This is the only valid, principled take

Chomsky has always been a piece of shit. He literally spent decades denying genocides and massacres, simping for authoritarians and extremists, and spread misinformation far and wide. I’m honestly not surprised to see him pop up here.

Most of these houses are not in downtowns of big cities but in rural towns that are far away from everything. Not to mention, just because a unit is vacant that doesn’t mean it’s not being used.

No, you’re just wrong. You can’t twist reality to fit some niche ideological fantasy that you find sexy.

The reality is that statistics show that if we took all the vacant houses including all those that are inhabitable, under renovations, all the second, third, whatever homes, and we took all the investment properties as well and made them all immediately available, there would still NOT be enough houses to meet the current demand.

The reality is that we have very nonsensical and outdated zoning as well as restrictive construction process that strangle output. We need to reform our zoning laws and expedite construction to pump the market with many new housing units as possible to not just meet, but also exceed demand. That’s the only way to bring house prices down in a genuine way while also giving people homes that they actually want to live in places that they want to live in.

How many of these are actually habitable? I would assume a large portion are either too dilapidated or under renovations.

I very much doubt that nearly a third of the housing stock is vacant for no reason, especially when it’s a seller’s market. The statistics for people who own more than home or buildings with more than unit are not enough to explain the difference. I’m skeptical of these random no name authors on websites like medium.

I know people here want a sexy quick solution, but the reality is that this country’s housing stock is too small, too old, and is not keeping up with demand at all. The one and only solution is to reform zoning laws, expedite housing construction, and pump the market with so many new units that it not only meets demands, but exceeds to the point where prices fall and we have a buyer’s market.

The actually reality is this:

Literally nothing is known about this woman outside of a single narrative written by a supposed 14th century Moroccan historian, Ibn Abi Zar’, who we know nothing about either outside of him being a historian. Actually, most academics doubt that he was any sort of scholar to begin with because the source of this information is not reliable.

There’s literally ZERO evidence to support that this historian was one or that this woman was even real. In fact there’s evidence that supports the notion that this story is fake because the inscriptions inside the mosque use a different script than what is claimed in the story. Most academics are skeptical of her existence and her story is treated as a cultural legend rather than historical fact.

Also within the folktale story, which by the way was written over 600 years after her supposed death, claims that she, along with her sister, inherited the wealth from their wealthy merchant father, and they both decided to use that fortune to build two parallel mosques in the same city.

The thing is that mosques in the early islamic periods were more like community centers than purely religious institutions. So it wasn’t uncommon for mosques to have a learning center as a part of the complex. Keep in mind, these learning centers were islamic schools that taught islam. They weren’t centers for researching and preserving knowledge like modern universities.

Over time, these mosques were repurposed to the needs of their time. Some were turned into purely religious institutions, some were demolished, some were turned into political seats of power, some remained community centers, and some evolved into purely islamic madrasas. Al Qarawiyyin was one of the latter. So this post is nothing more than blatant misinformation.

Tl;dr: This story is fake, this person isn’t real, the historical source is unreliable, and the institution is not an actual university but a mosque that later became an islamic madrasa.

No, this story is simply not true.

Trump has been in politics for a decade now, and he already served a term as president. Not only that, but he has done just about every reprehensible thing you could possibly think of. I think we’ve officially reached a point where Trump’s base is truly a cult in the most literal sense.

Anybody who is capable of independent thought, whether they are leftist, progressive, liberal, centrist, conservative, far right, or even MAGA has already jumped off the bandwagon at some point or another in the past decade. The only people left in his base are the most purified loyalists and the slimiest opportunists. These two groups will never, ever turn on Trump no matter what happens. Even if Jesus himself came down from heaven and told them Trump was a bad guy, they will turn against Jesus and stand by Trump.

The point is that the idea that this scandal is doing anything at all to push his hardcore supporters away from him in November, 2025 is pure fiction. Trump could give his under aged trans lover a satanic themed abortion on live television, and his loyalist cult will not care whatsoever.

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm

There’s quite a few assumptions here that I disagree with:

1. Property relations are inherently tied to exploitation - That’s just not true. Voluntary exchange is not exploitative. For example, let’s suppose a musician makes their livelihood by owning a music school where they sell music lessons, and they need more instructors to meet demand so they go out and hire one. The person being hired is someone who sells their skills for a living, and they applied for this position of their own volition and signed a contract for a wage they find satisfactory… how is that exploitative? This is a win-win situation.

2. Ownership of property is the same as extraction of surplus value - Again, this is just not true. For example, someone living off their own farm without tenants or employees wouldn’t fit this critique.

3. Restricting access to property is inherently bad - First of all, I don’t know what “reproduce themselves each day” is supposed to even mean, that’s just nonsense. Regardless, restricting access to property is literally how societies manage resources. Exclusion is often necessary to prevent overuse and conflict, and when based on fair agreements, it supports both individual rights and social stability. There’s a reason why human civilization evolved throughout history to favor private ownership.

4. Labor is the only source of value in a society - This is false. Things like land (natural resources), technology, knowledge, entrepreneurship, innovation, and capital (tools, infrastructure, machines) also produce value in an economy. Of course labor is important and valuable, but it is not the sole source of value. Holding this assumption as true is just economic illiteracy because you can’t run an economy with just labor alone.

5. Inequality is the same as exploitation - Inequality is a difference in outcomes or opportunity while exploitation is unfair advantage. Not all inequality is exploitative, some of it is caused by things like effort, talent, merit, or choice. Exploitation, on the other hand, involves coercion or injustice, which makes it morally distinct. Exploitation can cause inequality, but not all inequality is exploitative. In this sense profit is not inherently exploitation even if it can be if obtained in certain ways.

When you remove these assumptions from the equation, there isn’t really a coherent argument left. Your argument only makes sense if you accept the Marxist framework as true without a second thought, which I don’t. I reject both Marxist analysis and proposals. I’m not entirely dismissive of Marxist critiques, but they have to be framed in a way where they’re able to stand on their own merits for me to consider accepting them. Otherwise, there’s no point because Marxism and its assumptions are simply outdated. It’s an 18th century framework and ideology that was made by men of that time for societies of that time. The world has changed since then and modern economies don’t work the same way anymore.

This isn’t a video game. Long lasting ideologies are flexible, practical, unifying, and care deeply about the means of achieving their goals. Short lasting ideologies are rigid, idealist to a fault, seek to divide and exclude, and care more about the ends than the means.

You’re talking out of your ass. The Alawites have literally never ruled Syria for as long as Syria has been a thing. Stop spreading misinformation.

That makes sense

The mortgage usually includes the principle, property tax, and the interest (also mortgage insurance too if you have that). Why do you have them all listed separately?

Trying to actively seek and categorize enemies is inherently problematic. A good ideology doesn’t seek to eliminate enemies, but to bring about positive results.

That’s stupid, under that definition small business owners are the enemy. Not to mention that there’s no genuine argument as to why owning property or living off it is inherently bad in any way.

This is why I keep saying that Marxism has and well truly lived past it’s usefulness. Now it’s just an outdated ideology that people try to slap on to a world it wasn’t made for.

I don’t think we necessarily disagree. Al Assad was a ruthless man who brought an era of terror to the country. However, at the same time, he’s been replaced by another ruthless man with a history that indicates he’ll also bring his own era of terror. In this sense, Syria isn’t exactly free, bur under new management.

Likewise, we can agree that the American invasion of Iraq was wrong and unjustifiable, but also acknowledge that Al Sharaa committing terrorist attacks is also wrong and unustifiable.

The main point here is that two wrongs don’t make a right, and the guy I’m replying to trying to justify terrorism is just morally represented.

I literally lived in Syria for. Some pretentious schmuck on Lemmy pretending they’re experts on a place they’ve never been to is rich.

The Alawites were marginalized under Assad. The government is not the one that does marginalization, it’s the general population. The majority of Syria is Sunni muslim and Arab, and anyone who isn’t that is seen as a kafur and not a real Syrian. This is why all the minorities (Druze, Kurds, Alawites, Assyrians, etc) took up arms and tried to get some level of autonomy. They knew that the moment Assad was gone, he’s going to replace by a government less secular yet just as ruthless and they’re going to pay the price… And guess what? That’s exactly what happened.

They got the literal Syrian branch of Al Qaeda as the new government and it’s leader as their new president. Al Sharaa is a well known terrorist, islamist, and he’s infamous for being one of the primary reasons why ISIS exists. The moment HTS took over, there dozens of reports of islamist fighters under the HTS, aka the Al Nusra front, who went on sprees massacring Alawites just for being Alawites. There are also reports of them them kidnapping and enslaving women, but that’s something you just want to conveniently ignore.

What did Al Sharaa do? Nothing! He did nothing. The islamists who committed these crimes are not being exiled or prosecuted and the victims are not being compensated, rescued, or given justice. There has no change in policy outside of Al Sharaa giving lip service to not piss of the west. In reality, he’s enabling these islamists which is why the violence against the Alawites and other minorities is still going on right now. Al Sharaa is literally using Sharia law to train new soldiers and police officers so he could have them enforce “morality”.

Idk why you’re dickriding for a terrorist like him so hard, but this is not the hill to die on. The marginalized minorities in the country are not the problem, that’s a fascistic way of thinking. The cold hard reality is that Al Sharaa is and always has been a jihadist, and this violence is just a part of his ideology.

It definitely didn’t. Most data indicates that voters were concerned about the economy above all else. They blamed the incumbent president because he’s the one in office, and then went out and voted for the other party. When his successor promised to do the same thing, that’s when you knew the Democrats were cooked

This doesn’t change the fact that this is not the reason why Harris lost. Again, most people don’t care about this regardless. It’s really a lot more simple than that. People saw prices go up, they blamed the incumbent president for it, then voted for the other party. This is something backed by virtually every poll where they ranked the economy as the single biggest concern for the average voter.