How do I create a social movement to change the world?

I don't have a direct answer to your question, but in thinking about these issues here's a quote I heard that has always resonated with me:

> When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

- Rabbi Israel Salanter (1809-1883)

I think you'd want to start by studying social movements that did change the world. Figure out what they did, how they got going, what problems they faced and how they overcame those problems. See if you can fit what you learn about past successes into your present context.

I also think you need to balance the pros and cons of online activism. The pros are, obviously, that you can spread a message cheaply and build communities. A major con is that it's easy for people to just do the online part. If people have some impulse to support your movement, and they can entirely satisfy that impulse by participating in a subreddit, you may find that all you accomplish is building a subreddit.

I have no advice or idea about how to balance the pros and cons, it just seems to me that there are pros and cons. A group that just complains about something is easier to create than a group that solves a problem. Maybe the complaining group is necessary to raise awareness - but maybe it is also a distraction.

Finally, I would think you would want to experiment and iterate. Both with your approach to organizing and with your actual solution. There is a benefit in starting small - easier to make changes and less consequences if you're wrong.

Hi Andrew, A bit different from usual HN fare, but here's a quick nerdy breakdown of how to build power / advocate / get laws changed.

You have an audacious, but specific goal. That's great!

You have at least one person who cares about the outcome of your campaign (you). That's good, you'll need more

1. You need a power map. https://commonslibrary.org/power-mapping/ is a good resource to get you started. Get together some mates, preferably ones who've interacted with the political process before (They'll be more likely to know the players) and start mapping. Once you've got a good power map, that's a good time to reflect: Does this campaign still seem achievable? Is there too much power in the top-left quadrant, and not enough in the top right / middle? Movements that lack a good 'center' of persuadable+influential actors generally fizzle out, so you might want to consider tailoring your campaign goal.

2. You need a theory of change. How do we get from here to there? https://www.thechangeagency.org/?s=theory+of+change is a good start. Don't lock in to a particular tactic too readily, and be prepared to iterate

3. You need power. This both informs and influences your theory of change. Is your power electoral, financial, social?

4. You need a logframe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_framework_approach How will you know if your campaign is working? What intermediate metrics of success can you identify that are both impactful and measurable?

There's a mountain of campaign theory and literature to read, but that's enough to get you started assessing if your campaign is a goer at all. Hope it helps

The orgs that succeed imho have a lot of direct outreach happening below the surface. They are building relationships across the sector, meeting with politicians, business people, subject matter experts etc etc.

You see a website and think, the website is doing the work, but it isn't. The organisers are working super hard, grinding away.

Your Reddit community might be a piece of the puzzle but just a small one.

There are many books on the theory of social change. Start reading. Your specific issue here (housing affordability) is at least defined in scope and on political parties radar. But you need to find out why they talk about it but never fix it.

The fastest way to achieve this change would be to make a vast fortune, and buy enough politicians to change the laws to reflect your own concept of how society should work.

The problem you may face next is the consequences of what you have done.

Where will all those investment funds that were destined for housing end up instead? What will be the effects of that shift?

Who will buy the politicians next, and what will they make them do?

So long as you are prepared to keep on making and spending new vast fortunes, you will always be able to right the wrongs you see in society by buying more politicians over and over again so that your view prevails. That's the inherent strength of a liberal democracy like Australia. It is robust and responsive to the wishes of the people.

I share your feels towards housing in aus. I've seen friends who are single mothers who left the city to try and claw out a better existence by moving to the country get priced out of their homes. One had rent go from 400 a week to >500 a week due to new owners jacking the price to cover their overextended mortgage.

They need to put some serious brakes on housing as a investment in aus. It's fucking our country. But fat luck telling half the country your about to make them feel judgement day for their shitty high risk low value house stock as it comes crashing back to reality.

Land Value Tax seems to be the sensible solution, but like sensible solutions to climate change, it'll probably take decades before people stop milking it for political drama.

Maybe if you can popularize that policy somehow you might speed things along. Do any of the smaller or regional political parties already support that?

Found this while googling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Tax_Review

Change the world? Literally no one knows.No one can provide a sufficient answer to the question.

But there is a necessary one. You have to start locally, you just have to try something. The part about it that's equally annoying and exciting is that you're not going to end up where you thought you would, but you will be able to look back and have done something -- and probably found some new set of problems or opportunities to tackle.

(Source: I started a STEM non-profit. That exploded into a ton of very different random and messy-but-good things that I'm a part of, but I don't do much of the STEM education part that I intended to, these days)

In Australia, the vast majority of people own their homes.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/home-owne...

There’s a very similar group to yours in Canada called /r/canadahousing. They made a lot of noise, but in the end were a flash in the pan movement that didn’t change anything.

Why? Because in Canada the vast majority of people own their homes. What you call a crisis was actually also massive middle class surge in wealth.

Basically if you want change here, you must address housing challenges in a way that doesn’t impact middle-class wealth.

It might be worth reviewing this essay from aaronsw: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/theoryofchange

Mainly because calls to action are often about whipping up passion about an issue, without often doing the work to identify the actions that would actually be productive.

I disagree with your prescriptions for a solution, and the pushback on them will be fairly intense from economists, politicians and many others. I could go into detail about the policies, but there are problems with them.

And anyway, there is a much better way of achieving your goals that will get support from almost everyone, which doesn't involve pushing an angry agenda uphill against entrenched interests. Start pushing for Georgism. There's a large amount of theory supporting this, here's a starting point for reading:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-...

Now, the reason that we in Australia can push for Georgism is that we already have Georgist taxes (local council rates), it's just that they are too weak to have a major effect on the market.

At the same time, councils are underfunded. Since councils do a bunch of things that everyone connects to, likes and relates to (garbage collection, libraries, parks, local roads and footpaths, etc.), it's actually quite easy to create a slogan "let's fund councils properly" that everyone can get behind. If that just happens to end housing as a financial investment in Australia, oh well, that's just an odd unexpected consequence, isn't it?

In particular, you have a large number of councils that will thouroughly support your message, amplify whatever you have to say, and probably let you have access to facilities for free for events.

Your policy objectives are basically going to be: increase funding for councils by letting them increase rates by 20% per year, with a corresponding decrease in (say) stamp duty until state governments no longer need to subsidise local councils.

Even if Georgism is incorrect, we would start seeing rent and real estate prices start declining (because council rates will make holding property less valuable). Mission accomplished.

(The fun starts when councils are fully self-funded, and you keep pushing for 20% increases: then you can start funding state and federal government from Georgist taxes. If Georgism is correct, this should have a variety of very positive effects.)

The haters are invested in your failure, their success depends on being able to gaslight the world to maintain status quo.

Whatever you do, don't ever fucking give up. Give them hell.

If you really want to change the world, your online community is just one piece of the puzzle. It has to drive actual action - for example, regulatory and policy change within your government, campaigns to contact politicians, etc. If something IRL does not follow from the online community, you end up just being a loud vocal online presence... and nothing changes.

By all means, start a community... but have a call to action to go with it.

The first thing that comes to mind is that "changing the world" is not usually a good goal.

This book

https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Out-Where-Want-Life/dp/162636...

has a pretty good explanation of why that's so, and I was recently reading this book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1890109533

which makes the same case for people who are interested in polyamory. In that case you've got to navigate something pretty complicated just to make the world better for some group of maybe 3..10 people and even though it's in the context of "broken institutions" you really have to attend to your immediate environment.

Solving this problem means providing a workable solution to the people in power, which in this case is homeowners. Can you find a solution which lets them keep their financial gains but also shifts the status quo? If not, they will fight you and win.

One wonky approach might be to introduce some form of government seizure over time, like a scaling progressive rule based on the quantity of property owned that is actually a forced sale to the local housing authority. So over a period the extra housing equity would be owned by the authority and redistributed, while the existing homeowner gets cash but not the property. This particular concept feels flawed but something which produces wins all around is easier to get moving.

As for building the movement, a crisp rallying cry and lines of communication to local stakeholders is key. You probably need to search around for the location with the right mixture of local activism and receptive leadership, in the same way that many startups benefit from specific locations.

The problem is hundreds of years old, Tolstoy wrote about it, he was an advocate for Georgism, and there’s also the board game monopoly. Has anyone succeeded anywhere at any time at making housing affordable for the plebs?

I'd say study how antiwork got started. When you get a lot of eyes on an idea real change can happen.

In the past, your whole community needed to feel that change was necessary otherwise people would just accept the current situation. I argue anti-vax wouldn't exist if there wasn't a meeting place for people with vaccine related anxiety to meet. That place is the internet. And we see how much of an impact it has had on vaccination rates.

Regarding housing issues, to me the solution is simple but untenable to most western cultures. Limit population growth to natural growth unless the vacancy rate of housing is 3% of existing supply. Unfortunately, this would require reducing immigration which would mean wages would need to rise for all workers.

The part I don't understand is how government don't see wage rises as a positive thing. Income taxes make up the vast majority of the tax base in western countries and yet the government seems focused solely on corporate interests. Any country that targets high levels of immigration during a housing crisis must be corrupt.

Unrelated, too afraid too ask. But regarding house prices. I think housing prices are just the way it is? Or I am just not understanding a few things.

More people want to live more in cities (due to access to society’s benefits and jobs) then housing prices will rise. This seems normal to me? I.e more people means more competition means price will rise.

If someone wants cheap house, they can just move far to the suburbs and work there or commute to the city.

Am I mistaken to think that there is no inherent problem in rising house prices? It is just the way it is and it happens everywhere even in 3rd world countries.

Not spam but weird, lengthy post here man. Why not write all this in a letter/blog post on your site and share it here instead of this page long post. Point ppl somewhere to read your idea and request for help.

Change the title of this post from generic ask HN, it's ridiculous. Should be like Ask HN: idea to create a movement for real estate rebellion in Australia.

I mean the generic bait ask HN titles are the worst. What is your actual topic and most of the time you should be searching other threads instead of attracting upvotes unnecessarily on this stuff.

this might be helpful: https://fullspectrumresistance.org/the-book/

The logic of the system means there is nothing surprising to what you see happening. The reasons for doing what is being done are the same as for doing what was done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_land_rights_in_Aust...

I am Australian. What you are trying is impossible in this country. The last time a political party announced some policies like restricting negative gearing in last election they lost the "unlosable" election. Your premise is actually wrong. People can buy and own a house in this huge country of Australia, just not easily in inner to middle ring suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Even that would be better as there is fuck ton of inheritance coming down the line in next 10-20 years.

Australians like backyards and outdoor and hate to live in appartments. I would say change your social movement to policies like encouraging "work from home" with better NBN, better transport and high speed rail to de-centralise work etc.

ALittleLight gives a good general answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29533866

Building and departing on that somewhat:

Do study what has worked, and what hasn't. Keep in mind that success may be based on chance, and negative examples also teach.

Keep in mind that there are many ways in which political movements fail (and a few that help them succeed). The study of failed utopian projects is highly illuminating. My view is that creating a self-perpetuating "intentional community" is a possible approach. For these to work, the community itself must be practically viable, and address basic levels of human needs: shelter (obviously), food, work, society, etc. In my view the college town is amongst the more successful of these in the past century or two, though that itself may be based on conditions no longer broadly present.

I strongly recommend Jo Freeman's "Tyranny of Structurelessness". https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I'd strongly recommend going to the communities most affected by the problem at hand and getting their perspective. I don't believe that those oppressed by a system always fully understand the nature of that system or the solution. I do feel that they can offer highly useful insights, and that if you hope to enlist their support they will want to be participants and not mere passengers.

The general problem is one called "politics". It turns out there's a literature on this stretching back millennia. Old dead men (mostly, there are some exceptions) have something to teach.

There are a number of reforms based around the question of real estate and property. There's an increasing amount of current focus on this. Shane Phillips of the UCLA Lewis Center strikes me as particularly good, his book is a set of recipes for reform you should find useful, The Affordable City (https://www.worldcat.org/title/affordable-city-strategies-fo... https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city). Simon Winchester's written on the question of land ownership recently, Land (https://www.worldcat.org/title/land-the-ownership-of-everyth...)

There are Henry George, Koprotkin, Tolstoy, and others.

I've written a Hierarchy of Failures in Problem Resolution which some have found useful. (Invert the cases to "success in..." and you find an essential success chain.) https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fsr0g/hierarc...

There are a number of especially critical points. Many people recognise that there is a problem, and even the nature of the problem. Trouble usually starts with goals and methods, the getting-there-from-here problem.

Often you'll find that progress is blocked by those who 1) deny that there is a problem, 2) aren't interested in solving it, or 3) benefit by the existence of the problem itself. Overcoming these factors is a major challenge.

There are parts of the world which have far less of a housing and real-estate problem than others. Berlin, Vienna, and Tokyo are often mentioned. Looking at how they've addressed the problem and avoided the trap is hugely useful.

A thought exercise I conduct (and would suggest in talking with those dealing with the issue) is what I call "More Money Than God". The point is NOT that you have unlimited resources, but to simply take the funding question off the table whilst options for action are considered. Walk through possible methods and practices without considering how you'd pay for them, for now, and think which would have the greatest positive impact. After doing that, start putting price tags on things. If nothing else, you'll have a list of options to present to participants and potential funders.

A tremendously underappreciated mechanism in property-based market economies is that much personal wealth accumulation comes not from creating wealth (in the sense that a society as a whole achieves greater capabilities) but in asset inflation. And real estate is amongst the fundamental assets. Appreciation of its value is not a creation of new wealth in itself, but an appropriation of wealth creation elsewhere, at best, and quite often a manipulation of others' misery, needs, or lack of options.

Recognising this doesn't make your task any easier, but it does make possible the recognition of the nature of the problem and sources of likely resistance.

A great essay addressing this is Bernhard J. Stern, "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", 1937. This covers several areas, housing amongst them.

https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag... (poor-quality scan)

Markdown: https://rentry.co/szi3g

The market itself is the source of many distortions. That said, finding a way to leverage it against itself might prove useful. I'm sort of stumped myself on how best to do this, but it is the direction I've been leaning toward myself.

Rather than eliminating property ownership, at least initially, changing its structure might be an option. Co-ops, land banks, and other forms of collective ownership might have merits. These are practiced in many areas, though mostly to a limited extent.

First, see how many people are affected. You need a relatively large percentage of affected people to change the world. Otherwise, most people don't care if they aren't affected.

Start at your local government, figure out what they can and can't do to help. Go to the next level, figure out what can and can't be done at that level. Keep going.

Have you read Game of Mates(https://gameofmates.com/)? It discusses crony capitalism in Australia and has some concrete policy recommendations.

If you're looking for other references on activism the Radical Book Club (https://status451.com/tag/radical-book-club/) series of blog posts has detailed book reviews and recommendations. It's targeted at right-wing readers but the advice applies regardless of your views.

I'm in Australia as well, and so I've seen this housing issue first hand. I have two ways of looking at this.

I am complete agreement with you btw, and I don't think your idea is that deeply radical. I've been saying this for years.

I'm not concerned. I don't own a house, I've never bought into the "everyone must own their home, it's the greatest investment possible" mentality. To all the people who say "but real estate has gone up 30% in the last year", that's fine. You can send your condolences to my crypto account (or stocks which are also up more than 30%).

If you look at the people who REALLY did change the world, was it really those who created a social movement? There were a few, Nelson Mandella, Gahndi, etc. But you can also look at those who provided an alternative, or a new way of looking at the world. Of course, our current hero in this realm is Elon Musk, he didn't lobby to put a cap on fossil fuels, he built a solution.

Millennials are purchasing houses at a lower rate than any time before in history, AND people are becoming more mobile (well, before the pandemic anyway). With population collapse, will housing continue to be a good investment over the next 50 years?

I personally believe the real estate as investment will decrease in popularity. Why? Because you can't really sell just part of your house, I can sell a bit of stocks if I want to go on a trip, or buy a new car or something. If all my money is in my house, I have to sell the whole thing. I can only sell it to somebody who wants to buy the whole thing, and that person either wants to live in it, or wants to rent it out. My house is of less value to somebody in Italy (as an example) than it is to someone in Australia. With most other investments, it doesn't matter where geographically the person is, it's the same value. Lastly, a house, has upkeep, taxes, maintenance, and the design goes out of style and needs to be updated.

So, I'd suggest that rather than try to lobby to change society or create a "social movement", you figure out a) what you can do for yourself to improve your investment position without real estate, b) how you can help improve the lives of others.

Some people have said to me that housing in Australia will always be valuable, because as the population shrinks, immigration will just let more people in, but I believe this is also a flawed argument as it ignores the improvements to quality of life that are happening in the places that would normally be the source of immigration, and the fact that these countries will also likely see decreased birth rates as they continue to develop.

Get children to school strike for housing every Friday?

Will you still feel the same when you can afford a house? Is this about you because you can't afford a home or a cause you're willing to spend every dime you own to support?

We must cultivate our garden.

Write a book.

You can't. Any change is ultimately a wash.

The social movement you want is called marxism - a highly efficient framework to use a divide a society to your benefit. In your case, it's the divide between those who have homes and those who don't.