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[–] djdarren@piefed.social 39 points 3 months ago (4 children)

First, we need to ensure that the people who make the laws aren't landlords.

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[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

the french already invented the perfect tool

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[–] djdarren@piefed.social 10 points 3 months ago (1 child)

Chairman Mao had a good crack at it n'all.

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[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

from what I understand, Mao's purge of landlord was more akin to a purge of feudal lords.

not exactly the same, but close enough

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[–] Zink@programming.dev 6 points 3 months ago

I keep thinking we need an overhaul where volunteering to be a public servant at a high enough level also means volunteering to surrender all your assets and be barred from owning anything significant for life. You get a stipend that you can spend on food, hobbies, travel, and entertainment, but that's it. You get housing and transportation paid for (or maybe you can own your residence and car) but no businesses, no stocks, etc. I guess you get a pension or salary for life or something.

People have demonstrated that they generally cannot be trusted to balance governmental power with conflicts of interest. Sure some people can, but ordinary voters picking from candidates filtered for "actively seeks power" have a crappy track record. Here's hoping politicians like Mamdani can teach the voters a re things and start to turn that around.

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[+] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world -7 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Landlording is almost uneconomical as it is in a lot of places. That’s why so many condos are completely vacant in expensive cities. People buy them and just hold them as a store of value, but don’t rent them out.

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[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

vacant property tax. Mamdani did it. it works

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[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world -3 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

It hasn’t even started yet. Where’s the evidence that it achieves the goal of increasing the supply of affordable housing?

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[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago*

I dunno, common sense? Youll have two competing pressure for sure. On one hand, if holding vacant properties costs more, you're going to charge more rent on occupied properties to offset. On the other hand, you can only charge so much more above market rate without discouraging potential renters. If those numbers don't align for you, you sell your vacant property, increasing supply and reducing the market rates.

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[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 1 point 3 months ago

Large real estate groups also do that to artificially keep supply low to inflate market rates. Those are not the only properties they own.

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[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 26 points 3 months ago (6 children)

The laws of economics are more volatile than some fantasy books' magic systems (Brandon Sanderson my beloved)

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[–] blicky_blank@lemmy.today 14 points 3 months ago (5 children)

"laws" like economics isn't a psudo science.

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[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Any serious economics professor will acknowledge that all the economic "laws" they teach you are basically for illustrative purposes. "Market forces" only behave as described in a perfectly free market, with perfect information on both sides of a transaction, no coercion, no monopolies, and perfectly rational participants.

I compare it to basic physics: you learn how perfectly inelastic, frictionless spheres behave, for simplicity. But perfectly inelastic, frictionless spheres aren't real, so real experiments aren't going to match your basic formulas. Likewise, economic laws fall apart as soon as you try to apply them to the real world.

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[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

At least in physics you then learn the approximations and the use cases where your formulas do work

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[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The problem is that it's basically impossible to isolate economic phenomena. You can conduct a gravity experiment in a vacuum tube, but you can't make an economic vacuum tube.

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[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

And yet you can still use the basic formula for gravitational movement to calculate stuff with enough precision for everyday life.

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[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago*

and you know the price of milk when you go to the grocery store. and next week, but you don't know what it's going to be a year from now

and you don't know it's wholesale value, or it's production forecasts on which milk futures are traded. etc.

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[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago

Kinda worse tbh, because it used to be landlords would have to arrange a group call where they'd conspire to fuck us. Now it's done by companies like RealPage automatically.

[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

Economics, as an intellectual discipline, is closer to theology than physics. Its power is proportional to the belief it commands.

Finance is an arbitrary subset of accounting and mathematics, cherry picked by the owning class, and applied as their supporting mythology.

It’s an entirely imaginary construct, which means alternatives are only ever a conjuring away.

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 months ago

They are experts in made up numbers. They are purveyors of status quo. They are yes men for the ruling class.

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[–] Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

yea, especially if someone owns half the rentable housing. they can then effectively control rent pricing. and if they own that much then they can often directly affect the marked.

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

They don't even really need to wait. Check out the lawsuit against RealPage. https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/investigations/realpage-lawsuit/

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[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 6 points 3 months ago

Remember, you can create a housing co-op. Yes, it is a lot of work, but it will be a net good for society. (I have a strong and incorrect impression that this would be me giving money away. We need WAY more cooperative economic education.)

Also, you can marry a friend just to qualify for a mortgage (pre-nups!). Also, buying housing with friends is a thing.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social -3 points 3 months ago (7 children)

You can identify a leftist who understands economics with a simple test question: "what are the effects of rent controls?"

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[–] justaman123@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What are the effects of rent controls?

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[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago

There are multiple, but I'm looking out for the negative one: decreased quality and quantity of rental properties.

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[+] FishFace@piefed.social -10 points 3 months ago

Well, before I answer that I want to see if anyone else replies :)

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[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

I will bite. Not unlike an increase in minimum wage, it increases competition at the margin among landlords, which increases amenities, and encourages families and economic activity. It needs to also be accompanied by enforcement of landlord citations as well as empty housing penalties though in order to have its full effect of reversing the trend of out of state management of private residential property and encourages self-ownership over time and better landlords. The empty housing penalties are because the landlords primary use of the properties is capital and so an empty unit is often more profitable in value than the cost of it sitting empty. Laws need to tip the scale to increase supply of housing and force their hands to release it back to people who can take on personal responsibility of the unit, whether that be a next door landlord or ideally a rent to own tenant or owner living there.