>How are you going to "allocate" this "resource"? Just try me.

Easy, by having the government send Men With Guns to confiscate it from you.

Well, this has been already tried in my country, and been survived, but yours may possibly indeed have it in the future.

So how big a body pile are you gonna tolerate?

You don't just get to send men with guns to take large chunks of peoples wealth without dire social and economic consequences. To believe otherwise is pure fantasy.

Dire economic and social consequences clearly do not discourage authorities from sending men with guns (and threats thereof) to confiscate people's wealth. It happens all over the globe, frequently, and with large magnitude, both 3rd and 1st world and and with the full support of nearly all of the public.

In many places in the US we have government officials who decide who gets to live in which house and how much they will pay for rent. Tenants are part owners in properties, sometimes majority owners.

Zimbabwe sent men with guns to take the land of evil white farmers exploiting hundreds of thousands of black farm workers. (this is sarcasm). They lost their agriculture sector, became dependent on food imports without having any export sector (like oil) which ultimately lead to starvation and then finally hyperinflation as the government was no longer able to pay for the imported food.

Is that solution you prefer, or are you just answering with what you think gregallan's intentions were?

I'm not endorsing that solution, only pointing out how such "alloc[ation]" could take place.

Would take place, government always eventually sends guys with guns

Fair enough.

One simple way that's already practiced in some places is to tax unoccupied residencies - and, ideally, use that tax to subsidize housing. And then you either live in your apartment yourself, or put it up as a rental under the terms required by the law, or you pay up.

> tax unoccupied residencies

OK, sounds promising

> ..use that tax to subsidize housing

record needle scratch sound.

Subziding housing drives up the price, because it increases demand for housing. Have we not learned this lesson? After so many years, this basic economic fact is still tripping people up?

Please, stop with the housing subsidies. Why do you want to make housing more expensive?

Direct housing subsidies don't prevent additional supply. Rent control prevents additional supply.

Also, politicians have to be accountable for the subsidies which means that restrictive zoning will burn a pocket into the local budget. They don't give a damn about losses due to rent control. I.e. they privatize political gains and socialize the economic losses.

> "Direct housing subsidies don't prevent additional supply".

The idea that the price of housing will not increase if a good is subsidized because the supply isn't "prevented from increasing" is so confused and wrong it literally makes me sad.

We have the data of house prices rising as a result of subsidies. Housing is half land and half structure, and in constrained areas, 80% land and 20% structure. Land does not increase. Moreover even if housing was all structure and land was free, the subsidies cause houses to become bigger, as people can afford more structure, leading per house prices to rise.

Then you continue with a string of cliches, "privatize gains" etc. And a complaint that other people don't care enough.

Well, OK, but what of it? We don't shoot ourselves in the foot because other people don't care.

Adopting policies that make the world a worse place just because you are morally outraged is a terrible way of doing public policy.

I didn't meant subsidizing rent. I meant subsidizing housing - as in, using that money to build more of it.

Yes, it's a good idea, but I have a wife so we could pretent to occupy both actual place of residence and the now-vacant rent out apartment.