Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

The subtext, from the statement above, is socialist government decision making is irrational while capitalist governments are rational.

Having traveled across many countries in Europe, I have seen governments with socialist traits make rational, sensible decisions. Again, while I agree that a capitalist government is probably more effective than most communist governments, the world is not black and white.

Counterpoint: do you think it’s wrong to let the sick stay sick and not help them? Addiction is a sickness and often requires a lot of help addicts can not themselves do to quit. You can’t expect someone who isn’t able to help themselves help themselves. This is the crux of the issue.

Also, people in half way houses or assisted living absolutely should be sober so they don’t cause anyone else in the facility to regress, but it is a hard problem. These people often need intense rehabilitation and these programs are neither quick or cheap. Someone has to run the program and success is never guaranteed. Mandatory government funded rehab would be AMAZING, but imagine how many people would crow about their “freedom” to shoot up meth is being infringed if that happened at the federal level.

This is a very hard problem and there aren’t easy solutions. My opinion changed a bit after I married a girl with a masters in social work. This is very draining heavy emotional capital work.

> Is it that shocking that I would hold consistent views over time?

Not at all, in fact I respect that. I just didn't realize that we had talked about this before when I replied to your previous comment. On the one hand I feel a little silly, on the other hand I got to trot out that Ben Franklin quote, so that's cool. What do you think of that, what he wrote?

> I have some experience in this area that would be very difficult to dislodge. I have lived off the power, sewage, phone, and internet grid for 20 years. I have built cheap homesteads and expensive ones. I have spent days foraging pinion nuts and weeks bowhunting deer. I like to think I have some sense of the luxuries afforded by modern living, and what it is like to go without them.

That's fascinating! I don't want to get personal but I'd love to hear more about it?

> My specific point is that it still isn't, if you are willing to put up with the quality of lodgings non-industrialized people and settlers had. You can buy a wooded plot of land and build a log cabin for free. You can buy a steel shed that Native Peoples would have marveled at for a ~$1k.

> > A lot of places won't let you build and live in an igloo or adobe building today.

> Not in down town SF or most urban centers. If you leave these behind, nobody is going hunt you down and arrest you for living off-grid in a backcountry hovel. People actually do this!

You're right. My impression is that this is easier said than done, but that might be because I'm mostly only looking in California, where people have gotten kind of huffy about that sort of thing, at least in most counties. I've been looking at these cheap 2-5 acre parcels out in the desert (Utah, Arizona, NM, CO) that are just a couple of grand. Some of them even have electricity nearby. I guess the demand just isn't there.

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> > I promise I'm not fantasizing about magic elves. :) However, it's clear that Native American lifestyles were preferable to European-American lifestyles

> I think you are fantasizing about elves.

You think I am, I think I'm not, which one of us is closer to my brain? :)

> There is a lot positive to be said about native lifestyles, and negative to be said about industrialized lifestyles. However, I think most of them boil down to cultural issues and materialism, not the fact that Indians had somehow a superior material wellbeing.

There are very few cases of Native peoples voluntarily adopting Western lifestyles. They adopted useful things like guns and metal knives, but not culture.

That Ben Franklin quote makes it pretty clear that people preferred Native lifestyles despite the material lack. The fellow "reserving to himself nothing but a gun and match-Coat" shows that the "Wilderness" at that time actually met all his material needs, eh?

There's no doubt that the Indians did not have a superior material wellbeing. To me it's fascinating to speculate on what immaterial quality the Native life must have had that the European life didn't that outweighed the superior material wellbeing of the European.

regarding your last point first: no, it doesn't require the vote of the nimbys. The state and/or province could force this very easily and that group of politicians is beholden to a group of people with more varied interests so are less under nimby pressure.

regarding your first point:The loss from rezoning will happen at the time of rezoning and will primarily affect the currently zoned high density land. With newly repriced lower, non scarce multi unit residential land it is unlikely to end up in a large downward risk situation because the sophisticated reits will be pricing what they will pay now for land off of what they think will happen over the next twenty years and will likely be pricing in a rent drop (which is what drives the drop in land prices for high density). You also aren't really at risk of technological disruption because the total turnover/increase in units is low relative to total housing stock even if we ented a building boom. If it suddenly costs half as much to build a high density residential building, it's still going to take decades for that to erode rental costs by half because you don't suddenly have enough supply of that cheaper to build stock to house everyone.

That's why I said if the tenant has been there for a sufficient time. If they have covered the unit's cost, plus maintenance, they have effectively paid for all the owner's expenses. Shouldn't it be enough to effectively own the property they actually live in?