hi I'm a machinist and I expect my government to regulate out of control markets that are hurting people, even if it makes rich people slightly less rich
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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Certain cities that I will not mention have a really bad reputation for chummy collusion by asshole developers. FWIW neoclassical economists hate this and related shit, and if you here one accuse someone of being a "rent seeker" it's akin to saying "die in a fire"
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I'm going on and on. The main point I'm trying to make is that if you have more than a handful of landlords (which is usually the case), increasing the number of units available relative to the number of people who wants units makes them compete *with each other* on price
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The best way to lower prices and make things better for people who need housing is (i) let developers build lots of dense units near cities where they're wanted--and strict zoning laws prevent this; and (ii) make it easier for new developers to enter and compete
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This has become an absurdly long thread and I will pause now, thank you for reading through. I hope at least that you get the impression we want the same outcome, and that at least people like me are thinking seriously about how to get there.
End of conversation
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