Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

I don't think the empty tax is a bad idea, but I don't think it will have a substantial effect.

The lack of housing is not a issue of attracting investment. Canada (and basically every other country with a housing price crisis) is perfectly capable of funding construction with domestic investment. It is, as you mentioned, an issue with policy.

Until the policy is fixed, additional foreign investment is pointless and only serves to drive speculative price increases. It makes sense to deter it.

In theory as countries apply similar policies across the world, the surplus countries driving these capital flows will be forced to either invest in developing countries that could actually use the funds, or park the cash domestically. That will force countries like China and Germany to deal with their issues internally instead of exporting them.

Anything more than 45 minutes is too long.

Well, if only there was a way to let the market say that there is too much financial capital and tell lenders to go away. It's actually quite stupid. As you said, no single person is responsible. You have this gold standard thing. The reason why it doesn't work is that gold or money is the financial equivalent of real estate. You don't need money in itself for anything. You need money to trade your labor in for products and services, as a medium of exchange.

It's analogous to a bazar except you must go to this specific bazar and there is a limited number of stalls. You only need a stall for 5 minutes to do your transaction, you don't need the stall itself. We have collectively decided that people have the right to own these stalls. Here is the problem. If you are young and you have to work, you need to go to a stall and do transactions that let you sell your time. However, all the stalls are already taken by older people. They won't let go of their stalls, they want to take them into the grave, because they are scared of not having a stall when they really need it. So instead, they rent out the stall and let you use it for a short amount of time.

Now let's say the interest rate demanded is way too high and you refuse to borrow and fall for the debt trap. What are you going to do? Stay unemployed? Ok, but now you have lots of time to think and organize and a clear group of people that you dislike. This is the perfect growth medium for extremism.

So, we did away with a fixed number of stalls. Instead, we have decided to give everyone a stall. The problem is that those old people are now buying a second, third, hundredth stall. The amount of free stalls remains laughably small, forcing the government to keep increasing the number of stalls exponentially.

When you think about it, those stalls are public property and people who have no business blocking them are wasting everyone else's time. It's like someone is parking in the middle of the road and blocking traffic. Normally you would call the police and they will confirm the traffic violation and then tow the car away and fine the owner.

We don't do this with the stalls. There is no incentive for anyone to get on with their business as quickly as possible, so people grab as many stalls as possible. There is no opportunity cost to them but there is a huge opportunity cost to those who need stalls but can't get them. This is where the exploitation of the have nots by the haves originates. There are enough stalls for everyone but nobody is giving up the extra stalls that they don't need immediately. The wrong/incorrect allocation of stalls toward those who don't need them and away from those who need them is at the root of the problem. In theory, a market would automatically solve this problem. Why doesn't it?

My argument is that we need to introduce a fee on the stalls to punish slowpokes and make sure people keep those stalls free if they don't need them. This means that if people are refusing to rent a stall, the owner of the stall would be left with an asset that is losing them value instead of a tool that can be abused for power.

In short, the problem is that the interest rate must become negative to discourage people from indebting other people against their will when an economy that is no longer growing (for short bursts or maybe even forever) has no need for further debt, debt that can only be paid through inflation.

> Foreign investors jump into the housing market because the current system ensures that the supply of housing is limited so it is an attractive way to park your wealth.

If they were targeting mainland Chinese investors, it's too late. China already stopped capital flight out of their country two years ago. They even banned crypto, so getting money out of China is both difficult and expensive for both Chinese citizens and even expats. The former is understandable since it's an authoritarian country, but expats? That's a new one unless countries in the Middle East do the same thing.