So I stumbled upon the website for an organization called The Capitalism Institute. I clicked on their What is Capitalism?link and found that, clearly, they have a different interpretation of the term from what is traditionally meant.
Their definition of Capitalism:
"Capitalism is an economic and political system that is based on protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. By extension, this means enforcing contracts and banning all fraud."
It's clearly just another far-right, libertarian group, probably funded by the same guys who fund liberty works and so on, but I'd never really heard it put this way. In a way this obnoxiously ignorant rhetorical definition, and the rest of the rhetoric on that page, help me to understand why there are all these capitalist crusaders out there; they've been made to believe that Capitalism is, first and foremost, about preserving liberty, which is a patent absurdity.
Anyway, just curious what people's thoughts were.
Anyway, just curious what people's thoughts were.
I'm way too stoned to do much more than Plug a Book that Comrade Samnell initially recommended to me, but, yeah, pretty much.
Essentially, the definition of American freedom has changed, like, six or seven times since the country was founded, but the tying of freedom almost exclusively to property rights is a pretty basic tenet of a scary-sized swath of neoliberal thinking for a scary-sized amount of time now.
Says the Bolshevik-Leninist.
"The opposite of poverty is not wealth... In too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice." - Bryan Stevenson
If you believe in amassing a lot of wealth then you can use some of it to convince people you're right.
That should be fox news' slogan.
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A miserable pile of debts. :P
I think one reason for the conflation of capitalism and liberty was the repetitive hammering home of the idea that the US, as a capitalist nation, was the bastion of freedom in opposition to the communist bloc. Through it's continuous use as a propaganda tool and national identity aid, it morphed in the minds of many Americans from a free market economic system into a description of a way of life.
Even now when I read articles on China, even in magazines that should know better, they talk about increasing capitalist ideology as though it's a sign that the Chinese people are becoming free of government oppression. Never mind that saying an ill word about the ruling party or reminding anyone of Tiananmen might cause one to disappear overnight, or that they have no say in the laws that govern them. They're able to make money, that's what counts.
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{looks at comments above, hastily scribes a and runes for } They'll be here any moment now...
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Capitalism in no way equates to protection of freedom. It defines the matter of ownership and role of capital. It seems to be typical social manipulation by trying to assign false meaning to a term.
Capitalism: The most effective currently known technique of ensuring the longevity of the plutocracy. Like the lottery, it promises that if you 'contribute', it may [sic] be rewarded [sic] eventually [sic]...
An economic system where success of the individual is predicated on 'work' that contributes to the continued success of the plutocracy (even if that work involves not so much solving oil dependence or world hunger or world peace and more... marketing honey boo boo to the entertainment starved masses who are too tired to press the mute button during the commercials...)
Success of the system itself is predicated on 'hope, growth, or hope of growth'
Ultimately, capitalism is about the idea that your wealth and possessions are just that - yours. They do not belong to the state and therefore, the state has limited say in what you can and cannot do with them,
Nope.
That doesn't even distinguish capitalism from feudalism, which it replaced.
The only losers in a Capitalist system are the lazy. There is a reason that the USA is one of the youngest countries in the world, but has one of the oldest constitutions.
There is a reason why LEGAL immigrants flock here. With often little education but a lot of hard work they surpass the natives.
In ANY system, there are winners and losers. There are rich and poor. The only difference is with Capitalism at least everyone gets a shot at the top. Every other systems PICKS winners and losers, where in Capitalism the winners and losers are picked by the masses.
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Capitalism, like communism, is not a political system. Please stop defining it as one.
Corporations aren't just businesses, and existed for centuries before Capitalism as we know it.
Furthermore, property rights exist in non Capitalist systems.
When did becoming a successful businessman/woman become something to be attacked for?
Capitalism is a system of VOLUNTARY transactions. THAT is what makes it superior to any other system, and what makes it the PINNACLE of freedom.
The only losers in a Capitalist system are the lazy.
And the poor, sick, tired, hungry, and unlucky.
Kind of hard to to overcome a meteor to your house out of the sheer AWESOME! of you.
With often little education but a lot of hard work they surpass the natives.
Their kids might. Do we have any former fruit pickers on the forbes 500?
In ANY system, there are winners and losers. There are rich and poor. The only difference is with Capitalism at least everyone gets a shot at the top.
True. But some people have bazookas, and some have spitballs.
When did becoming a successful businessman/woman become something to be attacked for?
Capitalism is a system of VOLUNTARY transactions. THAT is what makes it superior to any other system, and what makes it the PINNACLE of freedom.
When? When that success was made on the backs of others. Which was about five minutes after the invention of capitalism. (Before that it was mostly the same people under previous systems.)
Early industrial age sweatshops? Robber barons? Company towns? The PINNACLE of freedom?
Let me ask you a simple question. As opposed to what??
Yes, the PINNACLE of freedom. Everyone in the USA works voluntarily. By choice. Freedom of choice. In the absence of those evil robber barons, how would those thousands of employees had made their daily bread? Did those robber barons FORCE their employees to work for them?
Robber barons?? Their wealth and industry allowed for MILLIONS of people to transport goods across the country for a FRACTION of the cost and time it did previously. Because of their greed, millions of people benefited for decades.
When did becoming a successful businessman/woman become something to be attacked for?
When enough successful businesspeople did immoral stuff to be successful that it became a stereotype for businesspeople to be considered immoral.
Capitalism is a system of VOLUNTARY transactions. THAT is what makes it superior to any other system, and what makes it the PINNACLE of freedom.
Work for me or starve! isn't particularly free when every other employer has the same policy.
Robber barons?? Their wealth and industry allowed for MILLIONS of people to transport goods across the country for a FRACTION of the cost and time it did previously. Because of their greed, millions of people benefited for decades.
Um YES they were forced to work. At gunpoint. Frequently. Holy crap your ignorance of labor history is astonishing.
Gobbo, tell this guy...
And the poor, sick, tired, hungry, and unlucky.Kind of hard to to overcome a meteor to your house out of the sheer AWESOME! of you.
You're absolutely right, and I wasn't be thorough. The sick, hungry and unlucky do indeed have it rough. But they have it rough in any system. Socialism aims to bring the poor up, but in practice it brings almost everyone else down to a mediocre existence.
Also you seem to be starting the story in the middle. Poverty and hunger are not predestined or fixed. I am ok with social safety nets and social programs to help the TRULY needy, but the problems with these programs are enormous.
Look at the entitlement mindset our society has so vigorously embraced.
Generational welfare has destroyed countless families, despite welfare's good intentions. There is a fine line between helping the needy and incentivizing laziness and entitlement.
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Work for me or starve! isn't particularly free when every other employer has the same policy.
And the reason its also a political system is because (as usual no matter which economic system is in place) it's reached the stages where it isn't
'Work for me or starve'It's 'Work just about anywhere *and* starve... you lucky guy you.'
Then use charity and tax code to shore up this growing discrepancy in 'workability to payability to livability' (which could still totally work forever either way except when, as usual, no matter what political or economic systm is in place:). Suddenly the rich are complaining that it costs too much in paychecks or taxes to government welfare programs to keep feeding these darn slaves. Why cant all these lazy 2 jobs and going to school welfare moms just stop flipping so many fast food burgers for each other and get a real job. (blame slaves)
Because the tax code won't let anybody give them a real job. (blame slave owners)
Circular logic is circular.
You're absolutely right, and I wasn't be thorough. The sick, hungry and unlucky do indeed have it rough. But they have it rough in any system. Socialism aims to bring the poor up, but in practice it brings almost everyone else down to a mediocre existence.
Europe has a higher standard of living and more socialism than the us. So it seems to me that socialism, like most other things, are good with the RIGHT amount of it.
Also you seem to be starting the story in the middle. Poverty and hunger are not predestined or fixed.
Not permanently fixed but extremely correlated. Our only two options are not 100% free will or 100% determination. Its incredibly hard to rationally deny the obvious fact that an awful lot of the rich did NOT get there by their own merits, and that the poor keep having poor kids... and yet economics are not inherited.
Look at the entitlement mindset our society has so vigorously embraced.
I would if i knew exactly what that was. The term gets tossed around like.. well.. socialism as a curse and a by word for anything but laisez faire capitalism.
These people think they're entitled to the pensions... that they.. well.. paid for.
What, you think you're entitled to that pizza just because you handed me money? Spoiled brat...
Generational welfare has destroyed countless families, despite welfare's good intentions. There is a fine line between helping the needy and incentivizing laziness and entitlement.
As bad as it is, its still better than what we had before.
As bad as it is, its still better than what we had before.
Exactly right. And if the rich powerful folks who are steering this ship want it to keep being the best rightest system and want to keep being the winners and deciders, they're gonna have to make sure to keep it being better than what we had *before* (or we'll go back to what came before) but it also has to be better than whatever comes *after* as well...
Surprising how much of this list sounds so currently relevant
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Bigger, Longer Plug for Foner
The Rebirth of Conservatism
"I am still puzzled," Friedrich A. Hayek wrote in 1956, that conservatives in the United States had allowed "the left" to control the definition of liberty, "this almost indisputable term." During the 1950s, a group of conservative thinkers began the task of reclaiming the idea of freedom. Although largely ignored outside their own immediate circle, they articulated the major strands that would dominate conservative thought to the turn of the century. One was antistatism, an outlook, rooted in classical liberalism, which had been given new political life in conservatives' bitter reaction against the New Deal and new intellectual legitimacy in Hayek's own writings. Freedom, in this view, meant decentralized political power, limited government, and a free market economy--an argument promoted in the journal The Freeman, which began publication in 1950, and in the writings of neoclassical economists like Milton Friedman. In some ways, this critique echoed common laments of the 1950s about the decline of individual autonomy in a mass society. At a 1956 conference on "The Problem of Man's Freedom," John Dos Passos, the radical Depression-era novelist turned conservative ideologue, called for a "reapplication of the vocabulary of freedom" to criticize assembly-line production and social conformism, as well as intrusive government.
What set these "libertarian" conservatives apart from other social critics, however, was their equation of individual freedom with unregulated capitalism. At the 1956 conference, Friedman insisted that conservatives must stop apologizing for capitalism and emphasize instead that a free market is the necessary foundation for individual freedom. In 1962, the year that witnessed the appearance of Michael Harrington's The Other America and the Port Huron Statement, Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom, no less uncompromising a critique of mainstream liberalism. Echoing Hayek, Friedman insisted that an unregulated marketplace was the truest "expression of freedom," since competition "gives people what they want," rather than what government planners or regulators think they ought to have. But carrying his argument far beyond his mentor and other critics of economic planning, Friedman called for the privatiziation of virtually all government functions, down to national parks, and the abrogation of minimum wage laws, the graduated income tax, and the Social Security system.
So, nothing particularly new, but, yeah this stuff's been out pushing 60. Before that, there was the Freedom of Contract school and, before that, the Social Darwinism crowd.
The actual part of the book that blew my mind was his claim that the Bill of Rights didn't really become important or particularly emphasized in American civics classes until its 150th anniversary in 1940whatever. For example, while Congress was forbidden to make laws regarding freedom of speech and religion, local state governments were under no such restrictions and that what most of us mistakenly believe as freedoms sanctified by the Constitution were mostly won by anarcho-syndicalists and birth control advocates in the 1910s and 20s and then codified by Justice Brandeis.
Fun stuff.
Here's something that me reach an epiphany: I actually read "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.
Then I look at the system we have now. I came to realize the United States is no longer capitalist. Maybe a new word like corporatist might fit more appropriately, but not capitalist.
Adam Smith's vision was more like what we call a local farmer's market. You have local producers and sole proprietors directly competing with each other in a local market. Adam Smith hated the idea of corporations.
"Adam Smith is very rarely read. He's worshipped, but not read..."
I've never read him, so I hesitate to speak, but I've gotten the feeling over the years that he's gotten a bum rap.
Rather than attempt to explicate why and expose my own ignorance, I'll just post a link to Professor Noam.
lets make one thing perfectly clear. We do not now, nor ever have been under, a capitalist system.
The US system is rife with crony-capitalism(which is in itself a misnomer), over regulation via congressional interference and the federal reserve meddles with money in profound, grossly powerful ways.
BigNorse: "Europe has a higher standard of living and more socialism than the us. So it seems to me that socialism, like most other things, are good with the RIGHT amount of it."
Europe has regular amounts of unemployment in the double digits. Virtually every country in the EU is far beyond bankrupt. Like the US, they have unsustainable debt and spending patterns. In our lifetime you will see the folly of this, mark my words.
BigNorse: "As bad as it is, its still better than what we had before."
Couldn't disagree more. Never in the history of the world have more people had access to clean water, heat/cooling, more regular amounts of food. The standard of living has never been higher. The average poor person in the US has clean running water, a television, electricity, and food in the fridge. There is nothing comparable to this in all of history.
Capitalism does work on the smallest most immediate scale and on the scale of wants vs needs, but the larger the scale, the less immediate the scale, and the more the question is about needs instead of wants, the less well it works (or seems to be working right now).
An apple right now is a want. If 5 guys in front of you have apples,
One guy has cheap apples but they look horrible
Another guy has great apples but the cost a fortune
You find the middle ground and vote with your dollar
Even if that vote is 'I don't want an apple that badly today.
The decision is clear, immediate, and a want.
If you're planning to get apples at the grocery store you have to develop a knowledge over time of which store has the best price on the best apples, and that store might be overcharging you for other groceries you might need as well. You pay the convenience price of choosing not the best quality apple for the price, but the best overall 'groceries as a whole' for the price, eliminating an abject need for quality on an item by item basis. Sacrifice quality for convenience so you don't have to browse all 3 stores and then reshop at each store once you know which ones have the best prices for each item on your list. The decision is no longer as clear, and no longer as immediate.
Clearly when you go buy a car you have a huge range of choices and you're forced to shop around a lot if you want to even *hope* to get a decent deal. Even then you have to *fight* and *work* for that deal so the onus to provide that deal isn't so much a responsibility of the person selling you the car as it is your responsibility to fight for a good deal. And your power to fight for that good deal is offset by the lack of clearness and immediateness, and by the fact that the car is still regarded more as a want than as a need even today.
When it's time to put a roof over your head so you don't freeze to death or have your property stolen while you sleep, clearly we're getting into a more 'need' area so you'd expect teh prices to be more competitive. Instead the prices are even higher. Sure you could buy a nicer house or a bigger house if you can afford the part of buying a roof over your head that isn't the need part. 'Freedom of choice and a free market' is still relevant if you can afford more than a 12x12 studio apartment in a slum. Instead it's still common to find a single bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood going for 3/4 of what you can make in a month... Because even the cheapest slummiest apartment in the worst neighborhood knows you *need* the roof. It matters even less if the choice is clear or immediate where you can go online and shop for the best deal. Even being able to do that you still find that the best deal is twice as expensive as it should be because you *need* it.
Of course you're as free as you were not to buy or rent a roof as you were to not buy that apple. If you wanted to keep your healthcare and your healthcare was 'free because it was no healthcare' obviously that promise didn't come true... You're still totally free to not have a roof over your head unless you're planning on setting up a tent downtown...
And when the roof and the food you can afford are no longer 'luxury quality' despite your 70 hour work week, either charity or the government steps in to help you. But if the government steps in to help you they're using taxes they took from the folks who through their efforts somehow were able to find a better paycheck or a better deal or a better way to make money than you. Their willingness to be charitable enough or taxed enough (which some refer to as 'charitable against their will') to take care of you can keep the capitalist system afloat indefinitely... But the moment when they decide they don't want to
to take care of you and yours, then the system starts collapsing. You're totally free not to take that minimum wage job.
Money is being made, but money isn't being spent. It's not the poor people that are saving the money thats being made though. They're spending as much as they make and not saving a dime and even then a huge chunk of them are spending more than they make by spending what they get from charities and government assistance. Because thats the *cost* of them to be. Thats the prices of everything around us. The prices set by those that have what you want or need aren't coming down just because there's more of you that want or need what they have. The fact that you want or need and the fact that there are many more of you that need it than every before makes those things *more* expensive. The incentive is supposed to be that they have to have paid for the roof at some point so either they're just sitting on a roof they don't need or they have to sell it for a loss? Nobody will ever sell it for a loss. If they own it they will rent it. They will sit on it... Forever. They didn't buy it to be charitable.. They bought it for capitalism!!! As I said above... They bought it for Hope! Growth! and Hope for Growth! Of their wallets. At your expense. Free market capitalism... The PINNACLE.
Supply and demand only works as long as they have a supply of what you demand... But if all you have is demands and they have the supplies but won't ever provide them at a cost anyone can afford... What kind of economic system is that? I think everyone can agree that if the only cars you could buy were ferraris we'd all be a lot happier until we discovered that the price of ferraris was never coming down and if you couldn't afford a ferrari you were walking.
When the freedom of choice in free market capitalism no longer freedom to choose the best item for your money and instead is freedom to choose to go without even what you need because you so po'... Thats when capitalism stops working. I don't want an apple that badly today is a perfectly fine system... I don't want a roof that badly today is not a fine system. I don't want any roof or food for two weeks and I couldn't have them even if I wanted them... I could have them but I need to be working or on my way to or from working every waking hour of my existance to get them... I don't want a minimum wage job that badly today... or the apples... or the roof... There's a serious problem brewin.
I totally support capitalism, back when it meant a guy could put in 40 hours a week and in doing so could have the food, the car, the roof, the family, and could still save for his kids college education and save for his own retirement. That ain't the kinda capitalism we got runnin anymore. And Fabius Maximus is right. It's not a political system that screwed it up. It's not the economic system that screwed it up. Its the same thing that screwed up every political or economic system that came before it... Greed and Corruption.
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I don't necessarily disagree, but another long quotation because I don't have much to do this Friday evening (I'm just happy I don't have to work every Saturday in December):
So central has freedom of expression become to Americans' understanding of liberty that it is difficult to recall how fragile were its legal defenses in the early twentieth century. As a practical matter, one scholar has written "no genuinely effective, legally enforceable right to freedom of speech" existed in the United States before the 1920s. Free speech claims rarely came to court, and when they did, judges generally allowed authorities wide latitude in determining which speech had a "bad tendency" and therefore could be suppressed. The only prewar [World War I] organization devoted to the defense of civil liberties was the tiny Free Speech League, founded in 1902 by the era's leading scholarly commentator on the subject, Theodore Schroeder. Convinced that absolute freedom of speech was a necessary complement to individual autonomy in all realms of life, Schroeder avidly defended the right to free expression across the political spectrum, but won few legal victories. When Zechariah Chaffee, Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote his landmark study Freedom of Speech, published in 1920, he searched the judicial record in vain for a tradition of free speech jurisprudence.
Vigorous public debate, of course, was a longstanding feature of democratic politics. But it coexisted with stringent restrictions on speech deemed radical or obscene. Nor was the First Amendment yet regarded as the cornerstone of American freedom. The fiftieth anniversary and centennial (in 1841 and 1891) of the Bill of Rights passed virtually unremarked. Until the Supreme Court in the twentieth century began to "incorporate" the Bill of Rights (that is, require the states to abide by its provisions), it had little bearing on the lives of most Americans.
Between 1900 and 1915, more free speech cases were brought to court than in the previous century. The litigants included advertisers seeking to avoid government regulation and the fledgling motion picture industry demanding an end to local censorship. But it was the struggle of workers for the right to strike, of socialists and labor radicals against restraints on open-air speaking, and of cultural modernists and feminists for an end to the broad regulation of "obscenity" [how they used to suppress info on birth control] that made free speech a significant public issue. By and large, the courts rejected their claims. But these battles laid the foundation for the rise of civil liberties as a central component of freedom in twentieth-century America.
He then proceeds to discuss the IWW's (original) Free Speech Movement and the likes of Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger and birth control before moving on to the trainwreck to American civil liberties that was World War I and, later, Louis Brandeis.
lets make one thing perfectly clear. We do not now, nor ever have been under, a capitalist system.
The US system is rife with crony-capitalism(which is in itself a misnomer)
Has there ever been a capitalist democracy where simply buying the government didn't become the most expedient and profitable course of action?
over regulation via congressional interference and the federal reserve meddles with money in profound, grossly powerful ways.
And letting it run rampant almost crashed the country.
Europe has regular amounts of unemployment in the double digits.
As does the US, when you account for actual un employment and not this fiction that only people getting unemployment benefits are the ones unemployed.
The fact is we've gotten too efficient. There just isn't enough work for everyone to do.
Virtually every country in the EU is far beyond bankrupt. Like the US, they have unsustainable debt and spending patterns. In our lifetime you will see the folly of this, mark my words.
I can disprove this! (jumps off bridge) HA! You were wrooooooooonggg..
BigNorse: "As bad as it is, its still better than what we had before."
Couldn't disagree more. Never in the history of the world have more people had access to clean water, heat/cooling, more regular amounts of food. The standard of living has never been higher. The average poor person in the US has clean running water, a television, electricity, and food in the fridge. There is nothing comparable to this in all of history.
1) We're agreeing there, not disagreeing
2) All of that has been made possible in part by government interference. The government runs water plants, regulates development in watersheds, works in partnership with the power companies to provide the necessary right of ways for food and water lines, subsidizes food production (because angry people riot. Hungry people revolt)
Oi, Comrad
Why the need to takes the means of production out of the hands of the rich, rather than just skimming a little more off the top and distributing it?
Why you asking me? I thought you didn't take me seriously?
[Shakes clenched fist]
Vive le Galt!!!!
The fundamental definition of Capitalism is "a system under which capital and means of production are owned by privates, who in turn make decisions regarding what and how to produce, in order to generate profit".
On the other hand, the definition of Free Market is a "system in which buyers and sellers mutually and freely agree to exchange, on the basis of perfect flow of information, perfect competition, and perfect availability". Note that a Capitalist system does not necessarily require a Free Market to exist.
While the definition used in that page is essentially wrong, I think they are attempting to mix both things into a single one. After all, "rights of property" are necessary for the existence of a Capitalist system, while "rights of liberty" are necessary for a Free Market system.
The part about "enforcing contracts and banning fraud" is irrelevant to a Capitalist definition, since those are elements that involve the intent and sustainability of transactions, and Capitalism itself is not about how the transactions themselves happen, but rather how is production handled.
Continuing on the assumption that the definition the page is using understood Capitalism and Free Market to be two parts of the same thing, however, it wouldn't be entirely mistaken to hold that tenement, since Free Market requires contracts to be enforced (in the ideal theory, these contracts are tacitly enforced by the parts. In reality, control mechanisms like the State and reputation systems are what usually enforce said contracts) and fraud to be non-existent (since both a perfect flow of information and competition are required for the parties to be able to make a proper assessment of the transaction).
So while the definition of Capitalism in that page is technically incorrect, I think the intent is not completely off. I wouldn't call it obnoxiously ignorant rhetoric, but rather a mistaken use and confussion of definitions.
To stick with the examining of laissez-faire ideology rather than attempt a definition of capitalism itself, Comrade Meatrace,
Citizen van der Kroft obviously reminds one of Chile, with its obvious connections to Milton Friedman and the application of capitalism and freedom in action (neutral link) and how these applications were applied to the world we live in today. To take one random and not at all neutral example.
[...] the definition of Free Market is a "system in which buyers and sellers mutually and freely agree to exchange, on the basis of perfect flow of information, perfect competition, and perfect availability".
In other words, by this definition, a free market is a fable, or an utopia.
[...] the definition of Free Market is a "system in which buyers and sellers mutually and freely agree to exchange, on the basis of perfect flow of information, perfect competition, and perfect availability".In other words, by this definition, a free market is a fable, or an utopia.
A perfect free market is unattainable by any method we are currently aware of.
[...] the definition of Free Market is a "system in which buyers and sellers mutually and freely agree to exchange, on the basis of perfect flow of information, perfect competition, and perfect availability".In other words, by this definition, a free market is a fable, or an utopia.
But who wouldn't want to live in a world full of omniscient sociopaths?
So I stumbled upon the website for an organization called The Capitalism Institute. I clicked on their What is Capitalism?link and found that, clearly, they have a different interpretation of the term from what is traditionally meant.
Their definition of Capitalism:
"Capitalism is an economic and political system that is based on protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. By extension, this means enforcing contracts and banning all fraud."It's clearly just another far-right, libertarian group, probably funded by the same guys who fund liberty works and so on, but I'd never really heard it put this way. In a way this obnoxiously ignorant rhetorical definition, and the rest of the rhetoric on that page, help me to understand why there are all these capitalist crusaders out there; they've been made to believe that Capitalism is, first and foremost, about preserving liberty, which is a patent absurdity.
Anyway, just curious what people's thoughts were.
It is just a advertisement funded by bankers to convince people that it is alright for the government to bail them out and still allow them fraudulently kick people out of their homes.