RobotNinjaHornets
Banned
...Pinochet?
Alternatively the millions of homeless? The people in the US who can't afford healthcare bills?
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Capitalism - Yay or Nay?
- Thread starter mid83
- Start date
- Status
Alternatively the millions of homeless? The people in the US who can't afford healthcare bills?
Here you go LA times just did a story on people who are too young to die but too poor to retire even after working 50 years.
http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/
ChetWilson
Banned
I'd like to focus on personal stories. Not links from papers or countries you don't live in. Thanks.
Umm I do live there. Did you read the article? the whole article is one person's story. You want a collection of them?http://www.metafilter.com/156772/Too-poor-to-retire-too-young-to-die
There is a whole thread. Count the number of people whose retirement plan is suicide since capitalism doesn't is a heartless system.
ChetWilson
Banned
I'm trying to find out how the posters on this thread came to their understanding of capitalism, and whether it's from what they 'heard' or it comes from their true to life experience.
I'm not interested in stories of random people who can't see past 24 hours in their life, make terrible financial decisions, live at or past their means for 50 years, didn't bother saving a nickel or dime for every dollar they made, and didn't make the financial or social investments for their old age...
Just GAF'rs.
Eh, I'm in agreement that capitalism/market driven economies are the way to go but let's not pretend there aren't downsides/loosers to that approach ( through little fault of their own).
Every system has them. And whoever pretends their favourite ideology is flawless and doesn't has most likely not understood what he is talking about.
Because middle class people have had their lives ruined by capitalism.
You're asking on a video games enthusiast forum, of course no one here is suffering.
thehypocrite
Member
My master theses was about the eroding effects on pensions of the administrative cost in privately run obligatory affiliationa pensions institutions. The data shows that the profits of them are greater than the gains of the pension funds. So they harvest the majority of the profits while shouldering none of the risk and the pensions coming out of this system would need to be supplemented by state funds.
Yeah, why don't we all focus on anecdotal proof to make our subjective petrie dish a objective reality.
Anecdotal flukes does not negate systemic trends and data, friend.
You're looking for personal stories of the extreme poor and disenfranchised, on a website that caters to superfluous and sometime expensive hobby?
RobotNinjaHornets
Banned
How did you come to your understanding of communism? Was it from what you've heard or has it come from true to life experience?
And I'm sure all the people who are well off are well off purely because they did those things you said. Not from being lucky and born into a well off family. Or being in the right place at the right time.
Also why can't I use Pinochet as an example? Everyone jumps to bring up Stalin or Mao whenever communism gets mentioned, why can't I bring up a capitalist dictator?
They didn't. Because it's impossible. What we had were countries trying to reach communism, absolutely failing and send millions to poverty and death.
You say that we can learn with the mistakes and do things differently, but it's really rare to see communism support groups trying to detatch their images from these failed states. We have a communist party here in Brazil. It's conferences are filled with banners with Lenin and Stalin faces. University professors treat Marx as a god and indocrinate students to communist values. They support North Korea actions, etc. Looking at that, I fail to see what these groups are learning, so I really, really hope that they continue to be treated as lunatics by the majority of the population and just stay with their ideas without any chance of implementing them again.
If you have a great communist party in your country, that shows how they have learned from past mistakes and how they can reach the impossible, maybe they can succeed by showing everyone how would that work and how it's better than what we hade today. Until then: Yay, capitalism.
prag16
Banned
Your narrative isn't going to like the charts at this link: http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/world-poverty/
The rate of extreme poverty worldwide falling from 90% to 10% over 200 years? Sure, correlations isn't necessarily causation. But it certainly casts an almost insurmountable amount of doubt on what you portray is such a simple narrative.
This is incorrect. The East India Company was an outspring of a mercantilist society, not a capitalist one. Now you may view mercantilism as some sort of proto-capitalism, but it has very important distinctions. In a mercantilist society, the corporations and merchants have been granted a monopoly and subsidies by the governments, in addition to the regulations on importing and exporting that prevented competition. These companies may have technically been formed with private capital, but effectively they were an arm of the state.
If you look at the marketshare of Standard Oil before it was broken up, you'd see that this is fundamentally incorrect. Standard Oil was actually rapidly losing marketshare prior to being broken up because of new competitors entering the market(it had dropped from ~90% to ~60% in the decade prior to the breakup), and even during the brief period where Standard held a monopoly it really didn't harm the consumer, prices of oil and kerosene actually dropped during that period.
There are market sectors where natural monopolies can form that are very hard to compete with, but the idea that this is the default state and that it is inevitable has been shown to be incorrect in most cases.
HarryHengst
Member
Its amazing that it start with ''since the onset of the industrial revolution poverty is falling", while the first century or so of the industrial revolution was a major reason people lived in squalor and poverty. It is only thanks to the people who managed to fight against it, and outsourcing of the worst parts of it, that we can now say that the industrial revolution brought an increase in living standards and such. And i also find the focussing on income to be way too simplistic. Yes, people in cities earned more, but that has to be offset by things like higher rents and the effects on health due to working extremely long hours in factories that were absolutely disgusting.
And lets also not start about things like the Land Enclosure Acts, which were necessary to kick people of their lands to force them into the factorties, because people realized that a factory is a terrible life even compared to farming. And what the industrial revolution did in the colonies of the European countries.
So yes, its nice and all that over longer periods things might have become better, but its not at all stated that its thanks to capitalism and not in spite of it. And too bad if you were a laborer in an English city in say 1820, who im sure didnt give a rats ass that in 2016 you can buy an iphone.
Basically, the luddites were absolutely right in what they did, and capitalists and people supporting it should not forget the immense amount of tragedy they have caused and keep causing over the past few centuries.
prag16
Banned
Again with this. Who decides when it "makes sense"? Who should be entrusted with this power? You? The government?
People keep saying that socialism doesn't mean super powerful government, and that it instead means the vague idea of super powerful "the people". Nobody has ever demonstrated how this could possible actually work in the real world. Hence why nobody has ever made it to "true socialism". Ever stopped to consider that maybe it just isn't possible?
HarryHengst
Member
Easy, corporations are not allowed to be owned by external shareholders, but only owned and controlled by the workers in the form of coops. Done. You now have both socialism and free markets.
There's nothing vague about the concept of workers' councils, it's a very neatly defined system albeit one that socialists have their own critiques for. The Soviets just needed better checks and balances. There's also co-ops if you want market socialism.
Also, I have to reiterate what HarryHengst said: people like to point to the overall trajectory upward with capitalism but fail to realize that many of the benefits that the middle classes of the world have gained were because of socialists and unions fighting back against capitalist exploitation. And the poor and the lumpenproleriat? Just sweep those under the rug, pretend they don't exist.
cpp_is_king
Member
We've never done 100% unchecked capitalism anyway, so I'm not sure what your point is. We're already in the middle
prag16
Banned
The workers don't have the capital. Where does the money to run the business come from? This doesn't make a lick of sense.
jackissocool
Member
They take the capital from the bosses in a revolution. It was only gained originally through violence and privatization of common property so it really should be commonly held.
Why couldn't we just cut out the bosses and owners entirely? They serve no purpose but to limit the availability of capital.
prag16
Banned
Then who is in charge? Who is the brains of the operations? Who is going to innovate? Did anybody actually think this through? Sounds more like a theoretical perffect world situation which could never actually be feasible.
Giant Panda
Member
Two points. I'm not sure why Marx's definition matters in this day and age because he built his theories on the labor theory of value which is pretty clearly false. Sadly, Marx inherited this from Adam Smith, so maybe if Smith had gotten it right Marx would have come up with a more coherent theory.
Second, you seem to recognize that communism can't work in a world of scarcity, correct?
They aren't free markets in that case though, but heavily government controlled markets.
You have a very warped view of how well off people were before the industrial revolution.
Again, that is not free markets. Government is telling people how they can use their assets, and to whom they can sell them to.
HarryHengst
Member
It is literally impossible that any other option than the ones we currently have can exist. We live in the best of all possible worlds and nothing else is possible. This is unfortunately exactly what capitalists believe.
This of course makes no sense. If the markets are exactly the same as they are now, but corporations do not exist, they suddenly arent free??
No, i have not. However, I do realize the immense cost that capitalism and the industrial revolution placed on the peoples before us. You clearly want to ignore that.
But the current government also tells people how they can use their assets. Im not allowed to buy an atomic bomb on the free market. Companies werent allowed to deal with Cuba or Iran for the longest times. Companies are not allowed to form a monopoly or collude with other companies to lower wages. So are you saying that we do not have free markets? So capitalism can exists without free markets?
jackissocool
Member
The workers run it democratically. Very simple.
Giant Panda
Member
No. Capitalists don't believe we're on the best system right now, because bad government intervention is currently causing distortions in every country to different extents. More government intervention would only cause more distortions, which is what you are advocating for.
Again, this would be very inefficient. The company would not be run in a way where they are rewarded for creating value for consumers.
prag16
Banned
Straw man. Everyone here seems pretty open to ideas. It's just that all these are retreads of failed ideas and/or situations that sounds completely unfeasible in the real world.
If there's one thing that may be as bad as trusting the government to run businesses, it's trusting "the masses" to run businesses. And what Giant Panda said.
jackissocool
Member
Why not?
HarryHengst
Member
We tried a lack of government interventions. It was the first century of the industrial revolution in Britain. It was terrible for everyone but the top 0,1% or so. The fact that you can work in better conditions is thanks to the people fighting against exactly the thing you want to reintroduce.
Its not letting "the masses" run businesses. You create worker councils were people are elected into certain positions but also democratically responsible for the decisions they make.
Again, look at how Mondragon runs things. Its a company with a turnover of 11 billion dollars and 75000 employees. If they can do it it is clearly possible.
Your definition of socialism is extremely lacking. Governments aren't necessary to "implement" it or enforce it. Otherwise we wouldn't have anarchism as a political ideology. The point isn't, I think, to ban people from private property rights but to make it obsolete so that people wouldn't want to work for a wage. Whether or not that's viable is another question, but when you say things like "government bans this or that" from earlier in the thread well that's missing the point. Government bans a lot of things presently under capitalism; so clearly when people talk about socialism -- they're talking about something that you're not.
Free market socialism is also a thing. See: mutualists like Kevin Carson or Benjamin Tucker if you want to go back further.
Giant Panda
Member
Workers would vote to run the company in a way that was best for themselves. New machine released that saves a lot of money but makes some labor jobs obsolete? Workers vote against it, which hurts consumers. Workers vote themselves very high benefits, and since your system makes it hard for new competitors to enter the market, consumers are stuck paying higher prices. In your system, where would an entrepreneur even get the funding to create a new business?
Giant Panda
Member
To keep capital being owned by workers or the government, the government would be banning private individuals from doing transactions that both parties considered mutually beneficial. Under a state of anarchy, the economic system would inevitably end up being capitalism with no corrections for market failures, aka anarcho-capitalism.
Simply Sarah
Member
You seems to be coming from a mental place where a non-distorted world is where a few control the capital and run things as they see fit while any change from this is a negative distortion. First you talk about bad government intervention, but then your next sentence applies to all government intervention, suggesting you view any such intervention as bad. This is bizarre since even the earliest and most basic tenets of capitalist economics see some level of regulation as required. Regardless, while bad regulation certainly does cause additional harm that doesn't mean that it is always bad in supposedly capitalist society.
Giant Panda said:
Again, you're coming at this from a capitalist viewpoint that is purely about efficiency and reward and value. Why must all these be maximized? Why can't we say that some inefficiency is worthwhile in order to improve the general population? I'm not saying we should be wasteful, but I view the goal as being a society without need rather than one that is most efficient at producing goods and services.
And under capitalism companies are, in theory, run in a way that is best for the owners. Saving money is done because it benefits them. Things aren't done to help consumers unless it is thought that would benefit the company. All that changes here under your view is who the owners are.
The fatal flaw of capitalism is its built on the idea of infinite growth when the Earth is finite. At some point the physical limitations of the planet are going to destroy the idea of an endlessly growing free market. Automation removing most jobs from the workforce is going to break it first though.
I'm not going to argue against what you think anarchy is. I'm just saying that considering that socialists have been advocating for anarchy since the 19th century; clearly understanding socialism as just government banning things (even something as specific as private property rights) is lacking with respect to a large part of socialist thought.
Giant Panda
Member
I didn't mean that all intervention is bad. There are very real market failures that need government intervention to correct. Pollution, a negative externality is an example. The government can create private property rights by issuing a certain number of pollution permits and letting the market trade for them.
But many government interventions aren't like that. Farm subsidies, all of the tax exemptions that subsidize inefficient behavior, barriers to international trade, etc.
Well, in a more efficient system, more needs can be meet. Progressive taxation and a safety net ensure that the distribution isn't too unequal.
Yes, but competition ensures that what is best for the company becomes what is best for consumers. Government has a role if competition is impossible, but currently it also is often the reason competition is harder/impossible.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
Not having government intervention is one of the worst possible outcomes to have. Corporations and businesses have no moral compass beside the one that is imposed by the government. They don't (generally) give a shit about the abuse they cause to workers, the environmental damage or pollution or the damage they do indirectly people.
A companys main objective is to create revenue. It's profit is not based on being nice. So you have the government to put a stop to the lunacy.
No, you cannot pour shit in the water supply, no you cannot dump that shit there, no you cannot lower the minimum wage to 2 dollars and hire 10 times as many workers. There is a good reason why you have restrictions.
Look at IKEA- H&M- Statoil, Lego, Maersk- They are able to compete with the largest corporations in the world, because even though they are based in socialist countries and pay a very high tax, there are also benefits in terms of stability, high quality of workers, safety, little corruption and high stability and mobility.
You could fuck all that shit up by removing the restrictions and allow their production costs and their taxes to go down, but it would be a boomerang effect that would fuck up shit further down the chain. Plus it would make things miserable for the people being thrown under the bus.
Having happy workers with a high sense of loyalty with care and work for your company in a way you wouldn't for a normal, and treating your workers decently reduces their stress and increases their productivity.
"Unregulated capitalism" is a way to beat your horse to death to make it go faster. Regulated capitalism allows you to stop the shit from spinning out of control. If you've ever worked for a large international corporation, you know damn well that HR doesn't have your back when you're being abused by a boss, or someone is cutting your pay illegally or cheating you out of sick days or bullying you or some shit like that. HR always has the companys at heart first, and they will calculate and asses the least-damage scenario. It's completely plausible and normal to be fired or punished in a corporate sense by acting up or being difficult.
When you have a government that goes in and says- you cannot treat people like garbage, the people- have rights and they can go to a union and be protected from the bullshit.
I think it is a false equivalency to say that regulations like that- like paid maternity leave, paying a living wage, a certain amount of vacation, a months notice before being fired, fair workers rights, equal pay and so on, are all examples of government intervention that fucks up corporations.
Arguing that if you removed those restrictions you would be able to hire more people is a race to the bottom. you work in a field with no prospects, and you work full time and you cannot make rent or get through the month. Things that have nothing to do with being bad with finances, and everything to do with capitalism spinning out of control trying to appease companies and deregulate everything.
It will never be enough for a company. That's the grotesque part of it. A company never goes "thats enough profits". We good right here. It will always be about growing, expanding and more and more- either through assests, profits, goodwill (branding, awareness) or similar things that benefit the company.
America is the richest country on earth, but a lot of that wealth is not being re poured into the economy. it stays in the bank account of a few individuals. Overwhelmingly so.
A companys main objective is to create revenue. It's profit is not based on being nice. So you have the government to put a stop to the lunacy.
No, you cannot pour shit in the water supply, no you cannot dump that shit there, no you cannot lower the minimum wage to 2 dollars and hire 10 times as many workers. There is a good reason why you have restrictions.
Look at IKEA- H&M- Statoil, Lego, Maersk- They are able to compete with the largest corporations in the world, because even though they are based in socialist countries and pay a very high tax, there are also benefits in terms of stability, high quality of workers, safety, little corruption and high stability and mobility.
You could fuck all that shit up by removing the restrictions and allow their production costs and their taxes to go down, but it would be a boomerang effect that would fuck up shit further down the chain. Plus it would make things miserable for the people being thrown under the bus.
Having happy workers with a high sense of loyalty with care and work for your company in a way you wouldn't for a normal, and treating your workers decently reduces their stress and increases their productivity.
"Unregulated capitalism" is a way to beat your horse to death to make it go faster. Regulated capitalism allows you to stop the shit from spinning out of control. If you've ever worked for a large international corporation, you know damn well that HR doesn't have your back when you're being abused by a boss, or someone is cutting your pay illegally or cheating you out of sick days or bullying you or some shit like that. HR always has the companys at heart first, and they will calculate and asses the least-damage scenario. It's completely plausible and normal to be fired or punished in a corporate sense by acting up or being difficult.
When you have a government that goes in and says- you cannot treat people like garbage, the people- have rights and they can go to a union and be protected from the bullshit.
I think it is a false equivalency to say that regulations like that- like paid maternity leave, paying a living wage, a certain amount of vacation, a months notice before being fired, fair workers rights, equal pay and so on, are all examples of government intervention that fucks up corporations.
Arguing that if you removed those restrictions you would be able to hire more people is a race to the bottom. you work in a field with no prospects, and you work full time and you cannot make rent or get through the month. Things that have nothing to do with being bad with finances, and everything to do with capitalism spinning out of control trying to appease companies and deregulate everything.
It will never be enough for a company. That's the grotesque part of it. A company never goes "thats enough profits". We good right here. It will always be about growing, expanding and more and more- either through assests, profits, goodwill (branding, awareness) or similar things that benefit the company.
America is the richest country on earth, but a lot of that wealth is not being re poured into the economy. it stays in the bank account of a few individuals. Overwhelmingly so.
Giant Panda
Member
Well, based on the definition of anarchism that I am familiar with, what I said makes perfect sense. My understanding of anarchism lines up with the Wikipedia definition of "Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies with voluntary institutions. These are often described as stateless societies, but several authors have defined them more specifically as institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations."
When individuals are free to act however they wish, they will trade privately as both individuals benefit. Private individuals will begin to accumulate capital, and workers will no longer be the sole owner of the means of production unless a government steps in to stop the private trading. I believe the "anarchism" you believe can't exist because it is inherently contradictory.
Well the whole "non-hierarchical free association" part precludes capitalism. But sure. At least I understand where you're coming from.
Simply Sarah
Member
But inequality is pretty much baked into capitalism in the modern world. If everyone ran their own person business and therefore owned their own capital then sure, that could remove most inequality, but that's not reality nor is it really possible. To truly limit equality you'd need a combination of regulation and social visions where the end result would be a sort of bizarro market socialism anyway.
Giant Panda said:
That is the theory behind capitalism, yes. But real modern world capitalism on any real scale has a massive number of unavoidable distortions and inefficiencies compared to the ideal. People are not inherently 100% rational, perfect information is most certainly not true, there are costs, sometimes quite large, to entry and exit, and I could go on. Additionally, and noticeably missing from your statement, none of that talks about being best for the actual workers. The owners and consumers? Sure, but, again, we're not in a world where everyone can and will run their own personal business.
Giant Panda
Member
I don't see how that precludes capitalism. Workers working for people is a voluntary decision and is free association, and the worker retains the ultimate decision to quit working for this person at any time so I don't see that has hierarchical.
First, yes perfect competition is impossible. But capitalism allows competition to get as close to perfect competition as possible, which makes it the most efficient. Also, workers are themselves consumers, so you have to be careful because if you help workers at the expense of consumers the workers might end up worse off on net.
Yoda
Member
I think what we have today isn't capitalism (this only pertains to the U.S. but may be applicable elsewhere). We have a form of Corporatism with a flavor of broken socialism. New regulations are less about protecting consumers and more about reducing overall competition and entrenching monopolies. Regulator capture has run it's course to the point where corporate profits don't shrink when economic indicators say they should. In addition we have sectors of our economy which have selective socialist elements, yet still have a "profit incentive". Medicare part D being the most egregious example of this, where the government is barred for "moral reason" of negotiating down drug prices... Essentially allowing Big Parma to extra billions from the tax-payers.
I think the reason a candidate who is OK with declaring his ideology stems from socialism is somewhat tenable (and thus sparking this debate) is due to the fact that the middle class in this country has seen their lives continue to degrade and no longer buy the trickle down economics, "just work really really hard", or that it's a merit based system. I myself believe in free-markets, but I don't believe this country has them anymore.
I think the reason a candidate who is OK with declaring his ideology stems from socialism is somewhat tenable (and thus sparking this debate) is due to the fact that the middle class in this country has seen their lives continue to degrade and no longer buy the trickle down economics, "just work really really hard", or that it's a merit based system. I myself believe in free-markets, but I don't believe this country has them anymore.
Since part of the hang-up here seems to be that it's "authoritarian" for socialist governments to ban private control of the means of production, I'd say it's just as "authoritarian" for private individuals to control the means of production when the only way for the masses to survive is to be subservient to them. And don't say "well you can start your own business!" because while that may be legally possible it's not feasible for the majority of people, and if everyone did that capitalism would fall apart immediately since capitalism requires an underclass to function. Capitalism literally cannot work if there are not workers being exploited by employers. Pretending that the employer-employee relationship is fair because employees can quit disregards the fact that they don't control capital and only have one thing to sell - their labor - or else they will starve to death. Meanwhile, while in theory workers could immediately bring an end to capitalism through one giant massive 100%-worldwide-solidarity-strike, in the real world employers can always find someone else to work for them or, if we continue down the path we're going down without any change, they can switch over to robots and just never need people to work for them at all again. This is why the only way the proletariat can make their lives better is through mass action, because by demonstrating that they are the ones who keep things running, they exercise the power that they do have over the capitalists. We just want them to have total power and overcome the parasite class completely.
The only difference in the authority here is who owns the means of production. In a proletarian democracy, the government - elected by the proletariat and working for the proletariat - makes sure that the proletariat remains in control of the means of production, while in a liberal democracy the government protects the property rights of the entrenched bourgeoisie. You can call it "authoritarian" but that doesn't make it bad; any sort of government action is by definition a form of authority. I'm not an anarchist and I do think a transitional socialist state would be necessary, so it doesn't bother me in the slightest that a government would ban private control of industry.
The only difference in the authority here is who owns the means of production. In a proletarian democracy, the government - elected by the proletariat and working for the proletariat - makes sure that the proletariat remains in control of the means of production, while in a liberal democracy the government protects the property rights of the entrenched bourgeoisie. You can call it "authoritarian" but that doesn't make it bad; any sort of government action is by definition a form of authority. I'm not an anarchist and I do think a transitional socialist state would be necessary, so it doesn't bother me in the slightest that a government would ban private control of industry.
It's not an either/or situation. We can do these kinds of projects without killing capitalism or whatever people are so afraid of:
Capitalism alone, when left to its own devices, often leaves entire communities stranded, jobless, and hungry. Community-based businesses aren't about killing capitalism, they're about rebuilding the neighborhoods which capitalism refuses to serve, places they've decided to avoid based on the amount of profit they can achieve.
Simply Sarah
Member
It goes even beyond this. Private ownership of anything and corporations themselves are all legal fictions enforced by a government or other source of power. There is nothing natural about them and they can only remain either through coercive force of some sort or convincing people they should exist. This is true regardless of if you think their existence is a positive, negative, or mixed thing.
Nay, broadly.
Capitalism is a progressive system vastly better than what came before, but is unsustainable and ultimately harmful. While capitalism's existence has actually done a lot of good to connect our economies and allow greater social mobility for many people, this system still relies upon hierarchies that benefit people on top to the detriment of people on the bottom.
While capitalism offers many important lessons and models for economics and politics, a socialistic system is better-able to provide for the material needs of its people. In addition, the rising trend of non-state bodies dominating politics due to sheer greed reveals a dangerous and intrinsic flaw in capitalism.
Capitalism is a progressive system vastly better than what came before, but is unsustainable and ultimately harmful. While capitalism's existence has actually done a lot of good to connect our economies and allow greater social mobility for many people, this system still relies upon hierarchies that benefit people on top to the detriment of people on the bottom.
While capitalism offers many important lessons and models for economics and politics, a socialistic system is better-able to provide for the material needs of its people. In addition, the rising trend of non-state bodies dominating politics due to sheer greed reveals a dangerous and intrinsic flaw in capitalism.
RobotNinjaHornets
Banned
Fun fact: Thatcher fucked up the UK's internet infrastructure in the name of competition
Yeah no, this is assuming it's feasible for everyone to A) quit their job and still be able to afford food, rent and bills and B) then be able to find another job.
And going back to this:
So your basic stance here is they deserve to gain money because they had money in the first place. I mean sure that's might be slightly reductive, but that is the basic concept of what you're saying.
And lol at the idea that there wouldn't be any demand for housing. That's like saying there wouldn't be any demand for fucking water. People need housing to live dood, dunno if you missed that. And it's not like social housing doesn't exist.
- Status