An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
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That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they're doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
so are you advocating for zero private ownership of houses?
like what's the policy proposal?
I do kind of like that other comment, " nobody gets a second house until everybody gets their first".
All of it should be public property.
This is a socialist sub so yeah no more private ownership of property would be nice
100% tax on the value of land is the policy proposal. It makes economic sense, would let us abolish regressive taxes on labor and sales, would incentivize more abundant housing. Seriously. This is the solution.
how?
a one-time 100% tax on the value of the land?
how does that change anything except make landowning less accessible to everyone except those born wealthy.
or is that the point, that you want nobody to own land at all?
I think I need some more context here
Sorry if I was unclear. It would happen continuously, over time. So like monthly or yearly, just like rent to a landlord.
no worries, this is a paradigm shift, lots of details to get lost in.
so you would pay 100% of the value of your property annually?
how?
how would those property values be estimated?
I don't see how anyone could have a home if they had to pay multiple times their yearly salary every year.
So the importantly, you would only pay tax on the value of the land your property is on, not the entirely of the property. Essentially, society owns the land and "rents" it to anybody who wants to use it for housing or a business, and that "rent" would belong to society, either as UBI or as funding for services.
So if your house is in a really rural area, the land isn't worth that much, your LVT would likely be quite low. If your house is in a high demand area, like manhattan, the LVT is high, and you should probably build and apartment or something so lots of people can live there. If the land you want to use has a lot of valuable resources under it, it would be expensive, and you have to pay a lot for the right to use it. This is essentially what Norway and Alaska to get as much money as possible out of oil companies and give it to citizens.
land not property.
got it.
that helps me wrap my mind around it.
I want to look more into that, especially where it's already in practice.
thanks
I have a house. My parents have a house. At some point they die. I now have 2 houses...?
You sell one would be the point here.
BUT ~~PARASITE~~ PASSIVE INCOME! HOW DARE YOU PASS UP ~~PARASITE~~ PASSIVE INCOME!!
:P
And how do people pay for that? How would it be different from today? What stops people from buying one now that would not stop them in that case?
I merely explained you the view of those you are talking with, I'm not well versed on the topic.
Luckily, the answer to your question is once again easy to derive from what the other people are saying: the price would drop to a reasonable price if houses got stripped of their role as a form of investment.
Or rather, as it's often the case in this day and age, if the selfish return of a profit was weighted against the damage to the community and found not to be desirable.
The solution is to just define that the price is low, okay. So are there still incentives to upgrade, maintain etc. a property when the value is low anyway? Is the money you spend on something thrown out of the window as soon as it is installed on the house? What about great locations, how to value those? So all the things that already apply to the housing market, how do you want to circumvent all of these factors that go into the value of a property/house?
You keep thinking I'm the herald of this position...
I guess there's two solution, the pragmatical approach is that people aware of the issue increase the offer on the market. The market is still a market so all you are saying still applies but it sees a rise in offer.
The other, more idealistic but also, ideal, is government intervention so basically you get to set up the rules any way it make sense on the principle of putting a roof above everybody.
All this aside, do you fix or upgrade the place you live in simply so that you can sell it at a higher price? I do this stuff because... That's where I live?