It sounds like a clever provocation, and he probably made sure it catches attention before they can silently move it under the carpet. He didn't do any crime, he even proposed compromises to make it seem OK and followed official procedures, so they can't (now, publicly) presecute him by law, but it offended their homophobia that much they found nothing more clever than dropping him into a mental yard instead of, like, declining his idea for some made up reason. What's that if not a high-risk high-reward prank activism? At least, we now know that the state of Pakistan loses it's shit over him touching that nerve.
I mean... You gotta be crazy to try and open a gay night club in a place that criminalizes being gay and not expect to be detained or even killed. I get it's likely a form of protest, I'm just not sure what their desired outcome was.
Anything to avoid talking about the elephant in the room, and what the hadiths and Koran say to do to homosexuals.
No, instead we dance around it by talking about safe subjects like what Reagan did in the US.
Yes please let's talk about what a shitty US president did 44 years ago that impacted the US population instead of talking about what an Islamic military dictatorship did to a gay guy this week.
Actually, funding has a very large part to do with moving away from institutions. You'll find money is behind most big decisions in this country. Not that I'm defending the hell that is institutions
That’s true. My point is that closing institutions and funding the alternatives are separate mechanisms. It should have been done all at once but Reagan didn’t see it that way
What?? We desperately need mental health institutions back. No, we don't need the romanticized victorian dungeons, but what we do need is an alternative to jails. Secure treatment facilities. We have... four, on the west coast. Two of which have at most ~160 beds. The priority waiting list for admission is decades long (no, that isnt an exaggeration) and there isn't a non-priority waiting list. If you're not a priority, you just go to jail!
Community treatment is critical and we totally lack anything like it, but good god deinstitutionalization was one of the biggest public health and social equity diasters this country has ever had.
Deinstitutionalization was dreampt up by deluded idealists that slept with a copy of Naissance de la Clinique firmly lodged in their asses. Abolishing asylums was good, because at the time asylums were the aforesaid victorian dungeons. But from the outset, the movement was based on the belief that a magic pill would cure everything and all long term treatment was oppressive.
Antipsychotics enabled community treatment at all. But the wholesale rejection of both long term and secure treatment facilities was an indefensible failure of reasoning and an abject tragedy, and one that was set in motion by Hoffman and his peers when they penned the foundational texts of the movement.
We desperately need secure treatment facilities. There is no solution if we do not have them, just the continuing abject failure of basic human decency that we currently have. This system is broken, and it is directly the fault of everyone who began the deinstitutionalization movement and their total inability to foresee the obvious consequences of their actions. Regan was evil and JFK was understandably bitter, and even though they both worked to bring the end of asylums, they are both still guilty for their roles in bringing this current hell down on us.
You hope that being talked at over the phone is enough to save your life, lol. Other than the suicide hotline or a regular doctor's appointment, you've got no options. Dial 988 for mental health crisis.
I don't quite understand how deinstitutionalizing was supposed to work here. That's like dissolving the fire department because we want to avoid cars. Was there no way to reform or replace the institutions? Just getting rid of an emergency service seems kinda like the situation you're describing was part of the plan.
Real answer? Social Services is probably the number to call unless there is a emergency medical issue in which case just regular 9-1-1.
Likely you will either ride in an ambulance or with two social workers in a car to the hospital. 24-48 hours out-patient while you are stabilized. If it is a temporary situation, say you had an insanely high fever and were delirious you would just go home. If it wasn't temporary highly likely assigned a case manager for placement.
Despite what you see in the movies/TV you will not be thrown into an mental institution you will not be forced to take a cocktail of drugs that make you a zombie.
My experience does not come from movies. I am an outpatient psychotherapist (in a country with a reasonably functioning psychiatric system). I have repeatedly seen patients slip into psychomental crises where outpatient care is no longer sufficient. The local psychiatric clinics were sometimes real lifesavers. That's why I find the idea of healthcare without emergency institutions confusing. I would find it terrible not to be able to offer my patients anything in such emergencies.
Ok well I am not sure what to say except my entire family is crazy so I have seen the procedure, also my wife is a hospital nurse. Pretty much every hospital has a floor for emergency mental health admissions.
Ah okay. So deinstitutionalization in that context was meant to include psychiatric institutions into general hospitals? Because that I can totally get behind.
Based on the other comments I got the impression that there simply is no inpatient treatment plan for mental health in the US.
There used to be huge asylums. Now there are almost none and the few that remain are nearly empty. The big thing is stabilize the patient and setup a plan so they don't have to come back again. Which usually involves housing, assigned case manager, medication, food stamps etc.
I’m not saying his overall intent was a bad one. But if you try something like that, in a country like Pakistan, you do kinda deserve to be in a mental hospital. I understand trying to spread acceptance and provide a safe place to go for those not accepted by the local society at large, but maybe there are better, even slightly more accepting places where this kind of idea would pan out. I feel like this is equivalent to opening a dispensary in Thailand.
Every Thai I know says that they don't think it's going to happen, it is leverage so the National Government can collect more taxes. "Ok we won't ban you but you got to start paying more"
But hey that is just armchair speculation and this is a thread about Pakistan
Thailand has cannabis freaken everywhere a tourist might possibly be. I don't know it if is possible to walk in a straight line for ten minutes in Pattya, Chaing Mai, or Bangkok without seeing cannabis for sale. And that is just official places, the stuff really grows like a wild weed there so tiny stores random stores will have the tea version for sale.
The first queer people here got fired from their jobs and left largely destitute. They were the ones that started the first gay societies and the first protests in front of the White House. Throughout the decades, many were fired, arrested, or died from poor health or deaths of despair.
Someone always has to take the first step.
I recommend reading The lavender scare, it's extremely relevant right now, and I had to keep checking the copyright date because the same shit is happening the same way it happened in the 50s.
Interesting they're blaming the Liberals when this decline's been going on for at last two decades now, at least relative to global wealth. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see that relative standard of living compared to the rest of the world, we've been declining the entire 40 years on average.
And looking at the trends, we're headed right towards another recession on top of a housing bubble burst, so no matter what anybody tries, we're looking at another decade of decline before there's even a chance of things getting better. The moment the housing bubble crashes, we're looking at a similar situation to Japan's lost decades, and we can only hope to ride it out half as well as they have.
Its actually a really interesting article. But it goes against what people want to be true with what is actually true.
People are down voting this because they want to live in fantasy land. Can we not actually upvote things that are informative and in areas where people knowledge is lacking. This article can be a learning point for you all or you can all live in denial.
This part confuses me. Wouldn't this be a good thing?
"Worsening the situation, 45pc of landlords decided to sell their properties in the wake of the announcement significantly reducing the amount of accommodation on offer and further pushing up prices."
Yes, the number of rental properties declines, but that would mean home ownership would increase, right? I know my bias is toward the North American model of a multiyear fixed rate mortgage. I also know that the model exists in Europe about essentially interest only mortgage where you never actually pay down your mortgage, but your interest payments are essentially your housing costs.
How does it work in Argentina? How do people buy houses? Are they instead all cash transactions or do mortgage schemes exist there in some form?
Not not good. Means there is no money to be made in renting
Right, because of the government imposed price cap. The article covers that.
and less houses will be built because of
Where does this part of the idea come from? There's no price controls on buying or selling housing, therefor should be no negative impact on the market. Further, the price of homeowners buying housing should have been temporarily cheaper because landlords were unloading properties instead. Private home ownership is a really good solid foundation for an economy.
Unfortunately a healthy housing market is surprisingly a good thing. It's like when house prices collapse it's actually a bad thing because the reason that happened is worse than the result on the house prices (e.g. 2008). People look at the system far to simply, do not understand it and make the wrong judgements. It's the problem of a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing.
Because there is no value it building a house because there is no value in buying one.
Many many people have talked about the issues of price caps. It's been done to death. Go look up a podcast, YouTube video, book, seminar, webpage of your choosing and find out why rent caps are bad. They will do a better job of explaining it than me and you can consume the information in the way you want.
Personally I would like some big changes to be made. Easiest of which would be a land value tax which would increase homes and decrease prices. Or much more radical things like destroying parts of cities. Unfortunately I don't make those choices. So reading the information here is showing the opposite of what you think it does and in the system being used is good news.
Unfortunately a healthy housing market is surprisingly a good thing.
"Unfortunately" "a good thing". These two things don't seem to work together. Typo? ESL?
It’s like when house prices collapse it’s actually a bad thing because the reason that happened is worse than the result on the house prices (e.g. 2008).
If you're speaking about the USA in 2008 that's a bad example compared to Argentina here, yes? In the USA the collapse was lenders extending mortgages to buyers that had no chance of paying them back, yet selling those mortgages as though they were good investments.
Are you suggesting Argentina was experiencing a liquidity issue like the USA was, and if so, the imposition of price caps on just rentals, not ownership should have no effect on it unless you're saying the price caps on rentals perfectly overlaps with a liquidity crisis.
People look at the system far to simply, do not understand it and make the wrong judgements. It’s the problem of a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing.
You can use that throwaway line, but if you are making an argument, you have to defend it.
“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” (Christopher Hitchens).
Because there is not value it building a house because there is no value in buying one.
Again, we're talking about just rental caps, not home ownership. And again, the reason that landlords were selling was because of price caps on rents. People wanting to buy homes for housing (and not rent) should be in a fantastic position to purchase.
Many many people have talked about the issues if price caps. It’s been done to death. Go look up a podcast, YouTube video, book, seminar, webpage of your choosing and find out why rent caps are bad. They will do a better job of explaining it than me and you can consume the information in the way you want.
Are you even reading my posts? I am not advocating for rental price caps, I'm asking why when the price caps were imposed that home ownership did not go up from the landlords putting more homes on the market.
Personally I would like some big changes to be made. Easiest of which would be a land value tax which would increase homes and decrease prices. Or much more radical things like destroying parts of cities. Unfortunately I don’t make those choices. So reading the information here is showing the opposite of what you think it does.
The following is true as reported in the article: Rental units are disappearing from the market (which is what happened here with the imposition of price caps on rentals and landlords sold).
Where did all the renters go that no longer could rent because the landlords removed so many units from rental markets? They have to live somewhere. Where?
Was the rental market over saturated and even with so many landlords removing rental units there was still enough rental supply for 100% of renters?
Unfortunately for Lemmys a professor of economics knows more about the economy than they do. He is making the housing market healthier and they don't like that.
If you're speaking about the USA in 2008 that's a bad example compared to Argentina here, yes?
I was trying to show an obvious example of how decreasing house prices can be a bad thing. It's an similar example, it is not the same. I was hoping to show you how just because something on the surface appears to be good it can be bad.
You can use that throwaway line, but if you are making an argument, you have to defend it.
“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” (Christopher Hitchens).
What a horrific misuse of that quote. I'm talking about economy theory that has been well studied. Evolution doesn't need to be proved every time it is mentioned why does this? At this point you need to assert against general consensus.
Okay right. With price caps total homes, now and in the future for rentals added to ownership decrease. This can put pressure on prices to rise overall for rentals and for home ownership.
Where did all the renters go that no longer could rent because the landlords removed so many units from rental markets? They have to live somewhere. Where?
Parents, friends, the street, foreign countries some of them would have gotten a home certainly but not all. At this point you will really need to be digging into the data and things get complicated and hard to count exactly.
I see your confusion now. The market is not over saturated, that's the mistake you are making in your thinking. It's a supply and demand curve. More people would rent if it became cheaper when it becomes more expensive less people do. Frankly it is as simple as that. Less people get to live where and how they want as cheap as they would like that's why rent control is so awful. This effect can put a similar effect on home ownership. People that can, then buy when they don't want to at a price they aren't happy with in a location they don't want. Some people just can't afford to buy a house when they once could. It just fucks over the whole market and pretty much everyone is less happy.
You seem interested in it. Go investigate. No point arguing with some random guy on a forum, go look at some quality content.
Not all rentals will become purchased homes. From a people living in it point of view homes disappear off the market. The problem also gets worse and worst over time, assuming the population of the city is increasing.
I'm tired I'm come back later and re read everything and see if I need to explain anything better then.
I’m tired I’m come back later and re read everything and see if I need to explain anything better then.
No need. Read @Shardikprime 's explanation. I got the missing piece which explains it (and its not even close to anything you were talking about).
I got the answer to my original question of "why home ownership didn't increase when property values fell?".
Its this:
"Little problem is that mortgages have been absent in anything but paper so Argentines have not been able to acquire property or housing with ease since years ago"
.... and this....
"Last time mortgages were available, it was in 2017/2018."
Would-be home buyers couldn't get mortgages because banks wouldn't lend to anyone. Full stop.
You and I were trying to apply normal market conditions that exist in the USA. Instead I took the approach of asking how Argentinians house themselves and Shardikprime seems to have the regional knowledge both you and I were missing.
My English is not the best but I believe, given the weird way this was redacted, that are talking about what happened with the previous leftist government:
`The rules, introduced in 2020 by then-president Alberto Fernández, included a mandatory lease term of three years and a limit on rent to an average growth rate of the consumer price index and the wage index. This cap was set by the central bank.
Even before the new legislation came into force, the effect was significant. Unsure of how much and when they would be able to increase rents, landlords hiked their pieces to try and avoid being caught out.
Worsening the situation, 45pc of landlords decided to sell their properties in the wake of the announcement significantly reducing the amount of accommodation on offer and further pushing up prices.`
Because this did happen with the previous government when they instated the rent controls.
Now after Milei's deregulation, we have more rent offer than ever, which allowed for a market dinamic. People now can choose where to rent with in turns let's the prices lower as rentals have to compete with each other's
Purchases of homes are either done in cash (more rare) where the buyer owns the home entirely at the time of purchase, or they get a loan from a bank (a mortgage) usually spanning 15 or 30 years. If they are borrowing from a bank, then they must pay a portion of the loan and interest back monthly. This is the mortgage payment. At the end of the 15 or 30 years, the buyer owns the home entirely themselves and does not have to make a monthly payment on their home. I'm simplifying this a bit and ignoring that homeowners need to pay monthly insurance and taxes on their homes usually.
Those that either cannot afford to buy their home (or choose not to for other reasons) pay a monthly rent to the owner of the property (landlord).
Is this the same way people pay for their housing in Argentina, or does it work differently?
Most people here cannot save enough for a down payment for a house /department. So the only solution are mortgages. Little problem is that mortgages have been absent in anything but paper so Argentines have not been able to acquire property or housing with ease since years ago
Last time mortgages were available, it was in 2017/2018. After the currency devaluation that came on 2018/2019, banks, understandably, faced towards different ways of earning interest on their capital savings. Banks turned to high interest, high yield governmental bonds during the last 4 years, which was the way the leftist government found to capture all the extra pesos they were printing thrift the central bank daily to subsidize everything from food to services.
Little problem? The interest rates implied that the central bank had to pay even more pesos to the banks every time. So to avoid paying in an unpredictable bank run, they kept increasing the interest rate, therefore the banks would keep their money on the aforementioned bonds, the interest would increase, then to avoid an unpredictable bank run, the government would increase interest rates again and so on.
It was a literal trap.
But that explains why banks would not loan money for mortgages. Why would they if they had the government at their service printing money for them?
It's not for nothing that the arrival of Milei is so celebrated by the 57% voting population. They guy literally saved us from hyperinflation.
Now thanks to Milei, banks now have to work and earn their money through real lending, not just interest rates being hiked at the expense of the people
Little problem is that mortgages have been absent in anything but paper so Argentines have not been able to acquire property or housing with ease since years ago
Last time mortgages were available, it was in 2017/2018.
This is the major piece of information I was missing! Thank you!
So even with the price of housing for sale falling substantially (because of the rental price caps), unless a would-be home buyer had 100% of the cash to buy the home (which I imagine is very rare), then they simply couldn't get a loan (mortgage) at all. So they couldn't buy the, at the time, very cheap housing even if they wanted to.
That explains it very clearly. I appreciate the time you took to explain that. I also appreciate the rest of your explanation about the further actions of currency devaluation impacts, banks on investment in government bonds, and the impacts on the nation from having to pay interest on those bonds at the inflated yields. Thanks!
The drastic change in outlook for the country’s rental market adds further weight to arguments that even with the aim of reducing the burden on renters, rent caps often have the opposite effect.
Ah, not just populist, pro-landlord. Not shocking from the Barclays (or Barclay, I guess).
telegraph.co.uk
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