Sure, there are "speculators" and almost exclusively speculation is foolish. And yet they do it, and in doing so are driving up home prices in many markets acr

Sure, there are "speculators" and almost exclusively speculation is foolish. And yet they do it, and in doing so are driving up home prices in many markets across the globe... which is the core thesis of this article. Your style of argumentation, where you state what people should do, and use that as the basis for ignoring the actual facts, is incredibly ineffective. I understand you have an idealized model of the way capitalism and real estate work. That idealized model does not, in fact, align with reality. In reality, real estate speculation is in fact a real thing, that happens in real places all over the world. So long as demand causes prices to rise significantly faster than those assets depreciate, this type of speculation will happen. Your personal value judgments regarding people engaged in such speculation don't, in fact, cause those people to not exist.