> "More housing" does not automatically translate to "affordable housing"
Imagine two hypothetical cites, each with one million residents. The first one has half a million apartments, while the second one has ten million apartments.
I have a total of four rental units. In the past year, I've been called out to fix something three times. Each issue took about 15 minutes to resolve. I could have hired a handyman for these jobs but it was cheaper and quicker to do it myself.
Most people are afraid of rental properties because it's out of their comfort zone.
Working a W2 job, socking money away in a 401k, and retiring at 65 = normal, safe, responsible, respectable.
Working a W2 job, slowing accumulating rental properties, fixing a toilet once in a while, and retiring at 45 or younger = deviant, risky, naughty.
As noted by the economist Luigi Zingales in his book "A Capitalism for the People", companies that are receiving subsidies (or other favorable treatment from the government) are highly incentivized to keep receiving those subsidies. For example, if the tax preparation industry stands to lose $100 million if e-file becomes free, they will lobby up to that amount to retain the status quo.
The problem is that those who wish to reform the status quo are not as well funded or financially incentivized to create a counter-lobby. Ordinary citizens, who would benefit the most from making e-file free, would have to form a counter-lobby group and put up at least $6 million in order to have the same level of access as the tax preparation companies.
Zingales' proposed solution is to do away with subsidies and special treatment for individual companies, as they inevitably lead to cronyism.
Without a lien on the property this type of business model, where the company pays for tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment up front to private individuals who may not have any other assets to be used as collateral, simply wouldn’t work. It’s not that different from a mortgage.
Document DBs are like blockchain projects - overhyped and worse than existing solutions for nearly every use case. Why do ostensibly smart engineers keep falling for this stuff?
Idk, maybe I'm spending too much on the internet but it seems like the discussion around inequality has shifted from "let's increase the welfare state" to "let's dismantle capitalism and give socialism a try". There seem to be a lot of people these days that call themselves Marxists or capital-S Socialists, and even some who are apologists for the likes of Stalin and Mao. These people are everywhere on Reddit and HackerNews.
I'm all for the Scandinavian model (which, to be clear, is capitalism with a large welfare state and a sovereign wealth fund, not socialism), but do I want a planned economy or a dictatorship of the proletariat? No, because it doesn't work.
> And those "disastrous" times you're talking about are more the result of dictators, than any economic system used.
Socialists use this argument a lot but I can't think of a scenario in which socialism doesn't eventually devolve into fascism. Even if the means of production are owned by the workers, the workplaces are run democratically, and resources are allocated by direct consensus, you'll still need to use coercion to force people to participate in the economy. If people in village A need more grain and the farmers in village B don't want to produce more grain, do you point a gun to the farmers' heads and make them produce more grain? Disagreements will still happen in Socialist societies. People will still fundamentally be selfish. People will still want to barter with each other and enrich themselves through their labor, intellect, and unique talents. How do you seize peoples' property, prevent them from bartering and hoarding, and force them to participate in a planned economy without a massive and violent state apparatus?
The great thing about capitalism is that it recognizes the inherent self-interestedness of human beings and channels it into something that is (mostly) positive for society. Socialism starts with the premise that human beings would behave in higher-minded way if only they had more economic power, which I think is a flawed assumption and the reason why socialist economies will always fail.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that the word "socialism" has completely lost it's meaning in the US. I don't think Americans truly comprehend how radical Socialism actually is. To compare increasing the minimum wage with Socialism is beyond absurd. Terms like "welfare state" are also loaded with negative connotations.
I agree. It's definitely not perfect, and I do view the rising inequality and stagnant wages as a serious issue. I just find it alarming that when people criticize capitalism, they usually advocate for some variety of full blown socialism, which has been tried many times before and failed disastrously every single time.
I don't know what the solution is. Every government intervention has the potential to distort the market and create corrupt/perverse incentives. Rent control is a great example of something that sounds nice on paper but ends up increasing housing costs as a result. I'm generally in favor of expanding the welfare state but I think we should be extremely cautious in doing so.
> His idea of human beings as rational, self-interested economic actors that is a ludicrously narrow model of the human being
Sure, but in order to understand human behavior on the scale of millions of people making billions of transactions, you need to start with a simple axiom and move on from there. I think people hear the word "self-interest" and think "greed", and assume that mainstream economics must be predicted on a very cynical view of human beings. That's not the case at all. We all want to survive. We can't possibly understand the individual needs of other people outside of a small circle of people that we love and care about. None of us are omniscient. The beautiful thing about markets is that none of us need to have perfect information in order to participate. By simply buying the things we need and selling things the things we don't, prices emerge in a totally decentralized way.
If you can think of a more accurate way to describe human economic motives, I'd like to hear it.
> has been disastrous for the working and middle classes all over the developed world.
Capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty. Sure, there's a large gap between the richest and poorest, but the poorest people of the world are also materially better off than at any other point in human history. I don't see how this is a bad thing.
Imagine two hypothetical cites, each with one million residents. The first one has half a million apartments, while the second one has ten million apartments.
Which city would have cheaper apartments?