No Vacancies: Squatters Move In

[badtoworse]

62. As a country, we have existed for well over 200 years with strong property rights

The big problem I have with your position is that once the right to retain your own property ceases to exist under some circumstances, you can't be sure that those circumstances won't keep expanding. Banks have a lot to answer for, but allowing their rights to be taken away puts everyone's rights at risk. If you accept the premise that it's OK to squat in someone's house because they're not occupying it, how do you defend against the argument that no one needs more than X in terms of money and other resources to survive, so let's just take the excess and use it for some better purpose? Now that we've done that, X doesn't really need to be all that large, so let's cut it in half. In a few decades, private property as we know it would be gone. It's called incementalism and the way you stop it is by not letting it get any traction, especially in the beginning.

In another post, you suggested I'm a freeper because of my position on this and I guess you think I'm just trying to defend the banks. The truth is that I'm worried about my own civil rights, yours and everyone else's. I'm a strong believer in guarding ALL of our civil rights, because once they're gone or weakened, they never come back. We have a desperate need for affordable housing and I'm all for finding a legitimate way to make foreclosed and abandoned homes available to people who need it, but I'm not willing to trash our 5th Amendment rights to do it.