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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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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This is less true in less-competitive markets, and there are definitely companies that spend a lot of time shivving consumers. My old boss at the Federal Reserve called (eg) credit card companies "obfuscopolies," for instance. It's dark stuff. And . . .
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by and large companies can only get away with that shit if they're not at risk of losing their customers to competitors. This happens with monopolies, and it happens when there are only a few companies that can collude. This definitely happens too, and in real estate to an extent
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