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You can rent virtually any durable good of value. “Power” has nothing to do with it, ownership does.

by zaroth 5y ago

epistasis 5y ago
I'm talking about market power to charge rents high enough to keeping capital tied up in a home, rather than some more productive use of it. That sort of ownership of the land rents is exactly the problem, as it incentivizes the local land owners to use their political power to en chance their market power to charge high rents.
- zaroth 5y ago
  This makes no sense. The “capital tied up in the home” is the reason that the home was built — obviously someone had to pay for it. So what you’ve stated is effectively a tautology. Either ownership embues the owner with the right to rent their property, or you don’t believe in ownership at all. You vote where you live, not where you own. The “local land owners using political power” is a trope posted here often, but I’m pretty sure it’s the renters who are electing the local politicians.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    After a home is built, somebody comes along and purchases it later. People are continuously doing this. When they do this to rent out a home, they are tying up capital in order to get rents. And what determines the price level of rents? Scarcity of housing determines how far up the demand-price curve the market clearing price will go. > You vote where you live, not where you own. The “local land owners using political power” is a trope posted here often, but I’m pretty sure it’s the renters who are electing the local politicians. This is a very astute observation! And you will find that places where the landlords live in their voting jurisdiction, like San Francisco and Palo Alto, tend to vote for far less housing-positive politicians than places where the landlords tend to live elsewhere, like Oakland or East Palo Alto. Landlords and homeowners have more money, more free time to influence local politicians. Every time you go to a public comment section, homeowners tout their homeowners status as if it gives them more clout with politicians, and often it does. There's significant academic work on this power dynamic. One sub-genre of it is the home-voter hypothesis: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674015951 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674015951 But there's lots of other research too.

You can rent virtually any durable good of value. “Power” has nothing to do with it, ownership does.

by zaroth 5y ago

You can rent virtually any durable good of value. “Power” has nothing to do with it, ownership does.

I'm talking about market power to charge rents high enough to keeping capital tied up in a home, rather than some more productive use of it. That sort of ownership of the land rents is exactly the problem, as it incentivizes the local land owners to use their political power to en chance their market power to charge high rents.

zaroth 5y ago
This makes no sense. The “capital tied up in the home” is the reason that the home was built — obviously someone had to pay for it. So what you’ve stated is effectively a tautology. Either ownership embues the owner with the right to rent their property, or you don’t believe in ownership at all. You vote where you live, not where you own. The “local land owners using political power” is a trope posted here often, but I’m pretty sure it’s the renters who are electing the local politicians.
- epistasis 5y ago
  After a home is built, somebody comes along and purchases it later. People are continuously doing this. When they do this to rent out a home, they are tying up capital in order to get rents. And what determines the price level of rents? Scarcity of housing determines how far up the demand-price curve the market clearing price will go. > You vote where you live, not where you own. The “local land owners using political power” is a trope posted here often, but I’m pretty sure it’s the renters who are electing the local politicians. This is a very astute observation! And you will find that places where the landlords live in their voting jurisdiction, like San Francisco and Palo Alto, tend to vote for far less housing-positive politicians than places where the landlords tend to live elsewhere, like Oakland or East Palo Alto. Landlords and homeowners have more money, more free time to influence local politicians. Every time you go to a public comment section, homeowners tout their homeowners status as if it gives them more clout with politicians, and often it does. There's significant academic work on this power dynamic. One sub-genre of it is the home-voter hypothesis: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674015951 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674015951 But there's lots of other research too.