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The problem is land. Land is not a normal commodity. Nobody makes it - all land rights are derived ultimately through legal fiat and violence, not labor. Someb
by pydry 3y ago
The problem is land. Land is not a normal commodity. Nobody makes it - all land rights are derived ultimately through legal fiat and violence, not labor.
Somebody who consumes a lot of high value land doesnt create the conditions for making more like somebody who, say, buys a lot of cars. They just create more profits for nearby land owners. Hoarding drives more hoarding and higher prices in a positive feedback loop unless arrested via a tax.
The elites can accomodate their market dysfunction by building public housing. They can neuter this market dysfunction by applying a steep land value tax (or by increasing property taxes).
Or they can sit back and profit, parasitically extracting ever higher land rents from the real economy.
- dauertewigkeit 3y agoLand is fixed, but only valuable because of the location it is situated in. And what happens as the location is not fixed. You cannot make more land, but you can alter the value of locations with incentives and taxes and government programs. Part of the solution could be governments shifting people and jobs around to secondary less popular cities.
- robertlagrant 3y agoAlmost every company doesn't employ people in incredibly high price locations. They can't afford to. And some of the ones that can will sometimes move, but they'll do it for bottom up reasons, not for political, state-led ones. Also, the big contributor is Zoom. If you can work from anywhere, as some jobs can because of Zoom, you can live anywhere.