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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

It's both funny and sad to see the mental gymnastics of people trying to find solutions to this when the solution is real simple: it's public ownership.

Housing needs to be decommodified. It needs to stop being a retirement plan. We need to stop letting people hoard it. We need to stop subsidizing exurbs and making it illegal to build the kind of walkable communities people actually like. Case in point: Red Vienna [1].

As another commenter noted, this is in every industry. Utilities are a particularly bad one including telcos. All the best ISPs in the US are municipally owned. Chattanooga was the first really big poster child for this.

Privatization of all these things is just rent-seeking behavior.

So many of society's problems come down to housing being too expensive. Anything that makes it expensive needs to be stamped out and that includes RealPage as well as Airbnb/VRBO.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY&t=191s

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It is not just housing but all land - the grocery store ups prices without increasing profit because every landowner in the supply chain (who they rent their stores from, their warehouses, the factories that process and package foods, the farms themselves) ups rent too.

This is a predictable outcome of commerce due to the limited supply of land and is described in some detail by Adam Smith and developed by later thinkers like Riccardo and George (who took it to its logical conclusion and inspired the board game Monopoly).

During the 20th century, economics was wholesale rewritten to blur the lines between land and capital so as to bury this awkward conversation.

The general recommendation of these early economists was taxing land - moderate in the case of Smith, up to 100% per George. This amounts to public ownership of part of the profits of land ownership.

Utilities are a monopoly and practice has shown regulated monopolies to be worse than public monopolies. Though my public utility isn't well run.

Housing does allow for market competition. The New York housing department is the worst landlord in the city going by HPD complaints.

Housing pricing and scarcity is driven by population growth and wage suppression from plantation migration policy.

... and the term for this behavior gives it away: "rent-seeking".

> It's both funny and sad to see the mental gymnastics of people trying to find solutions to this when the solution is real simple: it's public ownership.

No, it is not. Communism tried that and all communist countries failed spectacularly. Public ownership in practice means that everyone has rights but zero responsibilities.

Taking people's private property is not a solution to any crisis. This whole housing thing looks like "I want to have my cake and eat it too".

I wonder about the failure of the PRC while heaving 500 million out of poverty the last 50 years. Interesting failure mode.

PRC isn't communist.

But then USSR wasn't really communist either, it was far more defined by dictatorship of individuals; which is diametrically opposed to communism.

If you have people living in palaces whilst others starve then you don't have communism - the first principle of which is that benefit of labour is split under egalitarian principles. Whilst rich people getting richer, and the devaluing of people typifies capitalism.

From my considerations, we need to limit wage disparity, eg by a top rate of tax at 100% (I know how that will be received here!). That limits power that can be accrued through wealth too - no more billionaires who can by elections. We also need to give ownership of the benefits of labour to the people; wage limits does that, but a more direct link is possible too and that can aid transition from Western Capitalism to a more equal distribution of wealth. Ultimately, globally we're going to face far more issues with migration as the effects of our past excesses take hold; redistribution of wealth across nations also needs to be accepted if we're going to manage that transition with less war and bloodshed.

I thought it was all about who owns the means of production. I guess it was palaces and poverty all along; learned something new.

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