> How does building new apartments affect someone whose life doesn't revolve around property value? I think any rational person would want a society where affordable housing is plentiful.

If you don't know the answers to these questions, then I'm not sure what I can do for you. People don't only oppose construction in their neighborhood because of "property values." "Property values" is a proxy for all kinds of things that make a neighborhood more or less desirable and people care also about all those things.

Again, I think this isn't merely true, it's extraordinarily obvious, so I'm not sure what I could say to someone who doesn't believe it.

There is a serious shortage of affordable housing that has only worsened over the last two years. 30% of the single-family home stock in this country has been bought up by corporations. There are going to be far more unhoused people in the coming years unless we start regulating this.

Absolutely agree, capitalism doesn't attempt to solve for drug and mental health issues.

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>When the government pays for your health care

That is removing consumers from the private healthcare economy while not maximizing profit. Not very capitalist.

>When the government makes it illegal to own private property

Not socialism.

>When the government raises your taxes to spend more on welfare programs

Higher taxes means less money to spend in the capitalist market and welfare programs allow people to get services that aren't being maximized for profit. Not very capitalist.

>When people say they want to "capitalism is the problem" often what they are really thinking is that the government should provision more services. What they want is universal healthcare or increased spending on other social programs. But that's not in any sense anti-capitalist. That's just taxing economic activity to pay for the social programs you want.

People are wanting universal healthcare because due to the capitalist market abusing consumers with insane prices. They know people need insurance so they know they can get away with charging what they do for it. Classic example of capitalism being the problem.

Having workers have more control over the means of production is what, at its most simplest, what socialism is.

Many of those people cannot get the care they need because healthcare is inaccessible because it is commodified because of capitalism.

Additionally, the number of homeless folks is going to increase this season with the cost of heat/utilities going up because of political/lobbying efforts of moneyed interest (again, capitalism). People will become homeless because they cannot afford the increased rate because they work for employers who are incentivized, and enabled, to depress the employees' wages (again, capitalism).

Lmao..yeah them commy utopias.

No you cannot flip a switch to communism lmao. You would need a transitory stage of socialism in order to reach communism without total catastrophe.

"Local residents will oppose a bunch of new apartment buildings." Why in the world would they do that if the state regulated the supply and pricing of those apartments? How does building new apartments affect someone whose life doesn't revolve around property value? I think any rational person would want a society where affordable housing is plentiful. You're only able to imagine what an American would think if new property encroached on their networth and you believe this to be true for all societies lmao.

You're not wrong. They are short handed and it shows in the admin functions. I like my doctor there though.

They don't take care of things and people. Leaders are corrupt and conservative on housing.

If you fix a problem you can't throw money at it every fiscal year...

I'm a patient with Brown Physicians now and I'm actively looking to get out. They've gotten noticeably worse over the past year, especially the office staff.

If you could flip a switch and tomorrow we became a fully communist country with no private property where nobody owned their own home and nobody could profit financially from land, do you really think people would suddenly be just fine with a whole bunch of new buildings in their neighborhood? Of course not! Even in that communist utopia local residents are going to oppose a bunch of new apartment buildings in their neighborhood and they're going to oppose it for all the same reasons people oppose it today, which is just to say it's not primarily a "capitalist" position.

That's not to say that there aren't people who oppose supply for purely capitalist motivations, but for every landlord and developer there are 100 ordinary Americans who don't want to see changes in their neighborhood for reasons that have nothing to do with "capitalism."

People who live in suburbs today aren’t going to shrug their shoulders and say, “well, I guess I have absolutely no reason to oppose the densification of my neighborhood now that the profit motive has been removed.” Get real! They have tons of other reasons.

You don't think local contractors and landlords will lobby our regulators to keep housing supply low so they can inflate housing prices? Capitalism is all around the world but we are one of the few Capitalist countries where every facet of our government has been seized by capital interests.

People complain even more about solutions for the homeless (like building more housing, or even tiny house style camps) than they do the bike lines.

I'm pretty sure the solutions have been proposed MANY times but the state continues to rely almost entirely on charities to do the actual work. The government isn't ignorant - it's lazy. They think clearing out a homeless camp is all you need to do to remove the problem, because all they hear about is how bad the camp looks.

There is unfortunately a lot of confusion about these words. People use the term Socialism to mean "the existence of social programs paid for with taxes" and they also use the term Socialism to mean "a planned economy." This means in practice that "socialism" isn't always the opposite of "capitalism."

Some examples:

• When the government pays for your health care that can be "socialism," but it's not anti-capitalist.
• When the government makes it illegal to own private property that can be "socialism" and it is more or less anti-capitalist.
• When the government raises your taxes to spend more on welfare programs that can be "socialism," but it's not necessarily anti-capitalist.
• When the government makes it illegal to make a profit selling widgets that can be "socialism," and it's explicitly anti-capitalist.

When people say they want to "capitalism is the problem" often what they are really thinking is that the government should provision more services. What they want is universal healthcare or increased spending on other social programs. But that's not in any sense anti-capitalist. That's just taxing economic activity to pay for the social programs you want.

That's what Denmark does.

They are a capitalist country with high taxes that spends a lot on social programs. Some people call that increased spending "socialism," but crucially they still allow markets. You can still be a capitalist in Denmark. Most people there work for private corporations/businesses. Etc, etc.

Some people insist that restricting free markets isn't Socialism, it's Communism, and such people get very upset if you don't use the correct term. But the point is that there is not widespread agreement about how to use these terms and, further, people deliberately deploy these terms in ways that advance their political goals (whether pro- or anti-socialism/capitalism), so it's important always to be clear about what you're saying.

With that said, the things that Denmark does to help its houseless population are not very capitalist.

The bike path cheerleaders on here are out of control.

Thanks for clarifying. :)

I can understand how you thought that I was saying Denmark wasn't capitalist, that was not my intention. I was stating Denmark handles houseless people well. Then separately I was stating that capitalism is not designed to deal with houselessness.

Emergency shelter money is limited, and given conditions in shelters, many folks prefer to be outdoors during the warm summer months where they can be comfortable and relatively undisturbed. Why swelter in Harrington Hall with 100 other guys undergoing their own traumas, far from anything else in the state, only to be kicked out at 7 am when you can sleep in a tent with your girlfriend and your dog in a place that’s convenient to you at a time you like?

The shelters understand this as well (it’s also not easy to find good people to staff shelters). And to some extent, the government understands this, so they only release winter shelter money when things get dire (although many advocates will point out this is far too late most years).

Okay, that’s shelters. Why does government not fix the problem of homelessness? Two reasons. First, policymakers are housed while the homeless are notably not. There is a huge power differential here. If you are fighting for your literal survival everyday, you know what you don’t do? Vote. If your address changes repeatedly (though I’ll note “under the X bridge in Y town” is a valid home address for voting in RI, IIRC), then it’s hard to figure out where you should vote, and you may not waste precious data on your phone to look it up. Meanwhile, housed people generally vote much more reliably, and are generally more likely to support policies that criminalize homelessness (like banning panhandling) than solve it (building housing). Indeed, they often mobilize to stop the latter.

You might be surprised to know that >10 years ago the State created a 10-year plan to end homelessness. Guess what? No political support for enacting it.

Second, the whole “homeless system” is fragmented between a bunch of charities, which the government relies on to do the actual work. The State of RI basically acts as a source of funding for many of these charities. But they’re one of many such sources.

These charities are mixed. Some are pretty good, some are awful. There’s a few dozen of them, mostly regionally based. Some of them are genuinely threatened by the idea that we should end homelessness; after all, that’s how they get all of their money. These are the ones that refused to move to the national “Housing First” model until it became clear that all the money out there was demanding they do so.

Such a fragmented system filled with disinterested politicians creates the conditions for this. The myth that homelessness is hard to solve (it’s not, it requires housing: it’s right there in the word “home-less”) is also useful cover. Dishing out a few hundred thousand to charities allows politicians to say they’re “working on it” when they’re not spending the tens of millions required to truly end homelessness in RI.

Finally a word on bike lanes. Housing policy is mostly set by the State, cities could do more for it (housing authorities, zoning reform, etc.), but it’s not their prerogative, as it’s a statewide system. Bike lanes, however, are a municipal issue, since they generally run down municipally-owned streets. Spending money on bike lanes doesn’t preclude spending on housing, any more than sending an officer to arrest someone for panhandling does (a complete waste of resources, since panhandling is protected speech under the First Amendment). Also, many homeless people are also bike riders, so making cycling safer isn’t exactly a problem for them.

I’m not sure “capitalism” is the fault. There’s no shortage of jobs (and decent paying service jobs).

This is more likely a mental health and/or rehab issue.

> “I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy,” Rasmussen said.

-- Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen

Denmark is a market economy with high marginal tax rates that plows the unmatchable productivity gains experienced under capitalism into social programs. That's what's called "social democracy" or "democratic socialism" in some circles, but it is in no useful sense, "not capitalist." It's a market economy.

> Not sure individual states can fix what is essentially a product of capitalism.

There's "capitalism" all around the world and differing rates of homelessness.

There's been capitalism in the United States for 200+ years and for most of those years there were fewer regulations and safety nets than there are today, and yet homelessness is increasing, not decreasing.

In most of our country's history we built a lot more housing than we do today and that was during times when "capitalism" was more or less unfettered. Today, the primary barrier to building more housing is regulatory. Exclusionary zoning laws prevent the construction of new apartment buildings. That's literally the opposite of "capitalism." That's the state preventing housing.

You can't lay everything at the feet of capitalism.

Seriously … this is a much larger issue than people who hate bike lanes and want to use that as some sort of abstract issue that takes away from taking care of the unhoused in the state.