>>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 already defined what a "commodity" is -- and land doesn't fit my
definition. To the extent that some item of merchandise is a
genuine commodity, competition amongst producers tends to keep
the price down with the costs of production acting as a floor, and the
price thus tends towards that floor. You can always create more
items in response to increasing demand -- more cars or potatoes, etc.
That is the defining characteristic of a "commodity."
But precisely because there is only a finite amount of land in
S.F., increasing demand for residing here or siting a business here
does not lead to increase in supply of land. Tho it may lead to
increased density of use, there are restrictions (not just
political ones) on how much of
this can occur, and the base land supply doesn't increase. The price
for the land itself is therefore always a monopoly price, not
a commodity price. By a "monopoly price" I mean a price that is
limited only by how much someone is willing to pay. This is not
the same behavior as a commodity price, which is limited by
the costs of production. In this respect, the price of land is
like the price of a rare painting by some dead artist, which is
also not a commodity. The price there is also a function only of
what someone is willing to pay...the original cost of production
has virtually nothing to do with it.
[..]
>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.)
And looking for and finding an apartment in S.F. takes no time??? Have
you tried lately? And being snootily examined for acceptability by
a landlord, and being subject to their arbitrary decisions and control
that is not a problem? And the method I proposed did not allow any
room for "lobbying a commission member" -- that isn't what a lottery is.
>
>>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 itself is a rationing system. It's a rationing system that
acts on the principle, "Those willing to spend the most money win."
This means that, in the case of where people are able to live or
continue to live, you have a class-biased filter that sorts people
on income. Why should people accept that rationing system?
[..]
>>>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."
What most people sell is their ability to do work. It doesn't just
"matter" to them that someone is willing to buy their time, the
quality of the job is important as well. But even on the question
of just finding a job, an issue that I've mentioned is that certain
policies towards land use may have the effect of pushing many blue
collar jobs out of S.F. So, as far as the ability of that segment of
the population to "sell their product" (their ability to work), their
chances may be diminished by those land use policies.
The reason that the "speculative financial sector" isn't "real" production
is because it is entirely overhead relative to the continuation of
the actual lives of humanity, it is a pure cost of a particular type
of system of organizing real production. It's value is purely
instrumental relative to the organizing of the production of things
that people want for their own sakes.
Tom Wetzel