They’re both. You can’t detach them from the market because they are products of the market. In order for a house to be built you need landscapers to clear out the plot, a construction crew to build up the house and foundation, electricians to wire up the house, plumbers to hookup the pipes, roofers to put on the shingles, architects to design the whole thing, and you need to buy the material… which require loggers, welders, miners, factory workers, glaziers, and the list goes on and on. Even then, you still need appliances like stoves, refrigerators, microwaves, etc and each of those has it’s own supply chain and ecosystem. All of these people are trading their labor for money, they’re not going to work for free. Therefore, in order to have a house, you have to pay all these people in the chain to actually get the final product which you can either sell or enjoy. A house is commodity made of commodities. I’m not exactly sure what you’re expecting here, do you think the government is going to build houses with slave labor? Do you think we’re going to water the ground and get houses to grow? Do you expect us to follow in steps of a failed ideology like Marxism and have the government try to control the entire economy? No, these are all dumb. We can acknowledge that these are necessities and should be made accessible, safe, and affordable but also acknowledge that they’re products of the market and therefore we have to work with it, not against it.
What a load of shit.
This completely ignores how the housing market has become a farce, based more on speculation than reality. My prime minister has admitted that he does not want housing prices to go down because houses have become a retirement plan for an entire generation. The government literally admits that it wants housing to be unaffordable, how does that have anything to do with creating a functioning market? The price of home ownership is completely detached from the reality of building homes, arguing housing is expensive because it’s expensive to build is absolute horse shit.
Not to mention how many “commodities” have been socialized successfully. In order to get medical care you need to build a hospital, pay the doctors, buy the supplies, the list goes on and on. Yet my country has successfully socialized healthcare for the benefit of everyone who lives here. My utilities are socialized even though all the exact same concepts apply to them as well.
Your argument is completely hollow. Housing can and has been socialized, but doing so is against the interest of a wealthy land owners. Hmm I wonder if those wealthy land owners have any sway on government policy.
