This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Apparently the UK's entire net worth was £10.7 trillions in 2020 according to the ONS, their chief statistic agency. What's remarkable is that a whopping 60% of that is "non-produced, non-financial assets".
That's a fancy way of saying land. Why isn't this fact more well known? Should we expect it to be different for other countries? And why aren't more people talking about Georgism?
The fact that most of the wealth in the UK is in housing is relatively well-known. We are a country that is notoriously obsessed with house prices, to the point where they get used as an economic barometer the way the US uses the stock market. "Pension or property?" (i.e. should you invest your long-term savings in the stock market via a tax-advantaged wrapper similar to 401ks in the US, or in buying residential property and renting it out as a small-scale landlord) is a sufficiently common rich-person financial question that random celebrities get asked it in newspaper interviews. The fact that most of the value of housing in the UK is land and not buildings is admittedly less well known.
I would expect it to be slightly different in other countries (although Piketty's graphs in Capital in the 21st century show the situation as just as bad in France), because in most countries are open-access by default (policy-induced housing scarcity is a feature of a small number of rich cities), whereas in the UK is closed-access by default (it is a problem everywhere except declining industrial towns).
Can drill it down narrower. The value of housing comes not from the land, but from land you are permitted to build on. The value of land goes up a lot when it acquires planning permission. Typical residential land value, post-permission, is £1-2m per hectare.. Agricultural land is instead closer to £25k per hectare.
Janet, 72, retired, extracts massive rents not because she owns a house, and doesn't pay tax on the land upon which the house is sat. Rather, they come from her dutiful efforts to elect local councillors who will prevent housebuilding at all costs (every single major party stands on Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone at local elections), and persistent formal complaints against any effort to build anything at all. I don't see how Georgism is meant to be a fix for this. The issue isn't that there isn't enough land. The issue is existing legal restrictions on what you can use land for. The "unimproved" value of residential land is also low, if you regard "legal permission to build" as an improvement.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link