Category Archives: Homelessness

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Self Defense Against Cops is Murder — Just Ask the Cops

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The ability of individual people to defend themselves is a central aspect of anarchism of every variety. One of the first things every state does is monopolize violence and so prevent people from defending themselves as they see fit. Every anarchist understands that under the state “people are institutionally prohibited from defending themselves.”1 Every anarchist understands how absolutely necessary this prohibition is for the survival of the state.

How can this be true?! As a recent interlocutor had it, “I’m not sure where you get the idea that most people are institutionally prevented from defending themselves. There are statutes in every state that delineate the legal means of doing so, up to and including homicide.”2
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Communism works, just ask your bosses

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There’s no historical or contemporary evidence that communism is practical, where “communism” means, at a minimum, the elimination of private property.3 This is a commonplace in political debate. It goes without saying. It doesn’t need support. Everybody knows it. It’s just obvious that communism can’t possibly work. But, as with so many such beliefs, it’s completely wrong. There’s plenty of evidence that communism would work, there’s plenty of evidence that it’s a natural state of human organization, almost a default. The evidence that it would work just fine lies in the fact that it keeps breaking out all over despite the extraordinary and ongoing expenditures of power and wealth the ruling class has exercised throughout the history of the United States to prevent it.4
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In Los Angeles Revolution Is More Realistic Than Reform When It Comes To Ending Homelessness

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Apparently human beings are forced to live on the streets of Los Angeles because it’s “illegal to build housing” here. I guess there are even people who think we can “solve homelessness” in this City by changing or eliminating zoning codes to allow developers to build whatever they want wherever they want?5 These folks self-present as the smartest guys in the room but nevertheless have some pretty kooky ideas about how things work in this City. Just for instance, they seem to think that Los Angeles developers and politicians desperately want to house the homeless but somehow always end up thwarted by the complexity of the problem and a bunch of putatively bad laws that no one likes but somehow got written and enforced anyway.

Neither politicians nor developers can do anything about homelessness despite the fact that they’re in charge of the whole damn City because, the story goes, a bunch of single family homeowners hate apartments and use their vast political power to retain racist zoning laws in order to increase property values. These genius urban theorists, who apparently think it would be easier to get Los Angeles6 to eliminate zoning codes than to build a bunch of public housing, characterize every possible non-market solution to homelessness as leftist naivete. They tout their desired policies as political realism even as they denigrate progressive ideas as impossible and revolutionary.
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