[golergka]

> I've grown up in a typical 3-generational Russian family sharing a rather small apartment, and I can tell you, it gets on your nerves when the grandparents want to watch TV at maximum volume, while the parent is trying to catch some sleep debt and the kid (me) is doing homework in the same room. That was one of the main reasons why I decided to move to the West where having enough private space was considered to be a basic and unquestionable necessity.

I've had exactly the same experience, and I only now slowly come to realise the amount of emotional abuse that is normalised in such families. Shouting and fighting (physically, with bruises and injuries) on a daily basis, belittling one another, constantly being passive aggressive in any communication, never-ending hostility towards your closest family members — it's just something that is completely normal and expected in many, many families that live like this. Even without alcohol involved.

[nojokes]

In some places where spacious apartments that were the norm 10 years have now new trend where the same bed room size apartment has gotten about 1.5 times smaller. Just the cost of the square meter is so high that even fairly high earning people could not comfortably afford them anymore.

[golergka]

I have sympathy for people who are gradually priced out of basic necessities in life, but living in a center of one of the world's busiest and most expensive cities isn't a necessity. If a person is insisting on making that choice instead of moving out, especially in a world that is moving more and more into remote work, well, it's their responsibility.

Comparing this situation with a system without private property or even ability to rent, where apartments are leased by the state through your employer and you have no choice in the matter and have to wait years in order to move is a really, really long stretch.

[thereisnospork]

>Comparing this situation with a system without private property or even ability to rent, where apartments are leased by the state through your employer and you have no choice in the matter and have to wait years in order to move is a really, really long stretch.

Why is the soft touch approach of government making housing unaffordable any different, morally?

[golergka]

Three points: about government, about unaffordability and about morality.

First, although government has some influence over a market, it's overall influence is much less than in a country without any free market whatsoever - so even if housing would be really unaffordable and it would really be morally bad, the government's responsibility for this still would be less.

Second, as I wrote in my comment above, the fact that housing is unaffordable in the centres of the most desirable cities is not the same as housing being unaffordable at all. Complaining about skyrocketing San Francisco rent prices is like complaining about expensiveness of designer clothes. If you need to shelter your body from the elements, you can always go to the noname retailer store at the mall and buy jeans for $10.

And third point is the most important point in my personal worldview, but the one that people usually don't agree with me on — that's why I base my argument on three points and not just this one. Freedom of choice and control over your fate is more important than just expected value of the outcome. A system that offers more degree of freedom and where your choice has more influence on the outcome is always more moral than a system that gives a better average outcome. So the ability to make that choice, between spacious apartment or location, or whatever, makes all the difference in the world in my eyes — and even if this system would have worse average standard of living the the communist one (which, by the way, is obviously completely the opposite), it would still be better, just for that.