5 ms·

You can use the same argument for any good or service. Tear something away from a person and you can absolutely traumatize them. It can be a teddy bear for a li

by maratd 12y ago

You can use the same argument for any good or service. Tear something away from a person and you can absolutely traumatize them. It can be a teddy bear for a little kid, a car for an adolescent, your laptop, you get the idea. You can't legislate life into some gentle state. It is what it is. You can, however, smooth out the bumps. Unfortunately, rent control does the exact opposite. It creates stupidity like this. Where a landlord has to use a lawyer to increase the rent 4X, which is insane on a number of levels. That is one hell of a bump in the road. Get rid of rent control and prices will be stable. Yes, they will be higher for some, lower for others, but they'll be stable.

esrauch 12y ago
> Tear something away from a person and you can absolutely traumatize them. It can be a teddy bear for a little kid, a car for an adolescent, your laptop, you get the idea. I don't understand the point: none of those things are being torn away from people due to market forces.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  Then lets say someone's house due to foreclosure from a variable-rate mortgage. Happened all the time a few years ago, and its the same situation. The interest rates rose, people couldn't afford their mortgage anymore and were forced out.
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    While there is definitely a lot of blame to be placed on the creditors, don't you hold the homeowners to any standard of responsibility? They signed the mortgage.
    - rosser 12y ago
      So you want to blame people who probably didn't fully understand what they were signing up for (not least because they probably weren't responsibly disclosed to) for having been fleeced by crooks peddling predatory loans? I'd bet real money that almost every applicant for one of these mortgages was reassured up, down, left, and right by the broker (whose interests were most definitely not aligned with the applicant's) that everything will be fine. "When the variable rate kicks in, you can just refinance. Rates will be lower than ever!"
    - mortdeus 12y ago
      Many of the families who lost their homes to foreclosure signed into a mortgage under the assumption that they would be employed/in-business for the next 20-30 years. Unfortunately, when one economic domino falls and sets of a chain reaction leading to a market crash, a lot of hard working and responsible people get caught up in and swept away by the ensuing tsunami.
    - dragontamer 12y ago
      It was an example of how people place bets against the "Free Market" and lose sometimes. Even if people are rational about this, the 1980s saw an increase of interest rates above and beyond 14%. If 1980s style stagflation ever hit today, I can assure you that even the "rational" home-buyers who fully understood the clauses would be forced out of their homes. In any case, being forced out of your home, even if it is a situation you set yourself up for, is a traumatizing situation. I think we all can agree to that.
- maratd 12y ago
  > none of those things are being torn away from people due to market forces. You can end up owing money without the ability to repay fairly easily due to to market forces. If you have a judgement against you, in other words a court has determined that you owe somebody money, they can seize your property and auction it off to settle the debt. Cars, laptops, anything worth $$$ is a target. Life can suck. You can't legislate the "suck" away. You can, however, smooth out the bumps. In the scenario above, bankruptcy is a legal construct to smooth out the bumps. Unlike bankruptcy, rent control makes the bumps worse. That really sucks.
vacri 12y ago
You can't legislate life into some gentle state. So you don't believe laws against crime? You can use the same argument for any good or service. None of the things you mentioned have the universality of a home, which strikes almost everyone, regardless of demographic. Those who aren't adversely affected by not having a home are notable for being extreme outliers. As wpietri said, housing is not a normal good.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 12y ago
  A better way for him to have put it would have been: "Just like the Indiana state legislature can't by statute declare pi to be 3.14, San Francisco cannot repeal the law of supply and demand". Rent control or not, the law of supply and demand still applies; it just expresses itself in more dysfunctional and unproductive ways. That's the problem with rent control. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the public policy goal of getting people affordable housing trumps the rights of property owners. But they can't disagree about how many digits are in pi, or about whether rent control works. It doesn't work. It harms everyone in the market except for a lucky subset of tenants.
  - aceperry 12y ago
    "Rent control or not, the law of supply and demand still applies... or about whether rent control works. It doesn't work." Without rent control, I'm pretty sure that a LOT more people would be pushed out of San Francisco. It seems to me that places like San Francisco, New York, and a few other places are not typical of what other areas experience. I know it's fashionable amongst the libertarian set to blame problems on regulation, but there is much more going on here than simple rent control.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      The general response from economists seems to be that rent control suppresses growth in the supply of housing that could otherwise address the cost of housing.
pain 12y ago
Sane argument for free-form enterprise. Trauma enterprises are from a gross gap legal sanitizer function that forces markets to change. Tearaways you can take from logical systems that try to sense problems with random, arbitrary math(tied) category .
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
kristopolous 12y ago
No they won't. Type in "econometrics of rent control" into your search engine. It's a fairly well studied question with a fairly consistent conclusion.
- punee 12y ago
  "econometrics of rent control" brings here. The fairly consistent econ 101 conclusion about rent control is that it never works. If you're talking about another conclusion, what is it?
  - kristopolous 12y ago
    Huh? The idea was without rent stabilization or leveling, rent would magically be more stable then if mechanisms were in place. We don't need to argue about this. Rent control has been removed from many communities, and the rent becomes much more volatile without the stabilization control. There's lots of actual case study literature on this. These things aren't mere untested hypothesis where our personal politics come in to play - they are well studied.
    - jusben1369 12y ago
      I think the problem here is assuming terms like stable and volatile equate to better and worse. A lack of rent controls will definitely result in price changes occurring based on supply and demand and therefore much more frequently than with controls. So in that respect they're more "volatile" At the same time that market is much healthier because the prices are transparent and all economic agents can act rationally (My rent goes up 10% each year I'm here that's going to be a back breaker in 2 to 3 more years if this holds up so I'd better start planning a change) Controlled prices might be more stable because they don't change but underneath the surface that volatility is still there and building as it has no pressure valve for release. I'd rather my volcano constantly releases gases and shakes my house occasionally than sits under a cap and gives me no warning sign until it blows after 10 years of building up.
      - 12y ago

by maratd 12y ago

esrauch 12y ago

> Tear something away from a person and you can absolutely traumatize them. It can be a teddy bear for a little kid, a car for an adolescent, your laptop, you get the idea. I don't understand the point: none of those things are being torn away from people due to market forces.

dragontamer 12y ago
Then lets say someone's house due to foreclosure from a variable-rate mortgage. Happened all the time a few years ago, and its the same situation. The interest rates rose, people couldn't afford their mortgage anymore and were forced out.
- EpicEng 12y ago
  While there is definitely a lot of blame to be placed on the creditors, don't you hold the homeowners to any standard of responsibility? They signed the mortgage.
  - rosser 12y ago
    So you want to blame people who probably didn't fully understand what they were signing up for (not least because they probably weren't responsibly disclosed to) for having been fleeced by crooks peddling predatory loans? I'd bet real money that almost every applicant for one of these mortgages was reassured up, down, left, and right by the broker (whose interests were most definitely not aligned with the applicant's) that everything will be fine. "When the variable rate kicks in, you can just refinance. Rates will be lower than ever!"
  - mortdeus 12y ago
    Many of the families who lost their homes to foreclosure signed into a mortgage under the assumption that they would be employed/in-business for the next 20-30 years. Unfortunately, when one economic domino falls and sets of a chain reaction leading to a market crash, a lot of hard working and responsible people get caught up in and swept away by the ensuing tsunami.
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    It was an example of how people place bets against the "Free Market" and lose sometimes. Even if people are rational about this, the 1980s saw an increase of interest rates above and beyond 14%. If 1980s style stagflation ever hit today, I can assure you that even the "rational" home-buyers who fully understood the clauses would be forced out of their homes. In any case, being forced out of your home, even if it is a situation you set yourself up for, is a traumatizing situation. I think we all can agree to that.
maratd 12y ago
> none of those things are being torn away from people due to market forces. You can end up owing money without the ability to repay fairly easily due to to market forces. If you have a judgement against you, in other words a court has determined that you owe somebody money, they can seize your property and auction it off to settle the debt. Cars, laptops, anything worth $$$ is a target. Life can suck. You can't legislate the "suck" away. You can, however, smooth out the bumps. In the scenario above, bankruptcy is a legal construct to smooth out the bumps. Unlike bankruptcy, rent control makes the bumps worse. That really sucks.

vacri 12y ago

You can't legislate life into some gentle state. So you don't believe laws against crime? You can use the same argument for any good or service. None of the things you mentioned have the universality of a home, which strikes almost everyone, regardless of demographic. Those who aren't adversely affected by not having a home are notable for being extreme outliers. As wpietri said, housing is not a normal good.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 12y ago
A better way for him to have put it would have been: "Just like the Indiana state legislature can't by statute declare pi to be 3.14, San Francisco cannot repeal the law of supply and demand". Rent control or not, the law of supply and demand still applies; it just expresses itself in more dysfunctional and unproductive ways. That's the problem with rent control. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the public policy goal of getting people affordable housing trumps the rights of property owners. But they can't disagree about how many digits are in pi, or about whether rent control works. It doesn't work. It harms everyone in the market except for a lucky subset of tenants.
- aceperry 12y ago
  "Rent control or not, the law of supply and demand still applies... or about whether rent control works. It doesn't work." Without rent control, I'm pretty sure that a LOT more people would be pushed out of San Francisco. It seems to me that places like San Francisco, New York, and a few other places are not typical of what other areas experience. I know it's fashionable amongst the libertarian set to blame problems on regulation, but there is much more going on here than simple rent control.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    The general response from economists seems to be that rent control suppresses growth in the supply of housing that could otherwise address the cost of housing.

pain 12y ago

Sane argument for free-form enterprise. Trauma enterprises are from a gross gap legal sanitizer function that forces markets to change. Tearaways you can take from logical systems that try to sense problems with random, arbitrary math(tied) category .

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

kristopolous 12y ago

No they won't. Type in "econometrics of rent control" into your search engine. It's a fairly well studied question with a fairly consistent conclusion.

punee 12y ago
"econometrics of rent control" brings here. The fairly consistent econ 101 conclusion about rent control is that it never works. If you're talking about another conclusion, what is it?
- kristopolous 12y ago
  Huh? The idea was without rent stabilization or leveling, rent would magically be more stable then if mechanisms were in place. We don't need to argue about this. Rent control has been removed from many communities, and the rent becomes much more volatile without the stabilization control. There's lots of actual case study literature on this. These things aren't mere untested hypothesis where our personal politics come in to play - they are well studied.
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    I think the problem here is assuming terms like stable and volatile equate to better and worse. A lack of rent controls will definitely result in price changes occurring based on supply and demand and therefore much more frequently than with controls. So in that respect they're more "volatile" At the same time that market is much healthier because the prices are transparent and all economic agents can act rationally (My rent goes up 10% each year I'm here that's going to be a back breaker in 2 to 3 more years if this holds up so I'd better start planning a change) Controlled prices might be more stable because they don't change but underneath the surface that volatility is still there and building as it has no pressure valve for release. I'd rather my volcano constantly releases gases and shakes my house occasionally than sits under a cap and gives me no warning sign until it blows after 10 years of building up.
    - 12y ago