Did you actually read this? I don’t think you did. Either that or you’re being extremely dishonest right now.

Doctorow is briefly mentioned in passing in this blog post. His only involvement was a single tweet that in absolutely no way mentioned or even implied it was about Wu. Despite that she decided to make it about her anyway, and declared that Cory was leading some kind of witch hunt against her based on no evidence other than her own decision that she automatically counted as a “garbage person” in his mind. We have zero evidence that this was actually Cory’s intent, just her assertion that it must have been his meaning.

To take that and turn it into “he was involved in the media harassment and witch hunting of a famous Chinese tech girl Naomi Wu” isa disgustingly disingenuous twisting of the available facts.

It’s not impossible that Cory shares some blame in the events described - no one is perfect, every hero is some kind of bastard, yada yada - but the evidence you’ve offered doesn’t come remotely close to backing up the claims you’re making, and it’s dangerously irresponsible to share such a claim on such a flimsy basis.

Ah, the Skaven solution.

I’d argue that the obvious desired state is simple; people should not struggle to afford housing. Every other consideration is secondary to that. The question is just how to get there.

To be decided by committee. We’d have to study both options and examine the potential negative and positive impacts.

In general the goal of the rent formula would be to keep average rents at a low percentage of average incomes. That means a typical two person apartment should clock in at, say for arguments sake, around 20% of monthly minimum wage. So even if there was some flex in rental prices, it should basically be impossible for anyone to struggle to make rent.

That said, I think it would definitely be important to ensure that an increase in desirability in an area doesn’t end up punishing the existing inhabitants. That way lies gentrification. This would tend to argue against factoring in desirability. A waiting list system will naturally push people away from areas that are highly desirable, since no one will want to wait that long for somewhere to live. I suspect that alone would be a sufficient solution, but again, I’d like to see it studied.

Obviously, there are problems this can’t solve, but they need their own solutions. More walkable neighbourhoods, better public transit, these are the kind of factors that would help reduce housing pressure on specific areas by making everywhere more desirable to live. Same goes for ensuring fair distribution of resources to schools and other public amenities, and so on.

First off, let’s assess the purpose of this question. If you’re implying that an argument against a system is invalid without a fully thought out proposal to replace it, you’re engaging in pointless sophistry. If someone says “I think my leg is broken” you don’t ask them to tell you exactly how they think it should be fixed before you believe them. We don’t have to know the solution in order to realise we have a problem.

With that caveat out of the way, I’m personally a big advocate for getting private capital out of rental markets. I know a lot of people just want to eliminate renting altogether, but I agree that this is short sighted. It either relies on the idea that everyone owns their home, which isn’t always practical, or that people simply have homes provided at no cost, which opens up its own complications. Basically, while I am in favour of the total destruction of capitalism, I don’t think that has to mean getting rid of money. Money is a very useful way of tokenising resources so that they can easily be exchanged. This allows for more efficient distribution of the correct resources to the people who most need them.

What I want to see is rentals at a price that everyone can afford l. Obviously, in an ideal scenario this would be paired with UBI to ensure that no one ever goes unhoused, but we’ll focus on the housing side for now.

If given total power over my country’s political system, I would look to implement a scheme that would ultimately result in rentals being handled only by Crown corporations (not-for-profit entities operating at arm’s length from the government) created with a mandate to provide affordable rental properties. These corporations would invest building and buying housing in their area in order to fulfill this mandate. They would also be required to offer rent to own schemes. Rental rates would be set by a formula that would account for factors affecting the desirability of a property such as location, square footage and amenities. Conflicts would be solved by waiting lists.

Private rentals would be outlawed (with possible carve-outs for situations like a property owner who is temporarily away from their primary residence - even in these situations, the rental would be handled by the Crown corp with the collected rents passing to the property owner, minus a handling fee). Most likely this scheme would be phased in over time, allowing investment property owners to sell off their properties to the Crown corps. Investors would take a hit on this, but any economic downsides will be more than offset by the upside of the vast majority of the populace becoming, in effect, significantly wealthier (in GDP terms the economy would certainly shrink, but GDP is a terrible measure of economic health).

Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: This is the rough outline of a proposal. Were I actually in a position to implement it, a LOT of details would be worked out in committee, with advice from respected experts. This disclaimer shall be henceforth known as “The Sign”. Do not make me tap “The Sign.”

Just because you can find one example of a good use of a bad system, doesn’t make it a good system. That’s like saying that monarchy was good actually because you can name some good kings.

it just has not worked when it’s been done so far

Big, BIG “citation needed” on that one chief. Just speaking from my own experience growing up in England, council housing schemes were fantastically effective at getting people into housing with reasonable rental costs. And similar schemes have been successful all across Europe. I’m told there are similar success stories in the US as well.

I think you’re just picking one or two bad examples and just treating that as the whole dataset because it fits your prior assumptions. It’s easy to do, because people complain when government efforts don’t work (and often they complain even when they do; there are plenty of “bad” government programs that are actually fantastically effective, people just moan about their imperfections to the point where everyone assumes they’re broken) but rarely celebrate the successes.

Because landlording, as a practice, is a fundamental flaw in the system we live in.

That doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, but it makes you a part of a bad system.

To some degree, we’re all part of a bad system. Every time we buy a latte, or a smartphone, we’re participating in a broken system that causes unimaginable harm. Half the shit you own was probably made with slave labour.

That’s what “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” means. It’s not saying “don’t consume”, it’s saying the idea of living a morally pure life in a morally defunct system is impossible.

We don’t yet know what a future post-capitalist housing system will look like. Maybe your particular scenario is one that will eventually be seen as perfectly acceptable.

For now, if you feel what you’re doing is completely justified then you can simply assume that the hate isn’t directed at you. You don’t have to jump in and justify yourself at every turn. That’s no different than being the guy who has to yell “I’m not like that” every time a woman talks about how shitty her interactions with men are.

And even if what you’re doing isn’t a moral good in the world, it may simply be that it’s the best you can do in a bad system. We’re all just trying to survive, and capitalism demands that we be morally impure in order to live, because there are no morally pure ways left to live. Again, you don’t need to justify that. We’re trying to fix a broken system. No one here called you out personally by name.

Government ownership of property is nice in theory, but I’ve seen just how badly gov’t mismanaged public housing in Chicago. It was horrific. There’s very little way to directly hold a gov’t accountable, short of armed revolution.

Anything is bad if you do it badly. It’s ridiculous to dismiss an entire concept because you can name examples of when it was done wrong.

Bad drivers exist so no more cars. Bad laws exist so no more laws. Bad governments exists, so no more governments. It’s an asinine way of arguing.

Unless you can formulate clear arguments as to why government management of rentals cannot work as a concept, you should not dismiss it as a solution.