> not to mention supply/demand doesn't work for something with fairly inelastic demand lolwut?
> not to mention supply/demand doesn't work for something with fairly inelastic demand lolwut? The free market works pretty OK for gasoline and food (taken as a whole; obviously specific foods are elastic). When was the last time you heard people clamoring for price controls at the grocery store? Even more to the point, the free market works just fine for housing in the vast majority of the US that does not have any form of rent control. That so many units in SF are rent controlled is a huge part of the problem here. It reduces the incentives for landlords to maintain properties (the OP specifically cites these problems) and makes it difficult-to-impossible for people in rent-controlled units to move (again, cited by the OP). It also significantly reduces the supply of housing in SF, driving up market-rate rents. Eventually the market-rate rents are so much higher than the rent-controlled rents that landlords have a strong incentive to pull stunts like what's happening here. The other big part of the problem is that so many people seem to think that the solution to all their economic problems is more regulation. What we're seeing in SF is not a failure of the free market, but rather the failure of an over- and ineptly-regulated market.
Posted by jlebar on Mar 16, 2015, 1:27 AM
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Raise real-world problems, find people facing the same issue, and discuss solutions.7,500 issues0 comments
pricing (Housing)
> 1) Land is effectively nationalized under 100% LVT.
This low cost -> artist -> rich people movement of neighborhoods is something I observed happening in some cities I’ve lived in and it am...
From an admittedly selfish point of view, I also don't mind this.
> Oil is still underpriced wrt to its environmental cost.
If component prices keep going up and the respective monopoly/duopoly/triopoly for each component colludes to keep prices high&...
When I moved to the bay area out of college housing was too expensive for me to manage even working for a large tech company.
High housing costs is a key factor.
I know this isn't how our political system works, but if I were king of America I'd try to solve the problem of expensive housing like th...
> not to mention supply/demand doesn't work for something with fairly inelastic demand lolwut?
> not to mention supply/demand doesn't work for something with fairly inelastic demand lolwut? The free market works pretty OK for gasoline and food (taken as a whole; obviously specific foods are elastic). When was the last time you heard people clamoring for price controls at the grocery store? Even more to the point, the free market works just fine for housing in the vast majority of the US that does not have any form of rent control. That so many units in SF are rent controlled is a huge part of the problem here. It reduces the incentives for landlords to maintain properties (the OP specifically cites these problems) and makes it difficult-to-impossible for people in rent-controlled units to move (again, cited by the OP). It also significantly reduces the supply of housing in SF, driving up market-rate rents. Eventually the market-rate rents are so much higher than the rent-controlled rents that landlords have a strong incentive to pull stunts like what's happening here. The other big part of the problem is that so many people seem to think that the solution to all their economic problems is more regulation. What we're seeing in SF is not a failure of the free market, but rather the failure of an over- and ineptly-regulated market.
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