4 ms·

I think high rent prices are bad for a number of reasons: Less flexibility in starting a company: You can't choose to bootstrap unless you do it as a side hust

I think high rent prices are bad for a number of reasons: Less flexibility in starting a company: You can't choose to bootstrap unless you do it as a side hustle at a megacorp, and it's hard to not compete with a megacorp because it does everything. You have to take VC funding and follow VC rules to some degree, and it may not be a direction you wish to follow. This is a feedback loop. Oligopsony employment conditions: If you wish to build savings and not spend all your money on rent, you can really only work for the largest and best funded companies, and even then you need to negotiate at a disadvantage, since they have far more information on the employment markets (because they're big) and they each know the other big players (because they're few) and can bound salaries through price leadership. This is also a feedback loop. I'm concerned we will see fewer "real" companies like Intel/Apple, and more Snapchat clones and e-scooter startups. Less meaningful bets, less drive, and more complacency -- borne out of the desire to cannibalize social trust (e.g. if you work hard, you earn shelter) and the societal fabric (e.g. all people deserve shelter as a basic human right) for privatized financial gain.

whatshisface 8y ago
>all people deserve shelter as a basic human right I hear this a lot and it still makes absolutely no sense. Where will they get the shelter from? What if the builder doesn't want to build a house for that person? Is the plan to force the labor out of them? Every positive right that I have ever seen comes along with an implicit demand that somebody else become a slave.
- timcameronryan 8y ago
  There's no shortage of builders. You can just compensate those workers with taxes. If you think taxes are also a form of slavery, that's a different discussion.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    You can't fulfill a basic human right contingent on enough taxes coming in. If it's really a basic human right, insufficient revenues or unexpectedly high prices are not an excuse. If your country ran out of money, if the builders all started working for foreign companies, and if housing was really being treated like a human right, you'd have to make builders work without pay, or at least involuntarily. Providing housing most of the time is just a program. Providing housing all of the time with no exceptions, like you would expect from a human right, involves some serious distortions of other values. That's the problem, people are using the word human right when they mean high priority. It's a high priority that I do my laundry, but if society were organized so that I did my laundry at all costs, if we were all convinced that a society where I did not do my laundry did not deserve to exist, then things would get pretty crazy.
    - timcameronryan 8y ago
      A high-priority housing program is how you implement a human right for shelter. This isn't some paperclip maximalization requirement you adhere to the social contract, and under the wrong conditions will force people into house-building labor camps. Human rights are how you reason about resource allocation. You have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers, but that obviously doesn't mean a judge must preside over your case that same day by threat of force. We can recognize physical realities, while still understanding that if we wanted to, we could provide a social safety net that includes a place to sleep. > If your country ran out of money, if the builders all started working for foreign companies If your country runs out of money, many human rights are probably in danger.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  What will you do when it happens to you? That you have no place to live? Because it will.
  - GhostVII 8y ago
    What makes you think that will happen to them? Most people don't end up homeless at some point in their life.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      More people than you think and it gets more common over time.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    I have no place to live in San Francisco. So do about 7 billion other people. Somehow they get along, by having a place to live on the rest of the planet. So if I won't be able to afford place in San Francisco - which is, unfortunately, my current situation, unfortunately not because I want to live there but because I want to have income so high I could throw out almost $4K for just one bedroom - I would live in a cheaper place. Which is, fortunately, called "the rest of the planet Earth" and is quite large.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jamienicol 8y ago
  Or that the government builds and supplies houses to those in need. Unless you think paying taxes is slave labour.
- allahreturns 8y ago
  > all people deserve shelter as a basic human right No they don't. You are saying that we must award same quality of life to both kind of people: a) one who are meeting economic demand b) who are failing to meet their economic expectation Sorry but if you award the second group, you automatically demotivated first group to continue with their economic obligations.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    On hackernews and other boards, a greater than sign followed by an italic section is how quotes are usually formatted. If you look closer you'll see that I was quoting the parent, not making the point myself.
  - Thlom 8y ago
    Sorry, but what you are saying is that society shouldn’t give a shit if people freeze to death on the streets because they have no shelter. That is pretty disturbing to be honest.
    - allahreturns 8y ago
      Survival of the fittest has always been rule of the nature, why we must change it now? Fighting natur is fultile, those who are intelligent able will always have more money, more survival than those who are no.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  Outside of the prison system, legal coercive labor isn't really a thing in the US. The people building houses are working because they are paid and they prefer that to the existing social safety net.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Right, but housing as a basic human right is not something that exists in the US, at most it is a high priority. If it was really treated like a basic right our society would be unrecognizably distorted around that one thing. A human right is not something you can let slip on a bad day, and that fact has big implications. If you are allowed to say, "our budget isn't adding up today so some people will have to stay on the wait list a bit longer," you aren't acting like it's a human right. Human rights are maximum priorities, not just high priorities. An example of a reasonable human right would be that your own government can't kill you without a fair public trial. If a country ended up in a situation where they had to assassinate a businessman to keep their budget balanced, it would be reasonable to say "forget about the budget, you can't just take one of your own citizens out." However, if you had to loosen up the housing program because your tax revenue came in low that year, doing so would be potentially a reasonable option. "Potentially a reasonable option" is not even remotely on the table for human rights violations, which is why housing can't be a human right.
    - leereeves 8y ago
      Many rights in the US are only guaranteed in the sense that they "shall not be infringed" or "Congress shall make no law". The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and the right to bear arms, but the government won't build you a church or buy you a rifle. Housing could be a right in that sense: the government shall make no law preventing the construction of housing. Of course, like all other rights, it would be balanced against reasonable government interests like ensuring that the housing is safe.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        >the government shall make no law preventing the construction of housing The most pragmatic objection to this would be that everything you do prevents the construction of housing - if you build a city hall, you are preventing an apartment block from being built on the same land. Taxes prevent the construction of housing because the reduce the funds available to home builders and buyers. Property rights prevent the construction of housing because they would prevent me from setting up a tent in your front lawn. Making housing a right is a wellspring of endless absurdities, unless you are willing to treat it as a "maybe" goal. Maybe-goals and human rights are disjoint sets. >Of course, like all other rights, it would be balanced against reasonable government interests... So, let's look at a real human rights example, being assassinated by your government because you are protesting something. The dictator might claim that they were balancing your life against reasonable government interests - the reasonable response would be, "no interest is so reasonable that what you did would be justified." That's the thesis of human rights, if anything is justifiable then you don't believe in human rights. It's not that complicated. So, if you think that housing as a basic human right can be suspended for reasonable reasons, you either don't really think it's a human right, don't believe in human rights at all, or are proposing a distorted crazyland.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  I disagree that people paid by government contracts are slave workers. Or maybe you mean tax payers? Either way, I always avoid phrasing things as positive rights. But they can usually be rephrased as “I believe it would be in the interest of our society and the well being of our people to provide housing for all people.”
- vertex-four 8y ago
  “Shelter as a basic human right” means that we have a moral imperative to organise and structure our societies so that that right is fulfilled. If your society is structured so that not enough housing is being created, or so that housing is left empty while there are people without shelter, then that society is running on incorrect axioms and the people who make it up have a moral imperative to change how they do things. There’s no force involved, it’s a potential principle of self-organisation.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >There’s no force involved, it’s a potential principle of self-organisation. That means it's not a human right. If your government is engaging in real human rights violations you don't say things like, "potentially maybe we might want to reconsider how we organize our society." One example of a human rights violation would be, the government makes up for a shortfall in their black budget by engaging in human trafficking. Whatever the solution to that - keep the dictator, change the dictator, give the president a second term; that's all situational, what's not is that you have to quit doing it. >“Shelter as a basic human right” means that we have a moral imperative to organise and structure our societies so that that right is fulfilled. Essentially, the problem is, that's not what it means. A human right is a value that you are willing to see your civilization stop existing if that's what it takes to preserve it. If you made housing that high of a priority things would quit working pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you gave public trials to criminals who were willing to surrender, things would go pretty well.
- landryraccoon 8y ago
  This is totally irrelevant for San Francisco. Even if you're a libertarian (or maybe especially if you're a libertarian) you should support building housing in the bay area. Nobody's asking for government funds to build housing in SF. Developers are lining up to build housing funded entirely out of their own pockets. People who are pro-housing generally just want to government to stop preventing people from building more high density housing on property they already own. So, if you're arguing some sort of taxes and government regulation are bad thing, you should be in favor of drastically more housing in SF.
allahreturns 8y ago
So it's not bad Growing up in Berlin I was always depressed because of stupid/dumb people who lived around me. I wanted to move into a neighborhood where only smart people lived. This dream came true when I moved to SF. Here prices are so high only most smart people can afford to work and live here. You don't understand value of this kind of economic segregation untill you spend a few week in poor income localities. People have different beliefs, it's hard to make people act in a same way. But we've found that money is one such thing where most people agree if not all. So why is it bad that people who collectively value money are able to afford SF and those who don't can't afford. We find security among a group which values same thing as us. And most people in SF value meeting economic demand, making money and lots of money.
- akjetma 8y ago
  man, this comment depressed the hell out of me.
  - thewhitetulip 8y ago
    I'm surprised that people like that exist! Clarification: people who think they need "smart" neighbours as if they are going to play chess with neighbours 24 x 7
    - allahreturns 8y ago
      Sorry smartness is not only about "playing chess" and I failed to clarify by what I mean smart. It's about seeing your benefit and the group's benefit at the same time. Many people are incapable of this. They only act either in their own best benefit or benefit of none. Having lived and worked at many places, those who don't see how they or their group can benefit from something are simply incapable of bringing anything to the table. They fail to weight in risk Vs reward as a result they slow down important decisions, and become liability on you. They act helpless. And these people are not "smart" for me. And it's very depressing to live around such pessimistic people.
      - 8y ago
mamon 8y ago
Most European countries already recognize that, to some extent. "Sidewalk evictions" are illegal, you (or municipality/local government) have to first provide some replacement apartment before renter can be evicted. Most town/cities have some pool of apartments for that very purpose. Of course those aparments are shitholes most of the time, but still. Of course in practice this protection does not work for everyone, and there are still homeless people in Europe.

whatshisface 8y ago

>all people deserve shelter as a basic human right I hear this a lot and it still makes absolutely no sense. Where will they get the shelter from? What if the builder doesn't want to build a house for that person? Is the plan to force the labor out of them? Every positive right that I have ever seen comes along with an implicit demand that somebody else become a slave.

timcameronryan 8y ago
There's no shortage of builders. You can just compensate those workers with taxes. If you think taxes are also a form of slavery, that's a different discussion.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  You can't fulfill a basic human right contingent on enough taxes coming in. If it's really a basic human right, insufficient revenues or unexpectedly high prices are not an excuse. If your country ran out of money, if the builders all started working for foreign companies, and if housing was really being treated like a human right, you'd have to make builders work without pay, or at least involuntarily. Providing housing most of the time is just a program. Providing housing all of the time with no exceptions, like you would expect from a human right, involves some serious distortions of other values. That's the problem, people are using the word human right when they mean high priority. It's a high priority that I do my laundry, but if society were organized so that I did my laundry at all costs, if we were all convinced that a society where I did not do my laundry did not deserve to exist, then things would get pretty crazy.
  - timcameronryan 8y ago
    A high-priority housing program is how you implement a human right for shelter. This isn't some paperclip maximalization requirement you adhere to the social contract, and under the wrong conditions will force people into house-building labor camps. Human rights are how you reason about resource allocation. You have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers, but that obviously doesn't mean a judge must preside over your case that same day by threat of force. We can recognize physical realities, while still understanding that if we wanted to, we could provide a social safety net that includes a place to sleep. > If your country ran out of money, if the builders all started working for foreign companies If your country runs out of money, many human rights are probably in danger.
Gibbon1 8y ago
What will you do when it happens to you? That you have no place to live? Because it will.
- GhostVII 8y ago
  What makes you think that will happen to them? Most people don't end up homeless at some point in their life.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    More people than you think and it gets more common over time.
- smsm42 8y ago
  I have no place to live in San Francisco. So do about 7 billion other people. Somehow they get along, by having a place to live on the rest of the planet. So if I won't be able to afford place in San Francisco - which is, unfortunately, my current situation, unfortunately not because I want to live there but because I want to have income so high I could throw out almost $4K for just one bedroom - I would live in a cheaper place. Which is, fortunately, called "the rest of the planet Earth" and is quite large.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jamienicol 8y ago
Or that the government builds and supplies houses to those in need. Unless you think paying taxes is slave labour.
allahreturns 8y ago
> all people deserve shelter as a basic human right No they don't. You are saying that we must award same quality of life to both kind of people: a) one who are meeting economic demand b) who are failing to meet their economic expectation Sorry but if you award the second group, you automatically demotivated first group to continue with their economic obligations.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  On hackernews and other boards, a greater than sign followed by an italic section is how quotes are usually formatted. If you look closer you'll see that I was quoting the parent, not making the point myself.
- Thlom 8y ago
  Sorry, but what you are saying is that society shouldn’t give a shit if people freeze to death on the streets because they have no shelter. That is pretty disturbing to be honest.
  - allahreturns 8y ago
    Survival of the fittest has always been rule of the nature, why we must change it now? Fighting natur is fultile, those who are intelligent able will always have more money, more survival than those who are no.
aidenn0 8y ago
Outside of the prison system, legal coercive labor isn't really a thing in the US. The people building houses are working because they are paid and they prefer that to the existing social safety net.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Right, but housing as a basic human right is not something that exists in the US, at most it is a high priority. If it was really treated like a basic right our society would be unrecognizably distorted around that one thing. A human right is not something you can let slip on a bad day, and that fact has big implications. If you are allowed to say, "our budget isn't adding up today so some people will have to stay on the wait list a bit longer," you aren't acting like it's a human right. Human rights are maximum priorities, not just high priorities. An example of a reasonable human right would be that your own government can't kill you without a fair public trial. If a country ended up in a situation where they had to assassinate a businessman to keep their budget balanced, it would be reasonable to say "forget about the budget, you can't just take one of your own citizens out." However, if you had to loosen up the housing program because your tax revenue came in low that year, doing so would be potentially a reasonable option. "Potentially a reasonable option" is not even remotely on the table for human rights violations, which is why housing can't be a human right.
  - leereeves 8y ago
    Many rights in the US are only guaranteed in the sense that they "shall not be infringed" or "Congress shall make no law". The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and the right to bear arms, but the government won't build you a church or buy you a rifle. Housing could be a right in that sense: the government shall make no law preventing the construction of housing. Of course, like all other rights, it would be balanced against reasonable government interests like ensuring that the housing is safe.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      >the government shall make no law preventing the construction of housing The most pragmatic objection to this would be that everything you do prevents the construction of housing - if you build a city hall, you are preventing an apartment block from being built on the same land. Taxes prevent the construction of housing because the reduce the funds available to home builders and buyers. Property rights prevent the construction of housing because they would prevent me from setting up a tent in your front lawn. Making housing a right is a wellspring of endless absurdities, unless you are willing to treat it as a "maybe" goal. Maybe-goals and human rights are disjoint sets. >Of course, like all other rights, it would be balanced against reasonable government interests... So, let's look at a real human rights example, being assassinated by your government because you are protesting something. The dictator might claim that they were balancing your life against reasonable government interests - the reasonable response would be, "no interest is so reasonable that what you did would be justified." That's the thesis of human rights, if anything is justifiable then you don't believe in human rights. It's not that complicated. So, if you think that housing as a basic human right can be suspended for reasonable reasons, you either don't really think it's a human right, don't believe in human rights at all, or are proposing a distorted crazyland.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I disagree that people paid by government contracts are slave workers. Or maybe you mean tax payers? Either way, I always avoid phrasing things as positive rights. But they can usually be rephrased as “I believe it would be in the interest of our society and the well being of our people to provide housing for all people.”
vertex-four 8y ago
“Shelter as a basic human right” means that we have a moral imperative to organise and structure our societies so that that right is fulfilled. If your society is structured so that not enough housing is being created, or so that housing is left empty while there are people without shelter, then that society is running on incorrect axioms and the people who make it up have a moral imperative to change how they do things. There’s no force involved, it’s a potential principle of self-organisation.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >There’s no force involved, it’s a potential principle of self-organisation. That means it's not a human right. If your government is engaging in real human rights violations you don't say things like, "potentially maybe we might want to reconsider how we organize our society." One example of a human rights violation would be, the government makes up for a shortfall in their black budget by engaging in human trafficking. Whatever the solution to that - keep the dictator, change the dictator, give the president a second term; that's all situational, what's not is that you have to quit doing it. >“Shelter as a basic human right” means that we have a moral imperative to organise and structure our societies so that that right is fulfilled. Essentially, the problem is, that's not what it means. A human right is a value that you are willing to see your civilization stop existing if that's what it takes to preserve it. If you made housing that high of a priority things would quit working pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you gave public trials to criminals who were willing to surrender, things would go pretty well.
landryraccoon 8y ago
This is totally irrelevant for San Francisco. Even if you're a libertarian (or maybe especially if you're a libertarian) you should support building housing in the bay area. Nobody's asking for government funds to build housing in SF. Developers are lining up to build housing funded entirely out of their own pockets. People who are pro-housing generally just want to government to stop preventing people from building more high density housing on property they already own. So, if you're arguing some sort of taxes and government regulation are bad thing, you should be in favor of drastically more housing in SF.

allahreturns 8y ago

So it's not bad Growing up in Berlin I was always depressed because of stupid/dumb people who lived around me. I wanted to move into a neighborhood where only smart people lived. This dream came true when I moved to SF. Here prices are so high only most smart people can afford to work and live here. You don't understand value of this kind of economic segregation untill you spend a few week in poor income localities. People have different beliefs, it's hard to make people act in a same way. But we've found that money is one such thing where most people agree if not all. So why is it bad that people who collectively value money are able to afford SF and those who don't can't afford. We find security among a group which values same thing as us. And most people in SF value meeting economic demand, making money and lots of money.

akjetma 8y ago
man, this comment depressed the hell out of me.
- thewhitetulip 8y ago
  I'm surprised that people like that exist! Clarification: people who think they need "smart" neighbours as if they are going to play chess with neighbours 24 x 7
  - allahreturns 8y ago
    Sorry smartness is not only about "playing chess" and I failed to clarify by what I mean smart. It's about seeing your benefit and the group's benefit at the same time. Many people are incapable of this. They only act either in their own best benefit or benefit of none. Having lived and worked at many places, those who don't see how they or their group can benefit from something are simply incapable of bringing anything to the table. They fail to weight in risk Vs reward as a result they slow down important decisions, and become liability on you. They act helpless. And these people are not "smart" for me. And it's very depressing to live around such pessimistic people.
    - 8y ago

mamon 8y ago

Most European countries already recognize that, to some extent. "Sidewalk evictions" are illegal, you (or municipality/local government) have to first provide some replacement apartment before renter can be evicted. Most town/cities have some pool of apartments for that very purpose. Of course those aparments are shitholes most of the time, but still. Of course in practice this protection does not work for everyone, and there are still homeless people in Europe.