XPost: alt.politics.trump, alt.society.liberalism, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: uk.politics.misc   
   From: progressives@suck.com   
      
   On 28 Mar 2022, Wi1liam T T  posted some   
   news:t1s7fu$383jj$38@news.freedyn.de:   
      
   > This is what happens when the populace becomes complacent and refuses   
   > to fight for what they have earned.   
      
   CS Lewis, the author and Christian theologian, was, perhaps not   
   surprisingly, a great advocate of reading old books. This, he argued,   
   forcibly reminded you that every age had its characteristic assumptions   
   and errors. Past controversies showed that “both sides were usually   
   assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely   
   deny”, and were “all the time secretly united ... by a great mass of   
   common assumptions”.   
      
   Lewis’s point was that we should try to remember the same thing would be   
   true of the present day, too: there would be assumptions so widespread, so   
   taken for granted, that they would go unquestioned and unchallenged.   
      
   Well, I think that I have found one such belief for our modern age. It is   
   the widespread but little-discussed assumption that your property is not   
   really yours, owned absolutely for you to do with as you wish, but rather   
   that it is held, as it were, in trust from the state, and is only fully   
   free to use in line with the state’s purposes.   
      
   I urge you, try – for it is difficult – to think yourself back to a world   
   in which what you had was genuinely yours, where the government did not   
   assume the right to tell you what you could do with it, where you could   
   simply say “No: I use my own goods in my own way”, where you were the   
   master and the government the servant.   
      
   Once upon a time, it really was like that, at least in Britain. It only   
   faded away with the massive expansion of the public sector after 1945.   
      
   Think yourself back to that world, and then contemplate the measures the   
   current Government is proposing to “solve” (for they will not solve) our   
   housing crisis.   
      
   We already have the dreadful, shocking, wholly unconservative, Renters   
   Reform Bill, which will – if you are once so foolish as to allow someone   
   to rent your house from you – mean that they could have the right to live   
   there forever. You won’t be able to get them out except on conditions   
   specified by government.   
      
   Or, last week, we learnt that local councils are buying up empty homes to   
   get migrants out of hotels. The nominally Conservative-run North   
   Northamptonshire council backed off from a plan to force-purchase a house   
   in Rushden when it turned out that the owners were still living in it. But   
   it isn’t scrapping the policy and the council’s letter actually says that   
   it sees “empty privately owned properties” as “a wasted resource at a time   
   of high housing need”.   
      
   It may indeed surprise you that councils have long had the right to buy   
   your house, or make you let it out, as long as there is proven housing   
   need within the area (a criterion which would fit virtually any part of   
   Britain nowadays). You might have a good reason for wanting to keep your   
   house empty – it is, after all, your house that you have paid for – but   
   never before, outside wartime, have you had to persuade the state of that.   
      
   There is no end to it. Only this week the Government announced that it   
   would require you to get planning permission if you want to rent your   
   house to holidaymakers via Airbnb. Perhaps they don’t really want people   
   to go on holiday in this country after all.   
      
   These measures are crazy as public policy. They are based on an   
   assumption, which of course cannot be articulated, that we will never   
   build enough houses for everyone here, and that we must therefore work the   
   existing housing stock even harder.   
      
   But we already have incredibly low vacancy rates by European standards   
   (2.7 per cent of the stock is vacant, whereas in France and Germany it’s   
   about 8 per cent) and relatively low levels of second home ownership (9   
   per cent of households have a second home, though only a third keep it for   
   their own use, while in Germany it’s 15 per cent and in France 18 per   
   cent).   
      
   The truth is that, even if we stopped inward migration entirely, we would   
   still have to build nearly four million houses for the people already here   
   just to get us to the European average of housing per person. There really   
   is no way round this – and we must change our Attlee-era socialist   
   planning laws to do it. The Government’s tinkering is a pure displacement   
   activity that actually makes the problem worse by allowing everyone to   
   avoid confronting reality.   
      
   But the bigger problem is the mentality these policies reveal. We are now   
   just one step away – and maybe we will get there if Labour wins the   
   election – from the allocation of housing to various recipients felt to be   
   more or less deserving – “local” people, asylum seekers, whatever – and   
   from stigmatisation of people who want to use their property as they wish.   
      
   If you wish to keep your house empty, or just let it to whom you please,   
   prepare to be treated like a modern-day kulak, a “hoarder” of housing   
   against the public good.   
      
   This collectivist mentality is everywhere once you spot it. It even   
   applies to your property in your own body. Are you happy enough with being   
   a bit overweight and the risks that come with that? You need to think   
   about the burden on the NHS and slim down a bit. If you are ill and   
   elderly, are we too far off from a world in which you are encouraged to   
   let the state kill you? In the wider collective interest, obviously.   
      
   We are a long way down the road to a society where governments – of all   
   colours – have effectively nationalised private decision-making. Yes, you   
   have certain rights, but only if they are consistent with the wider   
   collective aims set by the state. If they aren’t – well, then you can’t   
   rely on them.   
      
   There’s a massive gulf between today and the pre-1945 world. Then, a free   
   people had inherent rights, including the right to property, and created a   
   government to help enforce them. Now, rights are created by government   
   order, from the European Convention on Human Rights down, and can be   
   changed by fiat.   
      
   The two worlds may not look that different, but there is a huge mental gap   
   between them, a revolution in the way we see our country and our place   
   within it. In the old world, it’s our country and we shape it; in the   
   brave new one, it’s theirs, and we do what we can on sufferance.   
      
   We have all got used to it. It doesn’t even seem odd any more. And no   
   political party is remotely interested in turning back the clock.   
      
   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/19/second-home-airbnb-planning-   
   michael-gove/?li_source=LI&li_medium=for_you   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)