• 26 Posts
  • 56 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 12th, 2023
  • EfreetSK@lemmy.worldtosolarpunk memes@slrpnk.net•if you're not free to become poor, homeless, and starving, are you really free?
    31·
    5 months ago

    Yes, I guess that’s up to a debate which one is better (or none of them).

    I’d say if we imagine housing as a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 means you’re homeless and 100 means you’re living in a mansion

    • The US way sounds like you’re using the whole scale - you’ve quite a lot of homeless people, but also quite a lot of people living in mansions. Some people are above average, some are bellow awerage and so on.
    • The soviet way is like if you’d shrink the scale to 30 to 50. You have no homeless people but also no one is living in a mansion (well … ). But also notice the best you can achieve in such system is average.

    Which approach is better? I guess from “progress” point of view the US system is better. Theoretically if you’re skilled and hard working, you can get above average and live better life. That’s actually the reason why so many skilled and talented people fled the soviet union - in the west there was no “ceiling” for you. On the other hand, from humanity point of view though, the soviet system sounds much better - country caring about every single one of its citizens to have a place to live.

    But I’d argue that maybe the 3rd way is best. Because well both Soviets and US are extremes. Soviets were … well … soviets. It’s like “left” on steroids. Also it failed - I mean if it was such a paradise on earth, why were so many people fleeing it.

    But US is also an extreme - you’re like a capitalist lunapark. Even other countries from west are often horrified how you take care of people (or rather not care)

    But there is some middle ground between these - you can have a system with focus on social issues but also not go crazy f.e. some scandinaviam countries

  • EfreetSK@lemmy.worldtosolarpunk memes@slrpnk.net•if you're not free to become poor, homeless, and starving, are you really free?
    67·
    5 months ago

    I add that “cannot be evicted” is a double edge sword here. Since appartments were free and were assigned more or less random (cough, cough, corruption), very often you got one or two … let’s say “interresting” neighbours

    Edit: well some interresting facts from my mom who’s sitting next to me - there were quite some downsides

    • My father asked for an appartment and the answer was: get married. As a single guy you won’t get anything.
    • Also when you get married and have children, there’s no guarantee that you get some big appartment. Her colleague had 3 children, a husband and got 1 room appartment anyway
    • There was a list of people waiting for appartments. When you were somewhere down, you wait, for years
    • When she asked for an apparartment as a married woman, a “commission” arrived to verify, whether we as a familly really need one. And whether we couldn’t stay living with grandma