Re:Ask HN: Are there too many people in the world?
by kypro on Monday March 11, 2019 @01:09PM
(#19360665)
Doesn't the value of a house have less to do with how much it costs to build, but how much the land it sits on costs?
My understanding is that if you have a growing population whom all wish to live in a few major cities then simple supply and demand means house prices in cities will raise unless more supply is added to the equation. But then in a city like London or New York the only place you can build is up (or down in the case of London) so this isn't always feasible.
House prices in rural areas are fairly affordable.
Re:Ask HN: Are there too many people in the world?
by amibang on Monday March 11, 2019 @12:26AM
(#19356664)
Well in the UK, housing prices have certainly gone up. It's a small country and we have net immigration of about 210,000 annually. Houses may be cheaper to build, but there is much competition for them.
For example, we can trade labor for money and money for wood. So we create great logging corporations who try to chop down as much wood as possible. At some point, the demand for wood drops, so we start creating more wooden products, marketing toothpicks, or selling cheaper cardboard boxes. Later on, some meal box startup decides that the price of cardboard boxes is so low that they can send a meal box every day.
Housing prices have not 'gone up'. In fact they get a little cheaper as people have better house building tools, and the raw material costs are about the same. But the average person produces less average value, and struggles to produce enough value to trade for a house.
Maybe a big part of this is that all this automation technology really has made people less useful. Inflation and overhiring masks the fact.