It's outright evil. I am not joking or being ironic or anything like that.
People who are doing real estate investing / flipping and all that are pretty much destroying our civilization now.
Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
401–410 of 764 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like the quick way to create a nation of renters. Otherwise, people would be priced out of their homes in short order by the ever increasing LVT. Which of course, isn't a bug, but the feature of Georgism (a family of 4 living making a home there probably won't permanently be the most efficient form of land use on that plot)
Precisely. A nation of renters rather than a two tiered class system with land owners at the top of the economic hierarchy and elderly renters at the very bottom.
Hmmm. I think what you are describing as a benefit most would think of as a bad thing.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe we should all take turns cleaning the toilets. Like jury duty.
If someone is willing to do it for money and I'm willing to pay them for it, why should I do it?
Money is a superpower, one of mankind's most potent inventions, and just like with anything of great power it is learning to restrain yourself, to recognize when it is and is not appropriate. Self-restraint in the use of great power is what makes the difference between good and evil.
With money, all actions take on a dimension of moral hazard. You pay for a thing, but you do not do the work, so you don't know how it is done and what effect the work has on the worker or on the world at large.
If the altruistic angle doesn't appeal, consider the selfish angle: money divorces you from the reality of an act, making you less able to do for yourself.
Like the Amish, I suggest that you carefully consider what you pay for and why, rather than just decide based on whether you can pay for it.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you need someone else to provide your ’basic human right’ Is housing expensive in popular cities or everywhere? What is preventing people (you?) from building cheap houses on cheap land? Is it regulation? We are headed for a massive population crash almost everywhere, the housing market will completely collapse in the next 10 years and will not recover. You can look at Japan and Italy as a head up, they are start…
>We are headed for a massive population crash almost everywhere We're not. Many countries predict stable populations at worst for several decades still. Some continue to predict population growths. Politicians are all too eager to use immigration as a way to band-aid low birthrates, and many are already subsidizing children more. Your last line gives it away too. Japan is primarily crashing in the countryside . Tokyo…
One thing I find interesting though is that at least in Australia, it's speculated that a lot of the property pressure is from foreign investment, especially from China.
So if China's population starts to crash or their economy goes bad at some stage what effect will this then have on the Australian market (for example)?
I'm guessing not much because the inflationary property price damage has been done. It's a curious thought.
Also in the case for "steady populations with little growth", wouldn't this mean that property prices will also stabilize and eventually drop? This stabilized property market will be interesting because people won't be able to make the huge capital gains and returns they were used too? A lot of property investors are also probably pretty heavily indebted and so any type of economic trouble might put many in a precarious position.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#405After looking into achieving personal freedom through tiny home living (and which could take different forms than what we think of today with some creativity), I can say that one of the most challenging things standing in the way is zoning laws.
You'd be surprised how difficult it is to find any piece of land anywhere in the US where zoning allows relatively unfettered building of tiny or smaller dwellings. It's possible, but it's very difficult.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would start by making property taxes substantially higher for non-owner-occupied property. If you are rent-seeking rather than residing on the property you should pay way more, maybe 4x or higher, in taxes. Housing prices would crash and that would be the point; but everyone who owns property would be against it because they don't want to see their assets drop in value. The counter-argument people make is "that wou…
>but everyone who owns property would be against it because they don't want to see their net-worth drop. They would be against it because it would mean they can never move, since they are now underwater on their mortgages. Most people who only own one property don’t care about its impact on their net worth unless they are planning on downsizing, since they can’t just liquidate the house to purchase other things as th…
It depends on where they want to move. For national policies prices should drop nation wide, ergo people would still be able to move inside the same country (probably 99% of relocations).
And if they don't sell, they wouldn't care much. Yeah, annoying, but as long as you pay the installments, not much changes in practice.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people speculate on land it doesn't get used as much as it should. By having people pay for the value of the land, that either forces them to make use of it, increasing housing supply, or get rid of it, which then the next person who buys will make use of it. Even a partial land value tax like we see in certain PA cities[0] yields real results and after implementing the tax vacant land went away and current home…
This sounds like the quick way to create a nation of renters. Otherwise, people would be priced out of their homes in short order by the ever increasing LVT. Which of course, isn't a bug, but the feature of Georgism (a family of 4 living making a home there probably won't permanently be the most efficient form of land use on that plot)
Renters are already paying for the land value, so if a renter can afford a property, so to can a homeowner. Under a Land Value Tax it is even easier to be a homeowner, as you no longer have a huge upfront cost of buying the land. As we saw in PA, current homeowners saw a tax decrease because so much vacant land went up for sale. A larger land tax would see even more positive effects. A larger land tax would also allow us to start reducing sales and income taxes, since that would end up simply increasing land values by more than they tax.
Since this incentivizes increasing the housing supply, zoning would quickly change from exclusionary to abundant. With those new homes being built, people would choose to move from their worn-down house into something new and better, and their current property would eventually have the same fate. It's not kicking people who love their homes out, it's letting people leave their homes for better ones.
You would still have apartments. You would still have AirBNB's. You would still have co-ops. You would still have houses.
Any tax money in excess of what is currently paid would be currently would simply be given back as a citizen's dividend, unless that tax money could be better spent on infrastructure, infrastructure that would pay for itself in higher land taxes that would yield even more land tax share dividends.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#408Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
I would start by making property taxes substantially higher for non-owner-occupied property. If you are rent-seeking rather than residing on the property you should pay way more, maybe 4x or higher, in taxes. Housing prices would crash and that would be the point; but everyone who owns property would be against it because they don't want to see their assets drop in value. The counter-argument people make is "that wou…
As others have said, this is an absolutely terrible idea and highly destructive to renters. There is simply no reason to boogeyman real estate investors so long as they are renting out the property. Renting is no less valid a form of housing than ownership and policies like you describe are already in place in many jurisdictions such as Ontario and it is already as we speak harming renters.
For all the people saying "it doesn't matter how much you tax landlords, the market rate is what the renters are willing to pay", don't be silly. Just take your argument to the extreme then. Why stop at 4x, why not charge 10x, 100x, or 1000x? Obviously as you raise taxes on landlording, the number and/or quality of rental units will go down and/or the prices will go up.
See Oh the Urbanity!'s recent video on the topic https://youtu.be/q3gtZcTdXaI
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#409Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
"Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting [...] a roof over their head that they don't like" Do you have a reference to back up this statement? Have you ever spoken to any homeless people and asked them what they think about this? Clearly there are some limits in which your statement holds; I would prefer to be homeless in a city in the UK than held in a forced labour camp with housing for examp…
Every single homeless person in Boston can get free transitional housing but the Mass and Cass street area is still packed with tents and drug users
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#410Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
housing is complicated My bullshit detector went off right here. Housing isn't complicated. It's only complicated by investment money being involved. Having a roof over ones head is a basic human right. In Australia, the market is so hot, very few young people can afford anything, if you're living in a nice place, you can easily be kicked out after your rent doubles. I know of good, professional people who migrated t…
> It's complicated because we've made it complicated.
And thus, it is complicated. Also worth taking into consideration: we may not be able to do otherwise. Currently, for sure (hence the commonality of conversations on this topic), and perhaps never if we don't/can't change the way we think.