10 ms·

Ah, my shortages are good, your shortages are bad. Makes sense.

gruez 5y ago
I have a feeling you're being sarcastic, but that's exactly what I'm arguing for. If your city only has enough housing for 100,000 people, but there are 150,000 people who want to live there, there's going 50,000 who can't get a house. In other words, a shortage. That's bad, but that number is going to be the same regardless of how you're redistributing it. The question then becomes, can we make the best out of a bad situation? Distributing by price has benefits that I mentioned. What benefits does giving giving it for below-market prices to people whoever's first on a waiting list provide?
- dbingham 5y ago
  Except, if you'd ever paid any attention to housing markets in any major city they don't work this way. There are too many other factors and incentives at play. Not least of which is that the profit motive drives developers and landlords to keep costs as high as they possibly can, and they all share that motivation, so you end up with convergent price fixing - where they all just naturally compete on things other than price with out actually colluding to do that. Markets rarely actually work as advertised.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    They do though. It's just that there's so much regulation and other problems that they can't adjust fast enough. I've lived in Hamburg, Germany, adjacent to an expanding hipster area. Rents rose steadily and every vacant lot was being built upon, industrial zones were repurposed for more housing etc. It's just that that still only gives you a fraction of the apartments you'd need to satisfy demand. If there was no incentive for investment, I'm sure we'd see even fewer new houses being built, because there's no incentive for the state to move, neither fast nor at all.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  It only works though if income distribution is somewhat sane and people actually buy the housing to live or for renting out. The issue is that a small part of the population is so rich that they can afford many apartments/houses without living in them or renting them out. Those individuals have often enough market weight that they can distort the market all by themselves. Creating an arbitrary shortage to drive up prices for example
flavius29663 5y ago
In the article, if you can't get in, you're out. In a price defined shortage, there are always alternatives, it's not so black and white: - you can get a smaller apartment - you can get a not so nice apartment, but with space - you can get an apartment further away from points of interest, meaning it's cheaper but you have a longer commute This is very similar to free market for groceries: in communism you don't get groceries on the shelves. You get them only if you are lucky enough to be around when a delivery is made. In capitalism, some groceries might be more expensive, but you can always buy cheaper ones, or travel longer to buy from cheaper stores.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  You talk about these options as if they are selection dilemmas rather than an optimization problem, and discussing trading time and effort for price as if time and effort are unlimited resources. If you're going to pretend time and effort are unlimited, why not pretend funds are, also?
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    time is not unlimited, where did I say that? But you can commute 1 hour away and get much cheaper rents in almost any location on Earth. You trade off one extra hour each way for some cash.

I have a feeling you're being sarcastic, but that's exactly what I'm arguing for. If your city only has enough housing for 100,000 people, but there are 150,000 people who want to live there, there's going 50,000 who can't get a house. In other words, a shortage. That's bad, but that number is going to be the same regardless of how you're redistributing it. The question then becomes, can we make the best out of a bad situation? Distributing by price has benefits that I mentioned. What benefits does giving giving it for below-market prices to people whoever's first on a waiting list provide?

dbingham 5y ago
Except, if you'd ever paid any attention to housing markets in any major city they don't work this way. There are too many other factors and incentives at play. Not least of which is that the profit motive drives developers and landlords to keep costs as high as they possibly can, and they all share that motivation, so you end up with convergent price fixing - where they all just naturally compete on things other than price with out actually colluding to do that. Markets rarely actually work as advertised.
- luckylion 5y ago
  They do though. It's just that there's so much regulation and other problems that they can't adjust fast enough. I've lived in Hamburg, Germany, adjacent to an expanding hipster area. Rents rose steadily and every vacant lot was being built upon, industrial zones were repurposed for more housing etc. It's just that that still only gives you a fraction of the apartments you'd need to satisfy demand. If there was no incentive for investment, I'm sure we'd see even fewer new houses being built, because there's no incentive for the state to move, neither fast nor at all.
cycomanic 5y ago
It only works though if income distribution is somewhat sane and people actually buy the housing to live or for renting out. The issue is that a small part of the population is so rich that they can afford many apartments/houses without living in them or renting them out. Those individuals have often enough market weight that they can distort the market all by themselves. Creating an arbitrary shortage to drive up prices for example

flavius29663 5y ago

In the article, if you can't get in, you're out. In a price defined shortage, there are always alternatives, it's not so black and white: - you can get a smaller apartment - you can get a not so nice apartment, but with space - you can get an apartment further away from points of interest, meaning it's cheaper but you have a longer commute This is very similar to free market for groceries: in communism you don't get groceries on the shelves. You get them only if you are lucky enough to be around when a delivery is made. In capitalism, some groceries might be more expensive, but you can always buy cheaper ones, or travel longer to buy from cheaper stores.

pessimizer 5y ago
You talk about these options as if they are selection dilemmas rather than an optimization problem, and discussing trading time and effort for price as if time and effort are unlimited resources. If you're going to pretend time and effort are unlimited, why not pretend funds are, also?
- flavius29663 5y ago
  time is not unlimited, where did I say that? But you can commute 1 hour away and get much cheaper rents in almost any location on Earth. You trade off one extra hour each way for some cash.