Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to “personal property”, which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of “private property”, which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Part of the problem, I think, is that in common vernacular, ‘landlord’ also applies to people that are renting out a room of their personal house. The pro-landlord propaganda likes to hold them up as the gold standard we’re attacking.
We need to be clear that we’re absolutely not talking about the couple that’s renting out their kid’s old room to get through tough times. They’re also victims of the same system, being forced to sacrifice personal property at the altar of capitalism.
Or even honestly, the middle aged couple that was able to upgrade houses without selling, and lets their old house to a young couple for a reasonable rate because it’s paid off. Which, in my rural experience, is really common. I am very grateful to a man that I didn’t and still don’t particularly like, because he rented me a nice property for a very fair rate. I could say similar things about other past landlords. The difference is when it’s not an investment, but a business. Treating housing like a business interaction cheapens human life, and I have lived in that situation as well, to varying degrees. The worst was an apartment in Park City UT that was owned by some yuppies in Massachusetts, part of some sheisty lease/timeshare property LLC, where the building super was just a power tripping asshole with no accountability. I’m rambling, but Landlord Bad is too simple for a complex situation.
Or like if somebody inherits a house while they already have one, and decide to rent it out, that’s fine too.
The private vs personal is introducing vocab to make a difference between ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is private property’. We’re proposing that it’s ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is personal property’.
I’m baked and deleted a paragraph because it turned to rambling.
I don’t like corporations owning housing.
How does no private property square with something like a car, that costs money to produce, has less inherent value than a home, and depreciates in value unlike a home?
I think I understand, but it gets murky for me after a point. Not trying to argue, just learn.
The idea is, we abolish the concept of private property, but retain the concept of personal property.
Personal property being stuff that’s used by one person, or ome family, or one small group, and ownership rights come from that use.
So a car would be the personal property of the driver or drivers who use it - the same as a computer or microwave or toothbrush would be the personal property of the person or people who used it. You drive it, you fuel it, you repair it, and that’s what makes it yours.
How to produce and distribute goods (like houses and cars and toothbrushes) without a system of private property, purchase, and ownership is a major site of leftist contention 😆
Word, thank you, and anybody else that commented on my stoned Wondering. I agree in concept but it’s always difficult to imagine in practice because we’ve all just lived with this
Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to “personal property”, which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of “private property”, which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Landlords hate this idea.
Here’s a really super basic summary:
https://www.workers.org/private-property/
And here’s a long complicated discussion:
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/anarchism-and-private-property
Part of the problem, I think, is that in common vernacular, ‘landlord’ also applies to people that are renting out a room of their personal house. The pro-landlord propaganda likes to hold them up as the gold standard we’re attacking.
We need to be clear that we’re absolutely not talking about the couple that’s renting out their kid’s old room to get through tough times. They’re also victims of the same system, being forced to sacrifice personal property at the altar of capitalism.
As always, the poor are human shields for the rich.
Ain’t no war but class war.
Or even honestly, the middle aged couple that was able to upgrade houses without selling, and lets their old house to a young couple for a reasonable rate because it’s paid off. Which, in my rural experience, is really common. I am very grateful to a man that I didn’t and still don’t particularly like, because he rented me a nice property for a very fair rate. I could say similar things about other past landlords. The difference is when it’s not an investment, but a business. Treating housing like a business interaction cheapens human life, and I have lived in that situation as well, to varying degrees. The worst was an apartment in Park City UT that was owned by some yuppies in Massachusetts, part of some sheisty lease/timeshare property LLC, where the building super was just a power tripping asshole with no accountability. I’m rambling, but Landlord Bad is too simple for a complex situation.
Or like if somebody inherits a house while they already have one, and decide to rent it out, that’s fine too.
The private vs personal is introducing vocab to make a difference between ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is private property’. We’re proposing that it’s ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is personal property’.
I’m baked and deleted a paragraph because it turned to rambling.
I don’t like corporations owning housing.
How does no private property square with something like a car, that costs money to produce, has less inherent value than a home, and depreciates in value unlike a home?
I think I understand, but it gets murky for me after a point. Not trying to argue, just learn.
The idea is, we abolish the concept of private property, but retain the concept of personal property.
Personal property being stuff that’s used by one person, or ome family, or one small group, and ownership rights come from that use.
So a car would be the personal property of the driver or drivers who use it - the same as a computer or microwave or toothbrush would be the personal property of the person or people who used it. You drive it, you fuel it, you repair it, and that’s what makes it yours.
How to produce and distribute goods (like houses and cars and toothbrushes) without a system of private property, purchase, and ownership is a major site of leftist contention 😆
Word, thank you, and anybody else that commented on my stoned Wondering. I agree in concept but it’s always difficult to imagine in practice because we’ve all just lived with this
If we can’t dream big, all we can do is maintain the status quo. And the status quo kind of sucks.