3 ms·

Housing is a little more of a critical need for people than graphics cards…

db48x 4y ago
That’s irrelevant. We’re considering here how the market prices them, not what they are used for or how important they are.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It’s hardly irrelevant. Proved by the fact the people voted for a vacancy tax and not an unused GPU tax.
  - db48x 4y ago
    /me facepalms That’s circular. This discussion of GPUs started when tomcam asked why a tax on unused housing was OK, and whether or not it could be extended to a tax on unused GPUs. In particular, a vacancy tax seems to force people to rent out property rather than merely posses it. Can the same law be used to force people to enter into other rental agreements? I have a bunch of old computer parts, including motherboards, cpus, and gpus sitting around unused. I dare say that I could build two or three working computers out of them. Should I be taxed for owning these unused computers? I have a few thousand books that I’m not currently reading, what about them? Should we tax people for having more books than they can carry? What about your bed, which is currently going unused approximately 16 hours out of the day? Can the government one day force you to rent that out too? Hot bunking would certainly “solve” any housing problem a city might face. Where is the distinction? Simply stating that no law has been passed to force you to rent out your unused GPUs is not stating a guiding principle, because that’s merely a matter of time.
    - camgunz 4y ago
      Lots of other people, including me, have pointed out that the differentiating principle is "is X a fundamental human need". Housing is, GPUs aren't. But to steelman the strawman you're putting up here, economics tries really hard to maximize the efficiency of markets, the idea being if you've got something you can make money with (e.g. a CPU/GPU/book/bike/car/bed you could rent out) you should, and thereby someone gets to use your thing and you get to make a little money. You paint this as some kind of hyper-communistic dystopia, but this is actually the world that hyper-capitalist companies like Uber and Airbnb are working pretty hard to create right now. This is critical to understanding the anti-democratic underpinnings of this landlord action. There's nothing unconstitutional going on here--it's basic market regulation that States and the US have been doing for literally hundreds of years. There's nothing wrong with policies aimed at making markets more efficient, that's why we have regulations and antitrust. And besides, rental housing is a market. Hogging supply to artificially inflate market prices is generally a crime. Suppliers in this market are suspected of doing that, so the people of SF are taking action to make them stop. They're lucky they're getting off with a tax. That said, I'm not a fan of this policy in this case. SF's vacancy rate is super low, and I think that indicates this tax won't result in meaningful revenue or vacancy rate increases. This seems like purely a supply problem. I know there are other places (Vancouver, Toronto, NYC) where "property as investment" has gotten out of hand and municipalities are passing laws to try and address it, but they had way higher vacancy rates than SF. I could be wrong though. Others have made the argument that SF's market is secretly inefficient, that for one reason or another landlords are reporting their units as occupied when they in fact aren't. In that case, this tax might motivate those landlords to rent their places. I don't buy this though, in particular I don't think many people would leave > $30k a year on the table just to have the option of one day letting their parents move into a unit.

That’s irrelevant. We’re considering here how the market prices them, not what they are used for or how important they are.

Gigachad 4y ago
It’s hardly irrelevant. Proved by the fact the people voted for a vacancy tax and not an unused GPU tax.
- db48x 4y ago
  /me facepalms That’s circular. This discussion of GPUs started when tomcam asked why a tax on unused housing was OK, and whether or not it could be extended to a tax on unused GPUs. In particular, a vacancy tax seems to force people to rent out property rather than merely posses it. Can the same law be used to force people to enter into other rental agreements? I have a bunch of old computer parts, including motherboards, cpus, and gpus sitting around unused. I dare say that I could build two or three working computers out of them. Should I be taxed for owning these unused computers? I have a few thousand books that I’m not currently reading, what about them? Should we tax people for having more books than they can carry? What about your bed, which is currently going unused approximately 16 hours out of the day? Can the government one day force you to rent that out too? Hot bunking would certainly “solve” any housing problem a city might face. Where is the distinction? Simply stating that no law has been passed to force you to rent out your unused GPUs is not stating a guiding principle, because that’s merely a matter of time.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    Lots of other people, including me, have pointed out that the differentiating principle is "is X a fundamental human need". Housing is, GPUs aren't. But to steelman the strawman you're putting up here, economics tries really hard to maximize the efficiency of markets, the idea being if you've got something you can make money with (e.g. a CPU/GPU/book/bike/car/bed you could rent out) you should, and thereby someone gets to use your thing and you get to make a little money. You paint this as some kind of hyper-communistic dystopia, but this is actually the world that hyper-capitalist companies like Uber and Airbnb are working pretty hard to create right now. This is critical to understanding the anti-democratic underpinnings of this landlord action. There's nothing unconstitutional going on here--it's basic market regulation that States and the US have been doing for literally hundreds of years. There's nothing wrong with policies aimed at making markets more efficient, that's why we have regulations and antitrust. And besides, rental housing is a market. Hogging supply to artificially inflate market prices is generally a crime. Suppliers in this market are suspected of doing that, so the people of SF are taking action to make them stop. They're lucky they're getting off with a tax. That said, I'm not a fan of this policy in this case. SF's vacancy rate is super low, and I think that indicates this tax won't result in meaningful revenue or vacancy rate increases. This seems like purely a supply problem. I know there are other places (Vancouver, Toronto, NYC) where "property as investment" has gotten out of hand and municipalities are passing laws to try and address it, but they had way higher vacancy rates than SF. I could be wrong though. Others have made the argument that SF's market is secretly inefficient, that for one reason or another landlords are reporting their units as occupied when they in fact aren't. In that case, this tax might motivate those landlords to rent their places. I don't buy this though, in particular I don't think many people would leave > $30k a year on the table just to have the option of one day letting their parents move into a unit.