3 ms·

If you did society would collapse as the housing Ponzi scheme collapses.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
itsanaccount 1y ago
I never know the attribution of the quote but it springs to mind, "If it can be destroyed by the truth then it should be destroyed."
- JoshTriplett 1y ago
  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/03/13/destroy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/03/13/destroy/
lurk2 1y ago
… because?
- azemetre 1y ago
  If you dig down deep enough it’s always about valuing money over humans.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    I’d like to dig down deep enough that we reach causal explanations.
  - neom 1y ago
    I think if you go even deeper: it's that humans primitively require novel and emotional experiences, it got us out of the cave. These systems are a way to generate.
tmountain 1y ago
All of society is built on the housing “Ponzi scheme”?
gruez 1y ago
Ireland had a property bubble that popped and society didn't exactly collapse there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_property_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_property_bubble
- Eavolution 1y ago
  I mean there is currently a housing crisis in Ireland, particularly in Dublin.
- blitzar 1y ago
  Government borrowing 100% of GDP over a few years helped ease the collapse (and re-inflate the prices again).
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    > (and re-inflate the prices again) That's not what re-inflated prices. Basically, no houses were built from about 2007 to 2017, and then far too few houses were built. Meanwhile, loads of people immigrated to Ireland for jobs (mostly in tech and finance). Then, because lots of people spotted that Irish property was a good investment, people started piling in using rents as their baseline for investment, driving rents up, which pushed prices up etc. But fundamentally property prices are increasing in Ireland because of population growth and a lack of supply (driven by poor planning for water and services, along with a culture of property owners objecting to the opening of an envelope).
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    Quite the opposite; the state should instead have borrowed 105% GDP and kept the construction industry on life support (during the financial crisis many countries did this, generally with public works stuff, but Ireland essentially let its construction industry die). As is, almost no housing was built between about 2010 and 2016, resulting in a massive shortage. The extremely high cost of the Irish bank bailout was largely down to bad bank practices and not merely the fact that there was a property bubble. The noughties Irish property crisis was largely driven by a speculative bubble, and there was not really a huge supply shortfall. Unfortunately, he _current_ one is supply-side. In 2023 Ireland built more housing per capita than any other OECD nation and it was close to the top last year, but, even optimistically, that is only stopping the shortfall from getting _worse_. (A lot of this is down to catastrophically bad estimates made early last decade, which had Ireland returning to its traditional economic pattern of perma-recession, and draining the working age population off via emigration.)
roenxi 1y ago
In corporate environments people often get into a frame of mind where they acknowledge they are behaving irrationally but are convinced - convinced! - that behaving rationally would bring terrible results and everyone is going to move in mad lockstep. I think it is some sort of groupthink-related phenomenon. They're pretty much always wrong about the bad results if someone can force change. It can be true that sudden change can lead to bad results and I wouldn't necessarily advise shock therapy, but making the basis of a system more rational usually leads to good outcomes. Being honest about how valuable something is won't cause society to sink beneath the ocean and neither does letting people just build houses on land they own. Someone is already eating economic losses here, we just don't quite know who or how much. Letting them do better will surely outweigh the negatives.
- blitzar 1y ago
  I don't advocate for the current system - but the western capitalist system is (rightly or wrongly) based heavily around property. > Someone is already eating economic losses here, we just don't quite know who or how much. It's an intergenerational transfer of wealth from the young to the old. Rough and dirty you could probably reverse back the amount by taking the change in Average house price-to-earnings ratios. Very basic estimate is from 4x earnings to 7x, which on the stock of US housing is about $20 trillion.
selfmodruntime 1y ago
I just want a home for my kids and a garden to grill. I don‘t care about it’s value, or the increase of it.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

I never know the attribution of the quote but it springs to mind, "If it can be destroyed by the truth then it should be destroyed."

JoshTriplett 1y ago
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/03/13/destroy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/03/13/destroy/

lurk2 1y ago

… because?

azemetre 1y ago
If you dig down deep enough it’s always about valuing money over humans.
- lurk2 1y ago
  I’d like to dig down deep enough that we reach causal explanations.
- neom 1y ago
  I think if you go even deeper: it's that humans primitively require novel and emotional experiences, it got us out of the cave. These systems are a way to generate.

tmountain 1y ago

All of society is built on the housing “Ponzi scheme”?

gruez 1y ago

Ireland had a property bubble that popped and society didn't exactly collapse there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_property_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_property_bubble

Eavolution 1y ago
I mean there is currently a housing crisis in Ireland, particularly in Dublin.
blitzar 1y ago
Government borrowing 100% of GDP over a few years helped ease the collapse (and re-inflate the prices again).
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > (and re-inflate the prices again) That's not what re-inflated prices. Basically, no houses were built from about 2007 to 2017, and then far too few houses were built. Meanwhile, loads of people immigrated to Ireland for jobs (mostly in tech and finance). Then, because lots of people spotted that Irish property was a good investment, people started piling in using rents as their baseline for investment, driving rents up, which pushed prices up etc. But fundamentally property prices are increasing in Ireland because of population growth and a lack of supply (driven by poor planning for water and services, along with a culture of property owners objecting to the opening of an envelope).
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Quite the opposite; the state should instead have borrowed 105% GDP and kept the construction industry on life support (during the financial crisis many countries did this, generally with public works stuff, but Ireland essentially let its construction industry die). As is, almost no housing was built between about 2010 and 2016, resulting in a massive shortage. The extremely high cost of the Irish bank bailout was largely down to bad bank practices and not merely the fact that there was a property bubble. The noughties Irish property crisis was largely driven by a speculative bubble, and there was not really a huge supply shortfall. Unfortunately, he _current_ one is supply-side. In 2023 Ireland built more housing per capita than any other OECD nation and it was close to the top last year, but, even optimistically, that is only stopping the shortfall from getting _worse_. (A lot of this is down to catastrophically bad estimates made early last decade, which had Ireland returning to its traditional economic pattern of perma-recession, and draining the working age population off via emigration.)

roenxi 1y ago

In corporate environments people often get into a frame of mind where they acknowledge they are behaving irrationally but are convinced - convinced! - that behaving rationally would bring terrible results and everyone is going to move in mad lockstep. I think it is some sort of groupthink-related phenomenon. They're pretty much always wrong about the bad results if someone can force change. It can be true that sudden change can lead to bad results and I wouldn't necessarily advise shock therapy, but making the basis of a system more rational usually leads to good outcomes. Being honest about how valuable something is won't cause society to sink beneath the ocean and neither does letting people just build houses on land they own. Someone is already eating economic losses here, we just don't quite know who or how much. Letting them do better will surely outweigh the negatives.

blitzar 1y ago
I don't advocate for the current system - but the western capitalist system is (rightly or wrongly) based heavily around property. > Someone is already eating economic losses here, we just don't quite know who or how much. It's an intergenerational transfer of wealth from the young to the old. Rough and dirty you could probably reverse back the amount by taking the change in Average house price-to-earnings ratios. Very basic estimate is from 4x earnings to 7x, which on the stock of US housing is about $20 trillion.

selfmodruntime 1y ago

I just want a home for my kids and a garden to grill. I don‘t care about it’s value, or the increase of it.