Comment on If housing was considered a human right, would it fix our housing crisis?
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How about this: you can’t use price signals to lower demand for something that’s a basic need.
There was a push to end rent-bidding recently, but they said no of course we need rent bidding, how else are you meant to respond to rising demand, except by pricing poor people out of the market?
Yeah no. It’s not OK to do that.
Luxury items, it’s still mildly sociopathic if you think about it but fine, whatever.
But basic human needs don’t go away if you make them too expensive, and it’s fundamentally not OK to triage them by wealth.
Imagine if they implemented this as a solution for overcrowded emergency rooms. Okay people, wait times are getting pretty long, so we’re charging you all $10,000 just to stay in the queue; pay up or go home. Yay, it’s looking way emptier out there, we fixed healthcare.
There would be heads on spikes before the week was out.
Doing the same thing with shelter is just as fucking inappropriate.
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Don’t we actually do that with private health though? In a roundabout way.
“hey you can wait 6 months for a doctor/surgery or you can tithe to some millionaires and get seen by a parasitic sector draining resources from public health and driving up prices faster!”
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Granted, but at least you can still rock up to the ER with your foot hanging off, and get seen without your bank balance being relevant.
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Sort of. If you’re not actively dying you can still expect to wait several hours with some panadol.
Idk when you last had to go to ER but when I had a broken toe that needed setting they didn’t even have ice packs. The swelling from waiting about 6 hours made setting it a doozy, it’s crooked and achy now :(
Shit is underfunded to all hell atm.
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That sucks, sorry to hear it.
I’m used to waiting many hours in my/family’s experience with the places, though the time I dislocated my ankle and was compromising blood flow to my foot, they got on it immediately. Time-sensitive vs high-impact, I guess.