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.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
0. Only post socialist memes
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).
4. No Bigotry.
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.
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?