But commoditization makes it easier to buy something, not harder. It means that people don't have to negotiate with individuals for housing, they can just find it on a market at a globally agreed price and aren't at someone's whim.
Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#12I definitely do. It's something that turns a basic necessity into a speculative asset, with a price distorted by the money poured into it. Airbnb is also a deeply harmful influence on housing prices. Imagine if we did the same thing with, say, water: privatized it and then "democratized" ownership of it. It's easy to get retail investors to buy things at inflated, speculative prices, so the price of water would go up…
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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#13> own personal freedom and living inside their own four walls.
I think this thinking has done more harm than corporatization of real estate. Owning a home has a outsized emotional impact on the psyche of regular Americans. Buying a TV isn't a life event , is it? nimby thinking is just downstream from this thought.
I think corporatization trend will finally disassociate real estate as the only wealth building tool for regular people. Cancel all the govt subsidies, lift all the nibmy restrictions, let the home commoditization begin for real. Lets start building homes like any other commodity.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#14People have been landlords throughout history and renters can only rent if they can pay. Plenty of other generations didn’t have an ability to have their own place so the current people who can’t aren’t special. Each individual’s ethics are not always aligned so there is no one rule to fit all.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#15"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds" — Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice , 1797
This is of course why Smith argued for a tax on the undeveloped value of the land. Sadly not easy to work out, but much harder to avoid and much fairer in the sense that the undeveloped value of your land is that part which benefits most from the services provided by the state.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#16> I do not understand how will someone expect for future generations to achieve their own personal freedom and living inside their own four walls. Why would that be desirable?
Otherwise it would lead to a concentration of wealth among the few, and increase the gap between the rich and the poor. And are you asking why personal freedom is so important to people?
People can invest in stocks/index funds. Why is real estate only route to 'personal freedom'.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#17"I'm not doing any harm," you say. "I just want to keep what I own, that's all." You own! You are like someone who sits down in a theater and keeps everyone else away, saying that what is there for everyone's use is your own...If everyone took only what they needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such thing as rich and poor. After all, didn't you come into life naked, and won't you return naked to the earth?
Ambrose, c. 350
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#18I don't see owning a residential property as any more of a right than I do owning a luxury sportscar or private aircraft. Having access to an affordable roof over your head yes, owning that roof no.
Even if someone gave land to an individual, many would lack the ability to actually have a home constructed without saving for many years simply due to the cost of materials.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#19Yes. But I think that it’s just part of a larger unethical system: the financial system(and it’s incestuous relationship with government). I am pro capitalism, but this is not capitalism. This is corporatism. The whole system is based on growth at any expense to maximize shareholder wealth. Perverse incentives lead to perverse outcomes such as lobbying/bribing the government, destroying nature, poisoning people, war mongering etc. On a smaller scale, this is the real estate market. Endless growth for assets can only come by debasing the currency to cause persistent inflation or by causing artificial scarcity. Both have been happening for many decades. You can see it in those birthday cards for older people where it shows the prices from like the 50’s compared to now. Housing prices are like 10-15x what they were 80 years ago. That is caused by purposeful “target” inflation which experts say is “healthy”. But healthy for whom? Antibiotics are healthy for the ill person but toxic to the bacteria. I feel like the populace has become the bacteria.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#20Absolutely yes. House buying should be restricted to self occupants or professional (ideally state owned) letting agencies IMO.
Here in Barcelona the market is screwed by shitty foreign investors with seedy letting agencies that totally ignore the tenant's rights. It's all about the money