7 ms·

Hotels and flights are, granted, less essential than a place to live. Remember, you _have to live somewhere_. That is a functional difference compared to other

by rtpg 4y ago

Hotels and flights are, granted, less essential than a place to live. Remember, you _have to live somewhere_. That is a functional difference compared to other "market-based" things (never mind that "market-based solutions" are a lot less workable when atomicity is lost. Yeah yeah, regulations making things harder to build, I think more should be built! But there are real, "wanted" things in the way of just having market magic solve everything). Employers sharing salary information is also maybe a descriptive reality but I don't believe to be necessarily smiled upon. Remember the wage fixing scandals in SV? Analogies are great because you can say A is like B, up until A is no longer like B and then they are terrible. But seriously, there are qualitative differences in things which make comparable effects be more or less of a problem (or even go from good to bad!). Thinking continuously by analogy misses the forest for the trees.

grecy 4y ago
> Remember, you _have to live somewhere_. You also _have_ to get education, healthcare and a whole lot more than nobody is doing anything about making any kind of affordable.
- ketralnis 4y ago
  Maybe those things are bad too?
- rtpg 4y ago
  Luckily it turns out that it _is_ possible to do multiple things at once, in theory. Especially odd to consider healthcare as "nobody is doing anything", as if this is a new political topic for debate instead of an ongoing fight for the past.... 40? years? The lack of progress isn't for lack of wanting it!
- babelfish 4y ago
  They should be.
- larsiusprime 4y ago
  You actually don't have to get an education and healthcare, although you ideally really should. But you can't opt out of physically existing in a location so long as you're still alive. And I've seen compelling evidence that inflation in healthcare and education is at least partially downstream of the housing crisis.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    In that same vein, you don't really have to have a home, although you really should. With that type of thinking, the only thing you really really require to live is air, food and water, anything besides that you don't really require but is merely optional. You can live outside in a tent or under a couple of moving boxes. Myself I'd say that both having a roof over your head, education, healthcare and a bunch of other stuff is a human right, but I digress.
    - larsiusprime 4y ago
      > Myself I'd say that both having a roof over your head, education, healthcare and a bunch of other stuff is a human right, but I digress. I mean I agree, you're missing my point. > You can live outside in a tent or under a couple of moving boxes. Not legally in a lot of places you can't! The point I'm making is that while we need (and should have as a right) many good things, the need to have a home is a particularly special one because locations are in fixed supply, and not even for one minute can you opt out of existing in a location, and every location that people want to exist in is currently owned by somebody, most of whom aren't interested in sharing. And wouldn't you know it? Locations that have steady access to all that other good stuff (education, healthcare, bunch of other stuff) tend to be way more expensive than other locations, precisely because they gatekeep access to them.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  On the right track keep going.
Aunche 4y ago
A place to live is a market based thing. There's no real difference between what RealPage is doing with housing, and what the CME Group is doing with crops. They both facilitate price discovery. The CME also is helping farmers maximize their profits. The difference is that farmers are allowed to grow as much crops as they want (perhaps a little too much in drought-prone areas), so food prices grow much more reasonably than rents. Meanwhile, developers aren't allowed to build enough housing to meet demand, so of course rents and home prices will skyrocket.
- notch656a 4y ago
  If you spend some time in South America you quickly find that most everyone can afford some type of housing, it's just a matter of how shitty it is going to end up. The vast majority of the US has set some building codes that basically say "be rich enough to build to this code or be homeless." One can debate the merits of whether the streets are safer than a sub-code house. If you go somewhere like Asuncion, Paraguay you'll find people living in a shack who would end up homeless in the US. IMO notably missing in zoning and building codes is they tend to consider the harmful effects of substandard zoning / code. But they seldom consider the harmful effects of the tradeoffs made to get it up to code/zone, including less money for healthcare, education, healthy foods, investing in your children, etc. Often it boils down to "fuck you, got mine, I won't risk some elevated risk of spread of fire to help keep you from freezing to death."
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- landemva 4y ago
  CME provides a place to trade futures products, which producers use to hedge risk. That is not like the apartment rent collusion.
  - Aunche 4y ago
    The CME facilitates price discovery with derivatives. RealPage facilitates price discovery with data science. If they are really facilitating collusion, then they would be selling a broken product. For example, for simplicity's sake, let's say that a city has a lot of landlords, but all their units are identical and they all follow the RealPage algorithm for price suggestions. Realpage suggests that they charge an exorbitant $10000 per unit, which leads to only 50% of all units being occupied, so your expected value of $5000 per unit. However, if you're a landlord, you'd be better off renting your units at $9000, leading to 90% occupancy. Your expected profit per unit is $8100, so you're actually much better off without the algorithm.
asdff 4y ago
Hardly anyone says "I have $200, where can I fly." Usually its "I have to go to X for y reasons, X is already booked and paid for, lets get a flight" at which point you are extorted by the dynamic price model for a flight you must take. It's somewhat hilarious when Spirit in particular overbooks, and tries to offer you money to take a flight some other day, assuming you can just rearrange everything in your life around this airline's fraught booking department. Like sure, let me go call the hotel and the rental car company and the venue and my boss and tell them I am attempting to move heaven and earth at the last minute for $108.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  > Hardly anyone says "I have $200, where can I fly." Not sure about that, there are entire industries around cheap flights for people that are location agnostic. ScottsCheapFlights comes to mind.
  - generj 4y ago
    But ScottsCheapFlights is a very particular concept and not how most people go on vacation. Even with it people have a vague idea of where they would like to go, just perhaps not when. For example, I would like to go to a major city in Europe sometime this summer. Which city isn’t urgent to me. The week I go doesn’t matter. Except oh so and so is getting married that week of June and I’ve recently been to Germany so would prefer something else. Very very few people plan their vacations like this. They would rather pay twice the rate a deal site gives them and plan around school breaks for their kids, know which country they are kicking off their bucket list, have a direct flight from their home airport, etc. We who are willing to book an international flight and only then figure out what our vacation will be give up a lot for our discounted ticket prices.
    - cercatrova 4y ago
      Hm I'm not sure it's very very few as you say. Most people I know also don't know much about the various countries in the world (vacation-wise) and would be happy to go somewhere for a set price (in a set time such as school holidays) rather than a particular destination. In fact, the more avid travelers (rather than casual vacationers) are the ones more likely to pick a particular destination to go to. I've heard of many people saying, I have 1000 bucks to spend on a vacation, I'd like to go somewhere for that amount during this time.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
> Hotels and flights are, granted, less essential than a place to live. Remember, you _have to live somewhere_. What about property tax assessments? Municipal governments don't care about pricing out local residents when they hire companies or banks that do exactly what Realpage is doing (i.e. collecting information, applying some proprietary regression model to it, and spit out valuations). In fact, they can put a lien on what should be your home, even if your one dollar short. The issue isn't market-based solutions. The issue is lack of transparency.

by rtpg 4y ago

grecy 4y ago

> Remember, you _have to live somewhere_. You also _have_ to get education, healthcare and a whole lot more than nobody is doing anything about making any kind of affordable.

ketralnis 4y ago
Maybe those things are bad too?
rtpg 4y ago
Luckily it turns out that it _is_ possible to do multiple things at once, in theory. Especially odd to consider healthcare as "nobody is doing anything", as if this is a new political topic for debate instead of an ongoing fight for the past.... 40? years? The lack of progress isn't for lack of wanting it!
babelfish 4y ago
They should be.
larsiusprime 4y ago
You actually don't have to get an education and healthcare, although you ideally really should. But you can't opt out of physically existing in a location so long as you're still alive. And I've seen compelling evidence that inflation in healthcare and education is at least partially downstream of the housing crisis.
- capableweb 4y ago
  In that same vein, you don't really have to have a home, although you really should. With that type of thinking, the only thing you really really require to live is air, food and water, anything besides that you don't really require but is merely optional. You can live outside in a tent or under a couple of moving boxes. Myself I'd say that both having a roof over your head, education, healthcare and a bunch of other stuff is a human right, but I digress.
  - larsiusprime 4y ago
    > Myself I'd say that both having a roof over your head, education, healthcare and a bunch of other stuff is a human right, but I digress. I mean I agree, you're missing my point. > You can live outside in a tent or under a couple of moving boxes. Not legally in a lot of places you can't! The point I'm making is that while we need (and should have as a right) many good things, the need to have a home is a particularly special one because locations are in fixed supply, and not even for one minute can you opt out of existing in a location, and every location that people want to exist in is currently owned by somebody, most of whom aren't interested in sharing. And wouldn't you know it? Locations that have steady access to all that other good stuff (education, healthcare, bunch of other stuff) tend to be way more expensive than other locations, precisely because they gatekeep access to them.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
On the right track keep going.

Aunche 4y ago

A place to live is a market based thing. There's no real difference between what RealPage is doing with housing, and what the CME Group is doing with crops. They both facilitate price discovery. The CME also is helping farmers maximize their profits. The difference is that farmers are allowed to grow as much crops as they want (perhaps a little too much in drought-prone areas), so food prices grow much more reasonably than rents. Meanwhile, developers aren't allowed to build enough housing to meet demand, so of course rents and home prices will skyrocket.

notch656a 4y ago
If you spend some time in South America you quickly find that most everyone can afford some type of housing, it's just a matter of how shitty it is going to end up. The vast majority of the US has set some building codes that basically say "be rich enough to build to this code or be homeless." One can debate the merits of whether the streets are safer than a sub-code house. If you go somewhere like Asuncion, Paraguay you'll find people living in a shack who would end up homeless in the US. IMO notably missing in zoning and building codes is they tend to consider the harmful effects of substandard zoning / code. But they seldom consider the harmful effects of the tradeoffs made to get it up to code/zone, including less money for healthcare, education, healthy foods, investing in your children, etc. Often it boils down to "fuck you, got mine, I won't risk some elevated risk of spread of fire to help keep you from freezing to death."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
landemva 4y ago
CME provides a place to trade futures products, which producers use to hedge risk. That is not like the apartment rent collusion.
- Aunche 4y ago
  The CME facilitates price discovery with derivatives. RealPage facilitates price discovery with data science. If they are really facilitating collusion, then they would be selling a broken product. For example, for simplicity's sake, let's say that a city has a lot of landlords, but all their units are identical and they all follow the RealPage algorithm for price suggestions. Realpage suggests that they charge an exorbitant $10000 per unit, which leads to only 50% of all units being occupied, so your expected value of $5000 per unit. However, if you're a landlord, you'd be better off renting your units at $9000, leading to 90% occupancy. Your expected profit per unit is $8100, so you're actually much better off without the algorithm.

asdff 4y ago

Hardly anyone says "I have $200, where can I fly." Usually its "I have to go to X for y reasons, X is already booked and paid for, lets get a flight" at which point you are extorted by the dynamic price model for a flight you must take. It's somewhat hilarious when Spirit in particular overbooks, and tries to offer you money to take a flight some other day, assuming you can just rearrange everything in your life around this airline's fraught booking department. Like sure, let me go call the hotel and the rental car company and the venue and my boss and tell them I am attempting to move heaven and earth at the last minute for $108.

cercatrova 4y ago
> Hardly anyone says "I have $200, where can I fly." Not sure about that, there are entire industries around cheap flights for people that are location agnostic. ScottsCheapFlights comes to mind.
- generj 4y ago
  But ScottsCheapFlights is a very particular concept and not how most people go on vacation. Even with it people have a vague idea of where they would like to go, just perhaps not when. For example, I would like to go to a major city in Europe sometime this summer. Which city isn’t urgent to me. The week I go doesn’t matter. Except oh so and so is getting married that week of June and I’ve recently been to Germany so would prefer something else. Very very few people plan their vacations like this. They would rather pay twice the rate a deal site gives them and plan around school breaks for their kids, know which country they are kicking off their bucket list, have a direct flight from their home airport, etc. We who are willing to book an international flight and only then figure out what our vacation will be give up a lot for our discounted ticket prices.
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Hm I'm not sure it's very very few as you say. Most people I know also don't know much about the various countries in the world (vacation-wise) and would be happy to go somewhere for a set price (in a set time such as school holidays) rather than a particular destination. In fact, the more avid travelers (rather than casual vacationers) are the ones more likely to pick a particular destination to go to. I've heard of many people saying, I have 1000 bucks to spend on a vacation, I'd like to go somewhere for that amount during this time.

Dracophoenix 4y ago

> Hotels and flights are, granted, less essential than a place to live. Remember, you _have to live somewhere_. What about property tax assessments? Municipal governments don't care about pricing out local residents when they hire companies or banks that do exactly what Realpage is doing (i.e. collecting information, applying some proprietary regression model to it, and spit out valuations). In fact, they can put a lien on what should be your home, even if your one dollar short. The issue isn't market-based solutions. The issue is lack of transparency.