Comment on England worst place in developed world to find housing, says report
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 11 months agoYou're assuming that this would magically drop all property prices to be affordable by all people, which is not at all self-evident.
irmoz@reddthat.com 11 months ago
You’re assuming there would still be a “market” in this scenario ;)
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 11 months ago
Respectfully, I think that's a safer assumption than the UK nationalizing the housing market, but by all means, feel free to wait for that if you like.
But even to play along, even if you could snap your fingers and abolish the housing market, the question of allocation doesn't go away. You'll still have certain units that are extremely desirable and valuable, others that are quite good, some that are fine, and some that are terrible. In other words, even in the absence of the market, inherent value will still drastically differ from unit to unit and location to location. So, if you're not using money to allocate things, how do you do it? What do you do if demand outstrips supply?
irmoz@reddthat.com 11 months ago
A democration institution run by the people.
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 11 months ago
Okay, let's explore this. Everyone votes for themselves to live in London's best penthouse. Crafty clever me, expecting this situation, bribe a few of my friends to vote for me to live in the penthouse instead. Perhaps I slip them some money under the table - or we've abolished money - I promise to do some amount of work for them, give them something valuable I have, promise to cook for them, whatever. So, I've got the penthouse. Yay democracy?
Or, to expand more, lots of people recognize this strategy, so everyone with some degree of wealth starts buying votes anywhere they can get them. Ultimately, the people with the most wealth wind up getting the best housing as loads of goods and favors get exchanged. At this point, oops, you have a market again.
Now, you might just say that it should be randomized. But in that case, if I get assigned a shitty unit, perhaps I might just go to someone who got a nice unit and offer them an exchange of some kind. Perhaps I don't have any valuable goods, but I'm a talented painter and offer to paint them several nice pieces. Ultimately, they find it to be an acceptable deal and agree to swap apartments. Lots and lots of people would be doing the same thing, and as the government wouldn't actually be able to monitory everyone's location all the time to ensure they're living where they're supposed to be, once again, you have a market.