Not OP, but the limiting principle is democracy. That's what gets you off the slippery slope. A tax on vacant homes passed a referendum, but barely at 54.5%, and SF is probably the least landlord-friendly city in the US.

Nobody is proposing city taxes on unused guitars, boats, or graphics cards. That would never pass. There is no public policy benefit to doing so, other than generic tax revenue. And if it did, I would move and feel comfortable doing so because I would not want to live in a city whose majority voting population is bananas.

Unfortunately moving the house is not an option, otherwise these taxes would be almost fine (as long as you have a choice).

There’s no comparison. Land already has a ton of riders attached to it, because ultimately a city, state, or nation is defined by the land they control.

For example, we would all be justifiably outraged if the government declared that SF buyers are only allowed to buy AMD graphics cards, while those living in Oakland are allowed only Nvidia, and the rest of the people in the area are not allowed graphics cards at all.

And yet, while many like me dislike land zoning, which is basically equivalent to the graphics card example, no one is calling it a fundamentally illegal and unconstitutional practice.

Yes, housing is a fundamental human need and expensive guitars aren't. Call it the Shkreli principle.

Let's not associate such positives with Shkreli.

I agree, access to healthcare is a fundamental human right. Shkreli might have liked to act like Robin Hood, "You'll only ever pay $10/month for a medicine, I'll make insurers pay the rest", a laughably condescending perspective that only shows that he believes enough people are too ignorant to make the connection of where exactly insurance pools come from, their indirect income. But many people glommed on to that.

Here's an example of Shkreli showing his real stripes:

A drug comes before the FDA for approval, and it is opened up for comment. Shkreli lodges an objection to approval of this drug.

Why? Because it's unsafe? No, trials thus far have shown it to be safer than existing drugs.

Why? Because it's less effective? No, it's also been shown to be more effective than existing drugs?

Perhaps it's more expensive? No, cost of R&D and production, and estimated retail costs are expected to be lower than existing drugs.

Huh, odd. So why did Shkreli oppose this drug getting to the market?

Because he and his company had just bought the patent to one of those 'existing drugs' recently, and this drug coming to market would torpedo demand for his drug, and torpedo the profitability of his investment in buying the patent.

Man of the people, fighting for healthcare rights, Martin Shkreli.

But is housing in SF a fundamental need?

I think the question posed is quite relevant, and FWIW my take is that property rights are a concern here. The answer is that there are other concerns in tension with this — including the desire to have more affordable housing in The city and voters apparently consider this to be more important in this case.

The landlords are free to move out of SF as much as tenants are. Nobody is held at gunpoint.

They cannot move out taking the houses with them. Not at gunpoint, but still not able to move it.

It's a fundamental need for some people, if you want to have a healthy city where firefighters, teachers, baristas, servers, etc. can live there without having the city's cost of living externalized via multiple hour megacommutes.

There's a one bedroom flat in Moldovia that's a perfect fit for you. They will also deliver meals every day. Of course, you don't get to choose which flat or which meal. Choice is freedom, and freedom is never free.

I agree all the things I like are a fundamental right and should be subsidized by the government. Also, everything I don't like should be banned.

I really like living in expensive cities!

Importantly they said fundamental need and not fundamental right, though I find it a bit disgusting how someone could be so strongly opposed to helping people meet their basic needs. Isn't that what society is for?

> housing is a fundamental human need

Not sure what that means in practice. If I pay for my own house, what percentage of my income should be set aside to pay for other people's houses?

You were asking for a limiting principle and I gave you one. You're now making a weird insinuation that I think that limiting principle should morph into a tax policy that applies to people who don't own rental properties, which feels like a non sequitur.

But, my personal feeling is "at least some", because homelessness is fundamentally a housing supply problem and I think no one likes it, so it sounds like the kind of social ill that needs funding to address.

> You're now making a weird insinuation...

Not sure how. I am trying to understand your thinking. But the phrase "housing is a fundamental human need" can use some explication. What's the maximum for "at least some"? (Roughly, not trying to pin you down to a particular number.)

Pretty much all my tax policies boil down to getting rid of super corrupt breaks to energy and ag, and a 110% tax on income over 10 million, and Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax. Confident we can build some baller cribs on that kind of cheddar.

> 110% tax on income over 10 million

Why not 125% or 200%? Or save even more souls at 500%?

Morty: "... If you really want your grandpa back, grab a shovel, because the one that won't let you down is buried in the backyard."

Summer: "You're right!"

Morty: "What! No! I was using ghoulish overkill! Ghoulish overkill Summer!"

Sure, if voters elect politicians who enact taxes like that, the judicial branch shouldn’t stand in their way. The remedy for that problem would be the ballot box.

No, the judicial branch has the role to check that democracy does not become mob rule. There are some basic rights and liberties, but there are others not clear written on paper, but still not removable by vote.

Taxes on land and personal property in the US date back to colonial times. And tax policy often distinguishes between property utilized in different ways (eg. personal vs. business). I doubt you’d convince a judge that a tax that varies based on whether property is unused impinges on some fundamental right in a materially different way.

This is not what I addressed with my comment.

Your analogy doesn't hold, because owning and neglecting such items doesn't prevent someone else from having them. Property speculation is so runaway that landlords are keeping properties vacant because they hope to make more money on rising real estate values alone.

The number of top–end GPUs in existence is finite and surprisingly small. If I buy one, that is one fewer for everyone else to squabble over. It is in effect just the same as land, and GPU prices are much higher today than they were 5 years ago. Even 5 year old used GPUs cost as much or more than they did 5 years ago.

Housing is a little more of a critical need for people than graphics cards…

That’s irrelevant. We’re considering here how the market prices them, not what they are used for or how important they are.

It’s hardly irrelevant. Proved by the fact the people voted for a vacancy tax and not an unused GPU tax.

/me facepalms

That’s circular. This discussion of GPUs started when tomcam asked why a tax on unused housing was OK, and whether or not it could be extended to a tax on unused GPUs.

In particular, a vacancy tax seems to force people to rent out property rather than merely posses it. Can the same law be used to force people to enter into other rental agreements? I have a bunch of old computer parts, including motherboards, cpus, and gpus sitting around unused. I dare say that I could build two or three working computers out of them. Should I be taxed for owning these unused computers?

I have a few thousand books that I’m not currently reading, what about them? Should we tax people for having more books than they can carry? What about your bed, which is currently going unused approximately 16 hours out of the day? Can the government one day force you to rent that out too? Hot bunking would certainly “solve” any housing problem a city might face. Where is the distinction?

Simply stating that no law has been passed to force you to rent out your unused GPUs is not stating a guiding principle, because that’s merely a matter of time.

Lots of other people, including me, have pointed out that the differentiating principle is "is X a fundamental human need". Housing is, GPUs aren't.

But to steelman the strawman you're putting up here, economics tries really hard to maximize the efficiency of markets, the idea being if you've got something you can make money with (e.g. a CPU/GPU/book/bike/car/bed you could rent out) you should, and thereby someone gets to use your thing and you get to make a little money. You paint this as some kind of hyper-communistic dystopia, but this is actually the world that hyper-capitalist companies like Uber and Airbnb are working pretty hard to create right now.

This is critical to understanding the anti-democratic underpinnings of this landlord action. There's nothing unconstitutional going on here--it's basic market regulation that States and the US have been doing for literally hundreds of years. There's nothing wrong with policies aimed at making markets more efficient, that's why we have regulations and antitrust.

And besides, rental housing is a market. Hogging supply to artificially inflate market prices is generally a crime. Suppliers in this market are suspected of doing that, so the people of SF are taking action to make them stop. They're lucky they're getting off with a tax.

That said, I'm not a fan of this policy in this case. SF's vacancy rate is super low, and I think that indicates this tax won't result in meaningful revenue or vacancy rate increases. This seems like purely a supply problem. I know there are other places (Vancouver, Toronto, NYC) where "property as investment" has gotten out of hand and municipalities are passing laws to try and address it, but they had way higher vacancy rates than SF.

I could be wrong though. Others have made the argument that SF's market is secretly inefficient, that for one reason or another landlords are reporting their units as occupied when they in fact aren't. In that case, this tax might motivate those landlords to rent their places. I don't buy this though, in particular I don't think many people would leave > $30k a year on the table just to have the option of one day letting their parents move into a unit.

There's a material difference between shelter and gaming peripherals.

Some states have annual property tax on cars and boats.

... they already have those on housing. No one taxes you more or less because of how frequently you use your boat, or if you rent your boat to others, etc.

They should just make a law to decrease taxes on primary house by 75%, on secondary houses by 50%, then augment the taxation by 400%.

I understand having a vacation/family home (not in crowded cities however), but having more than one and leaving it empty just to raise the price of similar unit feel really scammy to me.

> but having more than one and leaving it empty just to raise the price of a similar unit

Is there a dearth of this happening? SF vacancy rates are roughly the same as they are across the country.

Also, from a balance sheet standpoint: if you raise the rent of a similar unit, then the rent lost on your empty unit goes up. You're actually losing more money (potential rent - rent received).

Taxing externalities differently than other things is common. Taking up land is not the same as owning other things.

If society got pissed off enough about your unused guitar, you betcher ass they'd pass a law taxing it. It's not The Government you're up against--it's The People!