Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
And do you see these government measures anywhere in the court?DEATH wrote:It's silly, but best solved through government measures, not breaking and entering".
No. So? I do not consider the given case as being urgent enough to justify breaking the law, and arguing for its setting as a precedent/New Deal tm.NecronLord wrote:And do you see these government measures anywhere in the court?DEATH wrote:It's silly, but best solved through government measures, not breaking and entering".
Or a homeless shelter.No one is saying that it's the best way to do it. But I find it hard to begrudge the homeless from moving into any empty building, be it a house or a warehouse, that will keep them out of the wind and rain. No other solution is forthcoming for them: for them, the choice is literally that or live under a bridge or in a tent.
The person who is murdered is a hoarder of food who does not actually use the food in question; not a fellow eater like the man in question - that was specifically determined. Once again, how is he morally evil for killing an evil person who caused his suffering in the first place?Flash wrote:But that doesn't make the action morally acceptable.
Which means those homes would've been nationalized and given to people... in a sane nation-state. I mean, even crappy nations know that you don't just want lots of people to go homeless instantly at the whim of idiots who caused this mess... America seems to have a unique vision of the situation.PeZook wrote:The government is eating up trillions of dollars of bad debt from idiot bankers in order to prevent a total economic collapse.
It depends how exactly the debt was eaten up (it may just be promises of money rather than actual cold, hard cash), but I don't see why homes covered by mortgages the government did buy outright should stay in hands of the banks...Stas Bush wrote: Which means those homes would've been nationalized and given to people... in a sane nation-state.
Yeah, I meant directly buying the mortage. If you hold the mortage, why the hell should the bank remain in posession of property? That just doesn't follow.PeZook wrote:I don't see why homes covered by mortgages the government did buy outright should stay in hands of the banks...
Well, if it were in northern USA, as opposed to Miami, the case would be urgent enough to justify breaking the law. With winter coming on, exposure to the cold could kill you overnight.DEATH wrote: No. So? I do not consider the given case as being urgent enough to justify breaking the law, and arguing for its setting as a precedent/New Deal tm.
And if it were in Russia, foodstuffs would need to be collectivized to prevent famine and the Mongols overrunning the country before it froze to death. This is about Miami.Lusankya wrote:Well, if it were in northern USA, as opposed to Miami, the case would be urgent enough to justify breaking the law. With winter coming on, exposure to the cold could kill you overnight.DEATH wrote: No. So? I do not consider the given case as being urgent enough to justify breaking the law, and arguing for its setting as a precedent/New Deal tm.
So because you let someone live with you, it's ok for people to break in to a house and claim it for their own? Did this person ask to live there, or did he just break the lock and throw his shit into a room? Do you see the distinction here?The Duchess of Zeon wrote: As long as you're willing to share it with anyone else who needs housing, sure (and I'm not being a hypocrite. For the past two weeks someone I've never met in person before in my life before the day he showed up to live with us has been living in Amy and I's apartment, he just got a place of his own here today, so he stayed as long as he needed to).
Sweet, can I steal your car when you aren't using it? I won't give it back because, well, finders keepers..."Theft" is less ethically unacceptable if nobody is using the property in question.
Well what if I found a pile of cash that was just sitting around, or stole some from an ATM, I mean it's FDIC insured so they get their money back. No harm, no foul, right?Since that cash is still doing work, from an economic perspective, no, that wouldn't be acceptable.
Support for the rule of law does not equal undying support for capitalism. To be honest my hard on for the free market has justifiably taken a few massive blows recently and my views are moderating accordingly. That does not mean that I suddenly support rampant theft of property because someone believes they will benefit from it.Your support for capitalism in light of current circumstances is.. Unfortunate, though, not surprising.
The Yosemite Bear wrote:Ok, how about we use emminant domain to sieze the defaulted properties, then set up a program to make the property available for the poor and truely destitute while paying the owners/banks what they determine to be a fair amount. Come to think of it, that could work for the auto industry,,,,
You know, every time we have a thread vaguely related to the economy, business, or whatever, I see this line. Not to pick you out in particular Yosemite, or notable others who spout this, but please. Enlighten me.Knife wrote:The Yosemite Bear wrote: Fuck the banks.
Actually it was my quote, Bear is innocent here.Nephtys wrote:
You know, every time we have a thread vaguely related to the economy, business, or whatever, I see this line. Not to pick you out in particular Yosemite, or notable others who spout this, but please. Enlighten me.
Actually they are in this particular issue and to which I say 'fuck them'. Sure everything is interconnected and when they suffer, they'll sure as hell spread that around to ease their own problems. Not my point though: letting those houses sit and rot hoping to get some money out of them later when the market picks up doesn't alleviate the problem that they own large tracts of housing they gave bad loans out to and that the people evicted out of them now need a place. The government is bailing their ass out, so picking up that land and housing via emminent domain and turing it into low cost government housing is a good way for the government to fix some of the problem.Do you really think that the banks are the sole blame for the current state of affairs? Or even the primary cause? Even then, what will 'fucking the banks' do exactly, to improve things, aside being a childish, spiteful reaction instead of a reasoned one that repairs the economy, and improves the overall quality of life?
Perhaps the notion that their bussiness is too large and bloated with too much debt to continue, so as to need (lol) external intervention to save. Sure if the government takes that land it represents assets the banks no longer have, it also represents liability they don't have and costs and so forth.By literally, taking property from the banks, even if it's not used, is a loss of assets to them. How is this at all beneficial to an industry that, at the moment, is relying heavily on external intervention to save?
Ah, so you just focus on one glib comment in that post and not the actual point of the post above it. Gotcha.There's a lot of ways to approach this issue of homeless, foreclosed homes and whatnot, but just 'spiting richie' as Stark put it, is not necessary or productive. This isn't even looking into the entire 'legality' issue. Ignoring laws when convenient on 'moral' grounds is hardly a direction we should be going into.
Not seeing how this is different than eminent domain after bailout money is used on the banks...but ok. I'm down with it.Solauren wrote:It occurs to me the optimim solution for this problem would be for the government to purchase the homes and rent them out cheap to people, instead of leaving them vacant. Say, using the bailout money (of course, that would require laying the law down to the banks.... we can't have that, can we?)
They could then hire 'building supervisors' to handle the problems that might arrise, and pay them a salary.
That would
#1 - Create jobs (the supervisors)
#2 - Give the homeless people somewhere to live.
#3 - Keep the properties properly monitored (in theory)
So, to be clear no measures like those put forward in this thread exist or are forthcoming, then. Until the government actually does something, they're just fantasies. You don't keep warm on fantasies.DEATH wrote: No. So? I do not consider the given case as being urgent enough to justify breaking the law, and arguing for its setting as a precedent/New Deal tm.
Of which there are never enough. The number of beds in shelters is always inadequate. According to a study in 2001 - when there were less homeless in the US - as many as thirty five percent of people wanting to get into these were turned away. More families, too.Or a homeless shelter.
Which as you admit, is not happening, and I don't see any drive in official sources to sieze such houses. It's all well and good to say what the government should do on a web-board. But there's no actual movement to do so from any official or reputed government source. In other words: this will never happen. It can therefore be entirely discounted from your reckoning, it's pie-in-the-sky.And yes, it is shitty, and the situation should be approved, but I still don't think that this provides enough of an argument to override the homeowners' (some of which are banks) property rights in this situation. I do think that a solution should be reached to avoid this waste (I remember thinking "Why aren't unused flats used to house the homeless" when I was 8 years old),
You clearly have no idea how quick a wather change can screw you over. In Atlanta, in Febuary, four homeless people died in one night. The sunshine state is nice and toasty, provided you have shelter. If you don't, it doesn't matter where on earth you are, you're at risk of death due to exposure, unless you're some kind of survival expert.The Government being incompetent (or even not having a solution yet) does not mean that this (squatting) should be done, unless it were a life and death situation of pressing urgency (say a blizzard, or a natural disaster such as New Orleans or earthquakes).
My apologies then to bear.Knife wrote:Actually it was my quote, Bear is innocent here.Nephtys wrote:
You know, every time we have a thread vaguely related to the economy, business, or whatever, I see this line. Not to pick you out in particular Yosemite, or notable others who spout this, but please. Enlighten me.
And the numbers what would support this are where? Just because the Gov is giving banks money to stop them from collapsing doesn't mean we can just go 'Oh hey, since we gave you that cash, yoink!' and take the houses without actually QUANTIFYING what level of good/damage that'd do. What's the point of bailing someone out when you're going to take their assets anyway? It'd be different if the Gov bought the houses specifically and then reallocated their use to welfare-related purposes.Actually they are in this particular issue and to which I say 'fuck them'. Sure everything is interconnected and when they suffer, they'll sure as hell spread that around to ease their own problems. Not my point though: letting those houses sit and rot hoping to get some money out of them later when the market picks up doesn't alleviate the problem that they own large tracts of housing they gave bad loans out to and that the people evicted out of them now need a place. The government is bailing their ass out, so picking up that land and housing via emminent domain and turing it into low cost government housing is a good way for the government to fix some of the problem.Do you really think that the banks are the sole blame for the current state of affairs? Or even the primary cause? Even then, what will 'fucking the banks' do exactly, to improve things, aside being a childish, spiteful reaction instead of a reasoned one that repairs the economy, and improves the overall quality of life?
That the banks don't then get to hang on to the property and wait for prices to go up and make a good profit out of them after their actions in creating the problem doesn't concern me at all. Like I said, fuck the banks...in this regard. If the government wasn't bailing their asses out, I'd more lienient with that notion, but public funds are fixing their screw up, public funds will be needed to help the homeless this fiasco is creating along with pre-exsisting homeless and the banks have (at the moment) property not worth it's value with housing on it. Not a hard jump to Bear's and my suggestion.
So tell me, what is the alternative to a 'large, bloated business'? Letting them crash hard? Or perhaps actually RESTRUCTURING the faults over time, without gutting other industries tied to them? It's not about 'let them burn! they failed', but rather the fact that like it or not, the system needs them to prevent matters from degenerating.Perhaps the notion that their bussiness is too large and bloated with too much debt to continue, so as to need (lol) external intervention to save. Sure if the government takes that land it represents assets the banks no longer have, it also represents liability they don't have and costs and so forth.By literally, taking property from the banks, even if it's not used, is a loss of assets to them. How is this at all beneficial to an industry that, at the moment, is relying heavily on external intervention to save?
Did you not read my post? I was referring not to any one specific post, but to the sub-discussion in general on if such actions are morally justifiable or not.Ah, so you just focus on one glib comment in that post and not the actual point of the post above it. Gotcha.There's a lot of ways to approach this issue of homeless, foreclosed homes and whatnot, but just 'spiting richie' as Stark put it, is not necessary or productive. This isn't even looking into the entire 'legality' issue. Ignoring laws when convenient on 'moral' grounds is hardly a direction we should be going into.
This is disturbing because it essentially states that adult citizens with all of the rights and privileges to enter into contracts, are regarded as blameless and responsibility-free, if they should happen to exercise their right and privilege to enter into an agreement which turns out to have been ill-considered, on their end (and anyone who enters into a financial agreement they don't understand is lazy, foolish, or some combination of the two, neither of which is the banks' doing). It seems to undermine the concept that adults are responsible for the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices.Coyote wrote:Because I believe that the onus of responsibility is on the bank to make wise selections on who they extend credit to. That's why some people are considered good or bad risks, why there's credit ratings, etc. People want homes; not all of them are really in a good position to obtain or keep homes, and that is why the banks have regulations to follow so that lending is fair and evenly applied.Kanastrous wrote:maybe too far off-topic, but why not? Just because someone offers you something, does not mean that you are obliged - or halfway smart - to take it. No matter what blandishments a banker throws my way, I am still the sole person responsible for seeing that I don't take on more debt than I can service.Coyote wrote: I'm not blaming the high-risk buyers for simply taking what was offered to them...
Well obviously when a single person is making a decision he shouldn't be held responsible but when a bunch of individuals come together in a profit making venture every stupid decision they make earns them a ticket straight to HELL!Kanastrous wrote:This is disturbing because it essentially states that adult citizens with all of the rights and privileges to enter into contracts, are regarded as blameless and responsibility-free, if they should happen to exercise their right and privilege to enter into an agreement which turns out to have been ill-considered, on their end (and anyone who enters into a financial agreement they don't understand is lazy, foolish, or some combination of the two, neither of which is the banks' doing). It seems to undermine the concept that adults are responsible for the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices.
An unoccupied house, yes.KrauserKrauser wrote:
So because you let someone live with you, it's ok for people to break in to a house and claim it for their own?
You're strawmanning the fact that the houses in question are unoccupied. The original question, which you are ignoring, Sir, was if you could break into an unoccupied house and live in it. And I said "yes, if you were prepared to share it with others". Because of course nobody has the right to a full sized McMansion unless they have a very large family, they're extremely inefficient uses of social resources, so they should be shared between families.Did this person ask to live there, or did he just break the lock and throw his shit into a room? Do you see the distinction here?
The car, good Sir, is being used. Same thing with Broomstick's comments. The property is being used--there is a house on part of it, the rest of it is being maintained as a nature preserve, so, no, it's not terra nullius. I am proposing after all that the law be changed, so that property which sits unused (as in a whole plot, and preservation as a nature preserve could be registered with the government, under strict terms, to prevent this from happening) could be seized and redistributed. Now, note that such nature preserve factors are already in use. You can 'landbank' your property, getting paid to agree to never develop it, and legally it can no longer be developed. So if you want a nature preserve on your property, landbank it, it's eternally a nature preserve, and now it cannot be seized because it remains continuously in use as a nature preserve. Very simple.
Sweet, can I steal your car when you aren't using it? I won't give it back because, well, finders keepers...
No, because you're causing overall harm to the economy and a stress on the government, i.e., you're consuming social resources without cause. This is not the case with unproductive possessions.Well what if I found a pile of cash that was just sitting around, or stole some from an ATM, I mean it's FDIC insured so they get their money back. No harm, no foul, right?
If the car has sat there in operating condition unused for years, depreciating, yes. If it is in regular use, no. That is the ethical consideration. Notice that the same true of older laws, for instance salvage laws where if you find a ship abandoned on the high seas, you get to claim a substantial portion of its value for yourself, with the owners are obligated to provide to you, or else you can keep the vessel, and also with steadholding laws which allow you squatter's rights.Can I steal someone's car they have sitting in their yard? I mean the windshield is busted and it probably needs alot of work and I sure do need that specific car for some reason, I can steal that too because they aren't using it, Right? They have a bunch of working cars in the drive way so they shouldn't mind if I just drive up there with a truck, ruin their lawn and take it without asking. Sounds perfectly reasonable.
You should have no right to property if you do not regularly use it, and the definitions of regular use should be set by the government... To force the government to accommodate such methods, civil disobedience should be used.
Support for the rule of law does not equal undying support for capitalism. To be honest my hard on for the free market has justifiably taken a few massive blows recently and my views are moderating accordingly. That does not mean that I suddenly support rampant theft of property because someone believes they will benefit from it.
The obvious problem with this is that if you do it on any real scale, it screws landlords by (futher) depressing rents. Now I don't have a lot of sympathy for the hordes of idiots who bought a buy-to-let second home on a mortgage they couldn't afford. However there are plenty of legitimate professional landlords who'd be hit by this, plus the decline in private rental demand will trigger even more foreclosures. I suppose if your objective is large-scale nationalisation of property ownership that's a good thing - I do believe in private home ownership where possible though so I'd only support it if there was a clear plan to sell the houses back to their occupants over some reasonable timescale.Solauren wrote:It occurs to me the optimim solution for this problem would be for the government to purchase the homes and rent them out cheap to people, instead of leaving them vacant.
No, the laws should be overturned. And it is indeed not a protest, it is substantially more than that, it is an attack on the capitalist system.KrauserKrauser wrote:From what I can tell many on this thread are treating this as almost a non-violent protest to the current housing situation, which has succeeded in increasing attention to the increased number of homeless people in a market with a significant housing surplus.
Congratulations!
Now, go to jail, because even if it is a protest, which it wasn't you just broke in and are stealing property that is not yours, you broke the law and should be prepared to face the consequences.
It's people in need of shelter squatting in what shelter is available.The Duchess of Zeon wrote: No, the laws should be overturned. And it is indeed not a protest, it is substantially more than that, it is an attack on the capitalist system.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm, or not.KrauserKrauser wrote:Well obviously when a single person is making a decision he shouldn't be held responsible but when a bunch of individuals come together in a profit making venture every stupid decision they make earns them a ticket straight to HELL!Kanastrous wrote:This is disturbing because it essentially states that adult citizens with all of the rights and privileges to enter into contracts, are regarded as blameless and responsibility-free, if they should happen to exercise their right and privilege to enter into an agreement which turns out to have been ill-considered, on their end (and anyone who enters into a financial agreement they don't understand is lazy, foolish, or some combination of the two, neither of which is the banks' doing). It seems to undermine the concept that adults are responsible for the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices.
Actually the government wouldn't even need to purchase the homes, the government already owns them. The mortgages on those homes were put up as collateral by the banks in exchange for hard cash, which the banks gambled away and lost. Since the banks can't pay them back, the collateral, meaning the mortages on those homes, stays with the government and it can do whatever the hell it damn well pleases and the banks can go suck it.Solauren wrote:It occurs to me the optimim solution for this problem would be for the government to purchase the homes and rent them out cheap to people, instead of leaving them vacant.
