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Regulation yes, rent control no. Google "deadweight loss price ceiling rent control" to see the detrimental economic effects of that policy. Once you understan

Regulation yes, rent control no. Google "deadweight loss price ceiling rent control" to see the detrimental economic effects of that policy. Once you understand that, check out the deadweight loss graph of a land value tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Efficiency The type of regulation we need is a tax on the pure unimproved value of land sites (excluding buildings, factories, farms etc.). George: > When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by Nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return.

criticaltinker 5y ago
What do you think about regulation that enforces a maximum limit on the number of dwellings or properties any individual can own? > At what point is someone's wealth acquisition too much–$1b, $10b, $100b, $1t? > Limitarianism is the view that no-one should enjoy more than an upper limit of some valuable goods or resources > Plato's Socrates identifies the ‘endless acquisition of money’ (Plato, 1997b, 373d) as the main cause of civil unrest and war. > In his last dialogue, the Laws, Plato gives a more or less complete limitarian account with a specification of both a lower and an upper threshold. According to this account, ‘extreme poverty and wealth must not be allowed to arise in any section of the citizen-body’ (Plato, 1997a, 744d). > Plato provides a detailed description of the lower threshold which each citizen should meet: everyone should obtain one dwelling near the centre of the country and another one near the outskirts. The size of the pieces of land on which these dwellings are built will vary according to the fertility of the land and its distance to the city [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ejop.12535 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ejop.12535
- sooheon 5y ago
  When it comes to economics, I don't believe in hard limits. Policies should not be brittle numeric rules ($15 minimum wage, $800 maximum rent, 1 child policy). Think gradients that affect incentives at every point in the map, not hard step functions with wide open loopholes. Plato's ideas seem well intentioned but somewhat ignorant of higher order economic effects of such "1 child policy" like rules. Much better to have a tax policy that's well aligned with the incentives we want to promote, and let the market figure the rest out.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    I've always wondered why taxes were percentage based but many govt benefits were hard numbers. It seems like a clever govt trick. Allow the outgo to be reduced by inflation but allow the income to adjust to accommodate inflation.
  - bostik 5y ago
    Plato's ideas were also rooted in the times he lived in. He lived in ancient Greece, in the city-state of Athens - the birth place of democracy. And the word "citizen" does a lot of heavy lifting... At the time, roughly 3% of the population were citizens. You had to be landed, wealthy and/or politically influental to qualify. Incidentally, only citizens had a vote. The other 97% were riff-raff, poor, slaves or otherwise unsuitable to be allowed to have a voice in the nation's decisions. Hence their opinion didn't matter.
- IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  I think it's hardly enforceable in a world where real estate can be owned by legal entities, which can be set-up on paper in seconds. Besides, in a free market it should not matter to prices whether I own two properties, or me and my brother (acting individually) own a property each, the market will set prices and neither of us can with one or two or 200 properties. Of course there's a limit to this logic, which is when you own so much you have a monopoly, but there's no entity that I'm aware of that has a monopoly in residential real estate or anything close to it.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    It's easily enforceable. Avoid applying the tax to primary residences. If it's not a primary residence, tax.
    - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
      You've not addressed my point. The idea is not to tax, it's to have a progressive tax. i.e., the more units you own, the more limitations or taxes you pay. That doesn't work if investment firms can invest in individual entities owning individual properties.
  - bostik 5y ago
    > but there's no entity that I'm aware of that has a monopoly in residential real estate or anything close to it. Singapore might come close.[0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore -- "The majority of the residential housing developments in Singapore are publicly governed and developed, and home to approximately 78.7% of the resident population."
    - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
      But that's public housing, owned by the state, governed by a democratic vote. The theoretical chance that the state will abuse its monopoly position to squeeze renters is extremely remote, and in fact the opposite of the going practice in Singapore.
salawat 5y ago
Just to ensure I understand your and this George fellow's assertion, you're basically claiming that renting should be a revenue neutral activity, not producing profit, but being entirely counterbalanced by taxation. I.e. not an investment. I want to make sure I'm actually getting it, because I'm not sure I disagree in a sense. Housing/land has too much importance in the scheme of being a financial asset to the point it is detrimental to actually utilizing the world around us. Finance as social control mechanism has become, in my opinion, so fundamentally tangible as to be downright laughable. So am I getting it, or am I still missing the point?
- sooheon 5y ago
  Yes, good for you for getting to the heart of the issue immediately. Though to clarify, renting location should be a revenue neutral activity. Renting something that is the product of your labor or capital investment (house renovations, warehouse with new equipment) should of course be compensated. In addition, such a tax on ground rent should replace our familiar taxes on labor, capital, and economic productivity.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > a tax on ground rent should replace our familiar taxes on labor, capital, and economic productivity. Even better, a tax on economic externalities, like pollution.
    - sooheon 5y ago
      Yes, those would be Pigovian taxes, the very close cousin of the Georgist single tax. Not quite the same economic elegance, but less bad than taxes on wages, sales, value added, etc.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    What does renting location look like in practice? Aside, thank you for taking the time to write these comments, in this thread and others like it. This is fascinating and important stuff, and you have a way of putting it together in a way that's easy to digest.
pydry 5y ago
>Google "deadweight loss price ceiling rent control" to see the detrimental economic effects of that policy. One of the supposed detrimental effects of the policy is a lower rate of homebuilding which exacerbates the problem yet New York's fastest rate of homebuilding (the 1950s) still coincided with the highest level of rent control. It's a topic of study (like the minimum wage, corporation tax, etc.) I'm also not really sure I trust most economists on since there's way too much $$$ (e.g. think tanks, koch money -> universities) invested in usefully wrong results.

criticaltinker 5y ago

What do you think about regulation that enforces a maximum limit on the number of dwellings or properties any individual can own? > At what point is someone's wealth acquisition too much–$1b, $10b, $100b, $1t? > Limitarianism is the view that no-one should enjoy more than an upper limit of some valuable goods or resources > Plato's Socrates identifies the ‘endless acquisition of money’ (Plato, 1997b, 373d) as the main cause of civil unrest and war. > In his last dialogue, the Laws, Plato gives a more or less complete limitarian account with a specification of both a lower and an upper threshold. According to this account, ‘extreme poverty and wealth must not be allowed to arise in any section of the citizen-body’ (Plato, 1997a, 744d). > Plato provides a detailed description of the lower threshold which each citizen should meet: everyone should obtain one dwelling near the centre of the country and another one near the outskirts. The size of the pieces of land on which these dwellings are built will vary according to the fertility of the land and its distance to the city [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ejop.12535 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ejop.12535

sooheon 5y ago
When it comes to economics, I don't believe in hard limits. Policies should not be brittle numeric rules ($15 minimum wage, $800 maximum rent, 1 child policy). Think gradients that affect incentives at every point in the map, not hard step functions with wide open loopholes. Plato's ideas seem well intentioned but somewhat ignorant of higher order economic effects of such "1 child policy" like rules. Much better to have a tax policy that's well aligned with the incentives we want to promote, and let the market figure the rest out.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  I've always wondered why taxes were percentage based but many govt benefits were hard numbers. It seems like a clever govt trick. Allow the outgo to be reduced by inflation but allow the income to adjust to accommodate inflation.
- bostik 5y ago
  Plato's ideas were also rooted in the times he lived in. He lived in ancient Greece, in the city-state of Athens - the birth place of democracy. And the word "citizen" does a lot of heavy lifting... At the time, roughly 3% of the population were citizens. You had to be landed, wealthy and/or politically influental to qualify. Incidentally, only citizens had a vote. The other 97% were riff-raff, poor, slaves or otherwise unsuitable to be allowed to have a voice in the nation's decisions. Hence their opinion didn't matter.
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
I think it's hardly enforceable in a world where real estate can be owned by legal entities, which can be set-up on paper in seconds. Besides, in a free market it should not matter to prices whether I own two properties, or me and my brother (acting individually) own a property each, the market will set prices and neither of us can with one or two or 200 properties. Of course there's a limit to this logic, which is when you own so much you have a monopoly, but there's no entity that I'm aware of that has a monopoly in residential real estate or anything close to it.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  It's easily enforceable. Avoid applying the tax to primary residences. If it's not a primary residence, tax.
  - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    You've not addressed my point. The idea is not to tax, it's to have a progressive tax. i.e., the more units you own, the more limitations or taxes you pay. That doesn't work if investment firms can invest in individual entities owning individual properties.
- bostik 5y ago
  > but there's no entity that I'm aware of that has a monopoly in residential real estate or anything close to it. Singapore might come close.[0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore -- "The majority of the residential housing developments in Singapore are publicly governed and developed, and home to approximately 78.7% of the resident population."
  - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    But that's public housing, owned by the state, governed by a democratic vote. The theoretical chance that the state will abuse its monopoly position to squeeze renters is extremely remote, and in fact the opposite of the going practice in Singapore.

salawat 5y ago

Just to ensure I understand your and this George fellow's assertion, you're basically claiming that renting should be a revenue neutral activity, not producing profit, but being entirely counterbalanced by taxation. I.e. not an investment. I want to make sure I'm actually getting it, because I'm not sure I disagree in a sense. Housing/land has too much importance in the scheme of being a financial asset to the point it is detrimental to actually utilizing the world around us. Finance as social control mechanism has become, in my opinion, so fundamentally tangible as to be downright laughable. So am I getting it, or am I still missing the point?

sooheon 5y ago
Yes, good for you for getting to the heart of the issue immediately. Though to clarify, renting location should be a revenue neutral activity. Renting something that is the product of your labor or capital investment (house renovations, warehouse with new equipment) should of course be compensated. In addition, such a tax on ground rent should replace our familiar taxes on labor, capital, and economic productivity.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > a tax on ground rent should replace our familiar taxes on labor, capital, and economic productivity. Even better, a tax on economic externalities, like pollution.
  - sooheon 5y ago
    Yes, those would be Pigovian taxes, the very close cousin of the Georgist single tax. Not quite the same economic elegance, but less bad than taxes on wages, sales, value added, etc.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  What does renting location look like in practice? Aside, thank you for taking the time to write these comments, in this thread and others like it. This is fascinating and important stuff, and you have a way of putting it together in a way that's easy to digest.

pydry 5y ago

>Google "deadweight loss price ceiling rent control" to see the detrimental economic effects of that policy. One of the supposed detrimental effects of the policy is a lower rate of homebuilding which exacerbates the problem yet New York's fastest rate of homebuilding (the 1950s) still coincided with the highest level of rent control. It's a topic of study (like the minimum wage, corporation tax, etc.) I'm also not really sure I trust most economists on since there's way too much $$$ (e.g. think tanks, koch money -> universities) invested in usefully wrong results.