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    Kshama Sawant, Jess Spear, and the Uncompromising “Free” Market

    By Orion on Fri, 08/22/2014 - 8:41pm |

    In Seattle, socialist Kshama Sawant has been unusually successful in her progress as city councilwoman. While it will take a good while to apply, she did succeed in pushing $15 minimum wage for the city of Seattle. 

    The Socialist Alternative movement continued with Jess Spear, who ran a pretty stellar campaign against Frank Chopp for the position of speaker. Nevertheless, Spear was “overwhelmed,” as the Seattle P.I. put it, with Chopp raking it 80 percent of ballots, and the explanations why are pretty storied.
     
    Sawant’s honeymoon is over, especially among her more centrist-liberal backers. Liberal publications like ‘The Stranger’ and the ‘Seattle P.I.’ perhaps realized that when Sawant talked about “poorly paid workers and unpaid internships,” she may have been referring to organizations like their own, and not just corporations like Boeing and Microsoft, or the more conservative businesses from Eastern Washington. A lot of Seattle liberalism is a shallow cultural bigotry prepared more for looking down on the “knuckle-dragging conservatives” in the eastern side of the State rather than actually solving the real problems of social inequity.  For this reason, the liberal establishment has always been at odds with socialists like Sawant.
     
    Despite her loss, Spear’s campaign was just as impressive as Sawant’s and was run on a platform of “rent control now.” The call for rent control in Seattle was met by the same nonsensical, right-wing arguments that attacked Sawant’s $15 minimum wage platform, and were led by people who should know better. The aforementioned Seattle P.I. article regurgitated the argument that rent control has been “a colossal failure in San Francisco and New York City.”  A failure for who?  Certainly not poor and working-class renters.
     
    The argument typically deployed by the Right is that, since competition drives down prices, mandating prices artificially inflates the rates. However, cities like SF and NYC are extremely dense, and the demand for housing is extreme.  Profit is sought by landlords in any form of capitalist system, so the prices in an area of such demand are going to remain high even with controls set.  It’s “rent control” and not “universal housing,” after all.  The fundamental argument that is often missing is the one brought to the forefront by Spear, Sawant, and their Party – should things like housing and healthcare be sources of immense profit for private business, or are they human rights that should be, at the very least, affordable?
     
    Not to mention, the Rights go-to argument is opposed by reality – more specifically, the reality that the so-called “free market” is filled with artificial controls by the state that benefit the landowning class and “private” business.  For example, American fast food juggernauts like McDonald’s and Burger King got where they are with State subsidies on beef, which gave them a distinct advantage over “competitors” or chains that served healthier food, allowing them to spend much more money on expanding their reach (advertising and growth). I don’t need to tell you how much that formula worked for McDonald’s – you already know.  And big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Target have relied heavily on government welfare programs like food stamps and Section 8 housing to supplement their workforces, which are paid poverty wages.
     
    Rent controls wouldn’t work for property owners, a group of people who contribute nothing to society except manipulating property built by others in order to extort the people who only need a roof over their heads. It’s unfortunate that the Seattle P.I. wasn’t more receptive of Spear’s message – after all, their own operation is now “Internet only” as a result of no longer being able to afford a print newspaper. Their staff should know very well how oppressive and uncompromising the “free” market really is.

    Comments

    Rent controls wouldn’t work for property owners, a group of people who contribute nothing to society except manipulating property built by others in order to extort the people who only need a roof over their heads.

    This strikes me as an extremely Marxist interpretation. Just sayin'

    Personally, I think you ruin your argument about market price controls here by jumping into attacking profiting on ownership of property itself. Effectively saying that wanting to participate in a market for profit is immoral.

    I am reminded me of this short scene from Dr. Zhivago:

     

     

    It's hard for me to see the immigrants in NYC who buy a 2-family house in the boroughs as money-grubbing capitalist pigs, the ones that do it so that they can gain a little more equity with a renter helping pay on a bigger mortgage. Nor the 1,000+ Seattleites who list their abode for temporary sub-let on arbnb.

    If it's bad to sell property built by others, then it follows that only the actual construction workers that worked on a property should be allowed to live in the property, right? Everyone has to build their own roof and no one, even a construction worker, should be able to sell it? Those developers who build apartment buildings contribute nothing to society? Should only government be allowed to build apartment buildings? How has that gone so far in history?

    You do realize that it takes capital to build an apartment building--hire the architect, buy a piece of land, get the permits, buy the materials,and pay the workers who built it, right? The days of people volunteering to do barn raisings are basically over. For one thing, that scenario requires unlimited amounts of cheap land and small populations of people.

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/24/2014 - 6:10pm

    The  the crony capitalist and the socialist are much alike in that they despise the free market. The cronies want the government to protect them from their failures in the market place so they can become or remain wealthy while innocent people, the taxpayer, are forced by law to  pay for their mistakes. The cronies believe they have a right to be rich, without earning the right. The socialist looks down on the cronies:  he says we hate the  free market too, brother crony, but it's not for ourselves that we want government protection from the free market, it is for our poor brethren who can't afford decent housing and healthcare. While you, brother crony, believe you have a right to be rich, we believe the poor have a right to decent housing and healthcare (and any thing else we decide is necessary), and like you we believe the tax paying public, and those who create these goods and service should be forced by law to supply them. But you dear crony are naughty because you think only of yourself while we think of others.

    While the slavery of black people before the war between the North and the South was obvious the present day enslavement of virtually all Americans by their government is obscured by the illusion we hold that we are politically free; when in fact our lives and property belong to any individual or group who can get legally get their hands on it: the politicians, the govt. bureaucrats, the crony capitalists and socialists, to name just a few.
     


    by DesertBunny (not verified) on Sun, 08/24/2014 - 9:22pm

    AA, I had the same take you did on this...I don't think that it is extortion to rent an apartment to someone who can't afford to purchase a house.  Owning property is not in itself indicative of "contributing nothing to society,"  and based on that conceit, what really would be worthy?

     I am retired, but worked as a nurse for decades.  It is how I made a living.  Should anyone capitalize on the suffering of others?  I guess one could say that I did.  Would Orion say that I should not have been paid for 40+ hours of work each week just because the people I took care of were sick or injured?  I don't know.

    A discussion about those who make money for doing NOTHING  (as far as I am concerned) would be insurance companies, which TRULY provide NOTHING in exchange for limiting health care coverage to those who pay into a pool for the purpose of sharing risk in order to get medical care when they need it.   Others would be politicians, who are rarely held accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, Hedge Fund managers, bank executives, weather forecasters...but I digress...

    People who provide a service (roof over one's head), food (that they did not raise themselves, but purchased and provided for sale to those who can't raise everything they need),  clothing ... Etc, etc...ARE contributing to society IMHO. I don't want to make all my own clothes; can't raise all my own food; couldn't have built my house if my life depended on it. 

    The way to undo all of the above would be to go back to hunter-gatherer times.  I may have missed the message of this Orion post, but it isn't the first time I did not feel that I understood his message. 

    Demonizing people who provide needed services is counter-productive. However, for those who avoid paying taxes on their profits by outsourcing, after benefitting from our country's infrastructure ... I say don't demonized them either...just make them pay their fair share!  Make them contribute to the upkeep of the infrastructure that is currently crumbling as it suffers in comparison to war spending. 

    Oh, I could go on, but I will stop. BTW, loved the clip!


    by CVille Dem on Mon, 08/25/2014 - 7:01pm

    Orion,

    Interesting piece. Was in Seattle last week for the first time. Fabulous city and beautiful country.  And a minimum wage that you should all be proud of.


    by Bruce Levine on Mon, 08/25/2014 - 10:25pm

    Word!

    As for the landlord criticism, it's based on experience. I had a nightmare situation with a property manager in a public housing complex  who I am very proud of having gotten demoted. I have the notices scanned which he sent me regularly - threatening me with my home and legal action for bizarre infractions. One, which I circulated to his boss and which I hoped played a role in his getting demoted, called my fiancee, who was literally dying, a "nuisance" and inferred that that was somehow illegal. When I bring that up with libertarian and centrist friends, they say I am demonizing a group of people but his position of authority and the entitlement it blessed him with both attracts assholes and encourages asshole behavior. I don't sympathize with people who hustle the vulnerable to make a living.

     


    by Orion on Thu, 09/04/2014 - 2:21am

    But Orion, your description of harassment does not involve a capitalist landlord, just the opposite. A power-hungry manager of a public housing project obsessed with enforcing rules and harassing a tenant is actually like the Dr. Zhivago video, where you say he's charging you with bizarre infractions and he says he's just enforcing the rules, comrade, so everything is fair. A public housing project is one socialist answer to your last paragraph, where you don't let profit-motivated capitalists build and manage housing, but you have the government do it.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 09/04/2014 - 9:34am