The actual powerful network effects are essentially a somewhat benign form of cronyism, not mere inspiration from other entrepreneurs. People do more business with less haggling with friends than with strangers.
This is how humans work. This cannot change with UBI.
But there are also ideas. Even in fields where there's basically no money, half the world's innovation happening within a circle of a few miles is routine. For instance this happens in music, repeatedly.
Sure, on some level he could have done the same work in his garage, in some quiet seaside town full of retired people. But he didn't.
Reducing the friction in long-range interactions obviously has its upsides. But these hairless primates still pick up lots of stuff from being around each other.
Right now, only the wealthy can really risk things.
Ideally we'd just let more people live closer together like they want to, but the elites won't let more people get close to them.
Often because there aren't any good jobs there. With UBI entrepreneurs can self-select and live in places with low rent and weak job markets.
I think we should have robust social housing, as in Vienna or Singapore. But one thing that both places do that we do not is allow for far more housing to be built per person in high-demand areas (i.e. pricy areas). Their defining characteristic for affordability isn't so much the social housing, it's that they build for everyone as if housing were a human right, rather than a financial investment vehicle like we treat it here by enforcing scarcity.
To the extent that there is a "free market" it's only on existing housing once it's built. For existing housing, we let the wealthy do whatever they want, and use their market power to buy whatever they want, including hoarding it. However, it's only because of housing austerity in the building of housing that this real estate becomes such a sought after commodity. It is only through scarcity and austerity of building permits that continued financial climbs are guaranteed.
Most of the political spectrum in the US has housing completely wrong, and thinks that everything is going to be OK if they can just keep the "wrong" people out. Instead, we should adopt radical inclusion and welcome all people, and adopt the true belief that everyone deserves housing, every single person. Not just the cool ones, everyone. That is, unless we want to continue the current meatgrinder of capitalism. Eviction may be the blades at the end of the grinder, but the auger is the housing scarcity and exclusion practiced by nearly every single person in the US.
If you don't need to chase a high income, you can move where there's cheaper rent and try to innovate there. Assuming that you don't need any of the spatial resources of the expensive areas. (A big if... but perhaps you can grow your idea then move to the areas with lots of capital.)
It would provide housing for people on UBI, but because it’s operating on a thin budget, over time it becomes less desirable.
Now, it’s not always the case _if_ you can get the tenants to coöperate and pitch in on basic maintenance and keep anti social behavior at bay ala Singapore, but my feeling is we’re not of the same mindset as Singaporeans.
I live in Soviet-style housing in Poland. The antisocial behavior of some tenants (it seems that there's always at least one) is something you learn to live with. Over the years, you start ignoring the occasional puke in the hallway or automatically put on headphones when someone next to you starts blaring loud music again. All in all, given how much people pay for such flats in Poland, my guess is that it would be totally acceptable for most people to deal with the inconveniences, if the flat was free as a part of the UBI.
Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification.
As does creation of market rate housing[0], even in the short term.
What does that even mean? I'm not aware of any country that restricts the change in the income mix of housing, or the renovation of dilapidated housing by new residents.
Here are few examples among some EU countries: setting a minimum density and number of floors in urban areas to prevent "mcmansions".
Mandated commercial areas (aka shops) on the ground floor on new buildings.
Requirements on walkability applied to new road design to prevent sprawls e.g. limit cul-de-sacs.
Minimum and maximum percentage of buildings for industrial / office / shop / domestic use.
Minimum and maximum apartment size.
Tons of limitations on renovation of historical buildings.
A lot of this stuff makes it very difficult to quickly transform an already urbanized area into a bunch of super-luxury villas or similar.
Well, you know, everyone but the uber-wealthy.
But eliminating zoning restrictions and building more housing actually does work. Then when you move, you have your pick of many apartments to choose from, and nobody has pricing power to charge more.
The effects of rent-restriction you quote are theoretical effects. In the real world, it does work, as long as the rent-restrictions are well-thought-out.
Are you sure? There's lot of research n rent control and it basically all highlights decreased housing mobility, event he pro rent control authors mention it asa downside.
Secondly, landlords are allowed to evict if they do sufficient improvements to the property, which allows a safety valve.
There are so many people that move in the month of July, that over 7% of the entire population - including people who don't rent - moves out on that day. It's pretty much impossible to get a rental truck to move for the entire month of July.
The statistics are that, around July 1st alone, 250 000 out of 900 000 people move. Add in people that don't move in this period, and you get almost half of renters in the entire city moving, despite strict rent control.
You just need to do your rent control carefully. There will be some reduction in mobility, but if you counterbalance them, you can have minimal impacts in mobility and large impact in affordability.
> landlords are allowed to evict if they do sufficient improvements to the property
This is a REALLY unusual provision in rent stabilization laws in the US and as far as I know the EU which normally don't allow evictions like this and severely cap rent increases for improvements.
If you are in Quebec, the RDL is really unique as a form of rent control in that it doesn't set prices or cap increases but rather acts as an arbiter for rent increase disputes. I understand that there are some local criticisms of the system, but I'm not very well versed on the subject.
I think most HN comments about rent control are referring the type that exists in SF where prices are more or less locked in place or otherwise set by the government.
It also does extra controls that many countries don't do, such as capping price increases even if the tenant change (the tenant needs to request the former rent, though).
Allowing rent increases in the case of renovations is unusual, but not that rare either. That said, it's absolutely not "just a dispute resolution board". It 100% is traditional rent control with capped price increases, on top of the rest.
[1]https://www.tal.gouv.qc.ca/en/news/calculation-of-the-2020-r...
It's generally under inflation. A typical price increase cap might be 1.8%.
For cases where the landlord actually asks for a hearing, the average is of around 2.9%.
If no major repairs were necessary, you'll see around 1% or increase, maybe a bit more.
It's important to note that even according to your article, you need to drastically increase supply even for a modest decrease in rent.
No one here is against increasing density. It is however insane to believe that increasing density is enough to fix the problem. Cities at the edge of density still have affordability issues, whereas much less dense cities with appropriate rent restrictions don't.
There is not a single reference to induced demand here. As long as housing stays a profitable investment, and as long as density cannot be increased infinitely without increasing marginal costs, then rent will rise.
The only long term solution is to reduce the profitability of speculation on land prices, so that only productive activities, such as building, are profitable. Rent restrictions are part of this, as rent is a large part of the profitability of land.
And rent restrictions can work. There are many cases where they have been implemented without a significantly negative impact to mobility. So why oppose them?
> enough to fix the problem
I think we need to define the problem before we start arguing solutions. In my view "can't afford the rent" is a poverty problem, not a rent prices problem. So, I want anti-poverty solutions, not rent price adjustment solutions. I view "the rent is too high" as a distinct problem from "can't afford the rent." So in my mind, rent price adjustments via price regulation are inappropriate for both problems.
> so that only productive activities ... are profitable
I understand taxing negative externalities, but this sounds anti-democratic. Who decides what's productive? Let's put an appropriate tax on pollution (broadly defined) and let the market figure out what's most productive. That's what it's good at.
> why oppose them?
I don't know of any instances where rent control didn't affect mobility. Are you considering the effect on immigration and wages in other cities? If they didn't affect mobility, then almost by definition they had no effect whatsoever. They'd have to be covering such a tiny portion of the market that they can essentially be ignored, both cost and benefit. Which makes them a waste of bureaucracy.
It doesn't matter what your threshold for affordability is. Rent is increasing faster than economic growth, on average. It will continue increasing at this rate until a large part of the population literally cannot afford housing. You're never going to be able to solve the issue of people not being able to afford rent once it stops being economical to increase density, because there will be no incentive for landlords not to push up rent until people can't afford it anymore and start to move out (which is what we don't want to happen).
There are no cases where rent control literally did not affect mobility. There are many cases where there is rent control, and high mobility. The city in which I live has around 40% of renters move each year, which is more than enough mobility, and rent control. You do this by using the additional regulatory framework to make it easier for people to move.
Your first paragraph is literally meaningless. No one here said anything about zoning except you. If you want argue against someone else, then argue against someone else. The arguments I put forth and your response were completely orthogonal.
The rest is simply pure ideology. If you want to convince people or build a coalition with people that disagree with you, put your free-market absolutism aside and focus on solutions and problems.
On the contrary, it's providing the valuable service of holding property that I don't want to hold. I'd rather put my capital to some other use. You seem to dislike arguments of "pure ideology" but the assertion that real estate ownership doesn't deserve return on capital seems like it's singling out just one form of capital. Or do you dislike profits drawn from other kinds of property as well?
You say it's settled economics, but you've misstated. Monopolistic excess returns are "rents." Competitive market returns are to be encouraged.
> until people move out
That's actually exactly what I want to happen. 100% occupancy rate is a signal that something is wrong with the market, just as 100% employment would be.
A 100% occupancy rate naturally doesn't happen as people move from neighborhood to neighborhood and from city to city. You don't need to squeeze poor people until they have no choice but to sever their safety nets and move out to have a few percent of slack.
No, that'll just create a lottery system and unemployment or lower wages, because people won't be able to move to the jobs.
> eliminating zoning restrictions that limit housing
Yes, this would be great.