Miscellaneous > The Lounge
I love Bertrand Russel.
Aloone_Jonez:
--- Quote from: Kintaro on 26 August 2008, 09:09 ---Where do you think the capital will come from to build them? This will just rack up debt anyway - might as well do a Freddie Mac which does basically the same thing.
--- End quote ---
The government will get the money back from council houses from the rent people pay. This has been done before, the only idiotic thing was the conservative government came along and sold them at a loss.
The idea with cooperative building schemes is that in theory it will be cheaper if people club together to build houses for themselves rather than getting a company to do it for them. I know this idea isn't for everyone but lots of people might prefer to do it rather than rent a council house.
Kintaro:
--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez on 26 August 2008, 18:54 ---
--- Quote from: Kintaro on 26 August 2008, 09:09 ---Where do you think the capital will come from to build them? This will just rack up debt anyway - might as well do a Freddie Mac which does basically the same thing.
--- End quote ---
The government will get the money back from council houses from the rent people pay. This has been done before, the only idiotic thing was the conservative government came along and sold them at a loss.
The idea with cooperative building schemes is that in theory it will be cheaper if people club together to build houses for themselves rather than getting a company to do it for them. I know this idea isn't for everyone but lots of people might prefer to do it rather than rent a council house.
--- End quote ---
In a liazee-faire system I doubt that housing would be a problem anyway.
Aloone_Jonez:
Why do you say that?
Kintaro:
Although we have never had a system quite liazee-faire, the closest systems had greater prosperity and growth of wealth among the poor than any of the more controlled economies.
Aloone_Jonez:
I don't see how that would help to bring house prices down to an affordable level.
The problem we have in the UK is that demand for housing outstrips supply and that, unlike in Australia or the US, land is very expensive. The housing market isn't interfered with any more than any other area of the economy. There's a lack of afforable housing because the building companies can make more money from building fewer expensive houses that few can afford rathing than building many low cost homes that most can afford. The government have tried to interfere with this by making them build a certain number of affordble homes in every new estate but this hasn't been enough to solve the problem.
I suppose you could argue that the planning laws don't help but if they were relaxed companies would build on greenfield sites and damage the environment.
Perhaps socialist idea of cutting out the big companies and empowering the people to build their own cheap housing and more government owned houses for those who want to rent would help solve the problem.
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