this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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But markets consistently outperform all other forms of wealth distribution in terms of ensuring everyone has access to vital resources.
It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true.
What we really need to do is reduce the barriers to new construction. Density zoning is the most obvious market distortion that’s got to go. If a particular plot of land, based on location and all other considerations, results in its own most profitable use being a 100-unit apartment building, then density zoning that only permits 10 units is preventing 90 units from existing.
Profit comes from getting people what they need. This is only the case in a truly free market, where both sides must consent before money changes hands. But if that condition is true, then profit only exists when both people win by the deal.
Our current situation creates an artificial supply constriction which removes the consent side of the equation. Under our current system of artificially-constricted supply, landlord profit is indeed an indicator of money essentially being stolen from people who have no choice but to pay up.
But if we unlock more supply, simply by turning off the government activity that actively suppresses it, then renters will have choice, and their consent will be present in the deal again, and in that system (the one called a “free market”), any landlord who profits will do so by providing real value.
Consent is the key concept in a free market. That’s what the “free” part refers to. Contracts freely entered into. Investors free to build as many units as they can get profit from, and renters free to say no to those who offer shitty deals.
Most of the complaints about “free market capitalism” are actually about places in which the freedom has disappeared.
In the case of our housing market, it is the government’s constant crackdown on density that destroyed that freedom.
I think this is an immature understanding of how free markets work, how they slowly destroy themselves, and the problems at hand. Housing, like healthcare, isn't a market where choice is always possible, rational, or meaningful. And the "government" who imposes density restrictions are in place because of the people who vote in that government - a large portion of those restrictions are not the product of the past and an immovable system but because the owning class actively want them to remain in place. The incentive of the current system is to minimize housing access to maximize investment profit.
No one, or very few people, should profit from housing as an investment. Landlords produce nearly no benefit once a person is in the house and I would argue every other (or most other) benefit they produce only exist because the system caters to housing as an investment vehicle.
Anyone defending landlords is defending their own self-interest at the cost of the greater good, at the cost of their neighbors, and the generations to come. It's a parasitic job meant to transfer wealth from the poor to the wealthy.
“Ensuring everyone has access to vital resources”
Homelessness and healthcare excepted, I assume?
Is that the same 'consent' that has Walmart people working 30 years at minimum wage? Because they 'consented'? Kids working at 8 years old seems to fall under that same 'consent' label.
That sounds an awful lot like victim-blaming there; like "she should not have worn that skirt" kind of blaming.
The free market has always loved to call things voluntary when really Sophie Had A Choice too.