On 27/03/2021 21:28, William Unruh wrote:
> On 2021-03-27, TimS  wrote:
>> On 27 Mar 2021 at 17:29:53 GMT, Charlie Gibbs 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2021-03-27, The Natural Philosopher  wrote:
>>>
>>>>   Its rather a study of mine, actually. My tentative observation  is that
>>>>   those who advocate the purest form of Marxism are in fact simply showing
>>>>   a romantic fondness for the lifestyle of the hunter gatherer. Before
>>>>   farming, before herding even, a population of at best a few million
>>>>   lived 'in harmony with nature' lacking even the idea of 'private
>>>>   property' let alone the hierarchies and the discipline that are
>>>>   necessary for large numbers of people to act in unison.
>>>
>>> This makes it particularly ironic that many societies that
>>> are appalled by Karl Marx's philosophy are adopting one of
>>> his fundamental tenets: the elimination of private property.
>>> Housing prices are climbing so fast that soon none but the
>>> very richest will be able to afford their own home;
>>
>> In teh UK it's driven by population pressure, which has increased from 50 to
>> 65 million in the last 50 years.
>
> Almost certainly because of highly restrictive housing construction
> laws.

Actually no. If you mean the standards to which houses must be
constructed...

> Building 100000 additional houses a year should not be difficult,
> unless there is nowhere to build them.

That is nearer the mark. The UK is very tight on land space of the sort
that it is worth putting a house on. Scotland north of the lowlands is
wild and empty and no one lives there because frankly no one would want
to, there is no infrastructure and no means of livelihood.

Elsewhere there is a competition between land for farming. increasingly
land for Nature™ and land for people to build houses on. A friend has a
3 acre garden, but the boundary for 'permitted development' has been
drawn just 15 feet inside his boundary, so his house is included, but
his garden is green belt and sacrosanct.

Ultimately what the 'housing crisis' boils down to is too many people
with too high aspirations for the avaialable land area and
infrastructure. Birth rates are falling but that has simple encouraged
people to permit massive 3rd world immigration that carries with a  it a
high birth rate, so as to keep population levels up and the engine of
consumerism running.

Remember that modern post war economics is built on a Ponzi scheme of
public debt. Today's pensions are paid by te contributions of today's
workers, which works as long as there are ore workers earning that
pensioners.

If the number of workers and the whole population falls, you end up with
a massive geriatric problem - how to finance a non working population of
retired people.

Someone seems to have tried with COVID-19 :@-)

  (council laws against building on
> various land spaces, inability to build highrises, etc), while
> greenways, agricultural conversion laws, etc certainly have their good
> points, they also come at a cost of high house prices, and inability to
> house the extra population. Note that this is NOT because of lawas
> against private property. It may be cause of laws in favour of private
> property-- do not do anything to decrease the value of property.
>>
In the end its a compound problem of too many people for the country to
support but an inability to square the economic circle without a
permanently rising population.

The only modern country that has really limited both immigration, by
diktat, and population by its own personal choices, has been Japan, and
their economy is essentially IIRC bankrupt, but no one bothers about it..

wiki---

"Japan's asset price bubble collapse in 1991 led to a period of economic
stagnation known as the "lost decade", sometimes now extended as the
"lost 20 years." From 1995 to 2007, GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to
$4.36 trillion in nominal terms. Japan today has the highest ratio of
public debt to GDP of any developed nation, with national debt at 236%
relative to GDP as of 2017.  This debt is predominantly owned by
Japanese nationals.  The Japanese economy faces considerable challenges
posed by an ageing and declining population, which peaked at 128 million
in 2010 and has fallen to 125.9 million as of 2020.   Projections
suggest the population will continue to fall, and potentially drop below
100 million by the end of the 21st century."

No housing crisis in Japan....




--
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
and understanding".

Marshall McLuhan

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