Yes it does. Are you saying that's different from what I said?

>Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

I am proposing we take private property, aka second homes, for public use. That clause says we can't do that unless we provide just compensation. In other words, like I said, the government can't take people's stuff without paying them for it.

You're not blind. You just moved the goalposts. That's why i quoted your original comment.

You said "normal folks should just give up whatever 'excess' they have to those in need. "

Here's a Bible page that says exactly that:

>But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

Another

>Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.

That one seems pretty relevant to this discussion.

Here's one that says you should lend to the poor even if the debt jubilee is coming up, during which the state will cancel all debt:

>If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. >Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin

Yeah, the thing about our world is that it doesn't actually work, so we end up wanting contradictory things. We need to attract workers, but we also don't have enough housing, so we want to build more, but if you deregulate, then you end up with awful suburban sprawl, plus we also want to preserve the forest. Regulate? Now it's unaffordable. State housing? Come on, be serious -- plus we have no money. Raise taxes on the wealthy? No because they'll leave and then we won't have jobs. We need to save the environment, but we also need economic growth; if we don't have enough economic growth, we don't have the money to spend on saving the environment.

At the heart of this is a population with a fundamentally religious belief in an economic system that just doesn't work, but we cannot question it, so we try to meet its contradictory demands, and the results are nonsense.

I started my comment to you with what I think is a great example that's super relevant to the moment, though not the topic at hand. If you're asking about housing specifically, I would like to see the government actually do things directly to fix housing. Just ban airbnb for anything not owner-occupied. Offer social housing directly. I'd love to see proposals on ways to build it, eminent domain strategic STRs and vacation homes, whatever else policy dorks dream up. I'd like to see a conversation switch to actually directly addressing the problem instead of everything being ticky tacky tax here and disicinenvize there.

If you didn't even know the question they were trying to answer, how can you disagree with my critique that the way they framed the answer was weird. That's like a crucially important piece of context.

Yeah it's the classic capitalist propaganda that convinces people to have solidarity with capital by talking about your sweet little neighborhood small business or whatever. Just cause? That's the state forcing your nana to let that deadbeat live in her attic in perpetuity, never mind that the rule doesn't apply to that situation in ten different ways. Airbnb? What about that sweet old retiree just trying to keep up their house? Etc.

It's literally called "the takings clause" in legal scholarship.

That's a pretty weird argument considering the entire premise of the show is that they answer a listener question:

>What is the status of Airbnb in Vermont? How many units are taking away from locals? And what can be done about it?

That's a very thoughtful critique that I overlooked. I'd take it a step further now that I think about it. Money is fungible. That's like its thing. To ask what someone does with specific money they make is a useful question in some limited budget-making capacity, but interpreting it seems pretty... complicated. What will I do with the money I make today? What about the money I make working for my other job? Sort of a stupid question...

It's not a bad show per se. I like listening to the cool shit people are doing. I myself do R&D at private companies for a living, and I think some of the stuff I've made is pretty cool. But it does very uncritically report on the R&D of private companies while avoiding the greater context in which they're being made, and clearly views private companies in the market as the vessel through which technology progresses, and humanity with it.

I think they could do with a dose of critical theory every now and then, especially when they start talking about medical technologies. Those can get pretty hard to listen to.

In 1970, due to widespread inflation, Nixon issued an executive order that stopped all price and wage increases. It made them illegal. In 2022-2023, we have serious inflation, yet supposedly much more progressive administration is so staunchly neoliberal that anything other than tinkering around the margins of the market is heresy.

The government is the only institution in public life that has any democratic accountability, but the neoliberal hegemony is so overwhelming, that in just 50 years, no one can imagine its role being anything other than minor nudges to the market, hoping it'll tweak the incentive structure a bit.

We need to start thinking bigger than just making our already insane tax structure even more insane in the hopes that it'll convince markets to have more moral outcomes. I don't know what the answer is, but the conversations being had right now are so narrow that we're never going to find it.

Yeah, I pasted this elsewhere in the thread, but an argument much like you're making is laid out in some detail here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/npr-is-not-your-friend

The whole thing is very Manufacturing Consent. I don't doubt the reporter's honestly; I just think that, as Chomsky famously said in that interview, the people who end up doing the reporting are the kinds of people who believe the kinds of things they do. When's the last time anyone at VPR gave an openly anticapitalist framing of an issue? I think On The Media is probably the only NPR show that dabbles in leftist thought. Meanwhile, there are like 10 different shows that are just neoliberal apologia (How I Built This is just capitalist great man propaganda. Science Friday has tons of uncritical coverage of corporate products, etc.).

The whole thing reminded me of this much less friendly critique of NPR, which I thought was very well laid out https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/npr-is-not-your-friend

Yeah, it was a really strange editorial choice.

> Very slippery slope when you start saying normal folks should just give up whatever 'excess' they have to those in need. Sounds a bit like a certain failed ideology we've seen in the last century...

Christianity is a little older than the last century.

The constitution has the takings clause, which says the government can't take people's stuff without paying them for it. I say we take them and pay them for it, then operate them as social housing at cost to fund the program.

As for the morality, having thousands of empty homes while many are homeless is immoral. Right now, our tax dollars keep those houses empty. if a homeless person tried to stay in an otherwise empty house, armed agents of the state would show up and do any violence necessary to keep those houses empty.

20% of housing is second homes and vacation rentals, functionally kept outside the housing pool by rich people, but the real culprit isn't building enough? That doesn't make sense on its face unless we accept that a giant pool of vacation rentals and second homes is desirable or at least acceptable while there's a single homeless person, which I personally don't.

We could have 25% more housing inventory tomorrow if we just take the empty vacation homes and Airbnbs. Plus, if we accept that 20% of our housing will remain functionally outside the pool, and the only way is to build our way out of it, that means we're going to have to build 25% more housing than we need to build otherwise as vacation rentals and second homes continue to get snatched up.

Your understanding of the law is incorrect. If that happened to you or someone you know, you should contact the NLRB.

>You have the right to form, join or assist a union.

>You have the right to organize a union to negotiate with your employer over your terms and conditions of employment. This includes your right to distribute union literature, wear union buttons t-shirts, or other insignia (except in unusual "special circumstances"), solicit coworkers to sign union authorization cards, and discuss the union with coworkers. Supervisors and managers cannot spy on you (or make it appear that they are doing so), coercively question you, threaten you or bribe you regarding your union activity or the union activities of your co-workers. You can't be fired, disciplined, demoted, or penalized in any way for engaging in these activities.

>Working time is for work, so your employer may maintain and enforce non-discriminatory rules limiting solicitation and distribution, except that your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about or soliciting for a union during non-work time, such as before or after work or during break times; or from distributing union literature during non-work time, in non-work areas, such as parking lots or break rooms. Also, restrictions on your efforts to communicate with co-workers cannot be discriminatory. For example, your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about the union during working time if it permits you to talk about other non-work-related matters during working time.

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-rights-during-union-organizing

edit: add emphasis

I wholeheartedly agree! It's really nice to see someone advocating for de-growth! If you look at the other comments, a lot of people talk about how all the people moving here have made everything expensive or whatever, so I misread your comment to be against attracting people to move here for similar reasons. Apologies :)

Your comment implies that too many people are moving here, and that is just not happening. Vermont's population has grown 5% since 2000. From the census, the population is now 645,570. In 2000, it was 609,618.

(645,570 - 609,618) / 645,570 = 5.6%

Our population growth in the last year, according to the census, is less than 100 people.

Compare that to the 15% growth in that same time period of the US as a whole, and it'll be pretty obvious that the problem isn't that we're attracting too many people. To be clear, I'm not arguing that we should attract more people, but the problems we have now are not because tons of people are moving here, and until we stop blaming "out of staters" for everything, we'll never solve them.

Home prices are through the roof all over the world, not just in Vermont. There are exceptions, but in general, home prices are up. They're up in places that are building a lot or not at all. They're up in places with a lot of regulation and less regulation, in warm climates and cold climates, in cities and rural towns. They're up in Canada, Europe, Africa, and Oceania.

Something is off, but it's not the census numbers. It's way bigger than out of staters moving to Vermont, which, again, is not happening.

https://i.imgur.com/qP31yTF.png

Being fired for union activity is one of the only things employers aren't allowed to fire you for. Not saying that'll actually be enforced. No one said labor struggles were easy, just that they're worthwhile.