door100

unlike the US, where working conditions for the poor are fantastic?

Don't get me wrong, France (and the EU) has its share of problems. But "better protections for their workers" is not one of them. EU countries decided to use a small portion of their enormous wealth building a safety net and decent worker protections. The US does this to a much lesser degree, preferring instead to center corporate profits and the wealthy.

Even if all of these were true (I would describe most of them as a mischaracterization at best), do you honestly think that outweighs everything that I described? The worst thing that people can say about unions is they are bureaucratic and inconvenient. The worst things people can say about, say, working conditions in many non-unionized American workplaces are far, far worse. People dying, unfairly losing their job (and healthcare, and home), working incredibly long hours, unable to see their kid, unable to get adequate sleep, etc etc etc. I happen to think there are values other than "workers producing profit for their employers as efficiently as possible at the expense of anything else"

The horrors of... a 35 hour workweek, 5 weeks paid vacation, 16 weeks paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, and no at-will employment?

> unintended consequence is that it also facilitates exploitation of software developers by big corporations who from the perspective of FSF are just users as regular people.

Sure, but rms has nothing but pure comtempt for every big corporation and their approach to software. The only difference is the FSF doesn't have influence over big tech the way it does over hobbyists. This isn't a condemnation of the FSF, but of its marginal position. An alternative perspective is that the principles of the FSF are good, and should be enshrined in law and regulation, much like other freedoms are. We shouldn't make FOSS software less free, we should make big tech software more free.

What are you talking about? Chavez and the PSUV came to power in a democratic election in 1998.

> Cuba has been under sanctions for over 50 years.

I'm not sure what your point here is -- the sanctions have been extremely damaging to Cuba as well and are also immoral acts of US imperialism

I mean sure, if the "failed policies" are opposing US imperialism in Latin America, inviting a huge backlash of sanctions, several US-sponsored coups, etc.

The US can't do economic sanctions against itself like it did to Venezuela.

There’s nothing wrong with renting, I support strong, high quality, inexpensive public housing. I don’t support private landlords and the commodification of housing.

What kind of housing someone can afford is a political question. Our current answer to it is that this should be resolved through market mechanisms, which creates high prices alongside scarcity

Property management is work. Owning property is not. For small scale landlords, this is often the same person, and they may do a lot of property management.

> depicted as mostly working class.

What "working class" person owns investment property in NYC? They amount of capital required to do that is so enormous that the article calling them "working class" is deeply misleading. They certainly aren't working class in the way that most NYC tenants are.

I believe in a world in which housing is a public good and a human right, so that no one would have to rent from anyone else in order to have access to housing. In this world, housing would cease to be a profitable investment vehicle, and thus landlordism would no longer exist.

Could I "enter in a contract" to lease "land that I own" in a national park? No, because national parks are a public good that everyone shares in their ownership and right to access. Housing should be the same way.

I don't care about "enforcing contracts" as an abstract concept. If a contract is unjust, there is no reason it should be enforced. A contract that forces someone to pay $X a month or face homelessness during a huge economic crisis is not a just contract.