Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by globular-toast 1831 days ago
> Don't you want the ability to own something if you feel the desire to do so

Well... that's not really how things work, is it? Already there are things that you will never be able to own and a lot of it depends on the circumstances of your birth.

Since you mention houses it touches upon another point which you may have been suggesting. Should ownership of certain basic things be a right? What should be included in that? A basic house of some standard? A car? It doesn't seem obvious what should and shouldn't be included.

1 comments

A basic house of some standard? A car?

Well, 60 years ago those were attainable relatively quickly for someone without a high school degree. Now they aren't (unless you want to live in the middle of nowhere) for someone even with a college degree. So something went awry in the meantime.

Just because something was possible doesn't mean it should always be possible. I'm not saying whether it should or shouldn't be in this case; I really don't know. But it should be obvious that in the past ~100 years people have been taking far too much from the Earth without any thought to sustainability or the future. What was common 60 years ago was not necessarily right.