>>Food and shelter are essentially "required" for everyone. Should those be provided by the state, to avoid it being "an income-generating scheme for private parties"?

>The answer is: yes, absolutely, and we essentially do that to some extent with food stamps and homeless shelters; but, of course, not nearly to the extend that we can and should.

The programs you described only satisfy the "provided by the state" part, not the "avoid it being an income-generating scheme for private parties" part. If you're arguing it's something like food stamps, then that calls for the state paying insurance premiums on behalf of drivers that can't afford it, not for some sort of government insurance program.

>Shelter isn't just "required" in scare quotes, though; it's illegal to be homeless (you can get charged with loitering, trespassing, etc. if you try living pretty much anywhere where you're not paying for it some way).

Sounds like it's actually required, both in the sense that in certain areas if you don't have shelter you'll freeze to death, and in the sense that you need somewhere to sleep. The fact that you can get a place to sleep by violating other people's property rights, or commandeering communal resources for your own needs (ie. camping on the sidewalk or public parks) doesn't mean shelter isn't required. You can plausibly feed yourself by stealing from farm fields across america, that doesn't mean food isn't required.

>We all know that the rental market is a scam, since mortgage payments (i.e. what you pay to own the property, plus profit for the bank) is lower than the rent in most markets (sometimes even after adding property taxes on top).

1. source for this? in the hottest markets at least, price to rent ratios are so insane that the only way landlords are making money is through appreciation

2. you forgot to factor in maintenance, and cost of capital

3. the fact that there's a better deal doesn't mean it's a scam. the fact that costco sells 96-roll pack of toilet paper, doesn't mean that the 6-roll pack they sell at regular grocery stores is a "scam". The same applies to rentals. They offer flexibility compared to ownership. factoring in transaction costs, buying houses isn't worth it unless you're planning to stay for years/decades.

4. it's funny you mention mortgages and how banks make profit on them. Are they a scam? surely it must be, because they're selling money to you for more than what they're buying money for (otherwise they wouldn't be making a profit)?

>Note that I am not saying that the state should be the only supplier of shelter, food, healthcare, transportation, and education. Just that it should be one of the players on the free market, with a cost of 0 (or barely above nominal).

>That's how Europe does healthcare and education, and at the very least it shows that we can afford this on a grand scale.

1. yet, even progressive region such as "europe" only does it for healthcare and education, and not shelter, food, and transportation. Why is that?

2. The US already has government provided education. have you heard of public schools and state universities? Seems like the problem with education isn't due to the government not getting involved, it's because government institutions aren't bothering to undercut private ones.

3. "europe" doesn't have a unified policy for healthcare. Yes, there are some countries where there's a healthcare system run by the government (eg. NHS in uk), and there are some that provide government insurance option in addition to private offerings (eg. germany), but there are also countries that have only have private insurance (eg. switzerland).