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I buy electricity from a monopoly provider in my area, run the government. Is that a market? I buy sewer and garbage service likewise. There are some commoditi

I buy electricity from a monopoly provider in my area, run the government. Is that a market? I buy sewer and garbage service likewise. There are some commodities we choose to operate as natural monopolies because competition and profit seeking leads to bad outcomes for society. My argument is fundamentally that housing is the same.

paisawalla 4y ago
How will you be deciding who gets to have a view of the ocean, and who gets to sleep next to the overpass? First come first serve? Birthright?
- nivenkos 4y ago
  Pricing? You can have the government / housing co-ops sell properties and just forbid private renting out in absentia.
  - paisawalla 4y ago
    The point is that 1 KWh is 1KWh, but your home on the top floor of Millennium Tower is not equivalent to my home across from the 680 overpass. Housing is not a commodity like electricity, it's not fungible.
- turtledove 4y ago
  You could have a lottery, adjust prices within a regulated range, offer incentives for less desirable lots. You could reward developers for lots that have long wait lists and lots of interest, incentivizing developers who build places people want to live.
  - paisawalla 4y ago
    Ah hmm, that's interesting. How have lotteries for highly desired goods worked out in other centrally planned regimes? Did we find a pretty broad socioeconomic distribution among dacha owners in the USSR?
    - p1esk 4y ago
      Did we find a pretty broad socioeconomic distribution among dacha owners in the USSR? Yes.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    What if someone less fortunate 'wins' the mansion on the beach. How do they afford the future upkeep?
    - turtledove 4y ago
      This is a fair question, and one I'm not entirely satisfied that I have the answer for. Ideally, in my mind, I wouldn't own my home but I'd also be on the hook for maintenance and upkeep. But I recognize this does not meet everyone's needs and needs more thought. I would also hope that we would tend to build fewer mansions in favor of more multi family complexes, cohousing, coops, and small community oriented housing on the beach.
      - agentgumshoe 4y ago
        You know this kind of leads towards communism... Which I think is the key problem with any kind of shared equality by force system, it will work nicely so long as no one running things decides they don't want it to, then it works really poorly.
        turtledove 4y ago
        Looking at any single step on a path and rejecting it because the extreme end of the path isn't desirable is a quick way to never make any progress. We can improve things, we can do social good, and never slide to authoritarianism. (I assume you are talking about authoritarian communism vs, eg, council communism.)
        headsoup 4y ago
        Of course we can, but doing it at a society scale is very difficult and you have to be vary careful about who is on charge - or ends up with most influence - as history has consistently shown. I think it's easy (well reasonably) to do if resources are plentiful, but what do you do if there are more people than resources available to support them, who starts making the hard choices?
    - 4y ago
  - marvin 4y ago
    Offer incentives for less desirable properties, eh? That sounds suspiciously like having different prices, just with extra steps.
    - turtledove 4y ago
      I suppose, in the same way negative interest rates are just interest rates with extra steps. Start from a position of "everyone gets a home" and then ask "in that case, how do we make sure folks who end up in less desirable homes are compensated?" I suppose you could frame it in the language of prices, but in this case the price is paid to the tenant.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Indeed, it would be a tragedy if someone’s taxpayer-provided housing was insufficiently desirable that we must create a bureau to determine how much additional largess they should receive. That system seems likely to end well.
  - carom 4y ago
    How often would people have to move?
    - turtledove 4y ago
      When they wanted to. Forcing people to move is, imo, needlessly cruel.
      - carom 4y ago
        Isn't that unfair to someone else who wants to live there? It just seems like the first to arrive is the lucky one.
- aqme28 4y ago
  Is anyone in this thread proposing this kind of system? This is kind of an insane strawman. You can have a regulated market that still has prices. OP only proposed incentives to build and disincentives to hoard. Homes would still have prices, there would just be less scarcity.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    OP is claiming that housing is a commodity. If treated as a commodity, all houses would be priced the same. Then the reality sets in and you have to deal with the fact that some houses are more desirable than others, so you need to distribute them somehow without changing the price.
piotrkaminski 4y ago
Housing is very, very far from being a commodity.
- turtledove 4y ago
  In what sense? I mean, I'd love it if that were the case, but at least here in the US housing is extremely commodified.
  - kriops 4y ago
    Wikipedia: "A commodity is an economic good (...) that has full or substantial fungibility. (...)" On the basis of geography alone, housing can not be a commodity.
    - vertis 4y ago
      You're confusing want and need though. You might not like to live in any house, and you might need to be roughly geographically located to do work, but for the most part any house that fits your family is interchangable. When you take the other things, like job and where you want to send your kids to school it becomes a hell of a lot more fungible. Given that commoditization is a scale, I would say it could be toward that end of the spectrum if we wanted it to be.
      - gameman144 4y ago
        > Given that commoditization is a scale, I would say it could be toward that end of the spectrum if we wanted it to be. Commoditization is only a scale inasmuch as the underlying goods are fungible. Corn is a commodity because nobody cares about differences between individual kernels, but if some process came around that only worked with super-specific kernels, then you'd be reducing the commoditization of corn. I can, however, think of nothing that would make housing even close to fungible. Views, neighborhoods, neighbors, noise, history, location -- the list of things which are entirely unique per property is higher than basically any other market I can think of.
qeternity 4y ago
> we choose to operate as natural monopolies No, not at all. We don’t choose natural monopolies. We recognize them. The whole point is they are naturally occurring whether we want them or not. Housing shares nothing in common with the other services you mention which are anything but commodities! The natural monopoly of the electrical company isn’t electricity, it’s distribution. Power is a commodity, and delivery is anything but. Your argument that housing is the same is not well informed.
- southerntofu 4y ago
  There is no reason we have to pay for anything. Money is not a natural construct and is a leaky abstraction. Our ancestors built housing long before currency was even invented. Public services are not a "natural monopoly". They are a deliberate political choice (that was paid in blood by the lower classes, see also Haymarket Affair for example). We could very easily make housing free for all, or just affordable (see also HLM program in France).
  - qeternity 4y ago
    > There is no reason we have to pay for anything. Money is not a natural construct and is a leaky abstraction. Our ancestors built housing long before currency was even invented. As you note, there are other ways to pay for things than money. Whether it's "paid in blood" or other barter system, there is always a cost to pay. > We could very easily make housing free for all, or just affordable (see also HLM program in France). Would love to hear your very easy solutions. Affordability is relative. If you have more demand than supply (as we do with housing) the only way to increase affordability in real terms is to shift the supply curve. This shift is not free, and somebody has to pay for it. This is where the "omg it's so easy" arguments typically fall apart.
    - southerntofu 4y ago
      > Whether it's "paid in blood" or other barter system, there is always a cost to pay. I meant the social rights/protections had to be paid in blood. But nothing in itself requires payment. We just happen to live in a society which commoditizes everything. If everyone worked some field they're passionate about (and people are passionate about many things) and we evenly shared the work for undesirable jobs (eg. cleaning) we could have everything for free. > If you have more demand than supply (as we do with housing) This is highly uninformed. In many countries around the planet, empty dwellings easily outnumber homeless people so we don't need to build anything at all to house everyone. Moreover, if we just stopped tearing down housing and started renovating them, that's also much less work/resources. Finally, if you really want/need more housing, a government run program (such as the HLM i mentioned before) shows you can build affordable housing for 10-30k€/appartment and rent them for a final user cost (after government help for housing) of under 100€/month. It's a shame like all public services across France the HLM system is being corrupted and coopted into money-making machine. The buildings in popular neighborhoods go unmaintained while administrators pocket all the money, and the little that's left goes into developing higher-classes "HLM" housing which we popular classes can't afford.
simonh 4y ago
I'll try and argue the point without the useless pejoratives in a companion comment. Those payments are the equivalent of rent in the housing market. The thing that isn't a market and isn't being bought and sold is the right to provide those services, it's the power grid and generation plants, or the garbage infrastructure. The monopoly on those is what is anti-market and is the equivalent of not being able to buy and sell property. I'm not making a political point there, I happen to thing some thing are natural monopolies and that markets have their limit. Housing is a complex issue in this respect. Flats in big city blocks are much like a commodity and limited urban building space naturally reduces competition, while nice houses in the suburbs or country are very much a market with lots of options suiting different needs.
Bayart 4y ago
> I buy electricity from a monopoly provider in my area, run the government. Is that a market? It's not a market for you, but it is to your provider. And it naturally impacts the cost that's layed upon you, whether directly through electricity bills or through taxes if it's subsidised.

paisawalla 4y ago

How will you be deciding who gets to have a view of the ocean, and who gets to sleep next to the overpass? First come first serve? Birthright?

nivenkos 4y ago
Pricing? You can have the government / housing co-ops sell properties and just forbid private renting out in absentia.
- paisawalla 4y ago
  The point is that 1 KWh is 1KWh, but your home on the top floor of Millennium Tower is not equivalent to my home across from the 680 overpass. Housing is not a commodity like electricity, it's not fungible.
turtledove 4y ago
You could have a lottery, adjust prices within a regulated range, offer incentives for less desirable lots. You could reward developers for lots that have long wait lists and lots of interest, incentivizing developers who build places people want to live.
- paisawalla 4y ago
  Ah hmm, that's interesting. How have lotteries for highly desired goods worked out in other centrally planned regimes? Did we find a pretty broad socioeconomic distribution among dacha owners in the USSR?
  - p1esk 4y ago
    Did we find a pretty broad socioeconomic distribution among dacha owners in the USSR? Yes.
- headsoup 4y ago
  What if someone less fortunate 'wins' the mansion on the beach. How do they afford the future upkeep?
  - turtledove 4y ago
    This is a fair question, and one I'm not entirely satisfied that I have the answer for. Ideally, in my mind, I wouldn't own my home but I'd also be on the hook for maintenance and upkeep. But I recognize this does not meet everyone's needs and needs more thought. I would also hope that we would tend to build fewer mansions in favor of more multi family complexes, cohousing, coops, and small community oriented housing on the beach.
    - agentgumshoe 4y ago
      You know this kind of leads towards communism... Which I think is the key problem with any kind of shared equality by force system, it will work nicely so long as no one running things decides they don't want it to, then it works really poorly.
      - turtledove 4y ago
        Looking at any single step on a path and rejecting it because the extreme end of the path isn't desirable is a quick way to never make any progress. We can improve things, we can do social good, and never slide to authoritarianism. (I assume you are talking about authoritarian communism vs, eg, council communism.)
        headsoup 4y ago
        Of course we can, but doing it at a society scale is very difficult and you have to be vary careful about who is on charge - or ends up with most influence - as history has consistently shown. I think it's easy (well reasonably) to do if resources are plentiful, but what do you do if there are more people than resources available to support them, who starts making the hard choices?
  - 4y ago
- marvin 4y ago
  Offer incentives for less desirable properties, eh? That sounds suspiciously like having different prices, just with extra steps.
  - turtledove 4y ago
    I suppose, in the same way negative interest rates are just interest rates with extra steps. Start from a position of "everyone gets a home" and then ask "in that case, how do we make sure folks who end up in less desirable homes are compensated?" I suppose you could frame it in the language of prices, but in this case the price is paid to the tenant.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Indeed, it would be a tragedy if someone’s taxpayer-provided housing was insufficiently desirable that we must create a bureau to determine how much additional largess they should receive. That system seems likely to end well.
- carom 4y ago
  How often would people have to move?
  - turtledove 4y ago
    When they wanted to. Forcing people to move is, imo, needlessly cruel.
    - carom 4y ago
      Isn't that unfair to someone else who wants to live there? It just seems like the first to arrive is the lucky one.
aqme28 4y ago
Is anyone in this thread proposing this kind of system? This is kind of an insane strawman. You can have a regulated market that still has prices. OP only proposed incentives to build and disincentives to hoard. Homes would still have prices, there would just be less scarcity.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  OP is claiming that housing is a commodity. If treated as a commodity, all houses would be priced the same. Then the reality sets in and you have to deal with the fact that some houses are more desirable than others, so you need to distribute them somehow without changing the price.

piotrkaminski 4y ago

Housing is very, very far from being a commodity.

turtledove 4y ago
In what sense? I mean, I'd love it if that were the case, but at least here in the US housing is extremely commodified.
- kriops 4y ago
  Wikipedia: "A commodity is an economic good (...) that has full or substantial fungibility. (...)" On the basis of geography alone, housing can not be a commodity.
  - vertis 4y ago
    You're confusing want and need though. You might not like to live in any house, and you might need to be roughly geographically located to do work, but for the most part any house that fits your family is interchangable. When you take the other things, like job and where you want to send your kids to school it becomes a hell of a lot more fungible. Given that commoditization is a scale, I would say it could be toward that end of the spectrum if we wanted it to be.
    - gameman144 4y ago
      > Given that commoditization is a scale, I would say it could be toward that end of the spectrum if we wanted it to be. Commoditization is only a scale inasmuch as the underlying goods are fungible. Corn is a commodity because nobody cares about differences between individual kernels, but if some process came around that only worked with super-specific kernels, then you'd be reducing the commoditization of corn. I can, however, think of nothing that would make housing even close to fungible. Views, neighborhoods, neighbors, noise, history, location -- the list of things which are entirely unique per property is higher than basically any other market I can think of.

qeternity 4y ago

> we choose to operate as natural monopolies No, not at all. We don’t choose natural monopolies. We recognize them. The whole point is they are naturally occurring whether we want them or not. Housing shares nothing in common with the other services you mention which are anything but commodities! The natural monopoly of the electrical company isn’t electricity, it’s distribution. Power is a commodity, and delivery is anything but. Your argument that housing is the same is not well informed.

southerntofu 4y ago
There is no reason we have to pay for anything. Money is not a natural construct and is a leaky abstraction. Our ancestors built housing long before currency was even invented. Public services are not a "natural monopoly". They are a deliberate political choice (that was paid in blood by the lower classes, see also Haymarket Affair for example). We could very easily make housing free for all, or just affordable (see also HLM program in France).
- qeternity 4y ago
  > There is no reason we have to pay for anything. Money is not a natural construct and is a leaky abstraction. Our ancestors built housing long before currency was even invented. As you note, there are other ways to pay for things than money. Whether it's "paid in blood" or other barter system, there is always a cost to pay. > We could very easily make housing free for all, or just affordable (see also HLM program in France). Would love to hear your very easy solutions. Affordability is relative. If you have more demand than supply (as we do with housing) the only way to increase affordability in real terms is to shift the supply curve. This shift is not free, and somebody has to pay for it. This is where the "omg it's so easy" arguments typically fall apart.
  - southerntofu 4y ago
    > Whether it's "paid in blood" or other barter system, there is always a cost to pay. I meant the social rights/protections had to be paid in blood. But nothing in itself requires payment. We just happen to live in a society which commoditizes everything. If everyone worked some field they're passionate about (and people are passionate about many things) and we evenly shared the work for undesirable jobs (eg. cleaning) we could have everything for free. > If you have more demand than supply (as we do with housing) This is highly uninformed. In many countries around the planet, empty dwellings easily outnumber homeless people so we don't need to build anything at all to house everyone. Moreover, if we just stopped tearing down housing and started renovating them, that's also much less work/resources. Finally, if you really want/need more housing, a government run program (such as the HLM i mentioned before) shows you can build affordable housing for 10-30k€/appartment and rent them for a final user cost (after government help for housing) of under 100€/month. It's a shame like all public services across France the HLM system is being corrupted and coopted into money-making machine. The buildings in popular neighborhoods go unmaintained while administrators pocket all the money, and the little that's left goes into developing higher-classes "HLM" housing which we popular classes can't afford.

simonh 4y ago

I'll try and argue the point without the useless pejoratives in a companion comment. Those payments are the equivalent of rent in the housing market. The thing that isn't a market and isn't being bought and sold is the right to provide those services, it's the power grid and generation plants, or the garbage infrastructure. The monopoly on those is what is anti-market and is the equivalent of not being able to buy and sell property. I'm not making a political point there, I happen to thing some thing are natural monopolies and that markets have their limit. Housing is a complex issue in this respect. Flats in big city blocks are much like a commodity and limited urban building space naturally reduces competition, while nice houses in the suburbs or country are very much a market with lots of options suiting different needs.

Bayart 4y ago

> I buy electricity from a monopoly provider in my area, run the government. Is that a market? It's not a market for you, but it is to your provider. And it naturally impacts the cost that's layed upon you, whether directly through electricity bills or through taxes if it's subsidised.