say it with me:
BUILDING
APARTMENTS
WITHOUT
CONTROLS
ON
THE
RENTS
OF
THOSE
APARTMENTS
ONLY
ENRICHES
DEVELOPERS
AND
DOES
NOT
DRIVE
DOWN
RENTS
thinking that it does is some neolib "free market" bullshit
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because if the things that I machine were constantly fucking up your life and the lives of millions of people around you, on a massive scale and in long-term ways, I wouldn't be surprised if you walked into my machine shop and said "you are doing something very wrong here"
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and if you said: well, I would love to build a better machine; here are the forces preventing me from building this machine, and here are the reasons your proposed alternative will be even worse---
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I don't want to hear about why we can't do bold things, or that my idea is bad, in absence of a better idea. The argument against drastic application of rent control on basically all new development seems to be just "actually we have to keep doing it the way that doesn't work"
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Tell me how we *significantly* reduce rents in a way that DOES NOT rely on good faith from rich people, and I'm all ears.
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I think it's helpful to view rich people, or capitalists, or however you define these groups as cold machines that chase their own interest. If you set up a system where chasing that interest is beneficial to you, you don't have to trust them to do anything but be selfish.
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In this case, you make it easier for them to build tons of dense housing in high-demand by removing laws that make this impossible. People are willing to pay for that housing; knowing they can make money by building and renting, capitalists build and rent. Now,
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my *guess* is that your objection is something like: how does this reduce rents? Allow that landlords want to charge as much as they possibly can--I agree that they do, pretty generally! They'd take every penny from tenants if they could. All that's stopping them is competition
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My gut is it's easy to miss this about markets: your main opponent is not your counterparty, often, but people who are competing with you for business I work at a big company. We think about two main things: how to make better stuff for consumers, and how to beat our competitors
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