5 ms·
Free market would mean no zoning regulations. Housing is not a free market whatsoever (for a good reason, in some cases).
by throwaway3699 5y ago
Free market would mean no zoning regulations. Housing is not a free market whatsoever (for a good reason, in some cases).
- baq 5y agoI don't see how that follows. Free market must have rules to be free - market with no rules undergoes self-destruction quite efficiently, just like free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without consequences. Just mention zoning regulations explicitly.
- epistasis 5y agoTight downzoning took all the unfairness of the existing market for real estate and amplified it hugely. Today, housing market is driven by rentierism, which is pretty much the opposite of "free". I agree 100% that regulations create and drive markets, but the regulations have been put in place to ensure a steady transfer of wealth from those with less to those with land. The downzoning trend that started in the 1970s, driven by the twin forces of 1) racism (not wanting to allow non-whites into white neighborhoods after the civil rights movement tried to allow integration), and 2) Malthusian thinking (keep the population down by letting fewer people live near me), led to a transformation of real estate, making it even worse. They aren't making any more land, as they say. Which is what drives the value of it up so much in certain locations, the locations where people want to be. But by downzoning so that no more people can use the same bits of land, the structures themselves acquire the really insidious property of land that makes it a really bad for for markets.