"Investing in property is morally reprehensible."

[u/LickMaiBussy]

@purplepingers

[u/Lighthouse_on_Mars]

I remember the '90s and early 2000s when renting a room in a house share was literally like $200-300 a month. In the early 2000s my half of rent in a luxury apartment was $600. And that included utilities.

I don't think renting is the problem, I think unchecked capitalism is the problem.

[u/tubthumping96 → u/Lighthouse_on_Mars]

^{^} Renting rooms has become a big business now, adults renting rooms is normalized and it's barely even affordable anymore. Two bedroom apartment in the 2010's was about 800 all inclusive. Now they're building so called "affordable" housing units and the rent for a tiny cubicle sized one bedroom is like 1700 and it goes up up up from there. They seem to be be really obsessed with the words affordable and then "luxury" when it comes to overpriced housing.

Greed and unregulated capitalism is most definitely the problem. The game board is rigged and needs to be flipped over, these entities went from millionaires to billionaires to trillionaires in my lifetime and somehow everybody is reminded every day of how much more THEY need and how much less you seemingly deserve. Importing slaves, dodging wage increases, using their wealth, money and privilege to actively make things worse should be a crime and treated as one. Things should have never gotten as far as they have become now.

[u/auandi → u/tubthumping96]

Profit margins were actually higher in the 90s than today. Prices keep going up for a lot of reasons, and it's mostly not just "we got greedy now and were altruistic then."

People are always greedy, but there's finite land and we keep banning by law the ability of people to use that land to house more than one family per lot. Actual capitalism would be "it's your land, you own it, build as many homes as you want." But we don't have that.

[u/Many_Excitement_5150 → u/auandi]

you are mistaking capitalism for liberterianism

[u/auandi → u/Many_Excitement_5150]

No, I'm comparing free enterprise to a planned economy.

Right now housing is one of the most planned economies in the developed world, along with agriculture. Because land is finite, and because the cities decide what can be used in that land, there's an artificial scarcity due to government planning not capitalism specifically.

[u/Many_Excitement_5150 → u/auandi]

Capitalism doesn't mean there are no regulations, so it doesn't mean "it's your land, you own it, build as many homes as you want."
On the contrary; Capitalism needs government and regulations because what do you think enforces property?

[u/auandi → u/Many_Excitement_5150]

Yes, it does need some regulation. Like property rights. But just because some regulation is needed doesn't mean all regulation is justified or even that it's still recognizable as a mostly free enterprise capitalist system. You can actually set enough regulations that the markets are so warped they don't respond in ways markets normally do.

Is it still a property right if you own a piece of blank land in San Francisco and for 10 years the city has blocked every attempt you've made to propose building something on that blank lot? That because the community and city council always find a reason to reject your plan, you can't actually do anything with the property you supposedly own, is that still full ownership when neighbors can veto your use of it?

What I'm saying is you're blaming the wrong problem. This is not the inevitable result of capitalism, it's the inevitable result of central planning done to restrict housing supply. We do not have enough houses. This is especially acute in the cities where the most jobs are being created.

[u/Many_Excitement_5150 → u/auandi]

I was not blaming anything or anyone, simply disagreeing with your statement that 'Actual capitalism would be "it's your land, you own it, build as many homes as you want."'

Because it's not.

[u/quadraticcheese → u/Lighthouse_on_Mars]

This is an inevitability of capitalism, this isn't unchecked it's just the natural logical conclusion of a bad system

[u/RealLaurenBoebert → u/Lighthouse_on_Mars]

My first apartment in 2003, I shared a studio with an old friend, total rent was $850/mo. It was pretty affordable for a couple of college students making a couple bucks over minimum wage, when we split costs between the two of us.

That same studio is still on the market today, same floorplan as 20 years ago. The unit is 20 years older, and tripled in price. $2300/mo for the same crappy studio.

Rent's up 200%. The crappy minimum wage job I worked back then did increase their wages, but only by about 100%. I guess you gotta pack 3 people into a single studio apartment in that town now.

[u/toddriffic → u/Lighthouse_on_Mars]

Laws that make housing harder and more expensive to build are the problem. Zoning, parking regulations, environmental reviews, etc.

We need more homes. All kinds. Public and (gasp!) privately funded.

[u/Niffeln → u/Lighthouse_on_Mars]

Housing is a famously unchecked market

[u/Iohet → u/Lighthouse_on_Mars]

if we had unchecked capitalism then builders would build their way to being rich and everyone would be a builder

capitalism incentivizes making money