4 ms·

Perfect world: User: I can afford a livable four walls and a roof from a small amount of savings, without needing to mortgage decades of my future. Brilliant.

cortesoft 7y ago
Are you arguing that everyone should be able to buy a house, that they can live in forever, with cash they have with little savings? The problem with that is that if a poor person can afford a house with cash, then a slightly richer person would just go, "wow, I can buy a really big house! Or two!", and suddenly there is no more space.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  That would be nice, wouldn't it? Maybe they wouldn't be allowed to buy two, because in "a perfect world", a place to live is a necessity, not a profit vector. Keeping housing supply limited to boost house prices, to appeal to house-owning voters and wealthy landlords, to extract six figures of money from normal people over decades, is nothing like "perfect".
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    Some houses are still going to be more desirable than others... how do we determine who gets which?
    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      This sounds a lot more like inviting a trolling argument than any kind of genuine inquiry. Here I say "landlord epxloitation, profiteering from necessities, houses left unlived in as investment vehicles for the international super rich, NIMBYism and entrenched residents voting against housing stock, AirBNB, broken zoning incentives" and then you say "FREE MARKET it's rich people's right to buy up everything and if you disagree you're dumb, free market is best market". And then we disagree to agree and both leave unhappy. Is that an approximately good summary? We don't need to determine who gets which for this comment chain, we only need to question whether a 30 year mortgage should be the default way for a normal person to keep the rain off their bed, someone who isn't thinking of a beach condo in Malibu or a NYC penthouse, whether that is the best possible "perfect" world. I think it isn't.

cortesoft 7y ago

Are you arguing that everyone should be able to buy a house, that they can live in forever, with cash they have with little savings? The problem with that is that if a poor person can afford a house with cash, then a slightly richer person would just go, "wow, I can buy a really big house! Or two!", and suddenly there is no more space.

jodrellblank 7y ago
That would be nice, wouldn't it? Maybe they wouldn't be allowed to buy two, because in "a perfect world", a place to live is a necessity, not a profit vector. Keeping housing supply limited to boost house prices, to appeal to house-owning voters and wealthy landlords, to extract six figures of money from normal people over decades, is nothing like "perfect".
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Some houses are still going to be more desirable than others... how do we determine who gets which?
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    This sounds a lot more like inviting a trolling argument than any kind of genuine inquiry. Here I say "landlord epxloitation, profiteering from necessities, houses left unlived in as investment vehicles for the international super rich, NIMBYism and entrenched residents voting against housing stock, AirBNB, broken zoning incentives" and then you say "FREE MARKET it's rich people's right to buy up everything and if you disagree you're dumb, free market is best market". And then we disagree to agree and both leave unhappy. Is that an approximately good summary? We don't need to determine who gets which for this comment chain, we only need to question whether a 30 year mortgage should be the default way for a normal person to keep the rain off their bed, someone who isn't thinking of a beach condo in Malibu or a NYC penthouse, whether that is the best possible "perfect" world. I think it isn't.