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Comment by ohazi | Hacker News Reader

The difference would all go to landlords. Competitive commodities like rice have downward price pressure, because all it takes is one supplier selling for a penny less than all the other $50/lb price gougers, and the market will be theirs until the next penny defector, until you reach the commodity price.

With housing it's the opposite. Low teaser price to get you to sign a lease, and then you're guaranteed large rent increases until you move out because the landlord knows how much moving sucks.

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This seems like an oversimplification. If the landlord issue like you describe is really a core problem, then they can pass a law like they did in California, capping rent increases at 5-10%/year. That problem doesn't seem tied to UBI at all.

Rice would also likely increase in price due to higher taxes needed to pay for the UBI.

UBI would increase people's mobility, allowing them to move to cheaper areas where employment opportunities are not quite as strong.

People often are already able to do that but don't, because surprisingly to some, most people find the idea of leaving everything and everyone you know just to find a better job absolutely dreadful.

We need to remember that we're talking about humans, and not some particle which can simply find a shorter path to wealth.

Edit: To be clear I'm not necessarily opposed to UBI, but I find this 'people are but cogs in the machine' view of economics especially appalling.

> I find this 'people are but cogs in the machine' view of economics especially appalling

I resent your implication that I think people are just cogs in a economic machine.

People move location all the time for a variety of reasons. Sometimes economic, sometimes for lifestyle, sometimes for the weather.

I suggested UBI would give people more options, more choice, more power in their lives and you suggest I hold an appalling view and think people are nothing more than wealth seeking particles? Thanks very much.

I wasn't trying to say you specifically feel that way, but when we're talking about predatory behavior of landlords, giving those who are being taken advantage of the ability to leave town seems like a second rate solution.

I see the "UBI will just go to landlords" argument everywhere, and it is a very bad one.

Literally any policy that gives more money to the poor will increase demand for goods/services that low income people want (eg housing), and thus cause similar price pressure. Increasing purchasing demand from the poor is literally what redistribution is!

If you're opposed to UBI on this basis, you equally ought to give up on anything redistributive (or maybe you were just right wing all along).

The correct response to landlords sucking up money from the poor is to note:

- You can easily solve that via land taxes and wealth taxes more generally

- Even if the gains are swallowed up in aggregate, a UBI still has benefits in terms of equalizing demand (lowering housing inequality) and increasing income predictability.

> If you're opposed to UBI on this basis, you equally ought to give up on anything redistributive (or maybe you were just right wing all along).

I never said I was opposed to UBI.

I'm simply highlighting an aspect of the housing market that makes it behave less like the libertarian ideal of a perfectly efficient market with perfect mobility and perfect information flow. In my experience, the right wingers are the ones who want to continue pretending that an obviously tilted market is somehow still acceptably efficient when it clearly isn't.

Do you disagree with my assertion that moving is more difficult than buying rice from the next vendor over? That's really the only claim I made, and this is what leads me to believe that landlords are more powerful than rice vendors.

Lots of people proposing "if you're worried about landlords, then you can simply do X" in this thread... I don't think the fix for this problem is going to be simple.

You made another claim that djrobstep was responding to:

> The difference would all go to landlords.

Just implement a rental price freeze at the same time you implement UBI.

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