Re:Apollo – Funding for Moonshots
by Synaesthesia on Thursday June 18, 2020 @03:26AM
(#23560650)
Markets are geared towards individualised, itemised solutions. They have all kinds of perverse incentives. For example there’s no incentive for car companies to make public transport, or a cheap efficient car. Hence we’ve been seeing cars get larger and fancier instead.
In New York and other cities, financiers and banks buy up entire apartment blocks and let them stand empty to drive up property prices.
The advantage of the government is it isn’t tied to a profit system.
In the US there is also reasonably cheap housing in large cities like Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Chicago and Indianapolis.
In some large cities on the coast there isn't affordable housing. All these places have market economies. It's just that in places that are really successful if you have restrictive zoning and stop people building housing that people want prices go up.
It's also not just a US thing. In Australia, New Zealand and the UK zoning is also restrictive and housing is much harder to afford.
Allow people to build up and out and markets will provide affordable housing. Restrict the supply of housing and housing prices will shoot up in successful areas.