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Houses are for living, not for speculation

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Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#101

Post by simonra »

Arnt wrote: post #80
recursivedoubts wrote: post #31

You have to understand that our money supply is based on debt. It shouldn't be: the money supply is a public good and should be managed for the public good via citizens dividend or whatever, but currently it is debt-based and managed for the private good of the banks. Housing debt has to expand or the economy tanks because the money supply shrinks. Since we are at the end of the current debt cycle, housing has gone v…

Money isn't managed by anyone. There's an excellent description here: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-... Scan for the sentence "at that moment, new money is created" and then read the whole thing anyway ;) It seems to me that if you want some sort of money creation management role in the economy, you need to restrict people's ability to lend and borrow from each other. So if you wanted to…

> Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who's tried to restrict people's right to borrow from a willing lender.

Didn't the Christian phase in Europe effectively restrict meaningful lending from most of the economy for a really long time?

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#102

Post by recursivedoubts »

Arnt wrote: post #80
recursivedoubts wrote: post #31

You have to understand that our money supply is based on debt. It shouldn't be: the money supply is a public good and should be managed for the public good via citizens dividend or whatever, but currently it is debt-based and managed for the private good of the banks. Housing debt has to expand or the economy tanks because the money supply shrinks. Since we are at the end of the current debt cycle, housing has gone v…

Money isn't managed by anyone. There's an excellent description here: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-... Scan for the sentence "at that moment, new money is created" and then read the whole thing anyway ;) It seems to me that if you want some sort of money creation management role in the economy, you need to restrict people's ability to lend and borrow from each other. So if you wanted to…

Lol, the bank of england is the grandaddy of them all and doesn't want people to understand how money works any more than any other big bank does.

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

you can read up on social credit (the western version, not chinese) if you want an alternate perspective

EDIT: On reading it, this is actually a reasonable description of how it works. But the idea that it's not managed by anyone is silly: the banks manage it by scrounging as much debt as they can, productive or not, and charging as much interest as they can on it (and getting bailouts when that inevitably goes sideways, which transfers the issue to the public purse). That's the problem: the money needs to be created to match the productive economy and be placed in the hands of everyone, interest free.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#103

Post by recursivedoubts »

simonra wrote: post #101
Arnt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't managed by anyone. There's an excellent description here: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-... Scan for the sentence "at that moment, new money is created" and then read the whole thing anyway ;) It seems to me that if you want some sort of money creation management role in the economy, you need to restrict people's ability to lend and borrow from each other. So if you wanted to…

> Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who's tried to restrict people's right to borrow from a willing lender. Didn't the Christian phase in Europe effectively restrict meaningful lending from most of the economy for a really long time?

Yes, the traditional Christian understanding of usury is right about what's wrong, but wrong about what's right. Debt based and fiat currencies in general were able to expand the money supply to allow for more vigorous growth. Gold and silver were really the only other conceivable alternatives and there was never enough of it to match the productive economy, especially after the industrial revolution. I do think that the horrors of gold-backed money are oversold: the US expanded more quickly in the late 1800s under a gold backed currency with almost no immigration, but that shows that other factors (e.g. industrialization) are sometimes more important.

The thing to get your head around is: who gets the new money? My preferred system (social credit) says everyone gets a citizens dividend, rather than banks claiming surplus value via compounding (read: exponential) interest.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#104

Post by Paradigm2020 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #95
Paradigm2020 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original turning the none used resource into a productive resource (your eg clearing land, irrigation etc etc) is productive. Big land owners / PE / ... cornering all the available agricultural land / needed supply chain / economies of scale etc etc to extract more and more value of Scarce resource that has already been optimized is extractive. The thing is that the word extractive makes it hard to have a good de…

Your argument is just one of perspective. From my view, clearing of land & irrigation is one of the greatest disasters of modernity. Extracting everything from land and rendering it barren and featureless. We traded biodiversity and ecosystems for increased food production. All to support a population of humans that is nowhere near any kind of population threat level. On the opposite exactly, human population has ris…

Well state that you care about animal and nature wellfare right after your own welfare and before other humans welfare ? Or just add that to the original post would help clarity - would make everything comm wise easier.

(there's a 1% chance that I'm wrong here - please accept my apologies if you're a vegetarian, sub 30m²/person living in an apartment not using cars / ubers and intentionally living near public transport - or the closest equivalent available to you / your families financial status as of this moment, you are also donating at least 6% of your money to buying up farmland to convert it to pristine wilderness --- i am definitely not but my order is me - friends family - other humans - a more beautiful planet for the most of those other humans)

But yeah, personally I'd gladly make beef that are feed lot fed a lot more expensive with every house hold getting a check in advance for what would be a fair share of beef for all... Make it so only american beef is allowed (american farmers are happy) and make it a slightly diminishing amount every couple of years as farmers age out... It would be slow but the value of beef would massively increase and i think a lot ot poorer people (and myself) would put my money where my mouth is) You'd also have to ban the export/import of feed for cattle fattening and presto - 10% or land available for none extractive uses...

In the same way that delmonte closing canned peaches results in a vast monoculture being cut down and that right now with the right externalities / support "human focused demand" you could be setting up / buying some of it up and paying rent every year to keep it pristine ~ or a bigger a one off payment...

Anyway, again - noone states their values and most people think their values are duh and only dumbasses would disagree - hence why only conversation especially in a thread of a story tends to be rather difficult as everyone tries to defend their pov without stating it or dio mio asking the other person why (which would have been a better option from my part as well but again medium/message etc.

Looking forward to your reply and have a great day wherever you are. I'm off to zzz

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#105

Post by bpt3 »

Ekaros wrote: post #25
xtracto wrote: post #3

I wholeheartedly agree with this. My opinion is that governments should tax 2nd, 3rd and further housing so as to prevent people from accumulating residential buildings. If you want to live of your rents, buy a commercial or industrial building, speculate with that. But residential construction should be protected to ensure each household is able to buy one with the average country salary.

I am against "speculation" on any sort of real estate. On other hand I am not against real estate investments. And I don't think single family housing deserves any kind of special treatment. I see no reason why someone providing capital to build a building and then renting it out to cover cost of that capital, maintenance and building cost is unreasonable or bad thing. Issue really is when market is manipulated to ke…

When you ban "speculation" on an asset class, you're just telling owners (including creators) of that asset class that they will make less money if and when they sell.

Setting aside the "I know it when I see it" definition of speculation used by most people that changes as needed during a discussion and all the negative side effects that come with that, is telling people who produce a scarce asset that they will make less money when they sell it a good idea, or a bad idea?

Why do you assume that prices increasing faster than inflation is manipulation, and what is the definition of "normal changes in demand"?

Real estate historically hasn't appreciated faster than inflation over time. Supply constraints, historically low interest rates, and a couple other factors have changed that in a number of areas in the last couple decades, but not all. The Rust Belt is a prime example, yet for some reason that isn't relevant in these discussions.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#106

Post by bpt3 »

toasty228 wrote: post #20
juliusceasar wrote: post #2

So is energy, food, water and space. And yet, all cost money.

That's why they should be non profit and nationalised. Nobody mind paying taxes for the good stuff, everybody mind paying taxes for bottom tier private companies to mess with the bare necessities and charge a premium fo it

When in modern history has that ever worked? Why would this time be any different?

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#107

Post by cestith »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #86
cestith wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you need economics even when most of the money is used to pay for something productive rather than extractive.

but what's the difference between 'productive' and 'extractive'? Clearing huge swaths of land for agriculture is highly productive, in terms of making crops. Likewise irrigating huge swaths of arid land for agriculture is also highly productive. Are those 'extractive' or not?

Let’s try to keep productive and extractive to their economic meanings, and not talk about the exploitative practices with natural resources for a moment.

A farmer puts products that people buy into the marketplace. Many actors in the financial sector make their money by micro-timing trades in securities and commodities markets that are already liquid enough they don’t need the additional activity. Others buy up stock of housing just to control enough to raise the prices. They are literally just taking other people’s money out of the economy for their own gain, and the economy does not function any better due to their activity. In fact, when housing is overly tight the economy suffers.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#108

Post by dzhiurgis »

xtracto wrote: post #3

I wholeheartedly agree with this. My opinion is that governments should tax 2nd, 3rd and further housing so as to prevent people from accumulating residential buildings. If you want to live of your rents, buy a commercial or industrial building, speculate with that. But residential construction should be protected to ensure each household is able to buy one with the average country salary.

So people who want to rent are forced to live in commercial buildings?

Some people need to rent and some will never be able to of want to buy property. This is taxing them even more.

If we do something like this it should come from financial system. Like already you need 30% deposit when you buy investment property in NZ. Perhaps we should only give rental loans to new builds only.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#109

Post by mherkender »

mothballed wrote: post #74
mherkender wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find places like that all over the world. They're slums. Maybe regulations put too much burden on homeownership but slums create huge issues as well. Basic plumbing shouldn't be taken for granted.

Built my house for 60k (post-COVID dollars). A couple turns of 3" pipe into a tank. Up into a toilet. Not much more than that. It dumps into a big concrete tank and then from that the effluent goes out a couple pipes with holes drilled along it and into the soil. Quite clean and very cheap. I think the 'plumbing' for sewage took me 2 days and $300 in pipe. The septic system was maybe $2000 in materials, you could eas…

Personally I would wish for streamlined regulatory processes rather than being okay with any Tom/Dick/Harry creating health hazards next door because they overestimated their ability to dispose of their own poop.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#110

Post by kelipso »

mothballed wrote: post #89
Esophagus4 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which was the way housing was for many years. A house used to be viewed as a consumable good a hundred years ago, not an appreciating asset. (Before the New Deal commoditized mortgages)

At least in USA, since pretty much the absolute beginning, anyone with any wealth tried to gobble up the absolute most amount of land they could. Both as a form of wealth and a productive input. This has been less so in the past century though as agriculture has become smaller part of the economy.

That should be highly discouraged since land is a scarce resource. Property should be taxed exponentially with respect to how much you already own.
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