General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: No Vacancies: Squatters Move In [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)On that, we agree.
However...all that statement does is to make a case for a second New Deal and possibly a constitutional amendment establishing a RIGHT to a decent-wage job-it doesn't justify a zero-tolerance policy towards squatters.
What you don't get is that your position, taken to its logical conclusion, ends up justifying even more repression than you think you are fighting against by being
a property-rights absolutist...it ends up creating the rationale for things like the U.S. backed fascist coup in Guatemala(launched when the democratically elected Guatemalan government dared to expropriate land the United Fruit Company owned, but wasn't using and wasn't going to use anytime soon, in order to give the people of Guatamala enough land to provide food for themselves) and for the Fugitive Slave Act, a law which required people in "free" states to return escaped slaves to their owners, since, in the eyes of the law, those slaves were the owners' property.
That's the only kind of thing an absolutist position on property rights leads to. It doesn't do a damn thing for the tens of millions of Americans who DON'T own a home-in fact, it treats them as if they are nothing at all. It pushes us more and more towards the future-as-Ayn Rand-theme park that the GOP is fighting so hard to inflict on us.
Property frees no one, except for those who arrogantly claim the right to use their property to deny freedom to the rest of us.
Learn that, before the Jackboot Libertarians(and these days, that isn't an oxymoron)chain us all up in privately-owned dungeons.