> Non-housing costs are quite low in Taiwan. Food and childcare, in particular, are so much cheaper than California that it’s hard to believe.
That statement is the problem.
Nobody wants to rent. There are too many rental properties, and not enough affordable housing. The reason you need rental properties is because you're already trying to make a living from families having a home. You're not supposed to do that. That's supposed to be the prize for the family for assimilating with capitalism. By buying it and renting it back to them you're disincentivizing the working class from working.
But by all means, keep privatizing the shit out of 3 bedroom family homes and see what happens. Take every drop of value out of the housing market and bank it. That's what pitchforks are for.
The purpose of capitalism is to establish, reinforce, and perpetuate a class hierarchy where the people on the bottom must constantly pay to exist while the people on top constantly get paid to exist. This shit isn't a side effect, it's the entire point of the exercise.
Unfortunately in their rejection of capitalism, the people have mostly decided to do feudalism, i.e. legitimacy comes from land ownership and land tenure. It is even hereditary: heirs get to pay much lower property tax than transplants.
I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on capitalism, but even Marx would agree with me that it's better than feudalism.
Spoken like a true Marxist. The purpose of Marxism is to literally kill hundreds of millions of people who oppose the Marxist way. Like they did during the 20th century in the countries where Marxism prevailed (even briefly).
Progress should be saying "we don't have to spend so much of our time and effort on the ladder".
Our forefathers would be baffled to see that we've coerced crops into tenfold their natural yield, conquered lightning, the wind, and the sun itself, and yet, millions of people are still working 40+ hours a week to not starve or go homeless.
That statement is the problem.
Nobody wants to rent. There are too many rental properties, and not enough affordable housing. The reason you need rental properties is because you're already trying to make a living from families having a home. You're not supposed to do that. That's supposed to be the prize for the family for assimilating with capitalism. By buying it and renting it back to them you're disincentivizing the working class from working.
But by all means, keep privatizing the shit out of 3 bedroom family homes and see what happens. Take every drop of value out of the housing market and bank it. That's what pitchforks are for.