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It’s really astonishing how most of the British economy is just a real estate scam.
And of course, being the UK, there’s a television series the charmingly exploits the brutality and misery to those left out this system, and of course it’s called “Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away”. We follow bailiffs around the UK, and see the tenants journey in the court system.
It’s a story of pure rent-seeking predatory behaviour by landlords, developed, lawyers and usurious bankers and no civilised country would allow. In fact, a lot of what happens here is illegal in many other European countries.
Capital far more sway here. The rules are written by capital and the police are their willing enforcers. They re written entirely to screw over tenants, so that everyone involved can extract their pound of flesh from them, regardless of whether they end up on the street or not.
Not to mention that in London, where it’s arguably worst, it has made the city barely liveable even for the very privileged liked me. Exorbitant rents also ruin nightlife and food and entertainment culture. Everything has changed here in the last 10-20 I’m told.
It’s qualitative more unequal and oppressive than other cities. Everything in London feels like it’s just the attendant infrastructure for international finance’s busy laundering and intermediating of Russian and Chinese capital flows.
It’s an entirely extractive industry and Britain would be off without it. A technologically developed country in the 21th century should not have its economy rely on shitty service jobs and pushing around finite bits of real estate. It’s entirely a political choice to have be so.
Postscript: here's the publicity shot for "Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away!", marketed as “Britain’s favourite high court enforcement agents”.
