Mortgages currently dominate the average person's life.
I’ve taken long stretches off work and done all sorts of amazing, productive stuff during that time. I have friends whom I really respect completely fall apart when nobody’s ordering them around every day though.. they stop going outside, the lack of exercise and sunlight sends their meat suits into “depression mode”, and it’s a quick downward spiral
I’m hoping that having a whole society oriented around it would result in a more positive outcome
if you make people seek calm and good social bonds (through cultural creations mostly) you may avoid capitalism runaways
We already know. Look at housewives, people on disability, young people still living at home with their parents, and retirees. Arguably college students, too.
It is not the case that all (or most) people who don't have to pay rent suddenly spend significant amounts of their time volunteering. They pursue what they desire or find meaningful, just like everyone else. And it's not clear it's a better outcome than those who pay rent (or a mortgage).
Indeed, it's sickening, and there's a very well developed structure to stop the average person stepping outside of the system via a tiny house, van life etc.
Tiny homes are the mobile home of this generation, except less widely adopted. But they will depreciate, widening the gap between those who chose to purchase a traditional house and those who chose a simpler approach.
Van life and tiny homes are not suitable for 99.99% of families with children.
It’s not that small houses are bad. Small houses (as I’d define it 1000-1750 sq ft for a 3 bedroom) are great.
But I still see it written as “if those structures were removed” that those alternatives are a suitable alternative to a stick-built house for the majority of people. I think they are all sub-optimal solutions that people should not be forced into unless they want to.
Much of that is not unreasonable — e.g. I went to a high school which had a lot of children of migrant farm workers who were definitely held back by their parents’ need to migrate up and down California following the harvest. Stability has merit.
What I would focus on are the zoning laws forcing single-family houses, lawns, vast amounts of parking, etc. since those increase the cost of housing significantly and reduce supply. There are many owners who would consider subdividing housing, tiny houses/granny flats/basement apartments/etc. but can’t because that is banned outright or requires things like street access and subsidized parking which aren’t compatible with the available space.
Unfortunately, in the United States this also inevitably involves class and racism — the laws against density, people camping or living in vehicles, etc. usually trace back to fears of poor, often brown, people living outside of “their” neighborhoods and especially outnumbering the current residents. That sentiment is long-lived and hard to shake, no matter the professed politics of a community.
"I'm stepping out of the system" is actually "I'm too poor to stay in the system".
Even with money, staying into western dense urban cities only give you one kind of life.
i document some of my adventures here. https://www.instagram.com/l_eonine/
i think thats about as anti-marx as it gets, no?
Maybe your statement is true for the American society though
Like I'm a person who is part of this system because there's literally no other option. I want to get off Mr. Bone's wild ride but there's nothing really available to me.
It looks like ~65% of households own a home, and about the same percentage of homes have a mortgage; the average household doesn't even have a mortgage.