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Increasing wages obviously would help. The other workers at Facebook (i.e., these people’s coworkers) who make six figures are able to live comfortably. I agre

by ihm 7y ago

Increasing wages obviously would help. The other workers at Facebook (i.e., these people’s coworkers) who make six figures are able to live comfortably. I agree with you that our economic model for housing and land ownership needs to change though.

methehack 7y ago
It might help short term, but I don't think its obvious it would work long term. The idea is that it wouldn't solve the structural problem. The structural problem is that nothing prevents landowners from charging whatever the market will tolerate and so sucking all plausible value out of the people paying the rents -- even to the degree that renters are forced to work so much they do nothing else and should expect a shorter life. Since there's no structural impediment to doing so, if you pay the renters more, the landowners will take the value...at least eventually.
- agent008t 7y ago
  But it's supply and demand at work. Limit rents, and people will have to queue for housing.
  - methehack 7y ago
    Markets are a brilliant tool. We have to decide on the society we want, and use markets to shape it. Very few scenarios that make any sense would allow markets to function w/o purposeful shape. I think managing a queue might be a better way to preserve everyone's dignity than letting raw market forces work it out. Either that or I think you'll end up paying engineers to make $50 sandwiches, which doesn't seem like it would generate maximal economic value for the parties involved.
  - eli_gottlieb 7y ago
    It's "supply and demand" where the suppliers lobby city government to increase demand (by allowing new office space) while decreasing supply (by banning new housing development). Any idiot can make money if the government will literally let him walk into a town meeting and say, "Yes I'd like you to increase the value of my particular asset portfolio by force of law kthanxbye."
cameldrv 7y ago
It might help the Facebook workers, but it will hurt everyone else with a low wage job. The fundamental problem is that there are more jobs in SV than housing units, and you can’t build more housing units. The solutions are: 1: Some people work two jobs but only occupy one housing unit 2: Put more workers into each housing unit 3: New transport infrastructure to allow people to live farther away 4: Reduce the number of jobs 5: Somehow convince cities to build more housing

by ihm 7y ago

methehack 7y ago

It might help short term, but I don't think its obvious it would work long term. The idea is that it wouldn't solve the structural problem. The structural problem is that nothing prevents landowners from charging whatever the market will tolerate and so sucking all plausible value out of the people paying the rents -- even to the degree that renters are forced to work so much they do nothing else and should expect a shorter life. Since there's no structural impediment to doing so, if you pay the renters more, the landowners will take the value...at least eventually.

agent008t 7y ago
But it's supply and demand at work. Limit rents, and people will have to queue for housing.
- methehack 7y ago
  Markets are a brilliant tool. We have to decide on the society we want, and use markets to shape it. Very few scenarios that make any sense would allow markets to function w/o purposeful shape. I think managing a queue might be a better way to preserve everyone's dignity than letting raw market forces work it out. Either that or I think you'll end up paying engineers to make $50 sandwiches, which doesn't seem like it would generate maximal economic value for the parties involved.
- eli_gottlieb 7y ago
  It's "supply and demand" where the suppliers lobby city government to increase demand (by allowing new office space) while decreasing supply (by banning new housing development). Any idiot can make money if the government will literally let him walk into a town meeting and say, "Yes I'd like you to increase the value of my particular asset portfolio by force of law kthanxbye."

cameldrv 7y ago

It might help the Facebook workers, but it will hurt everyone else with a low wage job. The fundamental problem is that there are more jobs in SV than housing units, and you can’t build more housing units. The solutions are: 1: Some people work two jobs but only occupy one housing unit 2: Put more workers into each housing unit 3: New transport infrastructure to allow people to live farther away 4: Reduce the number of jobs 5: Somehow convince cities to build more housing