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> but what kind of investor is going to throw their money at Berlin, where their opportunity to make a return on their investment is severely hampered? I just
by deanCommie 7y ago
> but what kind of investor is going to throw their money at Berlin, where their opportunity to make a return on their investment is severely hampered? I just don't understand this stance at all.
This is a deeply American hyper-capitalist stance. I understand you're not American, but it's an insidious American mindset that permeates the world, and must be resisted.
A successful society is not just a rampant pursuit of economics and profits at the expense of everything else.
There are investors who will make their choices about more than just "which decision gives me the most profit at any point in time?"
There are many policies that are pro-business and pro economic stimulation that actually have huge negative externalities on the quality of life of individual people.
And, not to go all granola on you, but PEOPLE is what it's all about. All - society, culture, our reason for existence.
Anytime government regulations are introduced that favour people at the expense of corporations there is screaming of the sky falling and that the economy is going to collapse, etc. I suspect it's frequently not in good faith, and doesn't consider a holistic approach to maximizing human happiness.
- 6cd6beb 7y ago>A successful society is not just a rampant pursuit of economics and profits at the expense of everything else. Right, but people are incentivized by the profit motive and generally do what they can to meet it. To just say "think of the people" is swimming upstream; you're more likely to succeed by finding a way to modify the system to drive people towards actions that benefit each other. Unfortunately it is not very human to forgo money, power, fame in exchange for what they think is the right thing to do. That's why we've had to create economic or political systems that saddle the drive for those things and steer it towards things that benefit society.
- icebraining 7y agoWhile I don't necessarily disagree with rent controls, portraying this measure as people vs corps is simplistic. As long as the city relies on private investors to build new residences, lower investment also means the PEOPLE who could have lived in Berlin are left out. (The measure is also typically bourgeois; it throws some crumbs to fix the outcry so the capitalist system can remain in place)
- tannhaeuser 7y agoI'm not American, but I share this opinion. Berlin needs housing - but what they're doing is to make it maximally unattractive to invest in housing. That's just illogical, and even critized by non-profit housing orgs (Baugenossenschaften).
- dang 7y agoNationalistic and ideological flamewar are not allowed here. Please don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to warn you about this before. Please don't do it again so we don't have to ban you.