I Told You It Would Be a Hoot

Dale Courtney over at Right-Mind already did a great job covering the Socialist Housing Forum in Moscow on Saturday here and here, but there were a couple of particularly hilarious left-wing quotes from the Daily News story yesterday that I couldn't let pass by:

Swanson said leadership can come through private individuals who can put profit aside, not just through city government. S.M. Ghazanfar, professor emeritas of the economics department at the University of Idaho and member of the Moscow Human Rights Commission, said bringing people together for the forum was a good idea, but society is contributing to a bigger problem.

“Society has the idea that someone’s shelter is at the profit of someone else,” he said.

What a novel concept! Someone else profiting off of something you need! I actually thought that was the basis for economics.

If this principle should apply to the basic "right" of shelter, why should it not by extension apply to the basic "right" of food as well. Why don't farmers just give their crops away?

And who profits most from home building? The developer, who must purchase the land, materials, and labor, or the bank, that sits back and collects interest for 25 or 30 years? Maybe banks should just stop charging interest on mortgages. I'm sure that would just thrill the stockholders.

Brenda von Wandruszka, an associate with Moscow Realty, said people looking to buy a house in Moscow for under $100,000 may find that the houses fall short of their hopes and expectations.

She suggested building in ways that cut costs but don’t negatively affect traffic or the environment. “What it takes is to build in a different way,” she said. She suggested cluster development, with denser housing and a central community space.

I would hope that most people's expectations for a house are in line with their income.

As far as "cluster developments with dense housing and central community space" built at an economical price, that's already been done. You can find these monuments to central planning and socialism all over the former Soviet Union.