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A comment on Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty. Parent comment

Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by bradleybuda on Monday March 18, 2019 @09:01PM (#19427086)
Are you currently selling your unused possessions on Craigslist? That camping gear or extra set of kitchenware? By not selling your things, you are making those things more expensive for everyone else. Therefore, you are creating a negative externality by not selling your things, and storing unused property in your garage and basement should be illegal.

What you are describing is not an “externality” in the way that economists use that term.

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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by Dylan16807 on Monday March 18, 2019 @10:08PM (#19427467)
Land in a developed area is in very limited supply, it's necessary to make the economy function, and most of the owners are speculating on the price going up. Kitchenware doesn't work that way. Almost nothing else works that way.

Owning central land and not using it means that millions of people have to go further to get to their destinations. It also means that construction effort and money is going into a black hole and not turning into supply. Enough of this together makes a powerful negative externality.

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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by dehrmann on Monday March 18, 2019 @11:44PM (#19427916)
> Land in a developed area is in very limited supply

Because of high rises and land reclamation, this is a lot less true than you'd think.

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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by Dylan16807 on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @12:08AM (#19428011)
The zoning has to allow for building up before that counts.
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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by cycrutchfield on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @01:14AM (#19428252)
And thus you have arrived at the central issue here.
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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by xenadu02 on Monday March 18, 2019 @09:13PM (#19427165)
People need homes to live. Shelter is essential in the way very few things are.
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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by cycrutchfield on Monday March 18, 2019 @09:32PM (#19427272)
How about you start paying fines for all that unused food in your pantry?
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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by baroffoos on Monday March 18, 2019 @10:22PM (#19427532)
If there was some financial incentive to buy food and leave it to rot and this was causing a food shortage then yes, that is a sound idea.
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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by alanlamm on Monday March 18, 2019 @09:48PM (#19427333)
Yes, or even better, for all that surplus lard on your body!
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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by brandonmenc on Monday March 18, 2019 @10:16PM (#19427508)
> Are you currently selling your unused possessions on Craigslist? That camping gear or extra set of kitchenware?

Can you create new land?

No. They are completely different things.

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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by cycrutchfield on Monday March 18, 2019 @10:28PM (#19427568)
You can create a lot of housing out of a fixed amount of land. All you have to do is allow developers to build up.
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Re:Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty by spoondan on Monday March 18, 2019 @10:10PM (#19427474)
The ability to apply the same argument to another situation has no probative value. Any policy has its pros and cons. One can support vacancy taxes/fines without supporting other taxes on unused possessions.
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