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How about buying up housing stock in popular inner city areas only to "provide" housing for people? Housing is an essential good. Profiting off an essential is

How about buying up housing stock in popular inner city areas only to "provide" housing for people? Housing is an essential good. Profiting off an essential isn't so great suddenly. Yes people need to rent, but many would buy if prices weren't pushed up. Are they or the hand sanitizer guy assisting the market in any way here? Or are they parasitic? People are going to be asking a lot about unfettered capitalism after this. We are going to see many ugly examples in America before this is done.

egdod 7y ago
Housing, food, water, Internet access, cell phones... all more or less essential goods in the modern world. How dare anyone expect to be paid for them?
- TomMckenny 7y ago
  Food, water distribution, internet, building construction are all things people produce and must be paid for to exist and out of fairness. Land ownership is and always has been an arbitrary claim inevitably traceable to a murdered Indian or the equivalent on other continents.
kristopolous 7y ago
I've been looking for people to make the connection of how this is a great example of the emotional behavioral reality of actually exercising classical economic models and how people aren't just completely atomized rational agents devoid of collective cultural expectation, but you're the first to make the connection. It's a clear narrative for people who are looking for it who are deeply suspicious of how real world humans interact in alignment with the hypothesis of the traditional mathematical models, but to those who don't share the suspicion, you'd have to spell it out. I've had to, it's been painful. People have been penalized for thinking in sociological terms about economic culture all throughout school, because such considerations lead to dramatically conflicting answers. For instance, the more extreme example is private property markets require buy-in from the participants. If a group decides the rules are simply unfair, the game is called off. As a producer of physical assets I've always been keenly aware of theft and sabotage possibilities and prices are kept fair to keep people from doing such things.
- TomMckenny 7y ago
  There also seem to be differences in underlying assumptions: whether humans exist to serve markets or whether markets exist only because they happen benefit humanity. And a similar question for property itself.
  - eru 7y ago
    Nice strawman you got there. You'll have a hard time finding anyone who thinks that humans are meant to 'serve the market'. Especially any economist. The market isn't a separate entity, it's made of humans interacting.
    - TomMckenny 7y ago
      True, I put the point bluntly. If the market produces bad outcomes for years on end, which it in some narrow cases it does, do we 1) keep with it regardless or 2) do something else. I think you will find there are quite a few people who will choose #1
      - eru 7y ago
        The wisdom of this course of action depends on whether that something else produces better outcomes.
  - kristopolous 7y ago
    part of neoliberalism is a theory that everything is a market, in some "natural state" and it's only our human meddling that keeps it from being "free" ... there's been a century of Economic Anthropology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_anthropology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_anthropology) that shows this simply does not exist, there is no "natural state" and the definition of "free market" is constantly re-framed. It's a contemporary human social construct and a set of rather arbitrarily defined cultural rules. Market fundamentalism is a form of political convenience, not based on any empirical study of reality.
eru 7y ago
You know that housing or hand sanitizers can be produced? The supply is not fixed. So let people buy up what they want, and let producers make nice profits. (Alas for housing, lots of American cities do have decided to fix their supply. But that's their choice.)

egdod 7y ago

Housing, food, water, Internet access, cell phones... all more or less essential goods in the modern world. How dare anyone expect to be paid for them?

TomMckenny 7y ago
Food, water distribution, internet, building construction are all things people produce and must be paid for to exist and out of fairness. Land ownership is and always has been an arbitrary claim inevitably traceable to a murdered Indian or the equivalent on other continents.

kristopolous 7y ago

I've been looking for people to make the connection of how this is a great example of the emotional behavioral reality of actually exercising classical economic models and how people aren't just completely atomized rational agents devoid of collective cultural expectation, but you're the first to make the connection. It's a clear narrative for people who are looking for it who are deeply suspicious of how real world humans interact in alignment with the hypothesis of the traditional mathematical models, but to those who don't share the suspicion, you'd have to spell it out. I've had to, it's been painful. People have been penalized for thinking in sociological terms about economic culture all throughout school, because such considerations lead to dramatically conflicting answers. For instance, the more extreme example is private property markets require buy-in from the participants. If a group decides the rules are simply unfair, the game is called off. As a producer of physical assets I've always been keenly aware of theft and sabotage possibilities and prices are kept fair to keep people from doing such things.

TomMckenny 7y ago
There also seem to be differences in underlying assumptions: whether humans exist to serve markets or whether markets exist only because they happen benefit humanity. And a similar question for property itself.
- eru 7y ago
  Nice strawman you got there. You'll have a hard time finding anyone who thinks that humans are meant to 'serve the market'. Especially any economist. The market isn't a separate entity, it's made of humans interacting.
  - TomMckenny 7y ago
    True, I put the point bluntly. If the market produces bad outcomes for years on end, which it in some narrow cases it does, do we 1) keep with it regardless or 2) do something else. I think you will find there are quite a few people who will choose #1
    - eru 7y ago
      The wisdom of this course of action depends on whether that something else produces better outcomes.
- kristopolous 7y ago
  part of neoliberalism is a theory that everything is a market, in some "natural state" and it's only our human meddling that keeps it from being "free" ... there's been a century of Economic Anthropology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_anthropology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_anthropology) that shows this simply does not exist, there is no "natural state" and the definition of "free market" is constantly re-framed. It's a contemporary human social construct and a set of rather arbitrarily defined cultural rules. Market fundamentalism is a form of political convenience, not based on any empirical study of reality.

eru 7y ago

You know that housing or hand sanitizers can be produced? The supply is not fixed. So let people buy up what they want, and let producers make nice profits. (Alas for housing, lots of American cities do have decided to fix their supply. But that's their choice.)