It sometimes feels as if I have little company when it comes to being idealistic about how society should work and function. This comes most recently from a friendly discussion with a co-worker where we compared notes on our thoughts on home value appreciation. He was generally happy because his home has gone up in value (along with everyone else's).

I guess I'm kind of down on this because I spent a bit too much time worrying about how hard it would be to buy our first home and it just seemed unfair. Chiefly, my criticism of the home market is that it is just another case of the haves and the have-nots. So it's kind of a social justice argument.

I am noticing that as soon as you start talking about social justice, People are perfectly happy to knock you off of that horse at any chance that they get. Maybe I deserve it. It is really hard to reconcile talking about social justice in one breath and then about eating out in the next. I never really thought of eating out as a luxury but I guess it is. Still.. I felt like I was being called a hypocrite and I didn't like it. I don't think you need to live like a pauper to care sincerely about people who have it rougher than you.

I have many reasons for not liking the housing racket:

• One - it's not liquid as an investment -- if I want to cash in on my equity I would have to sell the house and move into something smaller or move out of the area or rent.
• Two - it's too hard for too many of our brothers to get into the housing market.
• Three - appreciation seems to broaden inequality between homeowners and renters (assuming that those homeowners can find some way to cash in on their equity).

Everyone seems to go gaga over their home appreciation but in the end, I don't feel any richer for owning a home that has inflated in value since I bought it. (It's usually after a sentence like that that a person will nail me to the wall for talking about social justice and talking about being rich.) I don't want to be rich. I just want to be financially secure. I want this for all people.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing this. Maybe I should just do what everyone else does and say "this isn't a problem that I can solve - I'm just one person". But what would that accomplish? We would all still be in the middle ages under the rule of some despot if people never thought about how we could make things better. (Unfortunately, I've only gotten to the stage where I'm analysing problems with the current system. It's hard to move onward to the next step of postulating possible improvements).

As for how society currently works and functions, I find it patently absurd that human beings have to pay to live on earth. In the beginning it didn't belong to anyone. Maybe I am viewing this the wrong way... that capitalism is just a way of making sure that all human beings do our due part in terms of working to help society along so that we have adequate production of food and shelter.

But that doesn't explain why a small percentage of the population has so very much more than the rest. It is in that understanding that I consider the fact that I have to work almost all the years of my life to pay for a house to be a form of indentured servitude. I am pretty darn close to alone when it comes to this particular belief I think.

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