2 things that bother me in this article: misconceptions about the nature of finance, and the role of real-estate brokers The first one is illustrated in the 'h

2 things that bother me in this article: misconceptions about the nature of finance, and the role of real-estate brokers The first one is illustrated in the 'hyperloop affordability' paragraph. What bothers me here it the confusion about the nature of fiat currency. In fiat currency based financial system, money is not realy a resource in the true sense. You don't need 'work' (in the energy sense) to create it. One push off a button can create limitless amounts of it. Money is 'merely' a means of prioritization. This is a subtle but essential difference. You can 'afford' something if you have the knowledge and the free (prioritized) energy (work) to invest in (choose to do) it. In classic balanced systems, where money and 'potential work energy' are in balance, the difference is small. In our real world financial system, where this is nowhere near close, both are very different. The second thing that bothers me is the lack of highlighting the active role of real estate brokers and speculators on the dynamics of rising and falling 'neighborhoods'. These businesses live of fractional transaction fees. Some real-estate is highly profitable as it generates a lot of transactions. A good-looking but 'bad' house where people often find out it is not so nice to live there and move on asap is a start in the realtor market. It generates potential transaction fees on the sale every few years. By contrast, a truly good home is sold on the market maybe once every 2 or 3 generations if ever. The only way to 'unlock' these houses is to take away their 'goodness'. Small things can be leveraged into high market dynamics. Typical things are lobbying local authorities to divert go-through traffic. Once peaceful and nice neighborhoods now become polluted and noisy, often resulting in a mass exodus by those that can afford it. Previous traffic hellholes that could be bought up for pennies suddenly become nice, relaxed and very desirable. A decade or 2-3 later you reverse the process and hit the jackpot again. Another trick is to buy a house on a nice street, and rent it out to a toxic person/family and let the butterfly effect do it's work. Not nice, but unfortunately very effective