Imagine you have a house, let's say you share it with a sibling. And let's say it's a big house, so each one of you actively uses only 10% of the house, the rest is common good. Now, suppose your sibling invites 8 of his trashy yolo friends to permanently live in the house with you and they all get their own 10% of the house. Would anyone in their right mind agree to such an arrangement? Clearly, not. Would you be better off with the new roomies than alone? Not really. Yet it is exactly what is happening in today's west, except it's not our houses but our countries. Why? I think I have a pretty good explanation.
Let's look at some of the details to this story, as well as common misconceptions. Now, first of all, why would anyone commit such a lunacy at all? Either that person is a small envious creature, so bent on ruining your life that it's willing to ruin its own in the process. Those people really do exist, but they are limited in numbers, concentrated in various NGO's, humanities, and Sweden. Such a minority may certainly cause problems similar to the one mentioned, and they are often being used as useful idiots for people who pull the strings. But I do not believe they are at the core of this. To realize why, let's make a small modification to the story.
Let's say I live nearby and own the house, with you and your sibling as my tenants. Clearly, having 80% of the house empty is not in my direct financial interest. Yes, I may wait for you guys to procreate, and in another 50 years or so my rent will be maximised. Yet 50 years is a long time. Or as an alternative, I may wait a year or two till I find some decent people to move in. But I want the cash, and I want it now. Maybe I gambled too much and I'm in debt. Maybe I picked a fight with the wrong people, got beat up, and now have to spend money on medical bills. Whatever the case, I need money and I need it soon. Most likely I don't really like the new tenants either. They're dirty and quarrelsome, and frankly they make my neighborhood uglier. But with the guy from the electric company threatening to cut the wire, I really don't have much of a choice now, do I? I let the scum come in, and solve my dire financial situation for a while.
Now, you and your sibling clearly lost out. While the house was formally mine all along, you could freely roam the other rooms as well without my direct opposition. Maybe you could have cheaply bought one more room for your kids once they grow up as well and solved their existential worries. Yet now you can't because you have a drunken crowd partying in every room other than yours all day and night. As the rooms get filled up and situation gets intolerable, you're really left with the only choice - to leave and find some other place to live.
It's pretty clear why leftist useful idiots would fall for this crap. They love anarchy, they love destruction, and they love to destroy all that is good, beautiful, and true. If the rest of the world regresses, your relative value grows, even though you're not moving anywhere.
But why would the center and the right fall for the story? Because they're sold a false narrative that's leaving one little detail out. The narrative goes something like this - Yes, you do lose a bit of your Luddite life quality, but what you gain is immeasurable. All the new tenants bring in their stuff with them, they fill the empty rooms with fascinating oriental furniture, and the house on the whole has a lot more value. The house grows and becomes larger, new floors are added, and soon there is a mighty skyscraper towering over neighboring shacks. What was once a tiny shed surrounded by empty and unused land is now an asset generating behemoth.
Your room is more valuable as well, because some of those people are breeding fast and they may want to pay you to get in. And if you're poor, you may get some of the surplus goods owned by one of your new cohabitants and end up better off than you were before. Even if the furniture is not that fancy, still, a plastic shelf is worth more than no shelf at all, is it not? Well, yes it is, before it turns to garbage and becomes a pollutant, but even if we disregard that issue, there's one little thing left out. It's really not your house. It's the house you share with your sibling and 8 other people. Instead of having a house to your own, empty as it may be, you two now live in 20% of the house, with the rest being occupied by noisy trash.
The one who sees real benefit is the owner of the house. Instead of having 2 people paying their rent and enjoying their surroundings, now there are 10 people paying their rent, even though they don't enjoy their surroundings all that much.
Now to bring that up to state level, one only needs to ask oneself - who controls all the empty land? Who is a part-owner of all the houses on that land? The government. And the government wants to maximize rent. Now, don't make a mistake and think they don't know what they're doing - they most certainly do. But they have to do it because they're broke. And the reason they're broke is democracy. When your governance is limited to 4 years and you have a very demanding population who may or may not give you another 4 years, but you're also allowed to take 30-year loans, it's pretty clear what the best course of action is. You take as many 30-year loans in those 4 years of power as possible, spend as much as you can on bread and circuses, and then use the plebs' positive sentiment to gain another 4 years. If you don't do it, the other side will, so there isn't really much of a moral hazard anyway.
When the next government comes, it will have to finance those debts. And the easiest way to do that is to raise taxes or increase the number of taxed individuals. Ideally, both. Also, raise as much new 30-year loans as possible, hoping there's still some value to scavange left over from the previous government. So what you end up with is a house owned by a person with a spending addiction, whose only way to cover his ever mounting debts and survive the day is to keep increasing the number of tenants and raising the price of rent. Repeat ad nauseam.
Let's look at some of the details to this story, as well as common misconceptions. Now, first of all, why would anyone commit such a lunacy at all? Either that person is a small envious creature, so bent on ruining your life that it's willing to ruin its own in the process. Those people really do exist, but they are limited in numbers, concentrated in various NGO's, humanities, and Sweden. Such a minority may certainly cause problems similar to the one mentioned, and they are often being used as useful idiots for people who pull the strings. But I do not believe they are at the core of this. To realize why, let's make a small modification to the story.
Let's say I live nearby and own the house, with you and your sibling as my tenants. Clearly, having 80% of the house empty is not in my direct financial interest. Yes, I may wait for you guys to procreate, and in another 50 years or so my rent will be maximised. Yet 50 years is a long time. Or as an alternative, I may wait a year or two till I find some decent people to move in. But I want the cash, and I want it now. Maybe I gambled too much and I'm in debt. Maybe I picked a fight with the wrong people, got beat up, and now have to spend money on medical bills. Whatever the case, I need money and I need it soon. Most likely I don't really like the new tenants either. They're dirty and quarrelsome, and frankly they make my neighborhood uglier. But with the guy from the electric company threatening to cut the wire, I really don't have much of a choice now, do I? I let the scum come in, and solve my dire financial situation for a while.
New tenants
Now, you and your sibling clearly lost out. While the house was formally mine all along, you could freely roam the other rooms as well without my direct opposition. Maybe you could have cheaply bought one more room for your kids once they grow up as well and solved their existential worries. Yet now you can't because you have a drunken crowd partying in every room other than yours all day and night. As the rooms get filled up and situation gets intolerable, you're really left with the only choice - to leave and find some other place to live.
It's pretty clear why leftist useful idiots would fall for this crap. They love anarchy, they love destruction, and they love to destroy all that is good, beautiful, and true. If the rest of the world regresses, your relative value grows, even though you're not moving anywhere.
But why would the center and the right fall for the story? Because they're sold a false narrative that's leaving one little detail out. The narrative goes something like this - Yes, you do lose a bit of your Luddite life quality, but what you gain is immeasurable. All the new tenants bring in their stuff with them, they fill the empty rooms with fascinating oriental furniture, and the house on the whole has a lot more value. The house grows and becomes larger, new floors are added, and soon there is a mighty skyscraper towering over neighboring shacks. What was once a tiny shed surrounded by empty and unused land is now an asset generating behemoth.
Pure beauty
Your room is more valuable as well, because some of those people are breeding fast and they may want to pay you to get in. And if you're poor, you may get some of the surplus goods owned by one of your new cohabitants and end up better off than you were before. Even if the furniture is not that fancy, still, a plastic shelf is worth more than no shelf at all, is it not? Well, yes it is, before it turns to garbage and becomes a pollutant, but even if we disregard that issue, there's one little thing left out. It's really not your house. It's the house you share with your sibling and 8 other people. Instead of having a house to your own, empty as it may be, you two now live in 20% of the house, with the rest being occupied by noisy trash.
The one who sees real benefit is the owner of the house. Instead of having 2 people paying their rent and enjoying their surroundings, now there are 10 people paying their rent, even though they don't enjoy their surroundings all that much.
Now to bring that up to state level, one only needs to ask oneself - who controls all the empty land? Who is a part-owner of all the houses on that land? The government. And the government wants to maximize rent. Now, don't make a mistake and think they don't know what they're doing - they most certainly do. But they have to do it because they're broke. And the reason they're broke is democracy. When your governance is limited to 4 years and you have a very demanding population who may or may not give you another 4 years, but you're also allowed to take 30-year loans, it's pretty clear what the best course of action is. You take as many 30-year loans in those 4 years of power as possible, spend as much as you can on bread and circuses, and then use the plebs' positive sentiment to gain another 4 years. If you don't do it, the other side will, so there isn't really much of a moral hazard anyway.
When the next government comes, it will have to finance those debts. And the easiest way to do that is to raise taxes or increase the number of taxed individuals. Ideally, both. Also, raise as much new 30-year loans as possible, hoping there's still some value to scavange left over from the previous government. So what you end up with is a house owned by a person with a spending addiction, whose only way to cover his ever mounting debts and survive the day is to keep increasing the number of tenants and raising the price of rent. Repeat ad nauseam.
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