Approaching a tangible policy recommendation, but still not really concrete. And more importantly, it’s not a tangible action an individual or even a moderately-sized group of individuals can take, which seemed to be what the parent comment was asking for.
Decommodify food and housing
This isn’t even vaguely approaching anything tangible.
What is your definition of tangible? These problems are large. We are not going to solve it by switching a percentage a couple points to the left or right.
Tangible means it’s some specific idea. From context, @[email protected] seemed to be asking for things individuals can do to help drive change, so the best answers would have been some idea of how to organise or lobby for change (note: I have not provided a tangible answer here, because frankly I don’t know one that’s very good. A tangible answer that’s not particularly great might be “write letters to your representatives telling them you want [some idea fulfilling the criteria in the second part of this comment]”), because that’s a tangible action an individual can take to try and help.
Less directly answering their question would be to provide an actual tangible policy that could be enacted. It’s not something an individual can do, but it is at least tangible in a different sense. “Tax the rich more” is close to being tangible, but still vague enough that I don’t think I’d call it that. “A 5% p/a wealth tax on all wealth over $1 billion as estimated by government auditors” is one possible tangible example of that abstract idea.
Decommodify food and housing is even more abstract, and frankly there would need to be a whole bunch of different policies put in place to address this. From tenant’s rights/protection laws, to greater amounts of public housing, to zoning law reform. That’s still pretty vague wording, but maybe tangible enough considering we’re not talking about any specific city here. A couple of definite-tangible example might be “eliminate single-family-only zoning” and “increase property tax/rates on any property without a full-time occupant by 500% (to discourage land banking and unregulated Airbnb hotels)”.
I’m not suggesting that my answers here are perfect or the best. Just that they are examples of something that’s tangible.
So I take issue with this approach. If you specify specific rules and regulations down to the percentage. You get into a situation where you don’t really know the outcome and the system may be more complex than somebody understands it to be.
So I could do some research and come up with some very specific stuff to try. Setting aside finding a representative that would give you exactly what you wanted, those specific elements might not get the outcome that was desired. Meanwhile, a lot of political willpower would have been put towards getting those specific things.
This also kind of defeats democracy. If I am single-handedly deciding what policies should be enacted, those policies are not decided. Democratically.
So if the original poster wanted specific policies to fix problems. I would not have replied, because I don’t understand the current system well enough to make specific policy suggestions.
Don’t get me wrong. Specific policies will be necessary for people running for office, and I think it’s good to discuss them.
Now if somebody was running for office on increasing the tax for the rich and/or subsidizing food for housing. This would be a person I would vote for.
Approaching a tangible policy recommendation, but still not really concrete. And more importantly, it’s not a tangible action an individual or even a moderately-sized group of individuals can take, which seemed to be what the parent comment was asking for.
This isn’t even vaguely approaching anything tangible.
What is your definition of tangible? These problems are large. We are not going to solve it by switching a percentage a couple points to the left or right.
Tangible means it’s some specific idea. From context, @[email protected] seemed to be asking for things individuals can do to help drive change, so the best answers would have been some idea of how to organise or lobby for change (note: I have not provided a tangible answer here, because frankly I don’t know one that’s very good. A tangible answer that’s not particularly great might be “write letters to your representatives telling them you want [some idea fulfilling the criteria in the second part of this comment]”), because that’s a tangible action an individual can take to try and help.
Less directly answering their question would be to provide an actual tangible policy that could be enacted. It’s not something an individual can do, but it is at least tangible in a different sense. “Tax the rich more” is close to being tangible, but still vague enough that I don’t think I’d call it that. “A 5% p/a wealth tax on all wealth over $1 billion as estimated by government auditors” is one possible tangible example of that abstract idea.
Decommodify food and housing is even more abstract, and frankly there would need to be a whole bunch of different policies put in place to address this. From tenant’s rights/protection laws, to greater amounts of public housing, to zoning law reform. That’s still pretty vague wording, but maybe tangible enough considering we’re not talking about any specific city here. A couple of definite-tangible example might be “eliminate single-family-only zoning” and “increase property tax/rates on any property without a full-time occupant by 500% (to discourage land banking and unregulated Airbnb hotels)”.
I’m not suggesting that my answers here are perfect or the best. Just that they are examples of something that’s tangible.
So I take issue with this approach. If you specify specific rules and regulations down to the percentage. You get into a situation where you don’t really know the outcome and the system may be more complex than somebody understands it to be.
So I could do some research and come up with some very specific stuff to try. Setting aside finding a representative that would give you exactly what you wanted, those specific elements might not get the outcome that was desired. Meanwhile, a lot of political willpower would have been put towards getting those specific things.
This also kind of defeats democracy. If I am single-handedly deciding what policies should be enacted, those policies are not decided. Democratically.
So if the original poster wanted specific policies to fix problems. I would not have replied, because I don’t understand the current system well enough to make specific policy suggestions.
Don’t get me wrong. Specific policies will be necessary for people running for office, and I think it’s good to discuss them.
Now if somebody was running for office on increasing the tax for the rich and/or subsidizing food for housing. This would be a person I would vote for.