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A lot of what you just said suffers from a pretty big misconception: it's land that's worth money, not the house that's on it. Every single news story about ho

A lot of what you just said suffers from a pretty big misconception: it's land that's worth money, not the house that's on it. Every single news story about how some tiny shack in Vancouver or Palo Alto now costs $x has the same problem, so you're in good company. But it's still not the right way to think about this problem.

macawfish 9y ago
That's a good point, and according to the board game Monopoly, you're totally right. In the above post I complained that housing costs don't reflect the quality of the housing itself. Land speculation is probably a huge part of that, if not the dominant contributor. But my whole point is about "rentier capitalism", and it applies whether you're talking about land, houses or SaaS. In a free market, of course there's gonna be ebbs and flows as people and industry come and go, but look at this chart: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-chart-20 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-c... Those huge, correlated roller coaster curves aren't based off of natural fluctuations in land values in all those different places. They're based on a kind of big distributed Monopoly game where a bunch of people frustratedly flipped the board over in 2008. Now we're going in for another round. Meanwhile, the north pole is melting, and there's tons of work to be done in retrofitting houses for climate change, in switching to new kinds of fuel, planting gardens sustainable agriculture, fixing broken stuff. What are people doing instead? A lot of people spend much of their time doing dog eat dog capitalism. Chasing rent checks and debt repayments. Doing the 9-5 grind. Driving 40 miles a day to work jobs they don't believe in. Not everyone of course, but too many people! We really need to shed this feudalistic way of doing things, and that's going to take people evolving how we participate in markets, what's considered "smart" or "dumb".
- dionidium 9y ago
  Those huge, correlated roller coaster curves aren't based off of natural fluctuations in land values in all those different places. They're based on a kind of big distributed Monopoly game where a bunch of people frustratedly flipped the board over in 2008. Couldn't this be that the underlying value of the land didn't change at all in 2008? That people still really value land in desirable coastal areas and will do just about anything to get it? That what did change was the amount of capital available to regular people to get it? Nothing about their underlying desire changed at all.
curun1r 9y ago
Would the land really be as valuable as it is if people weren't able to borrow money to purchase it? Someone would still own it and yet the price would largely be capped by the amount that people were able to save, not the amount that people are able to promise to repay. Just like it's been shown that the availability of student loans increases the cost of education, the availability of mortgages increases the cost of real estate. And the banks collect much of that increase by, through financial hand waving, loaning out many times the amount of money we give them to watch over. Somehow we've institutionalized a system where banks are able to leech money off one of society's most basic needs, shelter, while providing little-to-no benefit overall.

macawfish 9y ago

That's a good point, and according to the board game Monopoly, you're totally right. In the above post I complained that housing costs don't reflect the quality of the housing itself. Land speculation is probably a huge part of that, if not the dominant contributor. But my whole point is about "rentier capitalism", and it applies whether you're talking about land, houses or SaaS. In a free market, of course there's gonna be ebbs and flows as people and industry come and go, but look at this chart: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-chart-20 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-c... Those huge, correlated roller coaster curves aren't based off of natural fluctuations in land values in all those different places. They're based on a kind of big distributed Monopoly game where a bunch of people frustratedly flipped the board over in 2008. Now we're going in for another round. Meanwhile, the north pole is melting, and there's tons of work to be done in retrofitting houses for climate change, in switching to new kinds of fuel, planting gardens sustainable agriculture, fixing broken stuff. What are people doing instead? A lot of people spend much of their time doing dog eat dog capitalism. Chasing rent checks and debt repayments. Doing the 9-5 grind. Driving 40 miles a day to work jobs they don't believe in. Not everyone of course, but too many people! We really need to shed this feudalistic way of doing things, and that's going to take people evolving how we participate in markets, what's considered "smart" or "dumb".

dionidium 9y ago
Those huge, correlated roller coaster curves aren't based off of natural fluctuations in land values in all those different places. They're based on a kind of big distributed Monopoly game where a bunch of people frustratedly flipped the board over in 2008. Couldn't this be that the underlying value of the land didn't change at all in 2008? That people still really value land in desirable coastal areas and will do just about anything to get it? That what did change was the amount of capital available to regular people to get it? Nothing about their underlying desire changed at all.

curun1r 9y ago

Would the land really be as valuable as it is if people weren't able to borrow money to purchase it? Someone would still own it and yet the price would largely be capped by the amount that people were able to save, not the amount that people are able to promise to repay. Just like it's been shown that the availability of student loans increases the cost of education, the availability of mortgages increases the cost of real estate. And the banks collect much of that increase by, through financial hand waving, loaning out many times the amount of money we give them to watch over. Somehow we've institutionalized a system where banks are able to leech money off one of society's most basic needs, shelter, while providing little-to-no benefit overall.