Markets and Socialism Can Both Lead to Free Housing

     Many voters, with good cause, doubt politicians' ability to deliver on “free housing”. But in my opinion, that's because many voters are largely unaware of the true purpose of a free-market system.

     Decreasing and limiting the size and scope of government, simplifying the tax code, letting people keep more of their own money, and letting technology do its thing, could all help result in cheaper housing, and in more people getting housed. Making low-cost housing possible through voluntary and free-market means, instead of through the government, could help make people more free, while their rent goes down at the same time.

     Promoting multi-use zoning, for example, could help make it easier for people to work from home, or work closer to home. Land Value Taxation, rooftop reclamation, and building upwards, would all help to make land and housing less expensive, while also reducing urban sprawl, diminishing the influence of speculation on the land and housing markets, and leading to fewer unused parcels and fewer abandoned properties.

     Another thing that would help reduce the cost of housing, is to reduce the cost of land, in hopes that that would decrease the costs of building on land. It would also help to get the government out of all the lands out West that it owns or manages without explicit constitutional authority. There is no reason why progressives and conservatives shouldn't unite against large land and energy monopolies, especially considering that conservatism and environmental conservation have a long history of going hand-in-hand.

     I recommend that the single national Environmental Protection Agency be replaced with Community Land Trusts, and community trusts that protect air, water, and other natural resources (these trusts are one of the potential features of implementing Henry George's Land Value Taxation).

     Right now, we're seeing Donald Trump's E.P.A. make the exact same move that George W. Bush's E.P.A. made in the early 2000s; a move against California's ability to determine its vehicle emissions standards. This is an example of how government control of an industry with the purpose of protecting consumers, can easily cause that industry to become victim to regulatory capture, because the people assume that a good or service will be safe simply because there is an agency that exists which is supposed to regulate it (whether it does so or not).

     I strongly believe that it is better for many federal agencies to be abolished, than to continue existing and risk being used for evil. Don't be ashamed to cite California's 10^th Amendment “states' rights” to legislate on vehicle emissions, something that's not mentioned in the Enumerated Powers, and which is thus none of Congress's business. But back to land and housing.

     Housing is not free; but that's not primarily the fault of markets or voluntary exchange. Certainly it's because of capitalism, an also bad government, but not markets.

     It's because of land and mortgage speculation (which is capitalism, but with government protection). It's also because of bad legislation; such as 1) housing codes that favor flammable building materials (i.e., wood, instead of concrete and rock); 2) restrictions on architectural experimentation (look up Mike Reynolds and “Earth ships”); 3) subsidies to live in flood-prone areas, and loads of additional unnecessary measures that only make housing more expensive and more likely to be damaged.

     The best-case scenario of addressing these problems, is that we could we drastically undermine the financial and lobbying power of the “FIRE economy” (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate industries). Simply put – and speaking of fire - a home that isn't made of flammable materials (i.e., wood) doesn't have much use for fire insurance. Building more buildings out of glass, steel, concrete, and rock – including building into the rock naturally – could help reduce house fires, and drastically reduce the need to purchase fire insurance. And that means savings for struggling families.

     Markets aren't even supposed to exist for things which exist in abundance, like housing. Abundant goods exist in greater supply than is necessary to satisfy people's needs. People assume that land existing in a fixed supply, means that not enough of it exists.

     But of course enough of it exists; we're not falling off the planet, and less than 3% of land area is used for housing. So logically – according to free market principles of supply and demand; namely, that an abundant supply should mean not just low prices, but zero cost – housing should be free, because there's so much of it that it's a free gift from nature.

     But like idiots, we fence it off, evict whoever's on it, exclude everyone from it who refuses to pay us for access to it, sell it off piece by piece, and let governments and large companies own huge amounts of it, and even destroy it with no financial or legal repercussions nor compensation to the community.

You can learn more about mass eviction by looking up the enclosure of the English Commons, also known as the enclosure movement. Mass displacements of Native Americans, such as the Trail of Tears, parallel these mass displacements from land, as do similar events in other countries throughout time.

     This is the macroscopic explanation of why rent is theft; because what's being rented and leased is stolen, conquered property, which was not acquired justly. Whether it was acquired according to the letter of the law should matter much, much less than whether it was acquired without violating anyone's right to be free from other people's violence, aggression, and coercion.

     That is why “rent is theft”. While the Libertarian Party believes that “taxation is theft”, we at the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the LP also believe that “rent is theft”.

     Rent is theft for the same reason that eviction is murder; they're both coercive, exploitative practices which are likely to result in the death and deprivation of the borrower or renter, who for all intents and purposes has been legally and logistically precluded from doing anything to make ends meet other than those methods which have been culturally normalized and authoritatively approved (i.e., selling his labor and renting his living space). Homesteading, foraging, mutual aid, charity, and gift/trade/barter/share combined, do not always supplement what we procure for ourselves through legitimized business and political avenues.

     Additionally, we agree with Proudhon that “property is theft”, and that “property is impossible”.

Basically, this is to say that one can't own a huge chunk of land; at least not without the government's recognition and help and police assistance, because otherwise, people would steal it from them. Call it “stealing”, or “seizing”, or even just “challenging” them for it. A person defending a property claim based purely on defense and conquest, cannot logically refuse someone's offer to fight him for his property, if those are the terms upon which he voluntarily chooses to wager that his property claim is valid.

     “Absentee ownership” is a scourge against which Georgists, Mutualists, anarchists, socialists, and communists all fight; it is the ownership is a property by an owner who rarely makes use of or even visits his claimed property (especially one who does little to no work to maintain or defend the property). The Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the L.P. fully supports the right to squat, as long as the squatters do not make the place unlivable or let it fall into further disrepair. Usufructory (use-based) property rights are not a defense when it is conquered land which is being “used better” or “used more productively”.

     The idea that poor people don't pay taxes is ridiculous, for the simple reason that there are sales taxes in 46 states. There's no reason that a homeless person should have to pay sales taxes on everything he eats.

     There's also no reason why people should need to hire a lobbyist to stop their tax money from going to fund police forces, and license private security guards, and protect the six empty residences that exist for every homeless person in America, and prop-up and bail-out businesses that they want to fully boycott but can't. Socialists and free-marketers both believe in boycott, but for all intents and purposes, boycotts are illegal. Not just because our tax money goes to corporate welfare, but also because secondary boycotts are illegal according to federal law (the Taft-Hartley Act), even though they would have no reason to be illegal in a libertarian society because they are perfectly voluntary.

     Aside from taxes and corporate subsidies, and the impossibility of boycott, the idea that poor people don't pay taxes is also laughable because of the “opportunity costs” that people lose; when they are ordered to obey this or that policy, ordered to submit to this or that authority figure or politician, or ordered to buy this or that product. The lives of soldiers are being paid around the world to finance the destruction we are causing; and the value of those lives lost are impossible to measure. Opportunity costs are an unseen tax, and so is inflation, which Ron Paul called a tax on saving money.

     Human beings can't help but take up space and area on the planet. Each of us has the natural right to homestead property to make it livable, and bequeath it to our children, and any government that deprives us of that right should at least compensate us.

     Conservative hero Thomas Paine proposed that each adult be paid a fixed sum of thousands per year; as a share in the land value, and as compensation for those deprivations of rights to freely homestead, inherit, and bequeath. However, some of Paine's own modern-day conservative admirers might call him a Universal Basic Income Guarantee -supporting “socialist” for espousing such a position. The same with John Locke, who said people have to leave enough land for others, so they have a place to live.

     Some say that the poor don't deserve a basic income, nor a citizens' dividend, nor even any food or jobs guarantee. No free identification documents either. Many of them say that the poor shouldn't receive any government services, unless they pay for them, i.e., through user fees. This is predicated upon the idea that only property owners should vote, and that therefore poor people who have no property should not vote, nor receive government services. However, to say this is to admit that even if homeless people have a few possessions, they have no property. Which is to say that there is a distinction; a distinction which anarcho-capitalists insist is not useful, so therefore they do not make it.

     Socialists do not “hate” private property, and they do not want to “steal your toothbrush”. Anyone who is trying to convince you that socialists want your toothbrush because it's private property, does not know what socialists mean when they say private property.

     A personal possession is any ordinary, small, cheap, mass-produced, easily movable thing; anything that isn't an important, rare tool, or something is not essential to the labor process, or wouldn't make sense to be cooperatively managed by a large group of workers, or something that people don't actually need in order to survive or earn a living. The latter are examples of private property.

     “Private property” (as people like Marx and Proudhon used it) does not include personal possessions; only private property in the means of production, like factories and plants, large machine parts, farms, and land. It includes things that are loaned out at interest; and the laborer's wage is taken as profit (and the laborer underpaid) as a form of “rent” on the means of production which the worker is borrowing for eight hours a day in order to avoid starvation. Which he does by paying an additional rent to a landlord who holds a title granted by government, which right-libertarians are foolish enough to fail to describe as anything but another ordinary law.

     Sucks to the law.

Written on July 4^th, 20^th, 26^th, and 27^th, and August 1^st through 4^th, and 6^th, 2018

Edited and Expanded on August 20th, 2018

Originally Published on August 20th, 2018