Category: politics

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Homeownership and Communism

Today I watched this little YouTube short, and I think it’s pretty interesting!

https://youtube.com/shorts/Irgi6kR5d1o?si=cNS6kMMz1eaLnfwG

I haven’t checked the math myself. However, I do find it fascinating that the comments/the Discourse can’t agree on whether Encouraging Homeownership is pro or anti communist.

One of the things I hear a lot on the Internet (yeah, yeah, I know) is that everyone SHOULD be able to own their own home, because landlords are rent-seeking, etc.

Typically, the people who say this have never owned a home and in particular have never rented out a home to someone else. They have the mistaken assumption that rent is all for the personal enrichment of the landlord and not for things like maintenance or interest or anything.

Now. Are there bad landlords? Of course there are. Slumlords have always existed, and we should make sure that we have strong regulations to prevent landlords from abusing tenants by providing unliveable facilities.

I also think there should be more of the “missing middle” available (smaller, cheaper homes, for one step above renting). Amd I think there should be more ways to deal with the difficulty of getting a down payment, although I am not chock full of good ideas on how, at the moment. (Perhaps some kind of land trust? Co-ops?)

But: “Landlords are inherently evil, praise the revolution, home ownership for every proletarian” is sort of diametrically opposed to “home ownership is a tool of fighting Communism.”

My personal opinion falls on the side of the latter. I think that ownership does give you something to lose, gives you a stake in your country and your community. And I think that’s a good thing!

Now, I don’t think everyone wants or needs to own a house either. A lot of folks like the freedom and flexibility that leases give them. And again, I think we should protect those people with strong tenant rights laws.

And I also think that socially, we should decouple adulthood from home ownership. That’s not a great metric. (But that’s a whole nother complicated post.)

Anyway. Just wanted to share some thoughts!

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Trust, but verify

Recently, one group of friends started talking about a YouTuber that another friend is a huge fan of, in very disparaging terms.

I asked about it, basically asking for receipts, and nobody provided them..

I’m not really a YouTube kind of person, but this contrast (between people whom I like and respect the opinions of) was too much for me to ignore, so I went and watched the YouTube video myself.

I should say that I really hate video as an information format. It’s long, you can’t really do much else while you’re absorbing it, you can’t easily skip around, you can’t copy paste quotes.

But I stuck it out, because I’m stubborn, and by this point I was INVESTED.

I should also say that normally, I am wary of the “both sides have valid points” rhetoric. It used to be true, or at least truer than today, but that was before people started telling us to inject bleach to cure diseases or what nonsense Tiktok trend is going on these days.

But I made an exception in this case, because both “sides” here are people I generally trust to be working in good faith. I don’t think any of them are acting disingenuously; I think all of them believe what they believe.

I watched the whole video over the course of a couple days.

It was this one: https://youtu.be/7gDKbT_l2us

The initial group of friends were saying that in it, Contrapoints was “defending” JK Rowling.

I watched the whole video, and I didn’t see any defense.

About a third of the way in, I messaged the group to say “hey, I didn’t see any of the stuff you guys are talking about so far in this video…am I watching the wrong video?”

Instead of sending me the Actual Bad Video, they doubled down. One person said “If your friends telling you this person is a Nazi and a transmedicalist isn’t enough for you to keep their voice out of your head, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

That comment made me see red. And after I calmed down a bit, I said, look. When two people I like and respect tell me opposite things, which one of them am I supposed to blindly trust?

And then I thought to myself: I *don’t* blindly trust. Or rather, I don’t do it as a matter of conscious policy. Sure, there are lots of things in life where I can’t be an expert, and I do have to trust other people. But “the contents of a goddamn YouTube video” is not one of them.

Yes, we trust. But we also verify. And it’s not anti-friendship, or anti-trust, to say “I’m going to watch this for myself.”

I’m a little worried that by phrasing things this way, I’ll give steam to some kind of “do your own research” alt-right pipeline. If my friends have actual concerns about this content creator, I expect they will continue to share them with me.

But so far I haven’t actually heard any real concerns; I’ve only heard single-word adjectives with no details and no receipts. 

So I am cautiously proceeding, and looking at the primary sources myself. Because that’s what I do. “Citation needed” is just a way of life, I guess.

I’m starting the second Contrapoints JK Rowling video tonight. We’ll see if this one has the defending in it, I guess?

Coda: The day after I write this, I see the following from a friend of mine:

https://blast-o-rama.com/2026/05/13/dear-internet-read-a-little-deeper-it-wont-hurt-you-i-promise/

This. All of this. PLEASE don’t stop digging deeper and fact checking, even on things your side writes.

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The two conservatisms

My hot take for today is that fiscal conservatism is incompatible with social conservatism. It’s expensive to police people that hard.

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Chronic Illness

This is an *excellent* column from the Washington Post about chronic illness, how we measure it, and where it originates. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/19/chronic-diseases-health-policy/

“Blame is cheap. System change costs money and effort.” 

Here is a gift link to the article.

Disease is not caused by immorality. Thinking that way is tempting, because of the Just World Fallacy and Fundamental Attribution Error; but it’s not a sound way to go about interacting with the world.

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Throw back the dead man’s coin

I just shared my bitter brew post with a new person, and it reminded me of this amazing Wondermark comic.

https://wondermark.com/c/1135/

Because yes. If we did want equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, we would not have inheritance.

For that matter, we couldn’t even let children be raised by their parents! Even aside from the money issue (already solved in our Glorious Meritocratic Utopia), parents are of varying quality. My parents gave me unconditional love and support (even though we’ve had our arguments), while other parents are abusive.

So we would need a robotic state crèche for all the children to grow up in, to make sure their Equality of Opportunity Not of Outcome stays equal.

Do you hear how absurd that sounds? Do you WANT to end up in Harrison Bergeron? Or in Anthem? (As a side note, I read those two stories around the same time in high school, and woweee did I not realize the authors were very different until adulthood. Still the only Rand book I’ve read.)

Anyway. “Equality of Opportunity” is an impossibility. The best we can do is to stay mindful of the inequalities that do pop up, and try our best to mitigate them. It won’t be perfect but we can do our best.

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 A surprising note of sanity

I read this op-ed by a conservative politician about Harvard, and I very much appreciate it. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/08/harvard-eric-holcomb-indiana-governor/

The way some media personalities talk about college campuses is absurd and fear-mongering, and I don’t appreciate it. I didn’t appreciate it in 2005 or so, when my own university was in the cross-hairs of the national conservative media apparatus, either. 

There needs to be more recognition of nuance in the world. Harvard is not a “woke lions’ den,” as this guy puts it. We can and should continue to disagree on some subjects – nobody is advocating for groupthink! But the disagreements need to be based in reality and our shared humanity, and in a non-strawman understanding of what the other person thinks. (And I almost wrote “the other side,” but I also think it’s important to remember that these are *people* we are disagreeing with.) 

This paragraph about his political strategy really stood out to me: 


We approved a 1,500 percent increase in public health spending, expecting that a novel set of solutions — designed and driven by people who trust each other at the community level — will better reduce overall spending on health care. It costs less to keep people healthy than to intervene when they’re sick.

This is the way. And it’s heartening to see a Republican finally recognize that pre-emptive health care spending can save money AND lead to better lives for Americans in the long run. The myopic “does this benefit businesses in the next spending quarter?” attitude needs to go. 

Contrary to my side’s worst fears, I found students from a wide range of circumstances. Harvard’s freshmen hail from all 50 states; one in five is a first-generation college student; half pay no tuition thanks to Harvard’s endowment; and 16 are military veterans.

However, this part made me laugh. Sir, your “side” thinks that level of diversity is a bad thing. It is their worst fears. (And they can’t keep the story straight about whether my “side” is Rich Woke Elitists or Greedy Resource-Hogging Poors, either.) So…clearly, he’s got some beams in his eyes that he still needs to work on. But overall, I applaud his spirit and attitude here. And this paragraph just goes to show, once more, the weakness of looking at this as “sides” rather than individuals. 

I’m glad he gave Harvard a chance. And I’m glad to see sanity in this op-ed from someone I disagree with on most issues; and I’m glad to see that I agree with him on at least one issue.

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It is okay to have low ambitions.

I agree STRONGLY with this Tumblr post. People should be ABLE to work at the grocery store and make enough to support a family. That is how a functional society works. Grocery store workers (and other people in the service sector) are absolutely essential members of our society, and should not be disrespected and told that their jobs are only suitable for children.

Screenshot of a Tumblr post discussing societal expectations regarding job ambition and income, featuring comments about working at Taco Bell and personal definitions of success.
A reflection on the value of low-ambition jobs in society, emphasizing the importance of fair wages for essential work.

(U) I used an AI assistant to generate alt text and a caption there. It did a good job. Interesting.

I used Google Drive’s Optical Character Recognition to OCR the text, so here’s that, too:

User “youthincare”:

people should be allowed to have low ambition, and also be able to feed a family on the salary of a cashier at a convenience store.

User “kidsomeday”:

My very first job was at Taco Bell, and most of us working there were horrible young adults with horrible young adult problems, but one of my coworkers was a woman in (I think) her 50s.

And us horrid young adults would ask her why she still worked at Taco Bell, because it was starter job and who would want to stay there forever? Her response?

“I make enough money to make sure I always have roses in my bedroom.”

This answer changed me as a person. It changed the way I thought about what makes someone successful, and made me step back and realize that I was so caught up in what I thought success and

happiness should mean that I didn’t know what I wanted them to mean.

Which is to say that sometimes ambition is making enough money to keep fresh roses in your bedroom, and you should be able to do that working at Taco Bell.

I like that.

And yes, low ambition means this person will never have a 7-bedroom house. That is OKAY. It is okay that not everyone will always be able to have the nicest and biggest things. But people should be able to have basic things on a basic salary: an apartment, health care, enough food to eat, access to information and education. It is a problem when people cannot have those things.

(And I know nobody argues with me anymore now that I’ve moved to this blog instead of Facebook; but if you want to go toe to toe on “frivolous” expenses, bring a real life budget and let’s dissect.)

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Incrementalism

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine described herself as “incrementalist.” I think that’s a very good word.

Today, I saw this skeet. I’m going to copy the text here in case it gets deleted.

The way I’ve heard it explained is that there are people who are
1) actively against you
2) passively against you
3) don’t care
4) passively support you
5) actively support you

You’ll never get from 1 to 5 in one jump, so you want to move each person 1 notch more supportive. 1→2, 3→4, 4→5, etc

And that’s a very good explanation of how I view political discussions.