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Comment by austhrow743 | Hacker News Reader

Intergenerational wealth transfer is the root of all evil. She absolutely shouldn't be able to do that.

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. It's boring and rarely ends well. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23994951)

Wait--the root of all evil is me trying to work hard to leave something for my kids so they can have a better life than I do and, with any luck, pass on the genes that I've given them?

When your policy proposals require extinguishing desires built into our minds and bodies by millions of years of evolution, you should go back to the drawing board.

The root of all evil is unqualified, absolute, extreme statements, and the people who fervently believe in them.

Well, the discriminating structures in society are the result of people acting mostly rationally in their own interest, not necessary malice. If we're serious about ending discrimination, we'll have to accept not always getting what we think we deserve.

- Desires to hit people you hate and fuck people you find attractive are built into our minds and bodies by millions of years of evolution yet most people find not running around assaulting and raping to be pretty easy.

- Most terrible things people do are for the gain or preservation of resources and most people either have kids or want them. Piracy, animal poaching, bear bile farms, kidnapping and ransoming people, making and selling hard drugs, organised crime in general, war, telemarketing. Most people doing this aren't millionaires looking to buy yacht number 4, it's largely people just providing for their kids and we rightly hate those people anyway. So again not really a defence.

> Desires to hit people you hate and fuck people you find attractive are built into our minds and bodies by millions of years of evolution yet most people find not running around assaulting and raping to be pretty easy.

You're equating assault and rape with leaving money for your kids.

I think it's obvious why not doing the first 2 is pretty easy and not doing the last is pretty hard.

No I'm not. I'm choosing two particularly bad activities that would be justified by their choice of reasoning if it was valid, to show that it's not valid. They're the ones that brought up millions of years of evolution as if it doesn't apply to all behaviour.

If it covers rape and murder it's not exactly a good defence for not being bad for society.

Land ownership is a fairly recent phenomenon and we got along just fine with out it.

Singapore uses this system today and is a capitalist powerhouse.

The desire to build generational wealth is natural. The enormous downstream consequences of allowing people to do that will eradicate all of the wealth anyway through violent upheaval or economic collapse. It’s happened dozens of times already, and it’ll happen again.

You can still own land in Singapore, they call it estate land I believe. The HDB homes are basically government owned housing that is leased back at a lower rate so the average family can afford it. The homes tend to lose value later in the lease term as it’s unclear what happens when the lease runs out (many are 99 year leases and some are 50+ years in already).

Not that different than low-income housing in SF that people purchase. The price is artificially low and appreciation (for the owner) is capped.

Yes there is some freehold land. The vast majority is 99 year leases, leased from the state. Rent goes back to public coffers.

Yes it’s unknown what the effects of lease expiry are, but that’s not relevant to the argument since LVT doesn’t affect leases/ownership.

The similarity is in how rent gets captured again by the community. Singapore does this, still capitalist. The US can do it, it’d still be capitalist.

HDB is analogous to low income housing, but neither of those are similar to leasehold or LVT ground rent capture.

Right. My point was the system is not really that unique. There is also land in the US and Canada that is leased from the state (national parks) or Indian reservations.

I agree but preventing parents from providing security for their children is a form of harm. One could then argue that if all wealth were recycled, the state would be so strong that parents would feel even safer for their children in such a system - but then you're back to state vs. individual, socialism vs. freedom, etc., etc.

Yes, but if you argue a policy, even status quo, you're responsible for it's externalities. Wealth accumulation over generations creates real harm too.

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