in Australia. In fact even well paid people who don't currently own will never be able to buy a house. It wasn't like this before. In Australia, some people own multiple houses, 1/2/3/4 or more and others own none - society has been split into renters and landlords. The politicians all own multiple houses and dare not say a single word against raging house prices.

I want to end housing as a financial investment in Australia. I know this is a deeply radical idea but I think it's valid - why should housing be a financial instrument? Let's end the house prices ponzi scheme.

The subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/realestaterebellion/

The website: https://site-153316-2260-6863.mystrikingly.com/

Here's what the (unattainable) end goal of a successful grass roots campaign would look like to me:

1: end foreign ownership of residential real estate, close the markets to non-residents. It's obvious isn't it? Selling our houses to overseas buyers is reducing the supply and driving up prices. Time to end all foreign ownership of Australian residential real estate. Existing foreign owners will get 4 years to sell currently owned properties. Only citizens and people holding permanent resident visa will be permitted to buy residential property. Companies may only own new residential property that is in the process of being sold to individuals.

2: end negative gearing entirely. "Negative gearing" is an Australian tax policy which effectively pays government money to people who buy multiple houses. It is simply giving money to property investors and worsening the problem. Negative gearing to be unconditionally eliminated.

3: Heavy extra taxes for "Monopoly" property hoarders. The government rewards people who "Monopoly hoard" residential properties. Instead of paying money to monopoly hoarders, we will introduce new taxes to discourage accumulating portfolios of residential properties. Call it "positive gearing" if you want.

4: There's no reason for a family to own more than two houses.

5: Active, direct government financial co-ownership support to help anyone who wants to buy a house.



I don't have a direct answer to your question, but in thinking about these issues here's a quote I heard that has always resonated with me:

> When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

- Rabbi Israel Salanter (1809-1883)


“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

-- George Bernard Shaw


I used to admire this but have come to realize it is true in certain context only, while the GP one is much more humble

The key word here is change v/s progress.

The classic example of this is commuting via car v/s bicycle. The staggering amount of resources dedicated to solving this problem can be termed as progress with better infrastructure, cars (self-driving even) - contrast it against the change that those who can change to commute via bicycle.

We can only know progress in hindsight and only at things that can be quantified. It is self-serving in that sense, when you exclude the non-measurable.


It's possible to be humble without surrendering completely.

I'm rather aware that change is difficult.

It's far more difficult if you give up before you begin.

And it's helpful to have an understanding of the problem and its space (see my long comment to this thread, and the failure / success chain). Often the obvious / simple solution won't work, though again, if you simply give up you'll never recognise that and seek other options.


If you hit a mountain that you cannot climb or tunnel through, you simply go around it - you don't try to move it or worse start a movement to move it.

It is not about surrendering or giving up. There is difference between when you have to stand up for something, when you find yourself in a situation where you have to go beyond yourself and where you "want" to be a hero. This myth of the hero needs to die. Think about it, a society that doesn't need heroes is a better one.

I am not sure if you realize but there is nothing humble about starting a social movement to "change the world" - which is what the original question was about. Engineered v/s emerged - one is hubris, the other one is just is. I wish one could ask all the successful people who "started" a social movement (as opposed to one that emerged), whether with the hindsight of how it played out over the decades, would they still have done it.

To paraphrase the life comment - change happens while you are busy wanting to create it.


Your allegory of the mountain is precisely what I'm getting at.

Attempting the physically or logically impossible, or the effectively counterproductive. The point is to identify a problem, an achievable preferred state, and to work toward that.

Note that even towering mountains, given time, technique, or resources, can be overpassed, leapt over, or tunneled through. And that there are projects which take generations. The Swiss Alps are now laced with roads (rail, cable, and automobile), overflown by aircraft, and pierced by tunnels.

The best heros aren't of the Charge of the Light Brigade variety. They're the ones who identify a viable method and exploit it --- Odysseus and his Horse, Turing and his cipher-breaking tools, Gandhi and his Salt March.

A social change that doesn't need to be engineered ... doesn't require heros. One that won't happen without a specific concerted effort, or which might tip in any number of directions with some vastly preferable to others, do. I'd argue that part of the genius and heroism comes from recognising such loci, recognising the societal magnitude of the task, and searching for a solution space. As with scientific, engineering, and business innovation, even failures teach lessons, and diversifying investments over multiple strategies --- not in the blind sense of blindly inspiring cannon fodder to charge into fire (the Light Brigade, again), but to seek out more favourable options and avoid obvious low-probability / high-risk attempts --- is all but certainly the way to go.

And again: declaring defeat in advance, or throwing up ones hands and declaring that "all is foreordained" won't get you there.

I do advice research (see again previous) and marshalling and conserving your own energies. But not doing nothing at all.

Even slow moving water and the blowing wind can, in time, cut through or wear down that mountain.


>> And again: declaring defeat in advance, or throwing up ones hands and declaring that "all is foreordained" won't get you there.

I am not sure why what I said comes across as defeatist :).

>> I'd argue that part of the genius and heroism comes from recognising such loci, recognising the societal magnitude of the task, and searching for a solution space

I agree. Thank you for the thoughtful responses and the references.


I read the Salantar quote as ... largely defeatist, despite the twist at the end.

There are people who've left their mark who haven't followed that specific track, and the implied suggestion that it is the only and/or best method ... wants for evidence.

If you consider that you are one of the tools that you're applying to change, then it makes sense to keep that tool functional. Look out for yourself, first, that you may aid others and larger efforts.

A useful example to me comes from the field of ag engineering, and a story I was told at Uni. The practice often makes use of minimal capital and equipment to accomplish major changes. One example is riverbed engineering.

One approach is the US Army Corps method of bulldozers, earth-moving equipment, dredges, concrete, and explosives.

The preferred method of the ag engineer in remote and low-income regions is the gabbion --- a cage made of wire holding stones. Placed in the streamflow, these use the power of the water itself to reshape the streambed in the desired manner --- directing water to or away from a bank, speeding or slowing flow, enhancing or slowing erosion. It's an application of an intervention to maximum effect with minimum effort.

(That's not to say there aren't problems which bulldozers, diesel, dynamite, and portland cement can't solve far more quickly. But where you're bootstrapping from a minimal position, the gabbion method has merits.)

And that's the essence of what I'm suggesting. Study the problem area, see where behaviour is most strongly influenced, and modify that point. Let the energies within the system do the rest. Judo and ju-jitsu work similarly. I've heard RMS's creation of the GNU GPL described as an example of "ju-jitsu law" --- it takes copyright and uses precisely the law's own strengths to work against it. A certain amount of change was accomplished.

Another great concept comes from the field of navigation by Charles H. Cotter: "The Art of ship handling involves the effective use of forces under control to overcome the effect of forces not under control."

Ship's captains don't recede within themselves to control their ships. They master the craft, learn the practice, read conditions, and act to maximum benefit. There's the natural "ship of state" metaphor, and ... it's not entirely applicable (countries are far more complex than ships, and tend not to have a unitary chain of authority). But the notion of working on the possible remains.


I think you'd want to start by studying social movements that did change the world. Figure out what they did, how they got going, what problems they faced and how they overcame those problems. See if you can fit what you learn about past successes into your present context.

I also think you need to balance the pros and cons of online activism. The pros are, obviously, that you can spread a message cheaply and build communities. A major con is that it's easy for people to just do the online part. If people have some impulse to support your movement, and they can entirely satisfy that impulse by participating in a subreddit, you may find that all you accomplish is building a subreddit.

I have no advice or idea about how to balance the pros and cons, it just seems to me that there are pros and cons. A group that just complains about something is easier to create than a group that solves a problem. Maybe the complaining group is necessary to raise awareness - but maybe it is also a distraction.

Finally, I would think you would want to experiment and iterate. Both with your approach to organizing and with your actual solution. There is a benefit in starting small - easier to make changes and less consequences if you're wrong.


Hi Andrew, A bit different from usual HN fare, but here's a quick nerdy breakdown of how to build power / advocate / get laws changed.

You have an audacious, but specific goal. That's great!

You have at least one person who cares about the outcome of your campaign (you). That's good, you'll need more

1. You need a power map. https://commonslibrary.org/power-mapping/ is a good resource to get you started. Get together some mates, preferably ones who've interacted with the political process before (They'll be more likely to know the players) and start mapping. Once you've got a good power map, that's a good time to reflect: Does this campaign still seem achievable? Is there too much power in the top-left quadrant, and not enough in the top right / middle? Movements that lack a good 'center' of persuadable+influential actors generally fizzle out, so you might want to consider tailoring your campaign goal.

2. You need a theory of change. How do we get from here to there? https://www.thechangeagency.org/?s=theory+of+change is a good start. Don't lock in to a particular tactic too readily, and be prepared to iterate

3. You need power. This both informs and influences your theory of change. Is your power electoral, financial, social?

4. You need a logframe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_framework_approach How will you know if your campaign is working? What intermediate metrics of success can you identify that are both impactful and measurable?

There's a mountain of campaign theory and literature to read, but that's enough to get you started assessing if your campaign is a goer at all. Hope it helps


This is so interesting and seems applicable in many scenarios. Thank you for writing this.


The orgs that succeed imho have a lot of direct outreach happening below the surface. They are building relationships across the sector, meeting with politicians, business people, subject matter experts etc etc.

You see a website and think, the website is doing the work, but it isn't. The organisers are working super hard, grinding away.

Your Reddit community might be a piece of the puzzle but just a small one.

There are many books on the theory of social change. Start reading. Your specific issue here (housing affordability) is at least defined in scope and on political parties radar. But you need to find out why they talk about it but never fix it.


The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune, and buy enough politicians to change the laws to reflect your own concept of how society should work.

The problem you may face next is the consequences of what you have done.

Where will all those investment funds that were destined for housing end up instead? What will be the effects of that shift?

Who will buy the politicians next, and what will they make them do?

So long as you are prepared to keep on making and spending new vast fortunes, you will always be able to right the wrongs you see in society by buying more politicians over and over again so that your view prevails. That's the inherent strength of a liberal democracy like Australia. It is robust and responsive to the wishes of the people.


>> The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune

The irony is that had I made a vast fortune, I would likely not care about this issue.

I've noticed that people who own houses don't give a second's thought to this issue, or they don't see it is a problem. In fact, the opposite - if you own a house then you want to opposite of what I am campaigning for - you want prices to keep skyrocketing to infinity.

The only people who own a house who care about this issue are those who have kids/grandkids and are concerned that those kids are forever renters.

Put more simply: if you own a house then you don't give a ** about people who don't own a house.


I think a good approach for you to take here is Paul Graham’s “do things that don’t scale”.

Buy your own land, build a multi-unit building, and then rent it out to people at a fair price.

You’ll come away with a much greater practical understanding of the issues at hand than you’ll ever get by trying to organize people over the internet, and you’ll have tangibly helped yourself and a few other people.


Hi, Australian here living in Sydney. I'm a very happy renter. Renting in Sydney annually is way under 5% of the cost of owning a house. Even if I could afford to buy a house in Sydney, I wouldn't dream of it. It's much more economically sensible to rent. The money I save in opportunity costs from renting is huge. I can invest the difference between rent and mortgage repayments and don't need to be concerned with maintenance and other costs of owning.

Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwl3-jBNEd4 for more info.


How old are you?

$10 says every passing year will make you less happy with renting.


I'm 45, I've been renting for 25 years. I love the flexibility. I've never been forced to move by a landlord, though I admit it could happen, but I'd be fine to move. I've moved voluntarily about 15 times in those last 25 years.


I think you've oversimplified there.

People nearer the end of their life and with no children who own houses are the big winners here.

If you own a home and want a bigger one, then the price rises hit you proportionately. If you want to move to another location, you may come out even but it adds a lot of drama to the process. You've probably overinvested in housing, because you see a need for a big house later and buying/renting your own current needs would hurt you later.

If your kids want to move out then you'll probably end up using your gains to get them onto the owner side of the equation.

So most people probably want to unwind this. The problem is (like climate change) one of 'collective action' (See Mancur Olson) in order for most to benefit they need to act together (your social movement) but therr will be small, concentrated pockets of power that can take advantage of the situation for their own benefit.


> The irony is that had I made a vast fortune, I would likely not care about this issue.

Part of the issue is that our efforts are unlikely to have any lasting effect.

Founding the movement on an enduring ethical basis is a tricky feat.

Your quoted phrase is both honest and indicative of the challenge in making any changes that will outlast the individual who implements them.


I share your feels towards housing in aus. I've seen friends who are single mothers who left the city to try and claw out a better existence by moving to the country get priced out of their homes. One had rent go from 400 a week to >500 a week due to new owners jacking the price to cover their overextended mortgage.

They need to put some serious brakes on housing as a investment in aus. It's fucking our country. But fat luck telling half the country your about to make them feel judgement day for their shitty high risk low value house stock as it comes crashing back to reality.


Land Value Tax seems to be the sensible solution, but like sensible solutions to climate change, it'll probably take decades before people stop milking it for political drama.

Maybe if you can popularize that policy somehow you might speed things along. Do any of the smaller or regional political parties already support that?

Found this while googling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Tax_Review


What stops all of the landlords from just pricing the tax into rent? I guess the tax could be based on how many parcels you own, but then that would just encourage people to buy parcels next to each other (like monopoly).


> What stops all of the landlords from just pricing the tax into rent?

Nothing stops them from doing that at all; in fact they should.

Total rent = (rent from the improved structure on the land) + (rent from land)

Landlords should be given the right to extract money from people because they have built a nice house for renters to live in. Where Georgism disagrees is that that landlords shouldn't be given the right to extract money from people simply because they own land there (the second part of the equation). Or to be more precise, a large chunk of the money extracted from land ownership gets taken from landlords so that they don't derive much value simply from owning land and doing nothing with it.

That incentivises landlords to increase the value of the building on the land (e.g. higher density housing, batteries and solar panels, longer-lasting structures) in order to increase the portion of the rent that the landlord gets to keep.


https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-par...


Change the world? Literally no one knows.No one can provide a sufficient answer to the question.

But there is a necessary one. You have to start locally, you just have to try something. The part about it that's equally annoying and exciting is that you're not going to end up where you thought you would, but you will be able to look back and have done something -- and probably found some new set of problems or opportunities to tackle.

(Source: I started a STEM non-profit. That exploded into a ton of very different random and messy-but-good things that I'm a part of, but I don't do much of the STEM education part that I intended to, these days)


In Australia, the vast majority of people own their homes.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/home-owne...

There’s a very similar group to yours in Canada called /r/canadahousing. They made a lot of noise, but in the end were a flash in the pan movement that didn’t change anything.

Why? Because in Canada the vast majority of people own their homes. What you call a crisis was actually also massive middle class surge in wealth.

Basically if you want change here, you must address housing challenges in a way that doesn’t impact middle-class wealth.


It might be worth reviewing this essay from aaronsw: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/theoryofchange

Mainly because calls to action are often about whipping up passion about an issue, without often doing the work to identify the actions that would actually be productive.


This is good. I relate to it because Theory of Change sounds like a form of future backwards thinking, or working backwards, for non-profits or social movements. It is difficult strategy to apply well, but that pays off tremendously to those who are able to do it. It doesn't guarantee success but at least it stacks the odds in your favor.

Aaron Swartz's example of working backwards to figure out how to write a bestseller is not too different from Youtubers working backwards to figure what content to make that will generate views. It's about identifying the concrete steps that will take you from one state to the next, finally culminating in the goal.

The one thing missing from this approach however, is an explicit treatment of feedback loops (or "reflexivity" -- something which Soros claims to have applied to economic systems). It's a different way of thinking, but people who grasp systems and feedback loops often have a more realistic understanding of the world than people who think linearly and simplistically.

When you work backwards, you can't just think of what you need to do to get there, but also the 5-6 other 2nd, 3rd or higher order effects that will occur (including an accounting of adversarial forces). These will have unintended consequences that can either help or impede you. You need to find ways to enter positive feedback loops and exit negative ones. If you're able to enter a positive feedback loop, you'll have a flywheel that will amplify itself.


I disagree with your prescriptions for a solution, and the pushback on them will be fairly intense from economists, politicians and many others. I could go into detail about the policies, but there are problems with them.

And anyway, there is a much better way of achieving your goals that will get support from almost everyone, which doesn't involve pushing an angry agenda uphill against entrenched interests. Start pushing for Georgism. There's a large amount of theory supporting this, here's a starting point for reading:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-...

Now, the reason that we in Australia can push for Georgism is that we already have Georgist taxes (local council rates), it's just that they are too weak to have a major effect on the market.

At the same time, councils are underfunded. Since councils do a bunch of things that everyone connects to, likes and relates to (garbage collection, libraries, parks, local roads and footpaths, etc.), it's actually quite easy to create a slogan "let's fund councils properly" that everyone can get behind. If that just happens to end housing as a financial investment in Australia, oh well, that's just an odd unexpected consequence, isn't it?

In particular, you have a large number of councils that will thouroughly support your message, amplify whatever you have to say, and probably let you have access to facilities for free for events.

Your policy objectives are basically going to be: increase funding for councils by letting them increase rates by 20% per year, with a corresponding decrease in (say) stamp duty until state governments no longer need to subsidise local councils.

Even if Georgism is incorrect, we would start seeing rent and real estate prices start declining (because council rates will make holding property less valuable). Mission accomplished.

(The fun starts when councils are fully self-funded, and you keep pushing for 20% increases: then you can start funding state and federal government from Georgist taxes. If Georgism is correct, this should have a variety of very positive effects.)


The haters are invested in your failure, their success depends on being able to gaslight the world to maintain status quo.

Whatever you do, don't ever fucking give up. Give them hell.


If you really want to change the world, your online community is just one piece of the puzzle. It has to drive actual action - for example, regulatory and policy change within your government, campaigns to contact politicians, etc. If something IRL does not follow from the online community, you end up just being a loud vocal online presence... and nothing changes.

By all means, start a community... but have a call to action to go with it.


I feel like I am at the stage of creating an "MVP for a social movement". i.e. trying to work out if this is something that people want, if this is a topic people care about.

Presumably if I am alone in my passion for the subject then no-one will ever comment/reply/email/express their agreement.

If however lots of people start to agree, to put their hands up and say they feel the same, then I can take a next step which is I'm guessing to do what you say which is to define a call to action - but what would that be, can you suggest?


> Presumably if I am alone in my passion for the subject then no-one will ever comment/reply/email/express their agreement.

You don't have to wait for others to agree with you. Part of activism is making other people aware of an issue and inspiring passion about it.

> If however lots of people start to agree, to put their hands up and say they feel the same, then I can take a next step which is I'm guessing to do what you say which is to define a call to action - but what would that be, can you suggest?

The book Playbook For Progress: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer has a detailed description of how activism works. It isn't theoretical - the author founded the Bus Rider's Union (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_Riders_Union_(Los_Angeles)).


One problem we can all suffer from is the “not invented here” problem. You may want to create a social movement but perhaps the movement you want already exists? These things often lack the publicity they need so you may not have seen it. Your efforts will likely be much more valuable if they are connected to an existing movement with active members and momentum rather than starting anew.


The first thing that comes to mind is that "changing the world" is not usually a good goal.

This book

https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Out-Where-Want-Life/dp/162636...

has a pretty good explanation of why that's so, and I was recently reading this book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1890109533

which makes the same case for people who are interested in polyamory. In that case you've got to navigate something pretty complicated just to make the world better for some group of maybe 3..10 people and even though it's in the context of "broken institutions" you really have to attend to your immediate environment.


Solving this problem means providing a workable solution to the people in power, which in this case is homeowners. Can you find a solution which lets them keep their financial gains but also shifts the status quo? If not, they will fight you and win.

One wonky approach might be to introduce some form of government seizure over time, like a scaling progressive rule based on the quantity of property owned that is actually a forced sale to the local housing authority. So over a period the extra housing equity would be owned by the authority and redistributed, while the existing homeowner gets cash but not the property. This particular concept feels flawed but something which produces wins all around is easier to get moving.

As for building the movement, a crisp rallying cry and lines of communication to local stakeholders is key. You probably need to search around for the location with the right mixture of local activism and receptive leadership, in the same way that many startups benefit from specific locations.


> introduce some form of government seizure over time

And if you don't want your property seized because it's valuable to you, maybe you could pay the government a percentage of the price of the land to prevent that from happening.

... which is interesting, because Australia already has a land value tax. All we need to do is increase it.


The problem is hundreds of years old, Tolstoy wrote about it, he was an advocate for Georgism, and there’s also the board game monopoly. Has anyone succeeded anywhere at any time at making housing affordable for the plebs?


What was home ownership like in the US prior to the 1900's? Rural areas were farms that people owned and maintained, and repaired, if possible, with the help of neighbors. In urban areas only the wealthy owned homes, and it was very much landlords and boarding houses. It wasn't until post WW2 when freeways appeared and the suburban boom + baby boom that people actually started owning houses en-masse. I fear that we are boomeranging back to the urban landlord / renter model because now all of the suburbs have been bought up as investments. (A couple I'm friends with owns 13 houses; they've been buying them since the 1990's, fixing them up, and renting them. It's crazy, fortunately they are nice people.)

So to answer your question, there was a brief period in American history for about 50 years where housing was affordable (1945-1995) then shit just went sideways. But it required massive investment from the government (freeways & GI bill). To return to this would require massive, complicated legislation; or some simple push that collapses the housing market as an investment strategy. Maybe higher interest rates. Maybe killing the mortgage deduction. Maybe an inheritance tax with teeth.


I'd say study how antiwork got started. When you get a lot of eyes on an idea real change can happen.

In the past, your whole community needed to feel that change was necessary otherwise people would just accept the current situation. I argue anti-vax wouldn't exist if there wasn't a meeting place for people with vaccine related anxiety to meet. That place is the internet. And we see how much of an impact it has had on vaccination rates.

Regarding housing issues, to me the solution is simple but untenable to most western cultures. Limit population growth to natural growth unless the vacancy rate of housing is 3% of existing supply. Unfortunately, this would require reducing immigration which would mean wages would need to rise for all workers.

The part I don't understand is how government don't see wage rises as a positive thing. Income taxes make up the vast majority of the tax base in western countries and yet the government seems focused solely on corporate interests. Any country that targets high levels of immigration during a housing crisis must be corrupt.


Antiwork hasn't achieved anything except spamming a job board for a few hours


Unrelated, too afraid too ask. But regarding house prices. I think housing prices are just the way it is? Or I am just not understanding a few things.

More people want to live more in cities (due to access to society’s benefits and jobs) then housing prices will rise. This seems normal to me? I.e more people means more competition means price will rise.

If someone wants cheap house, they can just move far to the suburbs and work there or commute to the city.

Am I mistaken to think that there is no inherent problem in rising house prices? It is just the way it is and it happens everywhere even in 3rd world countries.


No, there is a lot of government policy at play here. Prices would be lower if there weren't as many investors in the market.


I see. Would that mean that it will be just slightly lower? As in, overtime the problem will be the same.


Not spam but weird, lengthy post here man. Why not write all this in a letter/blog post on your site and share it here instead of this page long post. Point ppl somewhere to read your idea and request for help.

Change the title of this post from generic ask HN, it's ridiculous. Should be like Ask HN: idea to create a movement for real estate rebellion in Australia.

I mean the generic bait ask HN titles are the worst. What is your actual topic and most of the time you should be searching other threads instead of attracting upvotes unnecessarily on this stuff.


this might be helpful: https://fullspectrumresistance.org/the-book/


The logic of the system means there is nothing surprising to what you see happening. The reasons for doing what is being done are the same as for doing what was done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_land_rights_in_Aust...


I am Australian. What you are trying is impossible in this country. The last time a political party announced some policies like restricting negative gearing in last election they lost the "unlosable" election. Your premise is actually wrong. People can buy and own a house in this huge country of Australia, just not easily in inner to middle ring suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Even that would be better as there is fuck ton of inheritance coming down the line in next 10-20 years.

Australians like backyards and outdoor and hate to live in appartments. I would say change your social movement to policies like encouraging "work from home" with better NBN, better transport and high speed rail to de-centralise work etc.


Do you own a house?


ALittleLight gives a good general answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29533866

Building and departing on that somewhat:

Do study what has worked, and what hasn't. Keep in mind that success may be based on chance, and negative examples also teach.

Keep in mind that there are many ways in which political movements fail (and a few that help them succeed). The study of failed utopian projects is highly illuminating. My view is that creating a self-perpetuating "intentional community" is a possible approach. For these to work, the community itself must be practically viable, and address basic levels of human needs: shelter (obviously), food, work, society, etc. In my view the college town is amongst the more successful of these in the past century or two, though that itself may be based on conditions no longer broadly present.

I strongly recommend Jo Freeman's "Tyranny of Structurelessness". https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I'd strongly recommend going to the communities most affected by the problem at hand and getting their perspective. I don't believe that those oppressed by a system always fully understand the nature of that system or the solution. I do feel that they can offer highly useful insights, and that if you hope to enlist their support they will want to be participants and not mere passengers.

The general problem is one called "politics". It turns out there's a literature on this stretching back millennia. Old dead men (mostly, there are some exceptions) have something to teach.

There are a number of reforms based around the question of real estate and property. There's an increasing amount of current focus on this. Shane Phillips of the UCLA Lewis Center strikes me as particularly good, his book is a set of recipes for reform you should find useful, The Affordable City (https://www.worldcat.org/title/affordable-city-strategies-fo... https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city). Simon Winchester's written on the question of land ownership recently, Land (https://www.worldcat.org/title/land-the-ownership-of-everyth...)

There are Henry George, Koprotkin, Tolstoy, and others.

I've written a Hierarchy of Failures in Problem Resolution which some have found useful. (Invert the cases to "success in..." and you find an essential success chain.) https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fsr0g/hierarc...

There are a number of especially critical points. Many people recognise that there is a problem, and even the nature of the problem. Trouble usually starts with goals and methods, the getting-there-from-here problem.

Often you'll find that progress is blocked by those who 1) deny that there is a problem, 2) aren't interested in solving it, or 3) benefit by the existence of the problem itself. Overcoming these factors is a major challenge.

There are parts of the world which have far less of a housing and real-estate problem than others. Berlin, Vienna, and Tokyo are often mentioned. Looking at how they've addressed the problem and avoided the trap is hugely useful.

A thought exercise I conduct (and would suggest in talking with those dealing with the issue) is what I call "More Money Than God". The point is NOT that you have unlimited resources, but to simply take the funding question off the table whilst options for action are considered. Walk through possible methods and practices without considering how you'd pay for them, for now, and think which would have the greatest positive impact. After doing that, start putting price tags on things. If nothing else, you'll have a list of options to present to participants and potential funders.

A tremendously underappreciated mechanism in property-based market economies is that much personal wealth accumulation comes not from creating wealth (in the sense that a society as a whole achieves greater capabilities) but in asset inflation. And real estate is amongst the fundamental assets. Appreciation of its value is not a creation of new wealth in itself, but an appropriation of wealth creation elsewhere, at best, and quite often a manipulation of others' misery, needs, or lack of options.

Recognising this doesn't make your task any easier, but it does make possible the recognition of the nature of the problem and sources of likely resistance.

A great essay addressing this is Bernhard J. Stern, "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", 1937. This covers several areas, housing amongst them.

https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag... (poor-quality scan)

Markdown: https://rentry.co/szi3g

The market itself is the source of many distortions. That said, finding a way to leverage it against itself might prove useful. I'm sort of stumped myself on how best to do this, but it is the direction I've been leaning toward myself.

Rather than eliminating property ownership, at least initially, changing its structure might be an option. Co-ops, land banks, and other forms of collective ownership might have merits. These are practiced in many areas, though mostly to a limited extent.


First, see how many people are affected. You need a relatively large percentage of affected people to change the world. Otherwise, most people don't care if they aren't affected.


Start at your local government, figure out what they can and can't do to help. Go to the next level, figure out what can and can't be done at that level. Keep going.


Have you read Game of Mates(https://gameofmates.com/)? It discusses crony capitalism in Australia and has some concrete policy recommendations.

If you're looking for other references on activism the Radical Book Club (https://status451.com/tag/radical-book-club/) series of blog posts has detailed book reviews and recommendations. It's targeted at right-wing readers but the advice applies regardless of your views.


I'm in Australia as well, and so I've seen this housing issue first hand. I have two ways of looking at this.

I am complete agreement with you btw, and I don't think your idea is that deeply radical. I've been saying this for years.

I'm not concerned. I don't own a house, I've never bought into the "everyone must own their home, it's the greatest investment possible" mentality. To all the people who say "but real estate has gone up 30% in the last year", that's fine. You can send your condolences to my crypto account (or stocks which are also up more than 30%).

If you look at the people who REALLY did change the world, was it really those who created a social movement? There were a few, Nelson Mandella, Gahndi, etc. But you can also look at those who provided an alternative, or a new way of looking at the world. Of course, our current hero in this realm is Elon Musk, he didn't lobby to put a cap on fossil fuels, he built a solution.

Millennials are purchasing houses at a lower rate than any time before in history, AND people are becoming more mobile (well, before the pandemic anyway). With population collapse, will housing continue to be a good investment over the next 50 years?

I personally believe the real estate as investment will decrease in popularity. Why? Because you can't really sell just part of your house, I can sell a bit of stocks if I want to go on a trip, or buy a new car or something. If all my money is in my house, I have to sell the whole thing. I can only sell it to somebody who wants to buy the whole thing, and that person either wants to live in it, or wants to rent it out. My house is of less value to somebody in Italy (as an example) than it is to someone in Australia. With most other investments, it doesn't matter where geographically the person is, it's the same value. Lastly, a house, has upkeep, taxes, maintenance, and the design goes out of style and needs to be updated.

So, I'd suggest that rather than try to lobby to change society or create a "social movement", you figure out a) what you can do for yourself to improve your investment position without real estate, b) how you can help improve the lives of others.

Some people have said to me that housing in Australia will always be valuable, because as the population shrinks, immigration will just let more people in, but I believe this is also a flawed argument as it ignores the improvements to quality of life that are happening in the places that would normally be the source of immigration, and the fact that these countries will also likely see decreased birth rates as they continue to develop.


Get children to school strike for housing every Friday?


Will you still feel the same when you can afford a house? Is this about you because you can't afford a home or a cause you're willing to spend every dime you own to support?


We must cultivate our garden.


Write a book.


You can't. Any change is ultimately a wash.


The social movement you want is called marxism - a highly efficient framework to use a divide a society to your benefit. In your case, it's the divide between those who have homes and those who don't.


You’re right about marxism but your framing about dividing society seems unhelpful in my opinion. Marxism is about recognizing power imbalances in society and understanding how to use our collective power for our benefit rather than the benefit of the few. Focusing on division seems a poor way to present this.


Many of the first to be sent to the Gulags were also true believers. You should study your history. Marx wasn't the great intellectual you might think and Marxist Communism never ends well for anyone.


Trust me, I’m a libertarian communist meaning I oppose the use of the State or any force. There are no gulags nor prisons in my imagined future. Marx’s economic analysis of different ways to organize production is invaluable even in a completely voluntary society, which is what I advocate for. I want to build systems that help people the way Wikipedia helps people - in a “take it or leave it” totally voluntary way.

Even if you ignore Marx completely, the basic idea that “perhaps it is bad for most people to have society ruled by a small elite” is a quite reasonable one to have.


Regarding your "reasonable idea", does it account for real life constraints, namely greed, cruelty and other qualities found in humans today? Capitalism isn't great, but it works, while other models tend to fold under the weight of reality.


Yes.

Meanwhile, I hear that "capitalism works" but we have tens of thousands of Americans dying each year due to lack of basic medical care, our students are saddled with educational debt that the boomer generation did not have to pay, people cannot survive working full time on minimum wage, and our politicians are pocketing huge financial gain to avoid a rapid conversion to renewable energy or affordable health care.

If you call that "working" then let me say we can do much much better.


All this are comical problems compared to what we'd had in a marxist regime. Instead of tens of thousands dying from lack of medical care, there would be tens of millions dead due to ideological cleanings (e.g. uygurs in china), and there won't be much of healthcare anyway because doctors don't like to work for free. This brings us to the education. In marxist regimes students are simply sent to work for a few years in places where the party needs them. No debts, but no freedom. The equivalent of the minimum wage problem in marxism is empty shelves: your salary buys a lot of stuff, on paper, but there's simply no goods to buy due to price control.

So far your arguments are just a wishlist: you say what you want, but don't explain how to get it.


I suppose you don’t know anything about the doctors in Cuba then.

> So far your arguments are just a wishlist: you say what you want, but don't explain how to get it.

Actually I often explain how I’m going to help create a system that can free people from the need to work. The fact that I’ve not explained it to you so far in this conversation is not evidence that I don’t have a plan.

I am a skilled robotics engineer and I will work with others to create productive machinery which lowers the cost of living until those benefitting from this system do not even need to work to get what they need.

What you do not realize is that the Marxist critique of the way capitalism organizes production can be applied to engineered systems without any use of force or state power. I will simply collaborate with others to build machines we own which provide for us. In this way we will create community ownership of the means of production in a voluntary system that works without any laws in the USA changing. This is a plan informed by Marx’s critique of capitalist production, and also informed by the failure of authoritarian communism.


Trust in good intentions is a huge red flag any time communism is being discussed. I'd like to believe that you are approaching this from good intentions and that you honestly can't see the horrific results that your proposed political/economic system would bring about - but there are just so many corpses tied to attempts to implement communism that anyone proposing it in serious conversation either does not fully understand the full history of it, or they are intentionally ignoring it for their own purposes.

Take for example your use of "libertarian communist." These are mutually incompatible ideologies. Libertarianism promotes maximum individual liberty (freedom). Communism by its very nature limits personal liberty to the maximum extent possible. You cannot have both because nature of communism will immediately begin to erode all liberties you may have envisioned.

No gulags or prisons? But where do you put the people who oppose the ideas you are proposing? But you will convince them your ideas are pure and you just want the best for everyone so you won't need to lock them away or dispose of them. But what about those who don't want to be convinced? Or the people who just don't like being told what to do? How will you incentivize them? There's a lot of people like that out there. You'd need an entire bureaucracy to promote your ideas to the non-believers. But some people would be silent dissenters - stirring up doubt and pursuading others away from your ideas through less public means. You'd need a way to keep tabs on these people to make sure they don't try to overthrow your administration before its had a chance to succeed. And what if they do find evidence of a conspiracy to abandon your ideas? Because your ideas are pure and the outcomes are expected to be glorious, anyone who rejects them must be...

And what of the people who do support you? How will you reward achievement and promote innovation in a system without means of reward? How will you keep them loyal? You will find the solution is quite simple actually - a system without reward mechanisms still has mechanisms for punishment.

So no - communism is not just misunderstood, it is not just implemented badly, it is not just attempted by the wrong people. It is rotten to the core. It is a fractally bad idea.


> No gulags or prisons? But where do you put the people who oppose the ideas you are proposing?

The same place the creators of Wikipedia put people who don’t like Wikipedia - nowhere, they don’t do anything to people who don’t want to participate.

> But what about those who don't want to be convinced? Or the people who just don't like being told what to do? How will you incentivize them?

My system is purely voluntary and it works with the participation of a small number of volunteers. You really have not appreciated that when I say it is libertarian I actually know what I am saying.

> You'd need a way to keep tabs on these people to make sure they don't try to overthrow your administration before its had a chance to succeed. And what if they do find evidence of a conspiracy to abandon your ideas?

You’re really letting your mind wander. Again think of Wikipedia. If someone wants to stop contributing, absolutely nothing will happen to them.

> So no - communism is not just misunderstood

At least on your end, the misunderstanding is significant. It would be great if, instead of telling me libertarian communism is an impossibility and wholly misinterpreting my goals, you kept an open mind and considered what a libertarian communism would be like.

Do you know about the Sikhs in India? How they produce and give away over one million free meals a day across the country? How they have massive Langar kitchens that produce 100,000 free meals a day? I am a robotics engineer, and a damn good one. I want to create facilities which can produce tens of thousands of delicious healthy organic meals per day to distribute for free or with a payment optional model. I want to provide free community robotics classes so the members of the community can learn useful skills to help repair and improve the machine and to get better jobs.

I call what I aim for communism because it is based on Marxist principles of community ownership of the means of production, and based on the ideals of libertarian communists from the past (there is a long history of that term going back to the 1800’s and you should look it up before so horribly misunderstanding it).

You could say “giving things to people in need is capitalism! It’s charity!” And the truth is the meaning of the terms overlaps. And we can both be right. But I follow in the libertarian communist tradition and I’m quite proud of that. I don’t usually hear capitalists saying every person deserves food and shelter and clothes no matter whether they can or do work.

I want to help create a world where having a job is totally optional. And we can do that through concentrated automation of core human needs with machines owned by the community they serve. Community ownership of the means of production. Imagine how much freedom a person would have if they did not have to work! They would have the freedom to spend time with loved ones, to paint, to read, to bike. For the average person this would be a life changing situation. One that our current form of capitalism seems to have no interest in producing.


What are your thoughts on how Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot conducted themselves? They also believed that they were doing the best possible good for their societies.

I believe the disconnect here is you seem to be suggesting that Marxist / communist ideology can be safely restrained from eroding personal liberty. I do not and would rather not run the experiment because history has shown it tends toward genocide - regardless of the good intentions of its supporters. It's the parable of the scorpion and the frog.

I'm happy to encourage people to continue to help the needy. But communism is a hard nope.


How can you account for the millions of Americans who have died over the past 50 years due to lack of medical care? How about the millions of Vietnamese people killed in their own country fighting for independence from colonial rule? How about all those innocent people killed by the USA in the Middle East?

The problem with all that and the people you mentioned is authoritarianism, not their preferred way of organizing production.

In the USA post-McCarthy “communism” was understood as synonymous with authoritarian communism. But authoritarian communism does not and has never represented the whole of communist thought. There have always been libertarian communists also called anarchist communists, as Peter Kropotkin identified himself in his famous 1892 book.

If you think all communism leads to authoritarianism then of course you would oppose it. But isn’t is the case that capitalism is just as susceptible to authoritarian control, as we see when the USA overthrows governments to secure cheap oil and a pliable labor force?

We can an must oppose authoritarianism in all its forms.

But you’re getting hung up on terms. I’m sure if I told you I want to marshall resources from donors to build a facility that makes automated meals for everyone, you’d be supportive. It is only when I say that every person deserves this regardless of their ability or desire to work that you will get concerned.

In the words of Hélder Câmara: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”


There’s capitalist solutions. Current Australian policy incentivises rent seeking, so simply stopping that would alleviate the problem slightly.


Policy is just a veil for the greedy crooks who benefit from the system. Unless you know how to overpower them, policy will stay.


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