Keith Devens .com

Ok, slightly off-topic, but the idea that government owns it is nonsense. Government administers land. It's the state that owns the land as common property. "Buying" property is simply a transferral of custodianship.

Hi Keith,

I'm not a liberal (one who favors social, but not economic freedom) or a conservative (one who favors economic, but not social freedom).

For the most part, I'm a Libertarian. I'm in favor of both social and economic freedom.

Cheers,
Steve

Hi Steve,

Sorry to have labeled you incorrectly. You're often so anti-Republican that I assumed you considered yourself a Democrat. That's an interesting way to boil down the liberal/conservative divide though. I hadn't thought about it in those terms.

Here in the United Kingdom, it was Margaret Thatcher who gave British citizens the right to buy government owned houses. Until then, if you lived in a council house (a property rented out by the Government to the tennant) you could not buy the house no matter how long you had lived there.

The Socialists believe in collective, state-owned housing, in the name of community. The question is, however, what promotes a better community: the right to the stablity of owning your own house, or having to answer to the Government for a house they don't even live in?