I know quite a bit about the theory of the Commons, the Tragedy of the Commons and principles like the Common Heritage of Mankind.
What I don't know is how you structure a society where, I take it, you get to live in an apartment somewhere that magically exists and doesn't require you to pay rent. That's got me as curious as all get out.
I am actually capable of providing my needs from the Commons. I am forbidden to do so because there are no Commons.
Its not an alien concept that private property has exceeded the intents of the founders. They lived in a wide open world, but they came from one where the landed classes lived fat off of rents. In their time, many went off and carved a little piece out of the Commons. This didn't require them to go to some isolated ****hole, just past where others had carved their places.
Government and law allowed the amassing of huge land holdings, as only they can. Rent, except in the form of "Gerties boarding house for travelers" forms, is functionally a tax.
Imagine it this way. Simplified, but accurate to a large degree.
My dad and your dad race up the last hill to a new valley.
Your dad gets there first. Yells "Mine", and gets to charge my dad and all his descendents 25% of everything they produce forever.
Please don't cherry pick this example to death.
My point is that MOST of the things you would like to change, and those I would like to change, are subject to change because they are made up.
Nobody HAS any rights. They are a product of society and the states.
I think everybody thinks a right to property is appropriate.
I don't think everybody thinks an UNLIMITED right to property is appropriate.
I don't think MOST people do.
Perhaps some potential "solutions" to the "problem" of rents as they currently exist would be helpful. These are "mine" so can't be sourced.
Let me live in my RV.
Provide space near town, on transit, where people can pitch a tent/grab a cot, bathrooms with steel toilets and solar showers. Pass out transit passes. No excuse to be sleeping in doorways (see, side benefit).
I think "the dole" should be cots in dorms with enough "Batchelor Chow" to provide basic nutrition and that's about it for the able bodied. Better for kids, situationally displaced etc.(I am liberal afterall).
All of these thing I feel would provide a large net benefit at a reasonable cost, without encouraging dependency.
All of the above return rent to a non-coercive form, as alternatives are available. Synthetic Commons, if you will. Mechanisms to replace their function in a crowded world.
Instead of sayin', too bad so sad, shoulda been born sooner. Or whatever.
Consider:
College kids could save a crapload of money.
Families who see sudden losses of industry in their area can move to a new place BEFORE they're almost bankrupt.
The homeless have a place to be, so they got no excuse to be sleeping in thei own piss in peoples doorways. And who knows how their paradigms might change, what opportunities they might encounter in some model like this.
Its something I've thought about quite a bit. That sleeping has been privatised, and nobody seems to notice. That people cough up 25% of their gross or more to landlords, every month. That a program designed to get some of these people off of this treadmill was used and abused to the point where it almost crashed the economy. And the widespread fraud the FBI expressed concerning these programs was estimated to be 80% on the part of LENDERS, but the meme that survived was that it was caused by the 20% that comprised customers.
I lived outlaw in my rv for a year as an experiment. We are back indoors now because we choose to be.
Our total housing expenses during that year? Utilities and all?
$300/mo.
In San Diego CA.
Moving the rig daily and never sleeping in the same place more than once a month or so. So most of that was fuel.
We had a bed, a kitchen, a bath with shower, a seating area. Etc. Everything everybody has in a house, just smaller. Gas for cooking, refrig was maybe $10 month.
The differential between "normal" cost of living and what we paid was simply ridiculous. Damn near criminal.
We were literally saving over a grand a month, best as we could estimate. Compared to a house or apartment of roughly adjusted size, and we have pets.
A thousand dollars a month to be in compliance with the law. A thousand dollars a month that would have gone into a landlords pocket, every month, forever.
So 80% of rent is "markup" more or less, and that don't seem like a free market price.
Some kind of Synthetic Commons would certainly exert downward pressure, by removing coercion from the equation.
