• JasSmith@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Just to be clear, you’re arguing that if capitalism didn’t exist in Europe, we would be building twice as many buildings per year? This is the dumbest take I’ve read today, and I accidentally landed on r/Politics this morning.

    • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Dunno about twice as much but the problem isn’t housing (Portugal has a shit ton of houses). The problem is affordable housing and yes capitalism is very much to blame here.

      Not in a “free market = bad” that I’m very much for in many situations but simply because it’s not profitable to build affordable housing. A vast percentage of the housing built in Portugal is for upper middle class, so everyone below that (which in Portugal is a shit ton of people) you are fucked. And even if you lived in a decent house prices have skyrocketed so much that you get kicked out if they can do that.

      Capitalism by design is very much against public housing and you don’t even need to imagine how the situation would be if you had that. You can just look at Vienna and see how they are doing in that regard (spoiler: pretty fucking well compared to the rest of Europe/world).