Excerpt:
Banksy isn’t happy with Guess’ latest collaboration.
The legendary anonymous graffiti artist had a directive for his followers on Friday, encouraging them—possibly tongue in cheek, possibly not—to visit the Regent Street Guess store in London and steal the brand’s new collection that features his artwork.
“Attention all shoplifters. Please go to Guess on Regents Street. They’ve helped themselves to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?”
Does anyone stop at “reclaiming profits for the working class” and not go all the way to removing property rights entirely? Owning my own home would be nice…
I’m enough of a hippie environmentalist to believe that land cannot be owned, and the very concept is insulting to the planet itself, but let’s leave that aside and talk socialism and economics.
I think the “American dream of home ownership” is, frankly, based on fear.
People are afraid if they lose their jobs or get old or sick and can’t pay rent their landlords will evict them.
People are afraid their landlord will harass them, or demand extra money from them, or otherwise extort them under the threat of eviction.
People are afraid if they have a medical crisis or extended period of unemployment they’ll end up broke, and want equity in a home as insurance against poverty.
And people are afraid their children will be broke or homeless or living in a slum and want to leave their children equity in a home to protect them as well.
And this is all a result of capitalism. This is because we treat basic shelter as a privilege the poor have to earn by working instead of a basic human right. And we don’t trust government to provide us with the basic right to housing, and we don’t trust government to protect us from abuses by landlords, and we don’t trust ourselves to be able to pay constantly increasing rent if we get fired or get sick, so owning our own home is the only way to protect ourselves from homelessness.
And American capitalism, in particular, enforces the fear of homelessness by abusing and brutalizing and dehumanizing people experiencing homelessness, so that the average American believes homelessness is one of the worst fates someone in America can endure. And it is. Because we make it that way.
Anyone who doesn’t own their own home in the US is at far greater risk of homelessness than someone who does. And the fear of homelessness is the fundamental drive behind American idealization of home ownership. And that is sick and wrong and unfair.
In a socialist society where housing is a human right and guaranteed to all, where people have no fear of losing their homes because they trust their government to ensure their basic right to shelter, where people don’t fear landlords abusing their power because apartment buildings and housing complexes aren’t owned, but managed, by committees which themselves are monitored by government to prevent abuses, I think home ownership would be not only unnecessary but irrelevant.
Because what does owning a home represent, in America, except shelter and security and protection? And if all that is guaranteed to you by right, what need is there for personal ownership?
In a perfect world, owning land would be as unnecessary and foolish as owning the air we breathe or the water we drink.
I want my own space.
Most of the things you’re attributing to capitalism could be solved in a capitalism society, but the real cause is just because survival is hard. We probably agree that too much land is private (I wont go so far to say it shouldn’t be owned), but even when people could find some space in the wilderness and make a home, it was a constant struggle just to survive. Not saying it was worse than modern society for some people, but it wasn’t easy for anyone.
And I’m not saying capitalism is a “good” system, but using American capitalism as an example of the problems with the theoretical implementation of capitalism is as misleading as using China as an example of communism. Both are flawed and corrupt, both have the issues you pointed out, and both could solve them in their own ways. If the upper class wasn’t constantly attacking workers’ rights, most of the problems you listed either wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t be nearly as bad.