> You don't really need to. Do what Singapore (or Vienna) did. Create a Housing and Development board, build the housing that you need... and that's about it.
Unless you can explain how that's different from what the Warsaw Pact did, or show that the Warsaw Pact housing, while horrible, was still better than what the free market would produce, then I'm not going to sign up for your solution.
it isn't really. Eastern bloc housing looks butt ugly but it was cheap and equitable. Singapore's just richer and probably hired an interior designer. The problems start when you try to centrally manage every box of cornflakes you make, not national infrastructure.
I'll go one further and tell you there is no such thing as free market housing and never has been, just like there's no free market submarine or free market interstate highway. These are big governmental and corporate projects and at best the market shuffles the occupants around after the fact. Every project like that is communist even in the good old US of A, just don't run the entire country that way and you're golden.
So your argument is, not that Eastern bloc housing was good, but that it was good enough to be far better than homelessness? That's... probably true. Given the choice, I'd probably take a Warsaw Pact apartment over a cardboard box.
[Edit: There are submarines that are free market, and are for sale to (wealthy) private individuals. There are also free market interstate highways; they are toll roads. Still official interstate highways, but privately owned and operated.]
It's pretty clear that no evidence would convince you to abandon your zealotry, because otherwise you'd make the trivial effort required to discover that Vienna or Singapore do not look like the Warsaw Pact.
> It's pretty clear that no evidence would convince you to abandon your zealotry...
Personal attacks are not cool here.
> ... because otherwise you'd make the trivial effort required to discover that Vienna or Singapore do not look like the Warsaw Pact.
I know they don't look like the Warsaw Pact. But the policy that Barrin92 is proposing sounds like Vienna, but also sounds like the Warsaw Pact. In one place it works; in one place it produced monstrosities.
My question is: If we adopt this policy, why do we think we're going to get Vienna's outcome instead of the Warsaw Pact's?
Unless you can explain how that's different from what the Warsaw Pact did, or show that the Warsaw Pact housing, while horrible, was still better than what the free market would produce, then I'm not going to sign up for your solution.