Gentlemen, experts of economy, it's time to realize we are walking in circles from one government intervention to the other. Capping rents, reducing inflation, minimum wage and UBI, cutting or raising taxes, regulations regulations regulations. Each comment here points out the failure of the last intervention, only to promise the next silver bullet recipe.
100-200 years ago your voice would be shouting about how government intervention in the labour market was hurting it. How giving workers more rights was big government taking over the economy and that we should be free from it.
Interventions might fail, just like leaving this to the market might fail. It's all a constant juggling of incentives, unforeseen consequences and catching up. UBIs and minimum wage are not designed to solve house affordability, so I'm not even sure why you'd lump it into capping rents, etc.
Without interventions you leave all the power to the profiteers, to the ones seeking to rent-seek as most as possible, so I'm very sure your approach of "less intervention" would just bring another set of unforeseen consequences with a worse side: complete lack of accountability. At least a failed governmental intervention has someone accountable for it, leaving the system to regulate itself (free market™) leaves no one accountable for the suffering it causes. Or even worse, it becomes a personal responsibility™ issue and the victims will be blamed for not trying hard enough.
I don't mind the interventions, and the goal of the economy is to serve the people, not the other way round, but narrative that government "gave the workers more rights" is largely false.
We became richer, thanks to the industrial revolution, not government coordination, and could afford to abolish slavery and work less. Same way we stopped wars of conquest conveniently when they stopped being profitable compared to large scale manufacturing and trade.
Government is at the mercy of these large trends just like the people.
> but narrative that government "gave the workers more rights" is largely false.
That's not my narrative. The government was forced to give more rights after a lot of bloodshed in multiple countries, it was ultimately a governmental intervention in the labour market which turned those protections into law.
The industrial revolution made societies richer, the workers through social movements and the power of government made the industrial revolution livable. If left by its own devices the industrial revolution barons would still be requiring people to work 12-14h days, including children over 12 years old.
Government is the collective voice of the people, we should let a decently democratic government have power over the markets, that's my narrative.
"Research has shown that the average age at which children started work in early 19th-century Britain was 10 years old, but that this varied widely between regions. In industrial areas, children started work on average at eight and a half years old."
> Reformers took up the issue of the working hours from the end of the 18th century onwards. Their campaigns resulted in the passage of legislation in 1802 and 1819 regulating the working hours of children in workhouses and textile factories to 12 hours a day.
> In 1833, the Factory Act banned children under 9 from working in the textile industry, and the working hours of 10-13 year olds was limited to 48 hours a week, while 14-18 year olds were limited to 69 hours a week, and 12 hours a day. Government factory inspectors were appointed to enforce the law.
I didn't mean to say that intervention is wrong. On the contrary, I believe in strong interventions. Just that they shouldn't be dismissed so quickly with the next hack.
There is no trick to make a free market work, for certain things we are in this together and should funnel a lot of money to lift up the poor.
The essence of civilization is helping out each other, that's why the first civilizations are defined as the ones where archeologists could find signs of medical procedures.
Are you willing and ready to work 12-14h a day, every single day of the week? And for your kids as well? Or perhaps you are part of the strata of society who won't be affected by the abolishment of labour protections, in that case you either don't have empathy or don't care about having it.
I don't think you completely understand what a regression to a world with no labour protections would mean. Either that or you'd be the one exploiting such lack of protections.
What's your proposal for the abolishment of labour protections, exactly?
That's just plain old corruption... Which is already illegal and immoral as far as I know, no?
Please, I expect deeper conversations than this from HN, don't just create a new account to use whataboutism and a dumb rhetoric of asking simpleton questions instead of refuting my arguments, that doesn't foster any stimulating debate. It just makes you look pathetically dumb.
The rate of NYC housebuilding was fastest in the 1950s when its rent control laws were strongest and rent was most affordable. Rent control apparently doesnt inhibit construction significantly.
I suspect it inhibits NIMBYism by keeping asset values down. Land is more scarce than construction materials and labor.
High rents->high asset values->freaking out about your riculous mortgage->freakimg about additional supply driving down your property price->turning up to town planning meeting to declare a laundrette "historic".
Were houses rent controlled in addition to multifamily residential? I'd expect developers to focus on houses when multifamily residential apartment buildings were under rent control. Is that the point you were trying to make?
It's good to point out a lot of nimbyism is defensive. As much as we like to demonize it, people are legitimately worried about their life savings investment getting cut in half if suddenly tons of new places were built
We should stop thinking of houses as an investment first and foremost. Their purpose is to be a dwelling for humans, not to park cash. When you look at it from that perspective, the house that one owns and lives in doesn't become any worse as a dwelling regardless of the state of the market. Those owned as investment, yeah, their owners should be legitimately worried - but they are also a big part of the problem, so let them worry.
I have the solution but it will require massive government investment and oversight.
Incentivize construction and cutting red tape to mass produce housing of a few million houses a year. This will hurt property owners but will open up affordability.
I think for high demand urban centres/markets, this is just going to lead to Braess's paradox of more roads = more cars = more traffic. More units = more people = more opporunities = maybe even higher rent. Unless there's ridiculous amount of oversupply. Perhaps greater NYC needs 60 million units to stablize price for 59M people that want to move there to reach the demand equilibirum of a overcrowded megacity 3x population of the current state. Gov needs to keep building units to put supply ahead of demand until until an urban centre becomes undesirable and people stop coming. Soon, ecumenopolis.
E: over comment limit
@Eisenstein They're not. I'm a fan of them. Like JP mega cities are relatively affordable with greater Tokyo having "reasonably" 22M people. But for US/west, highly desirable cities + high immigration, cities like NYC, I think has capacity draw/support people that push past what's stustainable based on regional geographic ceiling. NYC's already depend on stupidenous water transport infra. I feel (based on no evidence in particular) that NYC would grow to 40M people and run out of water, but rent stays the same/if not higher because there's even more opportunties and 80M people wants to move there.
Mega cities aren't really a bad idea. Less sprawl and more population density is a great solution to overuse of recourses devoted to moving people and things around.
Well, when working with with malevolent economic actors, stopping intervention is probably the last thing you want to do. It’s like saying you’ll stop pursuing robberies because there are always robberies.
"More regulations" and "less regulations" are both wrong perspectives, arrived at from ideology. We need more good regulations (e.g. banning waste dumping) and less bad regulations (e.g. price controls). There's absolutely no substitute for pragmatism and evaluating each individual regulation on its own merits.
You mean the common person who is getting evicted or having their rent increased by double digit percentages or getting priced out of their neighborhoods? Or the common person who owns a dozen high rises and is pissed about paying slightly more taxes?
The answer is obvious. Just follow the public land strategy of Singapore in urban centers. The city slowly purchases the land from citizens over a thirty year period.
I've seen a few comments already pointing out government regulations that are in fact working in other countries (France and Japan were already mentioned).
I would think that having discussions about working, net positive regulations would be pointless. I'm not sure why you think that discussing broken ones is indicative of all of them.
The system seems to working pretty well for you. You are fed, have a home and a computer, and are probably very wealthy compared to the rest of world. What exactly is broken?
Yeah I’m pretty well off thanks to the current system. But the same system is also leading to fair percentage of kids going to school hungry, people homeless or close to homeless (if any emergency happens) and a shitty chromebook if they are lucky and it has been getting worse. So I think the system is broken?
It is a bit of leap to go from 'I am doing well but some things aren't working' to 'trash it all and let's do the late 19th to early 20th century economic system again'.
It's not a leap to realise that the past 20-30 years has seen an increasingly accelerating trend of wealth concentration on the top. The scraps being left on the table for the rest of us are slowly dwindling while the system actively fights any reasonable voice trying to bring these social issues to the table.
We live in a world of abundance where kids in developed countries (UK, US) still go hungry, and it got worse in the past 10 years.
I don't think most left-ish people like me are asking to a return of 19th/early-20th century economic models, we are asking for a return of social democratic values over the hegemony of markets and finance. It's not that hard to imbue some humanity back unto an amoral system, we know now through empiric experience that pricing simply has not taken into account human suffering and externalities wreaking havoc into our environments, we just look for more humane ways for markets to function. Left to their own devices markets will only seek profits, at all costs, we, the people and workers, are the ones who can steer it into boundaries where profit-seeking isn't, ultimately, life-destroying.
The top level comment I was replying to was about removing all economic regulation. I'm not sure how that turned into 'social democratic values' but that's what you were replying to me replying to.
Sorry, I got lost in the comment thread and thought your reply was to something else. Honest mistake but I will keep my soapboxing-ish comment up as I believe there is some value for other readers.
Edit: did you really create a whole new smurf account just to reply to me in multiple threads? And just to keep asking questions instead of refuting anything I said?
For me it’s not about literally going back to Wild West but addressing this point by the other person.
> A broken system is very unlikely to ever produce correct results.
I agree there are plenty of net positive regulations made by good systems _at the time_. But it’s not producing good regulations _now_ and is very resistant to change.
If you're proposing making housing a 'right' and not a personal asset, how do we go about that? One debate in NYC is over people who have rent controlled or rent stabilized units in very expensive neighborhoods. Should their subsidized housing be a "luxury product" or not?
I'm of the mindset where if you need housing, the community or government should provide housing. American is wealthy enough to do this and it's just the ethical thing to do. I also feel that if you are given housing, it should be local, but not always your desired location. For example, if you grew up in the East Village and you now need public housing, be prepared to move to Inwood. You're still in Manhattan, but its a 30 minute express train to your old neighborhood.
