| > This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over. This is a totally naive approach. I have 0 hope that the rich will "help us out" no matter what we do--rich people don't become rich by being generous. Either we use our majority to make them be productive members of society and pay their fair share, or we get nothing from them. This idea that we're going to concede to them on a few issues and they'll suddenly stop hoarding resources is a total fantasy. > We already established (elsewhere in this discussion) that the rich don't feel any impact from squatting. They have private security forces, so it is a non-issue to them. I disagree. The middle class has largely been disfranchised from owning the homes they live in, so the idea that there's some massive section of the middle class that owns second homes they leave empty doesn't hold much water. The people you're talking about aren't middle class. > So if we want the government to provide for adequate services, middle class support is needed. If we allow all middle-class property to be stolen by squatters, there will be zero support from the middle class to provide any help to the thieves. Like it or not, basic human nature. Thank you for the strategic advice, but no thanks. This strategic advice you're giving sounds suspiciously like you trying to represent rich people as middle class, and represent rich people's goal of enforcing property rights as a step toward achieving goals that you don't even support. That may not be your intent--for all I know, you completely support the progressive taxation and regulation of landlordism necessary to provide (free) homes for the homeless. But if that's the case I think you're being naive: the promise that if we just give the rich people what they want they'll magically become generous and start giving back has been part of the conversation for decades, and those promises are never kept. |
> This is a totally naive approach.
I would've thought this was the entirely uncontroversial part of my premise!
Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over?
We're going to fundamentally disagree there. The whole premise of politics is to find ways to make alliances to achieve goals. If you make most people hate your cause, you won't get very far.
> the promise that if we just give the rich people what they want they'll magically become generous and start giving back has been part of the conversation for decades, and those promises are never kept.
Of course. That's just a variant of trickle-down economics, which is nonsense. The rich will keep it all very happily and never give anything back.
> The people you're talking about aren't middle class.
And yet, they must be. The actual rich are immune from house occupations. Their houses are either in private enclaves where you can't possibly get in, or in the case of standalone houses they have private security coverage where you can't possibly get in.
This is how it is in the US. I realize the article is about Spain, so perhaps the very rich act different in Spain and they just let their multiple properties sit unguarded for long times.