Let’s get rid of private housing.

I joked about something similar in a previous post, but home ownership appears to turn people into pretty vile caricatures of humanity.

I’m not convinced that de-privatizing housing would be beset by any fewer problems than the current system, but being that what we have now is irreparably broken it’s probably a worthwhile policy experiment, even on a mass scale.

Remember: there is no such thing as a natural market. All markets are government-created, very nearly, and certainly this is the case in our modern society. Don’t allow free market mythologizing to contaminate your beliefs about the inevitability of certain relatively-new societal developments.

Also don’t buy into the myth that the market determines what’s the best housing for people. The market only determines on what and where the few at the top can make the most profit.

For instance, there are nearly no houses out there for people like us: childless couples who want a large shared office room separate from the living room — in fact, we’d be fine with no living room at all.

Ever find a house like that? We haven’t, and we’ve looked at everything from $500 a month rent to $5,000 a month in about a half dozen cities over a ten-year period.

And people like us are an increasing share of the market — 20 to 30 percent depending on which stats you examine.

Tell me how well the market is working?