Countless humans got their lives destroyed because of this perfectly normal variation of human sexuality, that's atrocious and so we should never forget what happened to Alan Turing because of essentially religious fundamentalism.
As a moral realist and liberal humanist, I agree, but the post highlights something important. Evil acts are often motivated by sincere moral systems. These people are mostly not sociopaths acting independent of a moral system. The feelings of moral disgust you feel towards their views are probably no different neurobiologically to the feelings of moral disgust they felt. This is important for us to recognize. Feelings of moral disgust should not be automatically given credence or respect just because they exist. We should also be careful and introspective of strongly held moral feelings that arise in ourselves.
I agree, but then what do you base a moral system on?
We should be introspective, and it helps, but it is far from being a solution. It is very difficult to get away from personal feels, or from you culture.
> I agree, but then what do you base a moral system on?
I've thought about this way more than I probably should. While I don't have any answers, I do think two very famous attempts are particularly worth studying (and IMHO, blending). Immanuel Kant's exploration, particularly his categorical imperative, and Jon Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism.
IMHO though, it's a very difficult task because we humans tend to base our moral judgments on our emotional reactions to things, and our reactions (such as disgust) are a complex combination of instinct from past evolution, and culture we are raised in. If the outcome from some system/principle disagrees with our emotional reaction, we tend to discard the system rather than examine and question our reactions. I actually find Robert Sapolsky's work (and others in that area) to be just as interesting/illuminating because while they don't provide answers themselves, they do a remarkable job helping us see the challenges involved with trusting our gut.
I actually lived in a country where everyone had a right for free shelter. It was called the USSR.
The quality and quantity of said shelter was beyond abysmal. Several families sharing a single apartment, a family per room, was the norm.
If anyone attempted to squatter anywhere, they would very quickly find themselves free sheltered in Gulag. If they were to argue for their rights against oppression and exploitation, like you do, they would be very quickly free sheltered in a mad house and injected with generous doses of haloperidol.
What is ironic is that I’ve people living like that in the US too. I once lived in a building with a lot of immigrants from different parts of the world. I once got a glance in a living room walking down the hall: two bunks in the living room dozens of people inside. Another apartment was a studio apartment shared by two guys whose main source of income seemed to be charging lime scooters in the apartment. They’d be hauling scooters in and out all day.
So maybe things wouldn’t be that different at all for the poorest of this country but they’d not have the boot of monthly rent pinned on their neck.
Yeah, on the other hand you had Anarchist Catalonia or currently Zapatistas. In USA you had MK Ultra, where government experimented on people through for example drugging them and you have homelessness too. Moreover people who fought for liberation were diagnosed with schizophrenia.
We in the USA are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. We could solve homelessness and hunger tomorrow.
I'm not saying that people should lose their property to squatters, that's not the solution. I'm saying that we could build ~300,000 new homes and give them to people for free and it would barely register on the national budget.
Would you sleep in a tent for a year to get a million dollars? I already have a house and would still do it.
Hell, I would do it for 10% of that. No job and drinking and camping for a year sounds like an epic vacation.
Before you doubt me, I was certifiably homeless in San Francisco for 3 months it was a blast. Slept on couches everyday, worked cash jobs, and partied every night.
It's crucial to understand that if we let a person that build a shelter keep it for eternity then that person can build many shelters such that there will be no land left for other people to build their shelters on.
How they can make something they can trade, if they have no land on which they can make it? Where can they go, if private property exists in most of the world?
Everyone is entitled to free shelter, but nobody is required to build them? Where do you think the free shelter is going to come from? Because, looking around, I don't see very many free shelters, so they're going to have to come from somewhere.
And if your answer is to take all the existing houses and give them, one to each family that needs a place to stay, that's great in the short term. In the long term, though, who's going to build a new one when it will just be taken from them? And if nobody builds new ones, where are new ones going to come from, as the population continues to grow?
At worst everyone should have an access to piece of land where they can build a shelter for themselves, or live in a yurt or an RV if they don't want to build the typical housing.
No, because if there is not enough for other people they either are forced to get exploited by landlords or become homeless. Purchasing real estate is immoral, as is whole notion of rent-seeking through usurpation of unused land such that other persons cannot use it when you don't use it and occupy it.
Homelessness is a problem, even having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live is a problem. Squatting is just a strategy to fight an inherently oppressive private property norm.
I'm curious how would you expect housing to stock to grow or even stay stable if nobody had to pay rent?
Would all housing be used owned by the state and assigned to individuals based on certain criteria (with huge amounts of inefficiency and corruption that such a system creates)?
It could grow either by people making their own houses on their own, or by them finding others who would help with this process, or by paying someone for the labor required for the house to get build.
I think that private property should not get nationalized.
Fortunately, most citizens are not economically illiterate enough to support this ideology. Private ownership of land and natural resources is the foundation of 21st-Century economic prosperity.
No it's not. Private property created a world where 8 persons control as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity. This is not common prosperity, this is exploitation.
I would like to know what the limits of your application of this idea is because if I were to extend your argument that "even having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live is a problem.", this is what I get to:
I am currently buying a house, every month I pay money to the bank, this is very similar to having to pay rent. From my understanding of your logic, this would be a problem.
Further from that, I am building a house. I have to make payments to the builder(s) in order to have a place to live. Is this a problem?
Not endorsing the view, just sharing lines of reasoning I've seen.
Paying money to the bank implies you financed your purchase of a home. This is not necessarily a morally-neutral activity, it's in fact nuanced but we've done a good job of handwaving away the nuance in the last 4-5 generations of Americans.
A small vignette to explain: financing allows people to leverage their credit history and income to make larger purchases than they could otherwise afford. This increases the sticker price of purchasing a home, which prices out people with low credit or income. Anything that increases the price of housing effectively increases the price of rent, which limits peoples' abilities to save to actually purchase a home – it's a nasty cycle. One could argue that by participating in that system of financing, you're perpetuating it, but most people immediately dismiss this idea, ymmv.
Building a house, and paying people to build the house, is not a problem. You're exchanging value for labor and assets. You're de facto increasing the supply of housing.
So, I personally like the idea of someone working with a builder to build your house. I also like the idea of only ever buying something rather than financing it.
I also think that if that was only the option, housing prices would rise rather than fall.
Cash up front, I assume in an escrow so that buyer can't cheat builder and builder can't run away with the money.
This means that a someone who wants to build/buy a home is going to need around 150k saved up.
Assuming that 50k yearly salary and rent is immoral, they have to live at home until saved up. 1/3 put aside is 16.66k per year, 9 years before they can get a house.
In actuality, the cost is probably going to be more expensive as you would no longer have developments going up.
Not necessarily, you just might not build 100% of your eventual home immediately.
It used to be (i.e. prior to the postwar expansion of credit to the American consumer) pretty common to build a "starter home" that was intended to be expanded. You start with the basics (basement, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom) and expand modularly from there as your prosperity and needs allow.
In the midwest, they would start by building the foundation, basement, and a very modest first floor. As the family prospered, had children, and developed roots in the neighborhood, they'd expand the above-ground portion of the home in the summer months. You can find homes frozen at each stage of development from the pre-depression 1900s still around today, although they're of greater archaeological value today than housing stock value. A lot of present-day "colonial" housing stock in the Northeastern U.S. have evidence of this gradual accrual over the decades.
This idea of "build a whole mansion at once" was historically reserved for the truly wealthy, and has only been "practical" for a greater segment of society for the last 50 years (again, with the expansion of consumer credit, not because we can actually afford these things).
You could still choose to build things this older style. Our culture of "obtain everything all at once, immediately up to the limit of your purchasing power" is the main impediment. That, and building codes might frown on some earlier-phase iterations, though YMMV.
My ~150k is for a starter home. That is what a ranch 3 bedroom, 2 bath with kitchen/dining and living room, no basement goes for in my area, based on 1990's code.
Current code is more stringent.
I know that people used to add on, that is however going to be more costly in the long term. Think about heating and A/C system, rather than buy the system once and keep it for 15 years as you expand you need to keep redoing duct work and adding capacity.
You will end up with insulation and vapor barriers between two interior walls.
Plumbing and electrical will become interesting as well.
I grew up in the kinds of homes you are describing, I like them but the building style does have challenges.
I also like the idea of people putting down roots, however this in turn limits people's opportunities.
This also limits the type of housing, what would be required in order to build a duplex or townhouse? A condo/apartment building?
Part of the current green movement talks about getting rid of suburbia and condensing into more urban areas. This would be a direct opposition to that as you would need to buy a lot size that guarantees that you can grow.
I am living under my address, I am occupying that place, so I am not fine with providing my address. But I am fine with people living in abandoned houses.
I think it depends on local customs and local agreements, it can differ. I guess I could consider a house abandoned if no one lives there for a year or 2. While for a mine, I think I would consider it abandoned the moment previous miners left it, such that other can get into the mine and mine some resource.
I'm a little confused. You said you want to get rid of private property but also your residence is occupied so I can't stay there. Who gave you the right to say that? If there is no private property it seems like we should be able to vote who can stay in your residence.
Squatters fight against private property which is usually protected by law, it's very rare that it goes the other direction. A lot of squatters want to abolish the possibility of someone having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live, considering that relation inherently oppressive and against a self-ownership of the individual.
Refusing to pay for a place to live is simply theft and entitlement.
They expect people to build and maintain homes for them while doing nothing in return.
If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can.
These misguided ideologies can only live parasitic ally on the fringe of a otherwise functional society. If they got their way, the society would be destroyed.
For most of our history humans did not have to pay for a piece of land to put up some yurt or hut and live there.
How is the current system not strong taking whatever they can? Private property is just a legitimized theft, because it leaves some people without access to land or natural resources that is required for survival.
It's not true that without private property you get state slavery or a strongman situation, you may check Zapatistas, they are rebels that created a stateless society of 300 000 in Chiapas, Mexico without private property with structure that is based on decentralized, horizontal, federated institutions.
Anarchism is not a misguided ideology, it's a product of highest levels of freethought that inspired many people to fight for liberation from oppression and for a world where every human can develop the the heights of one's potential.
That is an ahistorical perspective. For most of human history, you could be killed for putting a yurt or hut in someone else's land.
Even chimps will kill others for infringing on territory.
There were breif periods where humans entered virgin land, but these people migrated because other land and resources were spoken for.
>Private property is just a legitimized theft, because it leaves some people without access to land or natural resources that is required for survival.
This is reverse reasoning. people lacking resources doesn't imply it was stolen from them. The alternative is that they simply didn't start with any.
Rights don't derive from wants or needs.
My wanting a pony does not give me a natural right to a pony. My hunger does not give me a natural right to food
>It's not true that without private property you get state slavery or a strongman situation, you may check Zapatistas
The zapititistas did not acquire all their land, people, and resources through free choice, nor were people free to stop collaborating if they chose.
> That is an ahistorical perspective. For most of human history, you could be killed for putting a yurt or hut in someone else's land. Even chimps will kill others for infringing on territory.
I don't agree with you, there are books such as The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity that counter your rhetoric. Private property norms did not exist for most of human history.
> Even chimps will kill others for infringing on territory.
On the other hand Bonobo is not so territorial and is too one of the species that is the closest to us.
>This is reverse reasoning. people lacking resources doesn't imply it was stolen from them. The alternative is that they simply didn't start with any.
Why then some people usurp land and natural resources and not let others use them?
> Rights don't derive from wants or needs.
From what they derive? If you agree that there is no natural rights, then how do you justify private property rights?
> The zapititistas did not acquire all their land, people, and resources through free choice, nor were people free to stop collaborating if they chose.
Bonobos are not pacifist. There is less violence within the troop, but they will still kill and maim, especially in the case of territorial disputes.
Groups of humans have always organized for Mutual Aid, but it has never been unilateral or not subject to the approval of the group.
Norms around private property are different across time and depend on the level of abundance. At no point could a strange human come and take your possessions huts, or food without permission.
In general, I'm getting the impression from your comment that you have some overly idealistic beliefs, and that you're perhaps unwilling to engage honestly with ideas that are counter to your own, but in any case..
Re: The Dawn of Everything
You're saying you don't agree with him because of a book you read - but that book has legitimate historians making some pretty bold criticisms: "cherry-picked and selectively presented examples", "perilously close to scholarly malpractice."
There is some positive feedback as well, but in general, if a book claiming to be historical elicits this kind polarization, it's probably not something to base a strong belief on.
I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history, humans have been protective of their territory. The list of examples you could point to for this is unending.
> Why then some people usurp land and natural resources and not let others use them?
You're question here doesn't really do accomplish anything re: property somehow being theft. I would suggest that "the reason" some people aquire land and don't let others use it can simply be because they don't want to. Sometimes the answer is that it's not financially viable to share it. Sometimes the answer is that they fear the destruction of the land or resource if they just open it up to anyone. Any of these reasons is sufficient, because they don't actually need a reason.
> If you agree that there is no natural rights, then how do you justify private property rights?
To start, the other guy never claimed private property was a natural right. The rights we have emerged from people wanting to self organize for their mutual benefit. They needed to agree on some fundamental protections that enable an actual net benefit of their organized society, and giving people rights to own and protect their property is generally needed for people to feel confident that effort they put in to improve the land is effort they will be rewarded for. It's a nice idea that people will improve land for the good of humanity, but in reality, people are not motivated by that enough to overcome the people who would abuse that system by "free-loading". It should tell you something that private property + property rights have consistently emerged, whenever people have tried to put together a society.
> Please share your sources for this statement
I admittedly didn't know much about this, but on some cursory research, it seems pretty obvious to me that this was not an entirely "free choice" based movement..
"Rebels wore ski masks and used furniture and other office materials to barricade themselves inside of buildings once they had taken them over.[11] During the occupation of the city, rebels also painted pro-Zapatista statements on the walls of buildings.[12] While raiding San Cristóbal de las Casas, the Zapatistas released 230 predominantly Indigenous prisoners from jail and also demolished land records in protest"
> In general, I'm getting the impression from your comment that you have some overly idealistic beliefs, and that you're perhaps unwilling to engage honestly with ideas that are counter to your own, but in any case..
I like precise logical argumentation, that's not idealism, I don't make any unnecessary assumptions
> I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history, humans have been protective of their territory. The list of examples you could point to for this is unending.
Oh, that's very simple, for most of human history humans lived as hunter gatherers and they did not have private property or rent relations.
>To start, the other guy never claimed private property was a natural right. The rights we have emerged from people wanting to self organize for their mutual benefit.
No, there was an enclosure of commons that happened to exploit farmers as factory workers. Those rights were always about naturalizing oppressive human relations.
>It should tell you something that private property + property rights have consistently emerged, whenever people have tried to put together a society.
This is not true, many civilizations were against private property rights and private property rights were never universal, they are even not universal in this worlds, even if they exist in most places around the world.
>I admittedly didn't know much about this, but on some cursory research, it seems pretty obvious to me that this was not an entirely "free choice" based movement..
No one is coerced to join those rebels. And rebels are rebelling against unjust genocide of Indigenous Americans among others.
That's not quite how your comments elsewhere in this thread read lol
> This is not true, many civilizations were against private property rights and private property rights were never universal
Wanna name a couple of those civilizations that didn't have property rights that managed to thrive and grow beyond a population of like 10,000? If you're going to point towards something like Greenland or China where land is owned exclusively by the state and leased out.. that's the same thing as private property rights, the people who lease that land out have rights with respect to that land. Countries literally can not exist without property rights, and if you're gonna say "yea and countries shouldn't exist it's all just made up borders anyway, mann..." then you're username is incredibly fitting lmao
I also never said that these rights were universal, just that they show up. A lot. And if you want to claim that reason is because of some oppression, go for it. I happen to think this is wrong, and the fact that basically every time these rights are revoked things go to shit tells me that's because they exist for a reason. See
> No one is coerced to join those rebels.
Brother, they showed up with guns and took over buildings by force; they destroyed the land records for everyone, not just their specific "members" - if that's not coercion, what is? Please recognize that you may just be enamored with the ideals of what the group said on paper, and are therefore rationalizing their extremist actions that end up being counterproductive to any positive goals.
>Brother, they showed up with guns and took over buildings by force; they destroyed the land records for everyone, not just their specific "members" - if that's not coercion, what is?
What do you think about genocide of Indigenous Americans? Is it okay? Or can they defend themselves?
For most of human history, people fought over the right for members of their group to put up a hut or yurt on a piece of land. And/Or some other, more powerful group would come and take whatever they wanted, including sex and slaves, from other, weaker groups of humans.
Now you have a group (or multiple groups) of people that will use violence to prevent people from doing the things that they feel are wrong. Probably they'll decide on what those things that are worth using violence to prevent are, and probably they'll write them down so that everyone is on the same page. If they don't do that, then they are using violence for arbitrary and undefined reasons, which most people don't want. I think I see where this is going...
What is the vision for this scenario that doesn't just turn into new groups taking power and enforcing their rules?
The most important difference is everyone could create such a group without main authority monopolizing violence. Some would try to recreate current authoritarian relations, while others would oppose them.
It's a nice thought, many small bands of people each doing their own thing. But I don't see why people think it would turn out differently than it has turned out before, which is some groups becoming large and powerful enough that they push out, destroy, or absorb other groups, until they become large and powerful enough that they're just called government.
> Yeah, so indeed it's important to organize self-defense groups that can help you not get hurt or enslaved.
Did you realize you just came up with the system you were opposing?
We can organize into some groups, let's call them countries, with an organized self-defense groups, we can call them police and military, to prevent our yurts from being stolen.
> For most of our history humans did not have to pay for a piece of land to put up some yurt or hut and live there.
In those same times, anyone that wandered by who was stronger could simply kill them and take over the yurt, until someone stronger showed and killed them in turn.
Not a great way to live, and not a very long life.
Yeah, Zapatistas have much higher standard of living than other people that live in Chiapas, which is impressive. You have to always consider local conditions and if you can see that certain ideas help some part of some territory develop better then alternatives then it's a strong argument for them. Especially considering that rebels are fighting against colonially motivated genocide.
> Yeah, Zapatistas have much higher standard of living than other people that live in Chiapas, which is impressive.
Of course, the corrupt ruling bandits always enjoy a higher standard of living than their subjects. The same story in every anarchist and communist society.
Zapatistas are organized Indigenous Americans, they are fighting against genocide. Why for you people who fight for their own survival are bandits? Do you think that people who were committing the genocide are fine? Do you approve of genocide of Indigenous Americans? If so, then that's disgusting.
"For most of our history humans did not have to pay for a piece of land to put up some yurt or hut and live there."
You can still put up your yurt or hut in many places of the Earth, probably including Chiapas, but it seems that more people want to live in London, Munich, Tokio or Barcelona.
Show me a place with a stateless society and without private property that actually attracts nontrivial amounts of people. You speak of such places highly and reverently, but for all their highest level of freethought, they don't seem to compete well with traditional urban centers of the capitalist world.
When voting with their feet, people mostly move to wealthy countries that protect personal property, not away from them.
>I'm pretty sure they're talking about real property. Land and improvements. Not the strong taking away everything you have.
An individual has to be very careful not to create any real property value or improvements, otherwise it will be taken from you.
Conceptually there are lots of solutions to managing this problem. Historically, they rely on a state institution that goes around stripping people of what they create, forcing people to create things they don't own.
Communism almost always devolves into totalitarianism for this reason.
You can create value in the 99% of the world that isn't attached to your house.
Also a more conservative set of rules, like the limits I was talking about, would still let you own a house and upgrade it a lot in a way that you fully own.
> There are so many better ways to solve this problem than putting a cap on value creation.
Does "value creation" here specifically mean adding more living space?
Only a very tiny fraction of homeowner construction projects would be an issue. And if you want to do something like build a third house on your property, a rule like that would say "go ahead, but then you have to sell it when you're done". You can create tons of value and profit from it, you just can't own three houses.
Lets assume this rule is only about living spaces, and not other assets and infrastructure.
I like building and improving houses. I have one in the bay area I work to improve.
I have built a mountain home in the Sierra Nevada, and am working on a desert home in Nevada. These take nothing away from anyone. They were empty land surrounded by more empty parcels before I did something with them.
There is no shortage of land and nothing is stopping someone else from doing the same. When I die, they will probably be sold off, and there will be more options. until then, nobody is worse off. I have thought about renting them out, which is still better than if they never existed.
Who am I hurting, and why should I be forced to sell?
If there was a law I couldnt own three houses, I simply wouldnt build them.
There could be an exception for houses in the middle of nowhere.
But also in economic terms, if that house is in a zero-demand area and won't be on the market for decades, then it would be better if you don't build it, and instead either spend that money elsewhere or invest it.
Who cares about economic terms? It is my money, and I will light it on fire if I want to.
Furthermore, sweat equity is real. You can put sweat, blood, and 100k of materials into something and have an 300k asset. It doesnt matter if a desert lot was dirt cheap.
I find it funny when people forget you can create value yourself instead of passively investing in someone else who creates it.
> Who cares about economic terms? It is my money, and I will light it on fire if I want to.
You're the one that brought up value creation, not me.
If it's a "who cares" when it goes against how you want to spend, then it's also a "who cares" when it aligns with how you want to spend.
> Furthermore, sweat equity is real. You can put sweat, blood, and 100k of materials into something and have an 300k asset. It doesnt matter if a desert lot was dirt cheap.
> I find it funny when people forget you can create value yourself instead of passively investing in someone else who creates it.
A house nobody else wants has a value of zero dollars, and you didn't create value.
If that house is worth 300k, then I misunderstood your earlier description.
But this kind of situation is not what normally happens. Whether it's allowed or not doesn't really matter. The important case is what happens when people build/buy in areas with more than negligible demand.
Strange, for me owning a property is slavery, being pinned to a single location. I'm retired now, looking back, I was free, happy and productive in the years that I was renting and unhappy while owning.
If you could see the extent of organization that such a life requires, you wouldn't say that. Especially when the alternative is "I bought this place and now you have to pay to live there" which is the highest form of doing nothing.
How can that be worse than "there are millions of unoccupied places, most housing belongs to the same people who don't need it, and yet there are millions living in the street"
Most houses are owned by people who do not work for it. It's the rent from their other houses that give them even more money, effectively doing nothing. Let's not think those people deserve our praise for their parasitism.
> Refusing to pay for a place to live is simply theft and entitlement.
Holding other people's basic survival need for ransom is simply theft and entitlement.
What makes you think that people are going through all the complexity of squatting if they have the options of paying for a place to live?
> If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can.
Anarchy where the strong (rich) take whatever they can is the situation we have now. Property rights as they currently exist are that rich people have property rights and nobody else does.
Unless you start talking solutions to homelessness, it starts to sound like you just don't care about the homeless and you're only interested in maintaining the power that exists.
If posting in favor of imprisoning the homeless is acceptable to you, but pointing out how awful that is, isn't, then I'm just not that interested in what's acceptable to you.
> If posting in favor of imprisoning the homeless is acceptable to you, but pointing out how awful that is, isn't
You know very well that the problem isn't your opinion but the way that you're expressing it, and your incredibly hostile treatment of other users.
HN is a platform for thoughtful discussion of interesting ideas and topics, not advocacy and emotional outbursts. Your kind of behavior isn't wanted here.
This kind of thing is not ok here—it's not what HN is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it.
I understand moderating discussion is extremely hard. I understand that it seems fair at face value for you to just enforce politeness and not enforce ideologies, but that's not actually possible. You are taking a side here, if you decide to censor me, and not the ideologies I'm arguing against.
I am not perfect and I should have been a bit more polite in some of the posts you link.
People post absolutely reprehensible opinions on this site, and a rational, reasonable response to those opinions is not politeness. The startup community is supportive of and participates in a lot of extremely harmful practices, and believes a lot of harmful ideologies. If espousing ideologies that are literally killing people is allowed by the guidelines, but pointing out how horrific those ideologies are isn't allowed by the guidelines, then the guidelines are effectively supporting those ideologies.
Take for example this post which you linked (I'm linking the post it was responding to):
The above post I 100% stand by. I think I said that about as politely as I think is possible; any more polite would be miscommunication.
If you consider that post a problem, I understand, but I'm not going to comply with that. If that's the case, please just delete my account and all my posts, and I won't attempt to create another account. I'd rather not be associated with a site that's protects reprehensible ideologies in the name of politeness.
(1) plenty of HN users post comments from plenty of ideological positions without breaking the site guidelines and (therefore) without getting moderated; and
(2) users breaking the site guidelines from all different ideological positions do get moderated.
That doesn't fit with "you're taking a side". In my experience the causality goes the other way: when people get moderated they have a strong tendency to jump to "the mods are against my side" rather than look at how their posts are breaking the rules and/or go against the intended spirit of the site. In other words it's not "I got moderated because you're taking a side", it's "you must be taking a side, because I got moderated". So it's probably worth adding:
(3) The users who jump to "you're taking a side" are distributed across all the ideologies.
There are also users of every ideological view making the case "my ideology is special; it requires me to break the rules, otherwise it cannot properly be communicated". This is disproven by all their co-ideologists who have no trouble communicating similar views without that.
I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40136616 was not as bad as your other three comments I listed, but it still used the "people like you" trope, which is a flamewar + personal attack combo that leads to forum hell.
I don't believe you need personal attack, clichés of internet aggression, etc., to make your case for what you believe in. On the contrary, these things cheapen your position. Morever, they are fungible across all the ideologies—that is,
(4) commenters who resort to breaking the site guidelines resemble each another far more than they resemble anyone else. Ideology is not the high-order bit here.
By the way, I don't identify with your word "politeness". Enforcing politeness in not at all what we're after, and in that sense I agree with you, though I think you're misassessing what we do as mods. Politeness is profoundly uninspiring as a value, and I'd find it profoundly demotivating if that were the principle. But it's not.
The HN guidelines used to say "Be civil", but we changed that years ago to "Be kind", because civility (which I take to be close to politeness) doesn't go deep enough to capture what we want here. Kindness is a far better word. We want people to be in good relational connection with each other, even when they disagree about a topic. That's an ideal, of course, but it's the right ideal for HN, because it's needed in order to optimize for curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
Perhaps then, the crux of your and my disagreement is that I do not think you are successfully optimizing for kindness. I believe that you intend to optimize for kindness, but you're not, you're optimizing for politeness.
You'll note that increasingly my posts here are on homelessness. There are nearly 600,000 homeless in the US alone, many of whom will die from homelessness-related problems. Many posts on this site both spread misinformation about that problem, and argue against any and all real solutions to that problem. That isn't kind, but it isn't moderated. And treating those comments as if they are not reprehensible, might be kind to the poster, but it's unkind to the 600,000 homeless in the country where a lot of HN users live.
Kindness isn't a simple thing: sometimes kindness to one person needs to be balanced with kindness to other people.
Kindness, as I understand it, has to do with how you treat the people you personally come into contact with. On HN, that means how you relate to other users.
I get that you're using the word differently and that's fine, as long as we understand what each other means by it. It seems like you're defining your political position (on homelessness in this case) as 'kind' while the opposing position is 'unkind'. Presumably someone of the opposite view might take issue with that, but I don't.
Since it's in your interest to argue for your views in a way that is personally kind to the people you're arguing with, I don't see any tradeoff between our two usages.
I support cheap and affordable housing. I support charity for people that are honest members of society.
I think unrepentant thieves need to be incarcerated, not because they deserve a housing, but to protect innocent people from their destructive Behavior.
>Quoting so you can't retract. I don't think you'll find much agreement there.
I think you'll find that you are in the minority. Look at laws for felony theft. I think most people would like even harsher penalties people that steal assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. All it takes is seeing it once and people swing very quickly against this kind of behavior.
You being hungry does not entitle you to my dinner. You being horny does not entitle you to my body. You being cold does not entitle you to my shelter.
> I think you'll find that you are in the minority. Look at laws for felony theft.
I think the laws for felony theft as compared to the laws for murder and rape are pretty solid evidence that rape and murder are considered more serious crimes than theft. And that's setting aside that there are plenty of theft laws that are even less serious than felony theft. In cases where people are stealing to meet their basic needs such as food or housing, it's not uncommon for perpetrators to receive lenient sentences including probation with no prison time.
What's your argument for landlordism not being theft? Shouldn't those people get a job too? Or is theft only a crime when poor people do it?
> What's your argument for landlordism not being theft? Shouldn't those people get a job too? Or is theft only a crime when poor people do it?
It is very simple. Theft is when you take something from someone without voluntary agreement. renters and landlords enter voluntary agreement. If a landlord has a job or not seems irrelevant. They didn't steal anything from anyone. Everything they have, they obtained through mutually consensual exchange.
How do you think landlordism could be considered theft? Is it just because people need/want shelter that they have?
Is a farmer who grows food a thief because people need food to live?
Is a doctor a thief because you die without surgery?
Is a mechanic a thief because your car needs repair?
In my mind, lacking, wanting, or even needing something does not mean that everyone who has it and charges you is a thief.
> It is very simple. Theft is when you take something from someone without voluntary agreement. renters and landlords enter voluntary agreement. If a landlord has a job or not seems irrelevant. They didn't steal anything from anyone. Everything they have, they obtained through mutually consensual exchange.
Wrong. The vast majority of people don't voluntarily agree to rent, they are coerced. "Pay rent or be homeless" is pretty powerful coercion.
> How do you think landlordism could be considered theft? Is it just because people need/want shelter that they have?
Stop this "need/want" nonsense. I think we can agree that homes are firmly a human need. People being mad that landlords are driving up housing prices for personal gain isn't just whining that people aren't getting what they want. People need homes.
It's theft because people who already have a lot of money, are buying up things that people need, so they can hold them for ransom. Owning things so that others can't own them isn't a benefit to society, and landlords do not provide services (before you trot out the maintenance argument--compare the prices of a handyman to rent). They're just leaches.
> Is a farmer who grows food a thief because people need food to live?
A farmer grows food, like a builder builds houses.
The landlord equivalent for food would be if someone decided to buy up all the world's food and jack up the price, letting people starve to death despite an excess of food rather than compromising their profit model. And that would be murder, not theft.
> Is a doctor a thief because you die without surgery?
Surgery, unlike a food or house, is a service, not a product.
Unlike a landlord, doctors performing surgery is actually doing work. And while the prices of medical care are high in the US to the point that people are dying rather than seeking preventive care, that's largely a function of rent-seeking healthcare companies, not doctors. And that's pretty equivalent to murder, too.
Hospitals are in fact required to provide surgery if failure to do so would result in the death of the patient.
> Is a mechanic a thief because your car needs repair?
Is a car a human need? In some places, maybe, but that's a problem of a society that doesn't provide other forms of transport.
Really, though, I'm less interested in defining landlordism=theft. We shouldn't need to prove it fits your arbitrary definition of theft to say it's wrong: if you don't get that causing homelessness for personal gain is wrong, your moral compass is pretty fundamentally broken.
>Really, though, I'm less interested in defining landlordism=theft. We shouldn't need to prove it fits your arbitrary definition of theft to say it's wrong: if you don't get that causing homelessness for personal gain is wrong, your moral compass is pretty fundamentally broken.
I think landlords prevent more homelessness than they create. Homes dont magically pop into existence. They are built for sale. I think people pushed into homelessness has little to do with profit seeking landlords. No landlords means nobody gets housing that cant afford to own
You seem to be freely conflating homelessness with regular people paying rent. This is misleading debate tactic to advance the entitlement of renters.
People who can pay rent, but want another's possession for cheaper, is simple entitlement.
Homelessness is a social and legal choice to make cheap housing illegal, or not provide social housing for those that do not work. This is orthognal to landlords. Someone with a vacation home or airBNB isnt the bottleneck keeping junkie bob from having a shelter.
I think pinning it on landlords is childish. You can help junkie bob and choose not to, because you dont want them in your house, or to pay for their shelter. Blaming landlords is simply a way for people to say it isnt their problem or responsibility.
Yes, builders build them. Landlords don't create homes. Landlords take them out of the market so that they can't be bought by people seeking to buy them and live in them.
> You seem to be freely conflating homelessness with regular people paying rent.
You seem to be freely conflating removing a house from the free market with providing one.
> No landlords means nobody gets housing that cant afford to own
Landlords mean that the vast majority of people cannot afford to own, and increasingly nobody can afford to rent either.
> Homelessness is a social and legal choice to make cheap housing illegal, or not provide social housing for those that do not work. This is orthognal to landlords. Someone with a vacation home or airBNB isnt the bottleneck keeping junkie bob from having a shelter.
1. Many homeless cannot work. Perhaps they could have worked when they became homeless, but being homeless quickly makes one unemployable.
2. The social/legal choice to make cheap housing illegal is driven by people trying to keep up the values of their vacation homes and airBNBs.
3. If you were homeless you'd have very good reasons to be a junkie too. The scorn you have for people less fortunate than yourself is horrifying.
> I think pinning it on landlords is childish.
I think not pinning it on landlords is willfully ignorant of basic economics in favor of an ideology that likely benefits you.
> You can help junkie bob and choose not to, because you dont want them in your house, or to pay for their shelter.
1. I don't own a home I don't live in, and the home is really not large enough for more than one person. Claiming that someone doesn't care about the homeless because they don't let homeless people live in their home is an intentionally ridiculous bar to set.
2. As for paying for their shelter, the amount of money I donate to housing-related charities varies based on how much I make (I have to live too) but I've donated around $1k so far to housing-related charities. I'm not making a lot of money right now, or it would be more. I also donate my time at a homeless shelter (mostly cleaning and moving stuff, I'm not there enough to do more involved tasks).
3. All this is beside the point that this is a childish ad hominem argument you're making. Not everyone is in a position to help the homeless--many are on the verge of homelessness themselves. Claiming we have to be actively helping the homeless to have an opinion is absurd. Is there any issue you care about, and do make any sacrifice as extreme as letting someone live in your house for that issue? Or do you just not care about anyone but yourself?
Do they actually? Would they allow the previous homeowner to come live with them? Usually they seem intent on kicking/keeping the previous homeowner out, which is enforcement of their own property rights.
Well, let's play it out. A squatter steals an owner's property while they're away on a Summer-long vacation. Later, the squatter spends some temporary time away from the property. During this time, another squatter comes along and steals the property from them. And so on. How does this not just lead to an unending string of lawlessness. Further, why would anyone invest in building and maintaining housing when their property can just be stolen from them without consequence? We'll be back to straw huts in no time. Claiming that renting housing is "oppressive" is absurd in the extreme. It is an arrangement of mutual benefit that is done voluntarily. It provides flexibility, mobility, and access that home ownership doesn't. In fact, the ability to invest in housing increases access to housing, not the other way around. No one is arguing that we should eliminate tenant protections against arbitrary eviction or unfair treatment. We should simply have sane protections for property ownership. There is no circumstances in which the theft of property is a smart or sane solution.
> neo-fascist
Your turn. How is pointing out that people have been seduced by a worldview that is neither fact based nor logical "neo-fascist".
> A squatter steals an owner's property while they're away on a Summer-long vacation
Realistically, if this would happen in real life (which isn't very common, compared to proper "occupations", which this is not), the police would kick them out quickly, as it's the owner's primary resident.
No one is arguing for squatters right for other's primary residence. The division comes when you start talking about properties that are bought/owned for the sole purpose of speculation.
There’s someone in this thread arguing exactly for squatters right for another’s primary residence, barring their ability to organize some kind self defense. Didn’t sound great
As always, there are extremists on both sides, that's no lie.
Generally, most people aren't so extreme as to say private ownership shouldn't exist at all. At least from most of the people I interact with here in Barcelona.
Besides what people think is right/wrong, the police does help you (quickly) to throw out people that try to invade your residence that you actively live in.
No, you just claimed one comment ago that "no one is arguing" that. Don't make those kinds of assertions in a situation when you know full well someone in this very thread is likely to do it.
Calling people you disagree with extremists is just an insult and it's not nice. It's rude. There is nothing extremists about fighting for a world where no one is oppressed and everyone can develop to the heights of one's potential.
The criterion of abandonment of private property I think should differ based on the local customs and on the type of private property, so for houses for example maybe it should be a year or 2 of you not living there before your house is considered abandoned and someone can live there. For for example mines I think they should be considered abandoned and ready for someone else to use much faster.
The main problem of private property is that it leaves some people without access to a place to live or means to subsist on, so they either have to die of hunger or agree to get exploited. This makes this concept oppressive.
> Your turn. How is pointing out that people have been seduced by a worldview that is neither fact based nor logical "neo-fascist".
I explained above why is such a worldview logical, if you have some issues please answer. On the other hand utilizing such dehumanizing rhetoric like "infection by a mind virus" is not acceptable and is typical of people aligned politically with far-right, such as Elon Musk, who is among the most popular users of this term.
How dare you use "dehumanizing" rhetoric against me, you far-right neo-fascist! That's rude!
The thing about hypocrisy is that it reveals that you think you are superior to others and therefore entitled to rule over them using whatever means necessary, including dishonesty and, ultimately, force. It is the definition of anti-social and is considered unacceptable in society for good reason.
The mind is much like a computer: garbage in, garbage out. You have essentially been mis- (or mal-) programmed. If you were to free your mind of these destructive ideas, you could live a freer, happier life and contribute to society instead of trying to destroy it. Make the choice if you still can, for the longer you hold on to evil, the stronger its grasp on you.
I don't agree with you, I don't think you discuss in a good faith. You seem to write in a very emotional state, which possibly does not make you stable enough to engage in a coherent discussion.
I think everyone should have an opportunity to develop to the heights of one's potential and I think no one should be oppressed and exploited. I don't agree with you that I am anti-social or I have destructive ideas. Moreover, I am a very happy person, I consider myself completely satisfied with my personal life and that's why I am willing to engage in a fight for other people's opportunity to develop, even if they were unlucky in their life and they didn't have access to those opportunities. I am fine with propagating a complete deconstruction of norms very strongly naturalized in our current society if I find them justifying oppression and exploitation.
> A lot of squatters want to abolish the possibility of someone having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live
That's exactly how you end up with no new or maintained housing, utilities and other services. How do you imagine system like that working besides a totalitarian government directly taking over all private property and rationing housing? (I assure the housing situation in Spain is not even remotely as bad as it was in the USSR).
> don't have a logical counter-argument.
Trying to form logical arguments that refute completely absurd and irrational ones is not particularly productive...
Is the worst you could say about anarchists is that they smoke weed? That's somewhat funny, please consider that for anarchists implementing their property norm of usufruct is a part of the social revolution through direct action, it's not really meant to me nice to the "middle class" because anarchists are revolutionaries who want to abolish the class society :)
Anarchist Catalonia had an economic growth during it's short existence during the Spanish Civil War and it operated on those types of property norms, so this falsifies your argument.
Not really. Also could we please stick to the Hackernews guidelines?
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
...
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Most anarchists are feminists and they are against anti-semitism. Historically a few theoreticians were anti-Semites, but most were not. You seem to just be dehumanizing other people who have different views than you, which is disgusting and not something you should be proud of.
How would you defend your all 100 properties at once without a state? If by capital you mean your personal belongings, then they can easily stay with you. Anti-capitalism concerns monopoly on land, resources, machines relevant for production and intellectual property like patents. Some people don't have access to those and they have to either become slave workers or starve.
Most civilizations created hierarchy, there are examples of somewhat anarchistic cities and civilizations that were very egalitarian and free, we can get inspiration from the to try to create a different world.
