EngManagerIsMe

I bought forestland that is uninhabitable and remote. I am restoring it to healthy forest. When I die, I want to ensure that it continues to be forest land.

The best way to do that is via a conservation trust. I appreciate your sentiment, but I worry it edges out cases like mine.

For sure. Hence "typically". In the usual case, the coop is designed to be operated by the tenants, who are not operating it as a profit seeking venture and it's run democratically. It's not impossible that what you say is also true -- I'm sure there are housing coops that are run as you describe.

And it's not even the debate I enjoy. I'm not here to win, which is unfortunately how many debates are structured.

I'm happy to listen to others beliefs, challenge them lightly, ask questions, and learn. And in turn share my beliefs, have them challenged lightly, have questions asked of me, and teach.

We can walk away from that thinking, "Wow, I strongly disagree with the way they view the world" and still have those moments of "But I'm glad we chatted, because that's a perspective I wasn't familiar with and I think I understand it better."

There are many flavors of communist, my friend. You might be familiar with Stalinism and Soviet/Maoist communism -- the authoritarian forms of communism that dominated the use of the word. I am not a fan of those, and indeed do not consider myself a Stalinist.

But there are other types of communism, in both theory and practice, that do not require authoritarianism. I'm comfortable in asserting that I'm fairly well read on different histories and theories -- from the anarchist writings of Kropotkin and practiced in communes in Europe in the early 20th century, to democratic workers councils, to neoMarxist works.

I'm more than happy to discuss the topic in more depth, and I think it might be interesting to some folks on HN to have a communist who isn't interested in petty sniping or scoring political points, but that conversation has to start with something other than "You are a confused Nazi."

> I think many of these ideas are sound but IMO your hostility towards “landlords” is misplaced.

I see landlords like ticket scalpers -- they have the money up front to buy a product, and provide 'liquidity' and 'free markets' by selling that product at the market rate.

For some reason, we generally view ticket scalpers as negative, and landlords as "just what you do when you get wealthy enough".

And, to be clear, I have been a landlord. I know the challenges in maintaining a unit, finding tenants, chasing down rent, dealing with legal challenges, wondering if I would need to evict someone because they were destructive/loud/etc.

(Ultimately, I paid back all the rent I had collected that contributed to my principals on the unit, keeping only the money I used to pay for maintenance. My feelings about landlords come partially from being a landlord and realizing that I was profiting off of people only because I was rich enough to afford a house in the first place.)

Sounds reasonable to me. I'd maybe use a slightly different designation for primary residence (e.g. you can choose one residence to be your primary residence, which you must occupy for 35% of the year).

And I'm sure #13 would run into legal hot water, but heck, if it gets people housed, I'd give it a shot.

A co-op ownership of a building typically is not seeking to profit from the tenants in the building. They may charge fees to cover the maintenance and upkeep of the building and sustain their administration. Some condos operate similarly -- everyone buying a condo, with minimal fees paid to the developer to cover the maintenance of the building, with the developer making the bulk of their income from the sale of the units.

Good questions! I'll answer in reverse order --

Typically RoFR laws do require tenants to seek financial support from a lender or developer. The tenants front some of the capital, get a loan for some of the capital, and offer some incentive for a developer. This is typically for people whose multi-unit apartment building is being sold, where there's the possibility for the tenants to band together to create a co-op.

These programs are also sometimes eligible for government assistance -- essentially helping subsidize communities into owning their own housing.

> What exactly is insured here?

Typically the lender is protected at the owner's expense. Rates can be quite high, and increase the cost of living, pricing people out of housing.

> Rent control

You disagree that rent control reduces the power of landlords? Do you think it has a positive effect or no effect for the power of landlords?

The reason I prefer low rise (especially in the 3-6 floors range) is because they require less specialized service. Maintaining the systems for a 40 story building requires specialists in hvac, elevators, plumbing, fire suppression, window washing, painting, siding, etc. that are simply less available than the folks who know how to get up on a ladder and just fix it.

Low rise also decentralizes services needed to support social housing, and allows local communities to build relationships that are less adversarial with the housing. (Which, imo, might be a uniquely American view that social housing is for the poor only.) So, in the initial rollouts, I think it makes it appear more palatable to American communities.

Now, I agree, high rise is more efficient across other axes. And I'd take well maintained high rise social housing over the current status quo. I have preferences here, but I don't believe that high rises are wrong. Just not my preference.

To be fair, police kill a lot more people than teachers do.

I'm a communist, I've been on HN for 8 years or so.

I've found that the political bent of HN is much, much more varied than "taken over by commies". In general, I've met many folks here from across political spectrum -- from arch-capitals to libertarians to progressives/socialists/leftists to neoliberals.

When we can be up front about our own beliefs and share our perspectives on them in a non-demonizing way, the discussions can actually be quite enlightening.

I might not agree with a libertarian ethos, but I've met many libertarians here I could have elucidating chats about things with.

And before you ask, "Why bring politics into hacking at all?" I'd argue that hacking is, by it's nature, a political activity (whether that's hacking in the cyber-crime sense or in the 'assembling something from spare parts' sense.) There's something about operating outside of systems, about putting one's mark on the world, about expressing yourself through what you choose to build and how to build it that is inescapably political.

Politics doesn't have to be a team sport. We can disagree and still converse.

Sure, but a police officer has much (much) more power than 5 teachers. I can't remember the last time teachers benefited from qualified immunity or civil forfeiture.

Your comment is misleading. Yes, the union has the ability to decide how the pie is allocated within teachers, but if the teachers are underfunded there's a systemic problem about making sure the teachers get a big enough pie.

Edit: Let me rephrase to be less strict, and express this as my personal belief rather than an absolute truth.

Edit 2: Genuinely appreciate the discussions on this. (Besides the one or two comments that got moderated away) I think many of the responses here are emblematic of what HN can be, where people who disagree can still come together and talk through their different lenses.

I believe we need to decommodify housing and provide additional support for tenants, as well as build more housing stock. IME, it's not as simple as 'build more', because the interests and incentives don't align -- adding new housing stock devalues existing stock, so there's pressure to keep the commodity cost high.

Some combination of the following would achieve my goal of chipping away at the power of landlords, and reduce the power of landlords over tenants.

1) Build more housing stock

2) Remove single family zoning and allow density (congrats to Washington state for pursuing this)

3) Rent control

4) Guaranteed legal support for tenants

5) Affordable foreclosure insurance

6) Funded community land trusts

7) Social housing, specifically distributed low rise, well maintained

8) Cooperative ownership of apartment buildings

9) Vacancy taxes

10) Good cause eviction laws

11) Stiffer penalties for failure to keep apartments in livable condition

12) Right of first refusal laws (tenant opportunity to purchase)

Teachers are not the only ones impacted by this -- all the members of our communities are unable to live in them. My barista, bookshop worker, teacher, and firefighter don't live in my neighborhood. We then need to invest huge effort into getting people in and out of this community.

... in vitro and in 40 male mice.

What if recording everything that transpires on the internet is a mistake?

Yes, I'm aware I should treat everything online as permanent anyways, but surely there's value in making the intentional choice to archive lore vs just recording everything.

Chat has always been ephemera, whether it was on AIM, IRC, or ICQ. Is Discord different? (Again, yes, I'm aware large IRC servers likely archived some of their content.)