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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Let's be honest there are areas that would benefit from less regulation.
(Looking at you housing!)
Creating slums will solve the housing crisis!!!
And so will unlimited luxury condos priced at millions of dollars each!
That is a capitalism chasing the bag problem, not a too much regulation problem.
It's a too LITTLE regulation problem: most cities have regulations about what you can build where and x amount of housing being affordable.
They don't tell you, but the regulations against replacing affordable housing with expensive condos are some of the ones the people behind YIMBY are most eager to get rid of.
I'm not saying slums.. but look around the United States and see what states are monumentally cheaper to build in. Hint. It's not blue states.
And I say that as a progressive in minnesota.
Blue states are more desirable to live in, thusly increasing demand. Though you'd need an education to understand economics 99, and it seems your state didn't provide.
Yes. That's why record number of people are moving to Idaho/Montana and Texas... because they are so undesirable.
Because they're cheaper, dumbass. I'm saying this as someone who has moved to one of those states. It's not because retards run the state.
Given your online demeanor I feel like you probably fit in well, and I'm guessing the locals love you.
Enjoy being part of the problem but not realizing it.
Right, me telling you why people I actually know did the thing you claim to know their motives for makes me part of the problem...
Your intelligence leaves a lot to be desired.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm. The housing market is suffering due to "real estate investors" just buying out and renting houses that used to be non-rental. Investment is driving up the cost of housing significantly. There's going to be a reckoning as wages are kept down and mortgages keep going up though. Eventually rent to cover mortgages are going to be too high and it's just going to push out the small time real estate investors, and either more companies will move in or there'll be a small drop in pricing.
One reason the condo complex has sane, ish, prices is that rentals are not allowed and if you want to flip one you will be paying both taxes and association dues till its sold.
I'll agree that is A problem, but not the only problem.
Those things also add to the exorbitant cost of housing. It's not investors who are causing houses to cost 300 a square foot in my city, it's lack of buildable land, contractor availability, licensing, residential zoning laws. All those things equal cost... some of those things could be fixed with less regulation.
You do realize it's a rich people hoarding land/houses problem, not a building laws problem right?
Well, it's both, but I agree with you that rich fucks and corpos running rentals and airbnb's is a much more prescient and addressable issue.
I mean, food can be made cheaper with less regulation too, that doesn't mean that's the right answer or even a good answer. Most of that stuff you mentioned has been in place for a long time. The more recent blowup in cost isn't directly related.
You do realize it's possible that it's more than one thing that is contributing to the cost of housing, right? .. and not just landlords, despite what lemmy keeps telling everyone.
You understand that the better version of your argument is better regulation, not less regulation, right? That's really the core of my point. Plus, the items you mentioned still have other benefits that need to be weighed against (and lack of contractors isn't even a regulation, it's a possible outcome of some other regulation, which is probably the licensing, but that is even closer to the whole FDA argument I made, and let's be honest, you needed more items for your list).
Edit: and it being a seller's market is absolutely caused by demand for purchasing, so in the end it's still landlords fault. They're converting too many non-rentals to rentals. They're buying up houses at high costs because it becomes more affordable with more units, therefore driving pricing. It truly is the biggest influence in purchase price. Regulating that would absolutely have a far better effect than deregulating other areas (which still sounds more like they just need better regulation).
I mean in my neck of the woods the issue is less landlords driving up the price as it is influx of California s selling 1000 sqft homes in California for 1 million and being able to pay cash for any affordable house here because we don't have a supply... again see my other reason for not having supply
I just googled it. It seems to be the mortgage lock-in effect that's the number one driving factor for lack of homes. Mortgage rates are too high so people aren't selling. They do mention construction under-building, but it's not really the main cause. Also in 2021, California passed a law allowing single family homes to become up to 4-family dwellings... oh... this lead to a bunch of companies coming in and paying cash for homes to convert to rental units. And there's actually been a lot of push to make it easier to build more and further deregulate and that seems to be having none of your expected outcomes.... because it's not really the biggest reason. And again, it has even had some of the opposite due to zoning deregulation.
Let's be honest, this is simply not true. Regulation acts in favor of the weaker link, no area benefits from deregulation.
Regulations also helps minor things like keeping food and medicines safe.
Traffic regulations make the entire system of people staying on their own side of a 4 inch paint line work.
Are you kidding me? No area benefits from deregulation?
Regulation in a lot of areas is put in as a protection to businesses already in the space to help alleviate competition. Is Charter/Comcast is out there pushing for deregulation so that small cities and communities can come in and setup their own cheaper broadband services, or are they fighting it tooth and nail?
Does my barber actually need a license to cut hair? Sure you could argue that the barber is technically more hygienic, but that isn't always the case.. it's just another way to make it harder for me to open up a competing barbershop.
Regulations are made to make sure that businesses comply with the minimum safety and health rules, as well as not actively harming the consumer. So, no, no area benefits from deregulation. Giant companies love deregulation so they can monopolize and/or fix prices. Getting to your barber example: if I'm trying to find a barber, I will surely only look for licensed barbers, as I surely do not want a busted hair job, or to incur in any hazard. Simple as that.
In Brazil, during 1990 - 2000, telecommunications were a highly regulated market. Due to difficulties to enter the market, there was not that many companies around, and outside big cities, phones are mostly inexistent or too expensive for the average customer.
I remember that in my city (100k people) there was only one option, and in my mother's city (5k people) there was no option.
After ~2000, the government did a big deregulation, making easier to other companies to enter in the market and do investments. A few years later, we got coverage across the entire country. For example, in 2005 my city had 5 options and my mom's city had its first option. At this time my family finally could afford paying for a phone plan.
So yeah, excess regulation can harm markets, and deregulation can be good. Finding balance is key here.
Regulation is hardly on the top 20 Brazil problems list. Be serious.
I mean, you said that deregulation has no benefits, I just gave you an example that disagrees with your idea. It does not matter other Brazilian problems in this context, I could take any example of any place to prove my point.
It does matter because you cannot isolate the effects of regulations from the corruption, violence, etc... All of which are huge issues in Brazil.
So can you explain for this specific case how other factors influenced in a way that the deregulation was still bad for the end user?
I didn't have to search much to find an article talking about the corruption in the Brazilian telecommunications free market: https://teletime.com.br/10/12/2019/o-passado-mal-explicado-das-telecomunicacoes-no-brasil/ Sure, you can argue that many of these companies simply went bankrupt, but the weight of those bankruptcies falls on the same shoulders every time: private profit, public loss. Sure, there were a lot of telecoms opening at that time due to the government opening up the market, but at what cost?
Sorry, I'm not following you. We're discussing if deregulation is always bad or not, and my point is that it can be bad in excess.
The article points to some corruption that happened at the time, which is correct, but it does not discuss anything about the benefits (or lack of it) for the end user after the deregulation.
If we could prove that if we kept excess regulation in the market as it was before, people still could have access to telecommunication as we have today, my point should be wrong. But its not the article discussion or what you're saying now.
Notice that I'm not defending 100% deregulation, even in the Brazilian example the market is still regulated today, just way less than it was 20 years ago. If we have no data caps for residential internet around here, its because of a regulation, not companies good faith for example.
Out of curiosity I asked chatgpt to list examples similar to the Brazilian one and it listed a few:
United Kingdom - Energy Deregulation Japan - Rail Deregulation New Zealand - Telecommunications Deregulation Australia - Banking Deregulation Sweden - Postal Service Deregulation
Truth is, its really hard to prove that something "is always" good or bad, as it will need to go over all cases and prove the point one by one. Normally economic discussions are applied to a society or sector, so we could say "in the US deregulation is often bad", which is much more fair and easy to prove.
It's true, there are factors that will make things sort of work, or make them go downhill very fast. In Portugal, there was a lot of deregulation in the past few 20 years, which brought higher prices, monopolies and fixed prices. That's my main reason for not believing in deregulation, but I understand that there may be exceptions to this. I just think that they're precisely that: exceptions to the rule.
Also, I love that I'm having a deep conversation in the memes community!