this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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How's there nothing wrong with paying rent? Why is someone else appropriating the fruits of MY labor just because they happen to be lucky enough to inherit a house?
sorry, what about your labor makes it more valuable than anyone else who also rents?
Nothing. Abolish all private rent and socialize it
Then the government will need to purchase the houses / apartments from the current owners so they still get a giant payday.
Then you'd still be paying rent, just to the government instead which will mostly go towards paying administrators that don't care or do anything just like current landlords.
Unless you mean all social government owned housing should be free, and most private property should be government owned.
Expropriation can be carried out without purchase, and it has been done in several countries to the great benefit of the workers. No need to pay for the housing of the landlords, we can just take it at gunpoint.
Who says the housing has to be centrally administered? Housing could absolutely be organized by local collectives in charge of the maintenance of the buildings after its construction, likely in the form of democratically elected councils. As an example, most access to housing in the USSR was through the work's union, not through the central government.
No, people should pay costs to maintain it. For example, rent in the USSR was about 3% of the monthly income. Seems much better than what I pay now!
The important part in this equation is that you can choose not to rent from them.
Yes, you can choose to die on the streets instead. What's your point?
At the same time, if you choose to live in an economy where you don't pay rent, you will barely find anyone outside your family willing to lend you a home.
And replying to your previous comment, idk about America, but in other parts of the world, people outside of affluent class have homes, and rent is close to or less than 4% of property value annually, not 6-8% Americans are used to. That's likely because corporates don't buy property here at scale they do in America.
Yes, that's why housing ownership should primarily be socialized, and access to affordable rent should be a right guaranteed by the public administration as much as healthcare and education.
That's still a worthless metric, though, rent should be proportional to construction costs + maintenance, not subjected to markets.
You're fundamentally asking for a different society. To be very honest, the Idea is great, I just don't see how it's gonna be implemented. Also you gotta be happy with pretty minimal houses, but I guess people in twenties who are just starting with life, this could be all they need.
Yeah Ik this is core communist ideology, I don't have anything against communism. I just am saying what you are asking is very different from what society is today.
Well, yes, I'm a communist, but seeing the housing in literally every western capitalist country suffering from the same issues, I have 0% of hope that the issue of housing will be solved within capitalism. Capitalists are in power and they're the ones owning the housing, so they simply will prevent legislation from passing unless forced by worker organizing
Sorry I didn't read the second paragraph, my bad. I see, but then if you're richer, maybe you want more choices🤷. That's why, like giving richer People some place to spend, a mix of capitalism for richer countries.
I mean, I know communism want's everyone's income equal, but then idk if such a thing could be achieved irl
I edited my comment and added the second paragraph, not your fault you didn't see it :)
Communism doesn't actually say anything about wanting everyone's income equal, I've only seen this claim by anticommunists before. Communists simply believe that people should earn according to their labor, and not according to the exploitation of others' labor. For example, the Soviet Union had widespread use of work quotas which, when exceeded, granted workers a higher wage. As an example, the Stakhanovite movement did wide promotion of work effectiveness and of rewarding exemplary workers, both through monetary and through social incentives.
I personally don't believe there's much place for capitalism at all, but that's a very deep ideological topic that's far beyond the scope of this post. If you're interested on discussing this, however, I'm very open to this topic!
In all honesty neither capitalism nor communism solves all problems. Problems arise because systems get too rigid, and it can happen with either. Today's capitalist problems are arising because America got too stubborn about capitalism, but at the same time, a purely communist state will undermine a lot of desires of common man.
The best solution is always in between the two, and is very context dependent. Like a lot of poorer countries benefit from socialist ideologies, and when people have enough purchasing power, certain parts of economy can be run by capitalists. The world right now is in chaos because too much of economy is handed to the capitalists.