[lbo-talk] more on house prices

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Aug 22 09:31:55 PDT 2007


Matt:

On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 08:42:15PM -0700, joanna wrote:


> But what makes me most bitter about home ownership in the last twenty
> years is that it has become the summum bonum of human life in the U.S.
> Forget justice, freedom, culture, solidarity, etc. If you have managed
> to get your 3bd/2ba mausoleum, you should feel set for the rest of your
> life, which you will happily spend decorating and redecorating. There is
> just something ignoble about that.

I don't see it as a zero-sum game. To most people I know who switched from renters to home owners it was a very liberating feeling. As working-class renters, most of us felt we could be out on the streets at any moment and our comfort and safety were at the whim of the prick hired by the far-off rentiers who actually owned the buildings.

Looking down on the people who don't want to continue living under a prick landlord for the rest of their lives and who enjoy decorating and gardening doesn't seem like a great way to build solidarity. The only real alternative for *most people* is to go back to a shitty apartment - for me that means pest infestations and regular A/C failures in the summer, half the space for almost as much money. Sounds great!

[WS:] This is basically a US-version of the old Eastern European goat story, which goes like that. A man comes to a rabbi complaining that he has a very small house. The rabbi promises to help him, on the condition that the man does exactly as told. He then tells the man to buy a goat and bring it to his house. A few weeks later, the rabbi meats the man again and asks how he feels about his house. The man starts complaining bitterly how horrible things are for him. The rabbi replies by telling the man to sell the goat. After a while, the two meet again and the rabbi asks about the man's house. The man replies smiling, "It is not a house, it is a mansion."

So basically you compare one horror story (buying) to even greater horror story manufactured by capitalist property relations (renting) - without considering other alternatives that are quite real but considered very un-American - e.g. housing coops. Coops exist all over the world, and even in the US, and nothing stops people from forming them - except for the official propaganda of developers and the government they own who profit from selling real estate at inflated prices.

You fall precisely in the same trap as Joanna aptly mentioned - that home ownership became the panacea for all social problems in the US, while all other alternatives have been forgotten or dismissed. If even the lefties fall into this consumerist bullshit, no wonder that most ordinary people fall for it wholesale.

Wojtek



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