The room the economy can't see • Hacker News Board

Re: The room the economy can't see

#251

Post by em-bee » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 11:43 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #244

em-bee wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the market is not spending that money. the community/goverment is.

How is that not a market, as long as we are voting?

good question. i actually agree with you. but free market is defined as "without government intervention", and some people defend that rigorously. i found this article where government involvement in a public parks fail: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeMarketEnvironmentali... driving that point home.

personally i believe for every story in that article where the government failed or did worse than private owners we can find just as many stories where private owners failed to act in the public interest and only government was there to support the public. this is not a question of the system, but of the motivation of the people involved. even some examples in the article only work because government set the rules that empowered the people to act against bad actors in the first place.

the article claims that government decision makers are seldom held accountable for broader social goals in the way that private owners are by liability rules and potential profits and i would counter that that is broadly not true in many places because people do expect the government to act in their interest and not doing so can and will backfire. even in a country like china where the government is more top down. but i digress.

so yeah, i agree that government and people are market participants. but i just had this argument in another thread where someone insists that i am a non-interested party in commercial property dealings if i am not a tenant or owner, while i kept arguing that as a person living in the city my interests are affected too if a property stays empty and therefore it's only right that the government gets involved.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#252

Post by inigyou » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 3:09 AM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #221

inigyou wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if someone invented a new type that didn't smell, it should be allowed. Regulate consequences, not causes. The power substation down the road is disguised as a brick house, because the rule was ultimately about maintaining the look of the area and not about forbidding power substations.

> Regulate consequences, not causes. a noble sentiment but most often these cannot be separated.

That's up to the property owner not the government. Can he invent a trash incinerator that doesn't smell or can't be?

Re: The room the economy can't see

#253

Post by hakfoo » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 4:02 AM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #137

cousin_it wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your heart is in the right place, but I want to push back a bit. Zoning is a red herring, sure, but landlords and airbnb are a red herring too. The truth is worse. The natural bloc for restricting housing construction and increasing home values is all homeowners! Everyone with a mortgage, too! Maybe the fight is still winnable, but we need to see clearly what we're up against.

Everyone who owns a home is incentivized to keep the property value up, but not all of them actually feel and respond to that incentive. In the same way that a pig farm owner is incentivised to keep the beautiful clean nature, but makes more money farming smelly pigs instead.

Isn't the solution just to take the market out of real estate?

At the individual-homeowner level, a lot of NIMBYism, HOA activity, and other toxic activity is grounded in "I have $400k of equity sunk into this square of land and it's the only meaningful asset I have for my increasingly oncoming retirement."

There are probably plenty of people who are subconsciously self-sabotaging due to that-- they may personally prefer a denser neighbourhood or more mixed-use facilities, but that Zillow number is blinking in their mind at the same time.

If the real estate were nationalized and people were leasing it from a state-owned trust, at basically its cost of operation (maintenance and amortized construction costs), it would free up a lot of resident income for other use or investment opportunities, and make a lot of changes less threatening to residents. (ISTR claims that rents in the USSR were on the order of 5% of income, and this when 30% or less was still a feasible story in the US)

Re: The room the economy can't see

#254

Post by hakfoo » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 4:06 AM UTC

infecto wrote: post #24

ixtli wrote: post #9

Very good and well-written. I wish we would also acknowledge that the market, by disincentivizing spend on stuff like this, is performing well. It is optimizing. The reason it matters to acknowledge this up front is so that we can, as the article says, get to the rule below all this which is that the market is default. This is a clear and thorough example of how the profit motive does not lead to the life any of us w…

Or what if the average consumer wants to live a different life than what you want? I long for the memories of my childhood where I spent it outside for hours on end or when I had the opportunity to use the phone line to use the internet but I am not fully convinced what people what are third spaces. It’s hard to answer and I think partially for better or worse why markets are often a useful tool to o help figure it o…

For some of us, we found digital "third spaces". In a way, when we're arguing on HN, or the kids on Discord, are using it largely as a community centre on their screen.

It clearly shouldn't be the only option-- it's not going to service all types of interests and audiences. I attend the meetings of the local numsimatics club-- they get a room in one of the city offices when it's closed for the day, and do presentations and discussions. The demographics are weird, it's like under-15s and over-60s with very little in the middle, and I'm not sure there's the technical capability or the preference to do it over Zoom. (Trying to remember what they did during the pandemic, I think they just closed down for a year or so)

Re: The room the economy can't see

#255

Post by bethekidyouwant » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 5:36 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #150

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you meant to save retirement money if not the market? Not sure the European model of kicking the can down the road is better.. It seems like the problem is more that urban boomers/genx/millenials didn’t want more than one or two kids… which is the central thesis here, why does having four kids suck in cities. Which i think historically has always been true. So its just an unsolved problem across time and sp…

>which is the central thesis here No, not exactly. We're dealing with a historical confluence of long term changes in humanity. Before 1900 or so and some people had a lot of kids survive and others had a lot of kids die. The population rate increased very slowly, and not from a lack of trying. Then around the time I stated people figured out germs were real, chlorine in water was good, and washing ones hands was a s…

Interesting I was just saying it was easier to have children in the countryside in ancient Rome then in Rome itself. I doubt rome the city made replacement rate.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#256

Post by TFYS » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #11

How much of this is just due to changing tastes? For example, Minecraft, Roblox, or an Xbox live subscription are the new lobbies for younger generations. Heck, the article mentions Internet cafes but those died out once computer and smartphone penetration reached high double digits. There are fewer of these third spaces because there is less demand for them than before due to changing preferences, as could be seen w…

But the preferences might be changing not because people like the new way more, but because the economic system forces people to choose the most efficient way of doing things. Someone who plays games at home can do it cheaper or in less time than someone going to a cafe, and because we are constantly competing against each other in this system, the less efficient choices become unaffordable over time. Efficient people hold most of the economic power and therefore the economy will mostly serve them.

Also people, especially kids, are not always good at understanding the consequences of their choices. The convenience of playing games at home is easy to see, but few kids understand how that choice will affect their social skills over the long term. Allowing individual preferences to dominate society might not give us the best result.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#257

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:31 AM UTC

mym1990 wrote: post #122

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you say "outcompeted" makes it seem like you're evaluating efficiency in both cases, but isn't direction the more important criteria? It doesn't really matter if a car without a steering wheel can be faster than one without on account of being lighter. One is going where you want it to, and the other is crashing into things. The economy, as we're practicing it today, is a car without a steering wheel.

Somewhat of a weird example…the one without a steering wheel could be autonomous, or the place you want to get to is in a completely straight line from where you start. Also in your example you have both cars without steering wheels.

[deleted]

Re: The room the economy can't see

#258

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:34 AM UTC

mym1990 wrote: post #122

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you say "outcompeted" makes it seem like you're evaluating efficiency in both cases, but isn't direction the more important criteria? It doesn't really matter if a car without a steering wheel can be faster than one without on account of being lighter. One is going where you want it to, and the other is crashing into things. The economy, as we're practicing it today, is a car without a steering wheel.

Somewhat of a weird example…the one without a steering wheel could be autonomous, or the place you want to get to is in a completely straight line from where you start. Also in your example you have both cars without steering wheels.

My point is just that progress is a vector, is has direction, and our economic theories generally ignore this and treat it as a scaler: if the number is going up then things must be good. When actually, the number going up just means that we're moving quickly in an arbitrary direction that has nothing to do with our needs and very well may be undermining them.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#259

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:44 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #200

eszed wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we somehow created jobs elsewhere so that poor people wouldn't have to fight rich people for city air Or, maybe... a VAT-funded UBI?

Why VAT? It's a regressive tax that hurts poor people more than rich people.

Not in this case, it doesn't - at least per the other articles in this series.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#260

Post by cobbzilla » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 7:03 AM UTC

cobbzilla wrote: post #203

_aavaa_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article spends a good deal of time making the point that these rooms are getting more scarce since people can't afford to volunteer their time .

People below or near the poverty line can occasionally be found volunteering. I think it speaks more about what people value, how they value their time. How many people can’t afford an hour a week? An hour a month? There is almost always some unhealthy activity that takes up at least an hour of your time a month, why not substitute?

lol apparently and unironically downvoters have the most time to spare!