The government's cultural heritage sale – a scandal in several acts
Protest against the sale and against the corruption-ridden appointment of Svenonius! Imagine that the state starts selling off our historic castles, churches and other cultural buildings to private parties – and the buyers happen to be friends of those in power. It sounds like a bad detective story, but it is reality. Now a big sale is being planned of 37 heritage properties, a maneuver that not only threatens our common heritage but also smacks of high-level corruption.
Svenonius and the scandal
To administer the sale, Former Moderate Party regional councilor Irene Svenonius suddenly as Director General of the Swedish Real Estate Board (SFV) – without any open recruitment. Svenonius, who has already been criticized for having destroyed Stockholm's healthcare system through privatization, is now responsible for selling our cultural heritage to friends in the business community.
The “economic necessity” scam
The sale is justified by the fact that SFV needs money to maintain other properties. But the state has want to lack of money. Sweden has a fiat currency, which means that we create our own money and do not have to sell off priceless cultural heritage to finance renovations. Instead, it is about a ideological sellout, where public property is privatized to enrich an economic elite.
What happens when cultural heritage is privatized?
When historic buildings fall into private hands, democratic control disappears. Suddenly, entrance fees can be introduced, properties can be exploited, and public space can shrink. We risk a situation where a small clique of the ultra-rich have free access to our common heritage, while the public has to stand outside and look in through bars.
Selling out our cultural heritage is a scandal – and Svenonius' appointment only makes it even more obvious that this is a politically rigged affair. The only question is: How long are we going to accept that our common cultural heritage is randomly given away to the already rich?
#corruption #cultural heritage #sellout
Still, it must be emphasized that the state cannot manufacture as much money as it wants. There should be a relationship between money and the real world. You can make money to facilitate the economic cycle, but not to increase assets; money is not an asset at all if there are no real values there to back it up.
And the question is, can cultural heritage be this if it cannot be sold, i.e. has no monetary value? In that case, it must be paid for by taxes, directly or indirectly.
Then of course Svenonius is an idiot who should not be allowed to take care of common values, read for example Zaremba's total slander on https://www.dn.se/kultur/maciej-zaremba-nej-basta-irene-svenonius-sjukvarden-ar-ingen-bilaffar/
Property management is a form of production that can generate money.
Yes, but you didn't get that, you mean. You can certainly rent out the buildings, but it's obviously difficult to make ends meet. And the money for maintenance has to come from somewhere.
So I find it difficult to see that anything other than other activities in society can pay for this, i.e. taxation. Even if the state produces earmarked money, it will be other activities that actually pay, i.e. pay in terms of goods and services.
And maybe that's okay. If we think we should have these buildings, isn't it only right that we pay for them?
For me, you get it, but it's austerity policy. I think that the need for restoration releases the buildings' intrinsic value. Then the excessive profits in today's society show that you can have a surplus of money without inflation. But a certain tax on the richest wouldn't have been stupid.
We have fantastic inflation, even though it is so-called asset inflation. Real estate and shares are only going up in price.
Possibly creating money to invest in public properties would stimulate asset inflation, I don't know, it probably depends on a lot of other things too.
But I mean this: money is just a symbol. If you can't buy and sell them, they are worthless. Now you obviously mean that the Swedish Property Agency should buy what it needs with fresh money, i.e. be allocated what it needs to buy for free. And ok, that's fine. But that just means that these things can't go to anyone else. i.e. that "someone else" pays. For me it's hard to see how that differs from taxation.
Then it is a completely different matter that you can distribute that taxation to a targeted target group, e.g. to equalize the assets in society, or to discourage a certain type of consumption. But that has little to do with state-owned properties...
Technically, every state budget krona is created. Taxes paid to the state cease to exist.
But as long as there is a sufficiently high tax on the richest and there is spare production capacity in society, it is often still possible to increase money creation for the management or repair of cultural heritage.
Then if the private sector were to take over cultural heritage, the same objects would probably be sold off time and time again to create speculative profits. This is then private loan-financed speculation which is a much higher risk financially.
Incidentally, production should not only be seen as productive in terms of what can be purchased for goods and money, but also consumption and real needs. Real needs can be long-term placement in homes for the long-term sick. The business does not produce much, but the employees still need a salary.
What we want to be able to buy with our money is only indirect production, the direct thing we want to be able to buy is the satisfaction of our real needs. This includes ensuring that cultural heritage is not unnecessarily privatized.
True. Taxes are there to prevent the inflation that a corresponding government expenditure creates.
But more money in the system without there being more to buy with the money only means that whoever gets the extra money can seize what “someone else” would have seized otherwise. That is, a kind of tax. Possibly with a certain inflationary effect.
Unless there is a reason to spread money around to increase purchasing power, of course.
One possibility would of course be to distribute government money while prohibiting banks from lending money they don't have. But that is perhaps another issue that has nothing directly to do with the Swedish Property Agency.