this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Would I be allowed to build my own house? If so, would I be allowed to sell it? If so, am I forced to sell it at "labour value" or can I choose freely (that would be market value)?
Pricing it at "labour value" would also mean if I'm a bad builder and take a huge amount of time to build it, I'm entitled to more money, right? Or if there were huge amounts of people wanting to move into a home because they need one, is the faster builder payed at best the same as a slow builder that finishes their house 1 year later when nobody needs it anymore?
Market value means that people pay whatever it is worth to them (or don't buy it). Now, you may argue that surviving is worth indefinite money to a person so let's assume that we have some very basic accomodation provided by the state if needed.
About that last paragraph: Unequal does not necessarily mean unfair. If I (literally) threw away all my money and then you started looking at only the physical outcome (e.g. the distribution of wealth) without it's backstory, then you may also come to the conclusion that it's unfair that I don't have any money. But the way of acquirement does matter. Not just the end result. Or is it unfair that I don't have any money after the hypothetical scenario?
Yup
Nope, houses would be decommodified. You could move out of it, and someone else who needed it could get it, so they could still be exchanged, but there wouldn't be a market for it. Same way we approach organs, sometimes people don't need organs, and they give organs away, and we have systems for managing organ transplants etc, but we don't have an organ market because the material effects of having an organ market are bad (of course there's still a black market for organs, and there'd be a black market for houses, but it wouldn't be an open market and would be severely less harmful as a result).
The next couple paragraphs are based on the idea that housing is still commodified and being bought/sold, so I won't address those because my above comment already does.
Correct, but ~10 people having the same wealth as 4 billion people happens to actually be a result of unfairness in the system. We will soon live in a world with trillionaires (estimates are within the next 10-15 years). This means a single person will be able to give a million people a million dollars worth of capital. That's a symptom of a failed system, not a cause of it. It's not unfair because it's unequal, but it is unequal because it's unfair. Capital shouldn't be a method by which you can accumulate more capital. It allows infinite feedback loops of extraction that end up materially hurting the vast majority of humans. Wage stagnation is a real thing that has happened for the last 40 years as we eased restrictions on capital. Stock buybacks for example were illegal from 1920->1980, now stock buybacks are used more than ever and allow massive amounts of capital accumulation for corporations without reinvestment of capital into materially beneficial avenues like R&D. There are many ways unrestricted capital allows for exploitation and materially detrimental outcomes.