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Gotta love how capital gets all high and mighty about unions, while getting repeatedly caught with various forms of collusion, such as the Big Tech salary collu
by mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Gotta love how capital gets all high and mighty about unions, while getting repeatedly caught with various forms of collusion, such as the Big Tech salary collusion a decade ago or cartoon-villain-bad levels of price fixing as we see here. Basically, it boils down to, "do as I say, not as I do."
Is it possible for the suit to result in charges brought against all users of RealPage? They are active participants, after all.
- d0gsg0w00f 4y agoWell, cartels aren't capitalism. Capitalism would be someone coming in and realizing the prices are inflated and undercut the rent prices while still being profitable.
- wwweston 4y ago"Capitalism" can be a lot of things, including things which privilege capital without regard to market freedom for labor or consumer. Cartels certainly aren't free markets. To keep those you need policy which keeps them that way.
- SMAAART 4y agoGeorge Orwell, of 1984 fame, would approve of this comment.
- wwweston 4y agoHard to say for sure, but probably correct: Orwell seemed to be a critic of totalist ideologies, certainly totalitarian communism but he also had words for unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism.
- SMAAART 4y agoMy comment was not political in nature, I was referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JoeJonathan 4y agoThe Dutch East India Company is often considered integral to the history of capitalism, if not the start of capitalism itself, and was granted a 21-year monopoly on trade by the Dutch government.
- JackFr 4y agoThe real reason the Dutch East India Company is integral to the history of capitalism has less to do with trade and more to do with the innovative legal structure which for the first time separated the owners from the managers, and unlike all prior enterprises allowed for tradable claims on the ownership in the form of equity shares rather than an ownership governed by a partnership. The problem with using 'capitalism' in discussions like this is that there isn't a precise definition of it. To some people it simply means private ownership of the means of production, to others in includes free trade, to others (and to my thinking, the most precise, but YMMV) its about the separation of management and ownership and tradable claims on the firm.
- scatters 4y agoThe Pythagoreans are often considered integral to the history of mathematics, if not the start of mathematics itself, and they murdered the guy who proved that the square root of two is irrational.
- ahoy 4y agoAnd are they not still mathematicians?
- JoeJonathan 4y agoHow would that work in a real estate market? How could you convince landlords to lower prices?
- singlow 4y agoBy not renting from them. A vacant house will pressure the rent downward. But this only works if there is a free market. If the regulations are limiting supply, prices will continue to go up.
- mnd999 4y agoExcess supply. But that will never happen. Low availability keeps prices high with no need to worry about things like quality. There is therefore no incentive to build to increase supply. When a market is this dysfunctional, state intervention is the only way forward. Build publicly owned housing and rent it affordably. This probably won’t happen either, because so many in government are also landlords. Edit: Wow, so many downvotes for advocating public housing.
- cmiles74 4y agoIt's worth pointing out that the software will recommend leaving apartments empty for the sake of keeping rents high. This is briefly mentioned in the article, but implies that we would need a lot of excess supply to make a difference in areas dominated by a small number of companies utilizing this product.
- luckylion 4y agoOnce additional supply is added, all the dynamics change though. The cartel can restrict their own supply at the price of profits, but cartel members will see that investors who are not part of the cartel enjoy the same high rents while having much higher utilization because they don't need to keep flats empty. The only way for the cartel to ensure that doesn't happen is to either make sure every (new) landlord becomes a member, or make sure there can be no new landlords. So far, they've use the latter option, and that's most likely because the first one is hard: if the cartel controls the market and keeps the prices high, new investors have no incentive to join, they'll make more money if they don't.
- mola 4y agoCapitalism is where the capital hold the power. And not surprising power likes to accumulate and be sustained by every mean possible
- gwright 4y agoI've been convinced lately that we have no collective agreement about what the term "capitalism" means any more. Yes there are text book definitions but none of those are used in typical public discussions like HN. Power tends to accumulate when government actions restrict voluntary trade that would have otherwise proceeded. That is a characteristic of governments not of "capitalism", IMHO.
- Kye 4y agoThere is no clear line between government and business in a place where spending money is protected speech. Much of the US government at all levels, but especially state and local, is fully captured by private interests.
- colpabar 4y agoOkay, if that’s the case - why isn’t that happening, and what should be done to make it happen?
- gwright 4y agoYou need competition, which means you need developers to add more housing units, which means you need to change the regulations that prevent that from happening. Problems in real-estate are almost always government created IMHO and not "capitalism".
- User23 4y agoThere are plenty of housing units in the USA. Housing is extremely affordable in parts of many major American cities such as Detroit and Baltimore to name just a couple. For example you can buy a house in lovely Baltimore for under $25,000 in a neighborhood with amenities like a walkable park, and tennis and basketball courts[1]. The complaint is never really "housing isn't affordable," it's more along the lines of "I can't afford to live in the most desirable coastal real estate in the entire world" or "I can't afford to live in a safe place with a good school district" (a classism/racism dog whistle if ever there was one). [1] https://livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/madison-eastend/ https://livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/madison-eastend/
- pixl97 4y agoAh, yes, I found that $25k house in Baltimore... https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2011-E-Lafayette-Ave-Baltimore-MD-21213/36453994_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2011-E-Lafayette-Ave-Balt... I see some 'houses' in the area that you're looking at for $130k, built in WWII and likely have heating bills high enough to bankrupt the wealthy unless the place is ripped apart and modern insulation is put in.
- mathgorges 4y agoAs a native Detroiter I can confidently tell you that any house you can get for $25,000 will come with externalities that will make the house undesirable on balance. Large back tax bill, lack of city services (e.g. if live in Springwells, good luck getting a reasonable response time from Detroit PD if you're being burgled) and an unsafe transit situation are the most common ones I can think of. The houses are cheap for a reason. Its not as though Detroit is filled with provincial oafs that don't know what they're selling.
- CPLX 4y agoCapitalism doesn't just happen. The natural state of nature is cartels, that's what markets will trend towards without government regulation. If this effect isn't intuitive to you, consider what happens when the market for something is completely removed from government involvement, like the global market for cocaine. Or a market that develops in the absence of any kind of centralized authority, like Somalia. That's what happens to every market unless a state intervenes. The invisible hand of the market trends towards long term warlord/mafia type arrangements unless the public is organized enough to stop it.
- JackFr 4y ago> like the global market for cocaine. The global market for cocaine is highly regulated by very violent men with guns. It is for that reason that drug consumers favor legalization but drug suppliers oppose it.
- ahoy 4y agoHow convenient it is that, whenever capitalism has a negative effect, people rush to say "oh but its not real capitalism, they're doing it wrong. That would never happen"
- yamtaddle 4y agoI think it's weird people are stuck on treating the real-world system of capitalism and ideals about how markets should work as synonymous. It's possible to criticize capitalism for its failures without necessarily questioning the underlying ideals about markets. They're not the same thing. Markets and market-thinking predate capitalism, and exist in and affect all kinds of non-capitalist systems, today and historically. They aren't solely a feature of capitalism, and capitalism isn't the same thing as markets.
- hbrn 4y agoI don't know any capitalism advocate that claims capitalism is perfect. It just happens to be way better than all of the suggested alternatives. And your No True Scotsman example is typically heard in reference to communism in USSR/China. I'll choose my billionaires over famine any day.
- traverseda 4y agoLand is pretty much the definitive natural monopoly. If you want land rights you're going to end up with monopolies formed around the use of land and natural resources.
- try_the_bass 4y agoNo, that's "free market economics", which is slightly different. Cartels are very much capitalist, because they create more profits for everyone involved. The more parties you get involved, the better it is for all of them, and the worse is it for any competitors who do not join.
- JohnFen 4y agoThat's more of a free market thing. "Free market" and "capitalism" are distinct concepts that can, but don't have to, coexist.
- gowld 4y ago"capitalism" != "free market" != "fair market with competition".
- wwweston 4y ago> Basically, it boils down to, "do as I say, not as I do." I think it's more accurate to say it boils down to "our sole underlying principle is our own advantage, and the privilege of not even having our advantages challenged or negotiated." But otherwise, I quite agree.
- nostromo 4y agoI think it boils down to, “different people have different opinions, much to the chagrin of internet commentators.”
- giraffe_lady 4y agoThis faux-openminded acceptance of opinion diversity is so silly and useless as a lens for understanding anything at all. As if mere opinions about capital, labor, and power are what we're discussing. As if opinions on these things are just something someone has, completely divorced from their actual relationship to these concepts in the world. These aren't sports teams, you don't just get together with your buds and see how it plays out over a couple drinks. "Aw dang I really thought we had it but you brought back child labor right at the buzzer there, rough one today." No, wealthy people are for price collusion because it gives them more power, and they are against unions because they take away some of that power. Some things actually are that simple.
- nostromo 4y agoYou’ve missed my point. Internet commenters love to group opinions into a camp and then call them hypocritical. (Ex: capitalists love rent market manipulation but hate unions, those hypocrites!) Of course, that’s not true, most capitalists would not want price fixing - something generally done under centralized planned economies.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoI still don't get your point then but that's ok.
- gwright 4y agoI fail to see why unions need to be brought in to this issue. Not every problem needs to be framed in the form of class struggle. Exactly what sort of "union" would represent tenants? It just seems like a unhelpful way to discuss this particular issue.
- closeparen 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_union
- skrtskrt 4y agoyeah why, when discussing large powerful groups of capital owners colluding to screw the working class, why would we discuss the most successful tool at stopping them: groups of working class people large enough to claw back a tiny amount of power?
- 8note 4y agoWorker unions have provided housing to their members before. The capitalist class is likely to be the owner both of the corporation you work for, and of the housing you live in, so you have the same power struggle with the same people. People owning their own homes, and small landlords push back against that, but the trend is that the owning class owns everything