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Comment by starpilot | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco-ization it seems. Liberals going against their own interests. Reminds me of an apartment complex under construction in SF that was forced to include a larger amount of low-income units. The builders found it would no longer be profitable, and ceased building. So lose-lose, prisoner's dilemma, vocal social media forces "won," lacking the cooperative biases that humans normally have. They all end up with nothing.

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tfw you can't make a profit renting housing in San Francisco.

Lack of a streamlined and efficient construction approvals process is really hurting (some ?) US cities. Or the real estate developer community is really spoiled there.

And by streamlined I don't mean just rubber stamp everything. But instead have clear rules, and check the plans fast whether they are compliant with them. (Basic civil engineering stuff, fire hazard, environmental protection, noise, traffic management, historic status. What else is there to check?)

Sounds like there's plenty of stuff to blame besides low-income people wanting a place to live.

Yes, but getting more units in a building that won't be build doesn't help said low income residents.

This is a moral argument that does not fit the facts we know, and hence can't have a morally good outcome.

I was not trying to make a moral argument, but an observation that many seem ready to believe any statement by the powerful no matter how dodgy, while the powerless are assiduously made invisible.

I don't see how the people that dictated terms to the point where the project was unprofitable is powerless.

I also question if the people fighting for this outcome are the same low income residents affected, because I have a hard time believing actual low income residents in line for the units would prefer an outcome where no units gets build in order to make a moral point.

Why is it morally good to make an idealistic stand that cause no units to be build? To me that seems factually wrong.

OP told an unsourced story about a supposed SF housing project cancelled because of supposed demands for low-income units. You appear to have uncritically accepted this story as true, to the point where you are ranting about the injustice and immorality of those pesky poor people demanding an affordable place to live. You are demonstrating my observation that many people are inclined to accept the viewpoints and arguments of the rich and powerful without question or examination.

Even if such a development existed, I would not take the word of the builders that it was annoying poor people that doomed it, without taking a closer look all the things that can cause such a project to fail, including the competing actions of other greedy rich people.

I’ve seen this happen countless times in SF. It is a pattern to do this here. It is unproductive and hurts everyone except those owning existing housing due to increasing prices caused by artificially restricted supply.

Win-win scenarios are possible more often than one might think.

Should shelter, a basic human need, be for-profit? If so, why?

Here's a thought; do you want to rely on the goodwill of people you don't know, that live hundreds or thousands of miles away, to get up at 4am to farm and create food (a basic human need) for you?

Or do you want to rely on the profit motive? If not, why?

Life is a bit more nuanced than profit-motive vs charity. I'd guess most of the folks on HN work for a salary at a company. There isn't a ton of "profit-motive" in the work. You don't necessarily get more money if you do a better job. At least not reliably (it's up to the discretion of the company usually).

So if a lot of people are willing to do work for a salary, why wouldn't a farmer or landlord be willing to do work for a salary? Why does a landlord need a profit motive? Why does a farmer need a profit motive?

I don't think you can argue that landlords are more attentive because they receive profit over a salary.

The term "profit motive" as generally used applies equally to money made from salary or equity.

> Why does a farmer need a profit motive?

Lets assume farmer refers not to a slave fieldhand working for a corporation but to an independent farmer who actually owns his own land on a critically endangered economic entity known as a "family farm".

Many family farms still left in the US at least are not profitable. They exist because their owners (foolishly?) are holding on to a dream of a farming lifestyle. The salaries are subsidized by federal price supports and things like family members working day jobs.

Farming that works economically is farms owned by large multinational corporations which employ slave labor.

The family farms owned by individuals who are doing things for a love of farming are on their last legs. Few left. Soon it will be none. Then it will be the corporate owned ones only.

This will be celebrated by those who have spent the last decades incessantly demeaning and insulting the small family farmers, claiming that they are vile despicable capitalists living on the labor of the common man. These anti-family farm advocates push society towards the inevitability of corporate dominance of all farming and its necessary reliance on slave labor.

The profit motive was a justification for slavery.

Want to try another argument?

Profit motive leads to more shelter being built. The same reason why you want food production for-profit.

Not everything works best with profit motive (eg, healthcare) but if you want affordable housing then maximizing profit motive will help produce more housing.

Well, we had food and shelter before we had profit motives.

> Well, we had food and shelter before we had profit motives

Did we? The Hobbesian original condition is one of the strongest "profit" motives around. Natural selection is unsentimental and unforgiving. This idea of distributing things according to "need" is a very recent novelty.

It existed, but was very unequally distributed. And that’s why so many people starved and died from natural disasters.

I don’t think profit margin typically makes things possible in a binary manner. I think it just makes them more efficient.

No, profit motive leads to more shelter being built for those who can afford it and everyone outside of that gets to live on the streets. See: Seattle.

Because empirically, we have learned that the best system we have for distributing goods such as shelter, food, and clothing is a well regulated free market economy. It’s not perfect, but it is less terrible than anything else humans have tried.

Money, necessary to acquire food and medicine, is another basic human need. If you have something someone else needs more, it is their fundamental right to have it.

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