>>> The monopoly
>>> nature of housing ensures that this will happen.
>>
>>It strikes me that laws preventing the transfer of housing to
>>homeowners, and keeping it in the hands of land lords, is what creates,
>>or encourages, the monopoly of housing in the hands of land lords.
>
>All landownership is participation in a monopoly. There is simply
>a finite amount of land here. This is why it isn't a commodity.
>A commodity is something where you can increase numbers of units
>produced in response to incresing demand.
Actually housing is a commodity, just a scarce one. There are thousands
of independent landlords out there who compete with each other - hardly a
monopoly (unlike, for example, Muni.) You can't create new land, but you
can buy and improve it.
I would also note that the market does a great job of allocating
thousands of essential goods (e.g. food) with minimal intervention by the
state. No shortages there.
The particular issue I have with any centralized rationing system is that
is strongly favors those with time on their hands, which I do not have.
If you can wait in line, or lobby a commission member, or see lots of
apartments, you will have a better chance of getting something that's
advertised at a certain price than someone who doesn't because he has,
for example, work to do. Not to mention the perverse things it does to
the market (e.g. units being taken OUT of the market because the price is
depressed or it's otherwise undesirable to be a seller, or in this case,
a landlord.)
>I think people would regard a lottery as "fairer".
Absolutely, positively not. I would vastly prefer to have sufficient
supply that I can buy (in this case, rent) at the market price. I don't
have time to wait for my number to come up. Neither, I would argue, does
ANYONE else - regardless of income.
>>"The market" determines this for us. Why should the city have to do it?
>
>Because the market is a manifest failure.
And city government isn't?
>[..]
>>I don't know about you, but I
>>_like_ being a writer and only having to dig in the dirt for fun. I see
>>no value whatsoever in preserving the latter type of job.
>
>Writing is not unproductive. Books are real production.
>Farming is not the only form of real production. The problem is
>the huge corporate bureaucracy and speculative financial sector that is
>an increasing parasitic growth on real production.
Right. But the magic of the market economy is that whether some
bureaucrat or academic thinks your work is "real production" doesn't
matter AT ALL - just whether someone is prepared to buy what you produce.
ANYTHING that brings someone value is real production, whether or not
those not affected by it choose to think so. Even - especially! - in the
"speculative financial sector."
Andrew
Andrew Sullivan
s u l l i . o r g andrew@sulli.org - www.sulli.org
1668 Grove, SF CA 94117 - 415 673 0626