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You're right, of course, but this sentiment amounts to little more than stomping your feet and wishing the world were different. As long as there is high deman
by dionidium 11y ago
You're right, of course, but this sentiment amounts to little more than stomping your feet and wishing the world were different.
As long as there is high demand, you can either build more or expect higher prices and more sprawl. I get that people don't like those choices, but that's what's on the table.
- maerF0x0 11y agoHigh local prices can be addressed with "distributed sprawl". ie growth in other cities.
- davidw 11y agoI think the problem with that logic is that the people at the 'top of the heap' - VC's, CEO's and the like are not the ones being priced out, mostly. Granted, a company might open an office somewhere else, but that's after it's already large and established. So you're kicking the marginal (in the economic sense) people out into marginal places where they have less access to what made the original area such a great place to have a job.
- maerF0x0 11y agomaybe, i have neither a moral stance nor suggested solution for that. Seems to me that is a trait of capitalism/market economies; those who can pay the most get what they want.
- kbenson 11y agoYes, but the reason things cost more is because we are restricting supply through regulation. That's not to say that all the regulation should be repealed, but you can't examine the problem in a vacuum and expect useful information. It truly does come down to supply and demand.
- asabjorn 11y agoArtificially restricting housing supply through SF-like approval processes is not capitalism, and rent control is a band aid. It is laws that highly favors the incumbents that already live there. Even if we determined who should be allowed to live here with some other mechanism than money we would still be housing supply constrained.
- maerF0x0 11y agoI agree that there are tons of things at play distorting markets.
- TylerH 11y agoOr you can do neither. It's not like the false dichotomy you're presenting is true.
- kbenson 11y agoNot in a free market. If demand is high, and supply doesn't raise to meet it, then prices will increase unless artificially suppressed. Rent control could do that for rent, but has its own problems. As for owners, how do you tell someone they aren't allowed to sell their house for what someone else is willing to pay them?
- TranquilMarmot 11y agoIf you do neither, are you implying that the third option would just be to tell would-be tennants to go look elsewhere because your neighborhood is full and you're not going to price out the people currently living there? Sounds like it would work, until you realize most of the buildings are owned by landlords who want to cash in and get as much money as they can with the property they've invested in. They don't particularly care who is living in the property, just that somebody is there and that they're getting paid.
- dionidium 11y agoMy position is exactly that the dichotomy isn't a false one.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]