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[-] SCB@lemmy.world -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You don't need a lot of personal capital if you fundraise prior to starting your commune, and have everyone pitch in the equity from sold homes/cashed out 401(k)s etc

Also you don't have a right to someone's property simply because they aren't using it at the moment

[-] Nevoic@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A lot of Americans have negative net worth, so everyone cashing out would likely mean you're still in debt, which is one of the ways our society keeps people trapped.

There's a difference between legal rights and moral rights. Legally you're correct, but 150 years ago people legally had the right to buy slaves, but they didn't have the moral right to.

Similarly, people have the legal right to buy hundreds of acres of land and hold onto it until it increases in value, and then sell it later. This is immoral though, it's scalping. We all understand scalping is bad when it's through the lens of GPUs or consoles because we weren't raised hearing about how "smart investors" invested in GPUs, we just heard about "investing" in housing or land.

If you have a solid argument why scalping houses or land should be permissible and even praised, while scalping GPUs/consoles should be impressible or at least scolded, I'd love to hear why.

I'd assert that scalping necessities is actually worse than scalping luxury goods.

[-] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

I think it's unhelpful to frame structural economic problems as moral wrongs done by individuals, because these are all situations where more people accepting a moral consensus doesn't actually resolve the problem. If there are 50 active GPU scalpers in the market, and a shaming campaign succeeds in reducing that number to 10, ultimately those 10 people are still going to be able to exploit the differential in retail price and actual market price to the same extent. Maybe it would take them a little while to scale up their operations, but they would do it. No amount of moralizing against scalpers can overcome supply and demand in this situation or actually make cheap graphics cards available to everyone.

Squatting isn't immoral IMO, but enshrining legal protections for squatters would probably just result in a lot of effort being wasted on preventing trespassing lest property rights be forfeit. Instead it would be better to have high taxes on unused land and various forms of redistribution to keep everyone in a situation where they have genuine choice in their lives. The point shouldn't be deciding who the wrongdoers are and punishing them.

[-] Nevoic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Whether or not it's helpful is orthogonal to whether it's true, which is more what I'm concerned with. Maybe there's a point to be had about effectively trying to convince people, but I don't have an obligation to be the most effective conversationalist or converter.

However I'd happily support systemic approaches to reducing the effectiveness of housing scalpers. Calling them immoral is not mutually exclusive with supporting legislation against them. I'd even say those things are usually aligned.

[-] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

legislation against them

This is why I don't think it is aligned. There is a lot of possible legislation that would effectively punish "scalpers" or reduce their effectiveness in pursuing their goals, but would not actually help resolve the actual underlying problem or even make things worse. For instance trying to ban the practice directly, or trying to fix prices, those generally will backfire. If the focus is legislating "against" them, that's looking it as a justice problem instead of an incentives problem, but even if it is immoral punishing immoral acts is much less important than solving the problems in peoples lives, and these goals can easily be at odds.

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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Antiwork

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