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Comment by joe-collins | Hacker News Reader

We already have the concept of a primary residence. I'd strongly support laws that impose fast-ramping tax burdens on further ownership. Possibly with a more modesty burden for a second home—say, a family purchasing one to pass to children, or preparing for retirement—but I don't feel that there's any acceptable reason for owning several homes.

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Why do you not think there’s any acceptable reason for owning several homes?

Perhaps joe-collins supports a steep tax discount on a first home - much like a society might apply a lower tax rate on books and apples than on Lamborghinis.

Perhaps followed by progressively higher tax rates on subsequent books and apples?

If Apples were: 1. Essential to live 2. Considered a human right 3. Not accessible to >90% of the next generation 4. Being hoarded

Yeah, fast progressively higher tax rates based on the number of apples you own would be perfectly reasonable.

Okay. [citation needed] on all of the above.

1 is pretty easy to experimentally deduce -- simply go live outdoors wherever you are. Skip the tent, that's housing too. Just make yourself a little bedding spot in a tree somewhere like our ancestors did.

Pretty sure in most of the world, you wouldn't last long without some form of shelter or housing.

Who is the number one “hoarder” of houses in the U.S.? When I bought my house, all I had to deal with (as far as I know) was the bank and the prior owner, who seemed happy to sell.

>If Apples were: 1. Essential to live 2. Considered a human right 3. Not accessible to >90% of the next generation

90% of the next generation is going to die from homelessness?

Instead of progressively make the tax rate a sigmoid growth curve with a long lag phase so no one monopolizes apples and books.

Because your "right" of owning several homes goes against the human right of adequate housing. Jurisprudence tells you the order of rights and human rights come first.

Why should someone have a right to a house built by someone else? Just because someone else doesn't have a house doesn't mean they get to take a house that you built even if you already have a house.

It’s funny that you use quotes around “right” when referring to property rights, which are well established as natural rights. All while making the claim that adequate housing is some kind of fundamental human right. It might be a government benefit in some places, but it’s hardly a human right.

If housing is a right, then it would make more sense to list the things that are not human rights. What else, Diet Coke delivered daily? Maybe a new car?

That one always blows my mind when people drop “housing is a human right”. So everyone has an inalienable right to the property and labor of another person? What if you were in John Locke’s state of nature and you were not participating in any social contract, would you still have that right?

But all rights are made up – they're simply things that we think are really important to provide each other. I can only assume that when a person says "housing is a human right", they mean "housing is something important enough that I think we should guarantee access to it".

If someone says something that seems ridiculous, but they're speaking seriously, sincerely, or about a matter they've given some thought, then there might be a chance you're simply misunderstanding them.

Tangentially: "an inalienable right to the property and labor of another person" is not that ridiculous of an idea. You already have a right to the labor of other people in nearly every society on earth. If the people where you live pay taxes, and even if you didn't avail yourself of public roads and whatnot, you still enjoy having a court system and law enforcement to uphold your rights, you enjoy a military to defend your country, you may enjoy the stability of a currency, and so on, and (if you are a native citizen) you get all of this merely for having been born. [And people don't get to opt out – people have to pay taxes even if they want to live alone in the wilderness, and to be relieved of that burden, in the United States we have to pay a fee to renounce our citizenship, even assuming we have the means to emigrate.] If you think at only a slightly larger scale, you might view us all as being stuck on Earth together and all members of a global society, unable to avoid participating to at least some degree.

[To be clear, I personally don't like the idea of owing anyone anything, especially when I presumably didn't choose to be born, but life is inherently unfair to begin with and also very difficult, so I can understand someone arguing that it's worth giving up the fight for a particular fairness in exchange for a better life overall. Also, other people may not have the same notions of fairness as me; I can imagine someone arguing that guaranteed access to housing makes the world more fair.]

I'd agree that it would be ridiculous to claim housing is a "natural right" as opposed to a potential "legal right", since it's a contradiction almost definitionally. Although not everyone agrees that natural rights exist, or what they are precisely.

Of course it's a right. I don't agree with the gp that owning 2 homes is fundamentally immoral, but no human deserves to be homeless.

All rights are made up, of course – nature grants us nothing, we grant ourselves rights. That said, it's hard for me to tell if you're not reacting in bad faith. Every person needs a place to live,† but they obviously don't need diet Coke and they usually don't need more than one place to live.

† You'll die without sleep, you'll die from exposure to the cold, you'll catch disease or be unable to hold a job if you don't bathe or clean yourself, you'll suffer from serious mental illness if you've not a space that's reasonably safe and secure some fraction of the time, and so on.

I believe that everyone has a right to food, but laws banning people from storing or consuming too much food are not an important part of the anti-hunger movement.

The problem is that the supply of housing is too low. Banning investment in housing might even make this problem worse by reducing the amount of real resources dedicated to construction, making home-building a riskier and less-appealing enterprise.

> I believe that everyone has a right to food, but laws banning people from storing or consuming too much food are not an important part of the anti-hunger movement.

If the supply of food drops too low, eg. during the world wars, you do get rationing which does exactly that.

If the housing supply weren't artificially limited, this might make sense. But it makes more sense to remove the regulations preventing more housing from being built instead.

Theres a fixed amount of land on earth and we can't develop every inch without screwing ourselves cover long term.

In fact we should put a limit on any new developments on currently undeveloped land...

In that context, were already dramatically behind the ball on ensuring enough housing unless we take housing from those who already have excess housing.

Yes, we can build condos etc, but they don't exist now and there aren't enough planned.

> we can build condos etc, but they don't exist now and there aren't enough planned.

You are dismissing my solution because we aren't currently doing it yet your is even less realistic?

How is building up less realistic that the infinite spread you claim to be the solution?

Really...

You have misrepresented my position. I never opposed building up.

Housing is not a limited resource. You can build more.

In theory, yes, but in practice, it turns out that it's quite more limited than theory might lead one to believe.

There are dozens of times more empty homes than people without homes: https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/

Sounds super complicated and easy to game.

Instead of getting married I put the second home under my spouses name as a primary residence.

What if an old person gets injured and moves in with family but there is a chance they can recover? Slam them with taxes for a second home?

What if someone is on a temporary work assignment and buys a small place in another state for 2 years?

What if someone is a traveling nurse and buys a couple small apartments in the cities they work?

Sounds like a nightmare of exceptions and bureaucracy.

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