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Unlike many other sectors where prices drop thanks to constant advances in Tech, what is weird is how Tech hasn't made a dent in Housing. Health I can understa

by cen4 2y ago

Unlike many other sectors where prices drop thanks to constant advances in Tech, what is weird is how Tech hasn't made a dent in Housing. Health I can understand cause it takes a long time to produce a Doc, and there is a high demand and low supply dynamic. But we can easily build housing cheap. Even if the real estate/investment lobby is busy buying up all the "prime" land, its not like the US is a small country to work around them somewhere.

Slartie 2y ago
> Even if the real estate/investment lobby is busy buying up all the "prime" land, its not like the US is a small country to work around them somewhere. Even the US being a big country doesn't help much. The value of land for the purpose of living on it is largely defined by the infrastructure around a particular piece of land: are there schools, shops, doctors, ... nearby, or do you have to drive through an empty desert for hours to reach them? And unless faster forms of individual travel are invented, this will limit the amount of "usable" land even in an imaginary country with unlimited boundaries.
- akreal 2y ago
  The infrastructure problem should also have a relatively cheap technical solution. I assume the major bottleneck is bureaucracy, which largely has no technical workarounds so far.
  - consteval 2y ago
    It's not a problem of bureaucracy, but rather efficiency. Urban centers emerge because they make sense - grouping together labor, production, and consumption. If we just equally distribute people across the country our economy would implode on itself. How do you get to work? Where do you work? Where does your work go once you've worked on it? Who buys your work? And what work do you buy? I'm not going to build a doctors office, or a train, or a corner store next to 10 people. I'm gonna build it next to 100,000 people. And now here we are, where we have space but not really because most of the space is worthless.
    - nightski 2y ago
      There are plenty of thriving towns in America with 5k-10k people. I think you need to just get out more. I grew up in one and it was fine. I now live in a slightly larger city (in the low hundred thousands) and enjoy the low cost of living with a high salary. But I'd never live in a major metro area, that's nuts.
      - consteval 2y ago
        > There are plenty of thriving towns in America with 5k-10k people Very, very few. Rural areas are disproportionately impoverished. It's just statistical, not personal, and it makes complete sense once you consider what an economy is. > But I'd never live in a major metro area, that's nuts Those major metro areas make up the vast majority of the US' economic prowess. You don't have to live in them of course, but you should be aware that the American suburbs and rural areas are essentially on the welfare of more economically successful areas.
Yizahi 2y ago
People can't live inside Kubernetes pod, unfortunately :) . The problem is not technical, it's regulation in three ways - 1) regulations restricting building new housing altogether (USA and Commonwealth issues especially, due to obsession with detached homes and zoning). 2) increasingly long times to obtain all permits (Australia issue and likely many others), 3) economic downturn which is also a type of regulation.
spicyusername 2y ago
Supply and demand at work. Lowering costs to build should, in theory, increase supply. High demand should, in theory, increase supply. But other things influence the balance, regulations, interest rates, etc, that are either keeping supply low or demand high, inflating prices.
monkeyfun 2y ago
In fact, it's actively made housing prices worse -- consider recent price-fixing scandals for one example.
throw0101a 2y ago
> Even if the real estate/investment lobby is busy buying up all the "prime" land, its not like the US is a small country to work around them somewhere. 40% of the US population lives in a coastal county: * https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html Two-thirds of the US population lives with-in one hundred miles (160km) of the border: * https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone The US population is fairly concentrated, and it seems that many people like living next to other people (for personal and/or economic reasons).
coding123 2y ago
Tech will: A lot of laid off tech workers will build houses!
snapplebobapple 2y ago
It's because of the government regulation and how localized it is so you can't pick a fight with just one regulator to force them to stop doing stupid, you need to pick fights with tens of thousands of local regulators (and their tens to hundreds of thousands of unionized government employees). On top of that, building is super capital intensive with long lead times to profitability that are fully controlled by said regulators so you can't pull an uber and just operate on a moderate sum of angel investor money while you also earn money from your service and flip the bird to the regulator. You don't make any money until you beat the regulator into submission, which makes beating the regulator a bad investment. On top of all the above, you have teh general populace, of which a significant portion own housing they want to see go up so you won't ever get to the point where everyone sees the light and overwhelmingly supports you like uber got to, there will always be significant push back from the populace who want to abuse supply constraint to increase their personal benefit at the severe cost to all of us.

by cen4 2y ago

Slartie 2y ago

> Even if the real estate/investment lobby is busy buying up all the "prime" land, its not like the US is a small country to work around them somewhere. Even the US being a big country doesn't help much. The value of land for the purpose of living on it is largely defined by the infrastructure around a particular piece of land: are there schools, shops, doctors, ... nearby, or do you have to drive through an empty desert for hours to reach them? And unless faster forms of individual travel are invented, this will limit the amount of "usable" land even in an imaginary country with unlimited boundaries.

akreal 2y ago
The infrastructure problem should also have a relatively cheap technical solution. I assume the major bottleneck is bureaucracy, which largely has no technical workarounds so far.
- consteval 2y ago
  It's not a problem of bureaucracy, but rather efficiency. Urban centers emerge because they make sense - grouping together labor, production, and consumption. If we just equally distribute people across the country our economy would implode on itself. How do you get to work? Where do you work? Where does your work go once you've worked on it? Who buys your work? And what work do you buy? I'm not going to build a doctors office, or a train, or a corner store next to 10 people. I'm gonna build it next to 100,000 people. And now here we are, where we have space but not really because most of the space is worthless.
  - nightski 2y ago
    There are plenty of thriving towns in America with 5k-10k people. I think you need to just get out more. I grew up in one and it was fine. I now live in a slightly larger city (in the low hundred thousands) and enjoy the low cost of living with a high salary. But I'd never live in a major metro area, that's nuts.
    - consteval 2y ago
      > There are plenty of thriving towns in America with 5k-10k people Very, very few. Rural areas are disproportionately impoverished. It's just statistical, not personal, and it makes complete sense once you consider what an economy is. > But I'd never live in a major metro area, that's nuts Those major metro areas make up the vast majority of the US' economic prowess. You don't have to live in them of course, but you should be aware that the American suburbs and rural areas are essentially on the welfare of more economically successful areas.

Yizahi 2y ago

People can't live inside Kubernetes pod, unfortunately :) . The problem is not technical, it's regulation in three ways - 1) regulations restricting building new housing altogether (USA and Commonwealth issues especially, due to obsession with detached homes and zoning). 2) increasingly long times to obtain all permits (Australia issue and likely many others), 3) economic downturn which is also a type of regulation.

spicyusername 2y ago

Supply and demand at work. Lowering costs to build should, in theory, increase supply. High demand should, in theory, increase supply. But other things influence the balance, regulations, interest rates, etc, that are either keeping supply low or demand high, inflating prices.

monkeyfun 2y ago

In fact, it's actively made housing prices worse -- consider recent price-fixing scandals for one example.

throw0101a 2y ago

> Even if the real estate/investment lobby is busy buying up all the "prime" land, its not like the US is a small country to work around them somewhere. 40% of the US population lives in a coastal county: * https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html Two-thirds of the US population lives with-in one hundred miles (160km) of the border: * https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone The US population is fairly concentrated, and it seems that many people like living next to other people (for personal and/or economic reasons).

coding123 2y ago

Tech will: A lot of laid off tech workers will build houses!

snapplebobapple 2y ago

It's because of the government regulation and how localized it is so you can't pick a fight with just one regulator to force them to stop doing stupid, you need to pick fights with tens of thousands of local regulators (and their tens to hundreds of thousands of unionized government employees). On top of that, building is super capital intensive with long lead times to profitability that are fully controlled by said regulators so you can't pull an uber and just operate on a moderate sum of angel investor money while you also earn money from your service and flip the bird to the regulator. You don't make any money until you beat the regulator into submission, which makes beating the regulator a bad investment. On top of all the above, you have teh general populace, of which a significant portion own housing they want to see go up so you won't ever get to the point where everyone sees the light and overwhelmingly supports you like uber got to, there will always be significant push back from the populace who want to abuse supply constraint to increase their personal benefit at the severe cost to all of us.