Tag: Decommodification

In this expedition, Neonn talks to DSA Sacramento Co-Chair Jonah Paul about the philosophical & strategic path to expanding human rights to include housing, starting with rent control and working toward full-on social housing policies like they’ve already achieved in more progressive places. We talk about different catalysts for political activation, why millennials are trending towards socialism, the nature of capitalist exploitation & how to respond to it, rhetorical strategies to change public opinion, the effect of the 2008 collapse on today’s housing crisis, direct ballot measures vs. routine legislation, the futility of corrupt neoliberal solutions, the actual mechanics of rent control, how American real estate became a tax shelter, how to fight gentrification & financialization, what a decommodified housing policy would actually look like, how inadequate housing is detrimental to public health, egalitarian reasoning from humanist first principles, DSA as a great way to organize for working class power, utopia as a pluralistic participatory democracy, & lots more fun activist philosophy.. 🎃

Jonah Paul ▲ Facebook ▲ Twitter

Democratic Socialists of America ▲ Facebook ▲ Twitter

DSA Sacramento Chapter ▲ Facebook ▲ Twitter

intro music ▲ Of A Great Red Cypress

outro music ▲ Kalki / Antony of Egypt / Legion / Sunya Das / Kikwaakew

outro music ▲ Zieke Sounds

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❝ It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Further, more unequal societies are bad for everyone within them-the rich and middle class as well as the poor.

The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level exposes stark differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem-poor health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness-is more likely to occur in a less-equal society.

Renowned researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett lay bare the contradictions between material success and social failure in the developed world. But they do not merely tell us what’s wrong. They offer a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. ❞

❝ Now includes “The Life Inc. Guide to Reclaiming the Value You Create”
In Life Inc, award-winning writer Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. The resulting ideology, corporatism, has infiltrated all aspects of civics, commerce, and culture—from the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self, from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking, from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of Facebook. Life Inc explains why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business. Most important, Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place. ❞