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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

Not OP, but probably that "fulfilling basic human needs shouldn't be for profit"

I'm a colossal fan of co-ops and credit unions for this reason.

Maybe a more workable and less authoritarian tack would be that the government plays in the market as a limited profit entity, thereby ensuring that a cartel cannot fully capture the market and endlessly drive prices upwards. Limited profit (capped at some percentage over revenue) is allowed in order to let the entity invest in expansions so that they don't simply end up being 1% of the market that can be ignored by their competitors.

A public option, then? In the current climate, I'd prefer public options be not-for-profit (well, I'd prefer they exist at all, but of course it was sniped dead during negotiations for the ACA in the case of healthcare), but fair enough.

Honestly I'd be fine with the government profiting if it could be tied back to a mechanism that directly reduces a taxpayer's burden, basically "your tax share is reduced by x because total profit from government-run institutions was y"

It might even work to incentivize lawmakers to legislate in favor of the profit of such institutions in that they could then tell their constituents that they were responsible for their lower tax burden in a given year.

Landlords aren't a cartel in that sense. The way they get together and "fix prices" is by having the government restrict housing density to increase scarcity. A non-profit that has to follow the same zoning rules can't fix that. Whereas if prices are high and you don't prohibit lower density housing from being replaced with higher density housing, there is money in doing that and the market takes care of it for you.

I mean my preferred solution would be zoning reform first, yes. I was just proposing an amendment to OPs policy, I don't think it's politically viable in the US.

In my large US city, a lot of apartments are held by various corporations that collude via third party software to raise and keep prices high. The local building managers have no say in lease pricing. Maybe a small percentage of people are lucky enough to find mom/pop landlords but many are stuck paying whatever the large complexes charge.

Software can't defeat supply and demand unless you have a monopoly.

Suppose the amount rents have to hit before it's profitable to build a new building is $1000/month and right now rents are at $990/month. A cartel representing 70% of the landlords in the city collude to raise rents to $2500/month.

If they're allowed to, builders will keep building new housing until rents are back below $1000, because until that point they can keep making money by doing it. Even if they have to increase the housing stock in the city by the entire 70% and leave the cartel with a bunch of empty buildings.

But if they're not allowed to build, prices go up. And some entity with a profit cap can't do anything about it because they have no path to supplying enough housing to lower the market price.

The supply here is highly constrained, hence my desire (in general) for zoning reform. Of course, there's a lot of opposition to building more housing from the usual suspects.

Build more housing, that's the only way.

So if you fulfill basic human needs you aren't allowed to make a profit but every other industry can?

I hope the people providing my food, utilities, clothing, and bedding are making a sustainable profit. I want them to be around in the future when I need those needs fulfilled.

Yes. You arent just like born into 'fulfilling' a basic human need.

These services, think healthcare, food, and housing, should be public services that are guaranteed not delivered by the market. You cannot look at the market-based solutions to literally any of these objectively and think it is performing well. At least, not if you value human life.

The problem, as always is about the definitions and the power associated with controlling those definitions. Does a fine wine count as food? What about an imported fruit? If the US made it illegal to profit on food I think we'd see rapid regulatory capture that supported some of the worst agri-business behemoths. (e.g. what happens to the local farmers that I prefer to support? They probably need a bigger profit margin than they have already, and can't even hope to compete at scale)

I agree with your intent here, but the devil is in the details.

Sounds like you have alternative history to what I learned.

Maybe buying up life-critical drugs to hike up the prices?

Sounds good to me.

Why do you want those needs to go unfulfilled?

Do you think places with privatized, for profit, electricity have less blackouts than places with non profit or municipal power?

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