Once again the focus is space. This time living space. Now I've argued before online that everyone should be entitled to at least some living space, and that this should essentially be considered a birthright. By this I mean that everyone should be entitled to some space that belongs to them.
Of course, normally we refer to these 'living spaces' as homes - as in a property or a building. However, by thinking in terms of space it really helps to elucidate how unnatural our attitude to housing is. If you're fortunate enough to own your own home then great - you have your own space. However, if you don't, or are still in the process of paying for your home, then you're in a very unnatural situation.
You're essentially paying to have somewhere to exist.
A space to sleep at night. Somewhere to breathe in and out. Paying every week or month to simply have somewhere to be. It's like living in a hotel room, but we just accept it as normal. Animals don't have this problem. They're not paying another animal to be where they are. To be in the lake or up in the tree. They just find a spot and build their nest or whatever it is they do.
Their primary focus is spent on finding food and raising their young. Whereas our primary focus is to pay the rent. In order to then have the very space in which to do those things in. This is why humans are in a constant state of anxiety, because they're constantly worried that next week they may not have a space (a home) to exist in. This is why we can never just relax and live in the moment, at one with nature. We can never just be.
..and it's not just that we have to pay for the space we exist in. We pay a lot of money for it. For most people the rent or mortgage will take up a huge chunk of their income. They work long hours to pay for the space they sleep in when they're not working. It's insane when you really think about it.
Living Space: the Ideal and the Practical
Anyway, I've been thinking about how we could fix this situation. I have a loosely fleshed out ideal - a Utopian vision I guess you could say. Then also a more practical, halfway house solution. I'll begin with the ideal.
Ideally I would create a world where everyone was simply given a bit of space when they reach maturity. Theirs to own. To possess, i.e. somewhere to live where they need not pay rent or mortgage to anyone. ("What? you can't just give people a house!" I hear you say. Well, I am :) ..and if you really don't like this idea then don't worry, there's the more 'practical' plan coming up next, which isn't quite as heady and radical).
So how much space should someone get? What's the baseline?
I'm not too sure about the exact amount of space, but obviously it would be small. Enough to cover the basics. I wouldn't like to put a square metre figure on it, but basically a bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchen type amount of space. A one person apartment essentially. Though you could theoretically quantify it by the metre if you wanted to get really technical.
I would then have a few rules.
1) Only someone who doesn't already own a property would be entitled to one.
2) They would have to be sold (or simply relinquished) when or if the owner buys another property.
..and I'm including the second rule here just in case it's needed, as I would imagine that under such a system it would be largely redundant anyway. Because..
a) Someone buying a larger property would naturally want to sell their little 'basic' home to help fund that purchase
and..
b) There wouldn't be much value in holding on to it as in a world where everyone already has a rent-free basic home there would be few people wanting to rent such a place. (Though there would perhaps be some market for people wanting to rent a second home, etc).
2 become 1
Another attractive thing about this scheme is that if two single people get together between the two of them they will effectively have a 'two bedroom' place. A small family home. Perhaps there could even be a way where such people could trade or swap their separate 'basic' apartments so they could get two that were next to each other or attached.
In a place with an extra bedroom you can raise one or two children. If you can afford to buy a larger home then you can have more children, but if not you would be limited by your basic means.
(Obviously I'm idealistically assuming that people would be responsible and live within their means here. So it's a little fanciful, but nevertheless I think most people would deem such a situation quite fair. Plus, after all, in modern societies people tend to have fewer children anyway. So it would suit people fairly nicely.)
the Orange Economy
This housing situation would also work in tandem with the idea of giving people access to creative space, as in the orange on a laptop article - i.e. space as an economic resource.
People would be entitled to a basic living space to live in, and likewise access to a certain amount of public space to create in. Grow food, etc. Like an allotment, or studio.
Make it happen..
Obviously this is all quite an ambitious plan. The state doling out homes to people fee, rent and mortgage free is a big ask. There are also no doubt numerous holes that can be instantly picked in this idea by anyone caring to read thus far. However, if it could be made to work it would surely beat living in a world where ninety-nine percent of people spend their lives struggling to pay for the bit of space they lie down in at night. So we owe it to ourselves and others to at least try to envision and enact something better.
It would be interesting to trial something like this in a small city or country. Get the government to build enough tiny 'basic' homes for an up and coming generation of people - say everyone who turns 21 in 2030 - then see what happens. See if it works. (I'm saying 21, but I think 25 or 30 would probably be a more suitable age to begin such a scheme, as younger people would just party in these places if the opportunity fell to them xD). It would be super-difficult to insulate such a trial from the wider world of course, but it could be done perhaps in the same way that Universal Basic Income trials are done.
If we can give people free money, why can't we try giving people free space?
The More Practical, Halfway House Solution
The more practical solution I promised I would share is pretty much the same as the above ..but this time the homes (or the spaces) are not free. They're just super cheap.
In fact, this is what I would do now were I in government. I would mass build lots of these basic homes or apartments. Massively subsidise the endeavour, and then sell them very cheaply. With the stipulation being that only people who aren't already home owners can get the discount.
When I say super cheap I mean basically the price of a car - i.e. the amount of money an average person can easily save in a year. So in this regard, even though the space would not be a free birthright, it would at least be affordable, and wouldn't require a lifetime of payment and toil. Once the process was started it would then create a conveyor belt effect, moving more and more people onto the property ladder.
Given an increasing number of people are on welfare of some sort these days it would also make sense for governments in the long run. As at the moment they're often the ones paying the rent or housing benefit anyway. If everyone has a rent-free bit of space then there is no rent to pay. So the burden would diminish and eventually disappear.
Likewise, once the initial 'basic' housing stock is built up to sufficient levels the need to build more diminishes. As noted earlier, if an owner of one of these properties then chooses to buy a nicer or larger home they can then sell the basic property on. In this halfway, practical situation they can sell it on to another person, or they can sell it back to the government.
In the 'ideal' scenario, where everyone is already guaranteed one of these rent-free homes, the government would simply buy it back, and at a nice cheap price because there would be little wider demand. It would then be ready to be doled out to the next generation.
So space, but not as we know it.
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