No people don't "just have the option to move away", that's an incredibly naive way to look at the world, some people need to be in certain locations for social or work reasons.
Also, what I'm saying isn't a "theory", it's an observation of data. You keep trying to rationalize it away, but whatever way you slice it you can't get rid of the 16 million vacant houses that are not in use, while we have half a million homeless people and rising costs housing costs.
You seem to be insinuating that people don't just buy up housing and sit on it, like that's not a phenomenon that exists because you can't fathom why, despite my last comment clearly outlining several reasons how it could happen, and more importantly the fact that it does actually happen.
You didn't respond to anything I said. You essentially said "I agree and you're wrong" with some fluff, so uhm okay good talk buddy.
There are a ton of reasons why individuals/corporations would scalp housing units and hold onto them without opening them up to use, from laws requiring fair treatment of renters like in NYC (where 90,000 rent controlled apartments remain vacant), to "unified cartels" actually have incredibly large influence over some areas (there are some companies that hold 10s of thousands of housing units, like blackrock, and these corporations purposefully keep some vacant to inflate the price of all units and control supply).
But even if you want to just close your eyes and ignore my last paragraph, you can try to rationalize away the data, but the data will still be there. There are 16 million vacant housing units in the U.S. Even if you can't fathom any reason why these might exist, they still do, and they still impact supply even if you'd like to believe they don't.
Agreed lol, though iirc they're getting periodically DDOSed, so it's not just normal usage spikes.
I responded when lemmy.world was having issues, so my lemmy client couldn't find your comment and so it just responded at the top level: https://lemmy.world/comment/1975730
Yup. GPU scalpers do the same thing, they buy up an entire stock, and then restrict supply by only letting a couple units go at a time, which inflates the price.
In housing, capitalists lovingly call this practice "investing", when you buy up land or housing and don't rent it out or sell it, you just let it sit and increase in value.
A set of doctrines or beliefs that are shared by the members of a social group or that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.
Edit: this response was part of a chain, but I posted it when lemmy.world was having issues and I think my lemmy client couldn't find the comment it was responding to, so it just posted it at the top level, here's the chain for context: https://lemmy.world/comment/1973311
Capitalism is an ideology, you have a very weird relationship with definitions, first denying what scalping is and now denying what an ideology is. I don't know why you choose to live in a world where you just make up your own definitions, but it makes it harder to communicate.
Demand outstrips supply absolutely, and yeah if we built an infinite number of houses we'd have a fine supply, but also if we didn't have 16 million vacant homes we'd also have a fine supply. We currently have more vacant housing units than homeless people (by a factor of ~30), and capitalists are purposefully restricting supply to increase cost.
I don't know why you choose to live in a world where there is only one possible solution to the housing crisis. I've already said building more would obviously help supply, I don't know why you're so ideologically motivated that you can't admit that putting literally millions of housing units on the market would also help supply. You seem to have an inability to even consider that capitalism could have any problems. That's the epitome of an ideologue.
I'm not a liberal, for whatever that's worth.
Sure, lets build more affordable housing, that's fine.
You ignored my entire point though and went on your own ideological ramble there (one paragraph saying we don't need ideology and the next defending capitalism. Do you read what you write? Lmfao).
Are you saying you don't believe supply/demand is a real thing? Or you just choose to ignore the impact that over 10 million housing scalpers would have on the U.S housing market?
If it's neither of those, then I guess we're in agreement, outlaw housing scalpers and build affordable housing. We could get median housing costs down to a fraction of what they are now, just like other societies have that outlawed scalpers.
Whether or not it's helpful is orthogonal to whether it's true, which is more what I'm concerned with. Maybe there's a point to be had about effectively trying to convince people, but I don't have an obligation to be the most effective conversationalist or converter.
However I'd happily support systemic approaches to reducing the effectiveness of housing scalpers. Calling them immoral is not mutually exclusive with supporting legislation against them. I'd even say those things are usually aligned.
Is calling me insane an "actual thought"? You expect more from me than from yourself.
Just because you don't understand what I'm saying doesn't mean I'm not saying anything. Not to say it's not my fault, language is a two way street. But similarly, it's not only my fault, you shouldn't just assume that your misunderstanding necessarily means I don't have a position. Maybe you think you're infallible and incapable of misunderstanding, but I assure you you're not, and I hope you understand that.
When you scalp land, you're reducing the supply of land. I assume you have an at least rudimentary understanding of supply/demand, so you know that reducing supply increases cost with no changes in demand (fun sidenote, demand for housing is actually increasing as population increases, so this effect is even more pronounced).
This increased cost in housing/land will be felt by the working class. So as an externality of your profitting off increases in land value (caused in part by this scalping), the working class will have to spend more on housing.
So owners get more money and workers get less money.
What we see in societies that don't have this gross feedback loop is housing costs that remain healthily at 5-10% of median income. Our society is instead at 30-80%, and it's growing relative to wages (not just inflation).
@Nevoic
@lemmy.world