• Zink@programming.dev
        6·
        8 days ago

        I keep thinking we need an overhaul where volunteering to be a public servant at a high enough level also means volunteering to surrender all your assets and be barred from owning anything significant for life. You get a stipend that you can spend on food, hobbies, travel, and entertainment, but that’s it. You get housing and transportation paid for (or maybe you can own your residence and car) but no businesses, no stocks, etc. I guess you get a pension or salary for life or something.

        People have demonstrated that they generally cannot be trusted to balance governmental power with conflicts of interest. Sure some people can, but ordinary voters picking from candidates filtered for “actively seeks power” have a crappy track record. Here’s hoping politicians like Mamdani can teach the voters a re things and start to turn that around.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
      29·
      9 days ago

      Landlording is almost uneconomical as it is in a lot of places. That’s why so many condos are completely vacant in expensive cities. People buy them and just hold them as a store of value, but don’t rent them out.

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 days ago

        Large real estate groups also do that to artificially keep supply low to inflate market rates. Those are not the only properties they own.

          • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
            2·
            7 days ago

            I dunno, common sense? Youll have two competing pressure for sure. On one hand, if holding vacant properties costs more, you’re going to charge more rent on occupied properties to offset. On the other hand, you can only charge so much more above market rate without discouraging potential renters. If those numbers don’t align for you, you sell your vacant property, increasing supply and reducing the market rates.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        8 days ago

        Any serious economics professor will acknowledge that all the economic “laws” they teach you are basically for illustrative purposes. “Market forces” only behave as described in a perfectly free market, with perfect information on both sides of a transaction, no coercion, no monopolies, and perfectly rational participants.

        I compare it to basic physics: you learn how perfectly inelastic, frictionless spheres behave, for simplicity. But perfectly inelastic, frictionless spheres aren’t real, so real experiments aren’t going to match your basic formulas. Likewise, economic laws fall apart as soon as you try to apply them to the real world.

          • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            8 days ago

            The problem is that it’s basically impossible to isolate economic phenomena. You can conduct a gravity experiment in a vacuum tube, but you can’t make an economic vacuum tube.

            • rockerface🇺🇦@lemmy.cafeEnglish
              1·
              8 days ago

              And yet you can still use the basic formula for gravitational movement to calculate stuff with enough precision for everyday life.

  • Lasherz@lemmy.world
    17·
    9 days ago

    Kinda worse tbh, because it used to be landlords would have to arrange a group call where they’d conspire to fuck us. Now it’s done by companies like RealPage automatically.

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    8 days ago

    Economics, as an intellectual discipline, is closer to theology than physics. Its power is proportional to the belief it commands.

    Finance is an arbitrary subset of accounting and mathematics, cherry picked by the owning class, and applied as their supporting mythology.

    It’s an entirely imaginary construct, which means alternatives are only ever a conjuring away.

    • Tiger666@lemmy.ca
      1·
      8 days ago

      They are experts in made up numbers. They are purveyors of status quo. They are yes men for the ruling class.

  • Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    8·
    9 days ago

    yea, especially if someone owns half the rentable housing. they can then effectively control rent pricing. and if they own that much then they can often directly affect the marked.

  • MNByChoice@midwest.social
    7·
    9 days ago

    Remember, you can create a housing co-op. Yes, it is a lot of work, but it will be a net good for society. (I have a strong and incorrect impression that this would be me giving money away. We need WAY more cooperative economic education.)

    Also, you can marry a friend just to qualify for a mortgage (pre-nups!). Also, buying housing with friends is a thing.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    47·
    9 days ago

    You can identify a leftist who understands economics with a simple test question: “what are the effects of rent controls?”

      • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
        21·
        8 days ago

        There are multiple, but I’m looking out for the negative one: decreased quality and quantity of rental properties.

    • Lasherz@lemmy.world
      7·
      9 days ago

      I will bite. Not unlike an increase in minimum wage, it increases competition at the margin among landlords, which increases amenities, and encourages families and economic activity. It needs to also be accompanied by enforcement of landlord citations as well as empty housing penalties though in order to have its full effect of reversing the trend of out of state management of private residential property and encourages self-ownership over time and better landlords. The empty housing penalties are because the landlords primary use of the properties is capital and so an empty unit is often more profitable in value than the cost of it sitting empty. Laws need to tip the scale to increase supply of housing and force their hands to release it back to people who can take on personal responsibility of the unit, whether that be a next door landlord or ideally a rent to own tenant or owner living there.