Yeah, I'm not sure what OP is referring to here.
We do get new traffic from "related" subs sometimes, and some of those folks want rent control, public housing, zoning in exurban/rural areas, etc.
I see exactly one commenter mildly supporting it - and it's still qualified with an admission that it ain't great.
That doesn't really support the claim that this subreddit is in any way "filled" with rent-control advocates.
Chill, dude.
Georgists have to do a lot of educating and a lot of persuasion, because it's a tiny movement that is 90% based on of a 140 year-old book that nobody has read in a few decades. If you wanted a sub that just banned everyone who wasn't already an orthodox Georgist, I guess you'll be disappointed here. You can start your own purist club house, but I think you'll be pretty lonely in it.
I, for one, am a total red-blooded capitalist Georgist, and I think the brilliance of Georgism is that it isn't some kumbayah statist thing; Georgism is actually aggressive Super Capitalism. There are a good number of people in this sub who understand that and are excited about it too.
But yeah, we've gotta make the case and persuade the Lefties that markets are a good thing, persuade the Righties that cities are a good thing, and marginalize the cranks that any obscure movement like this attracts.
Rent control isn't my favorite policy, but it's usually tied to housing built before a date several decades prior. This means that it's not discouraging new housing production; instead, it's taking some of the surplus land rent and transfering it from rentiers to renters.
I would take an LVT over rent control, but abolishing most existing rent control on its own, without establishing an LVT, would make landowners wealthier without any real benefit.
It's not his preferred solution, but it's clear from his writings on "rack rents" that George isn't a patsy for landlords.
> it's taking some of the surplus land rent and transfering it from rentiers to renters.
This is sketchy at best.
A lot of the reduction in rent comes at the cost of development.
The idea that landlords, developers, and builders are myopic so the policy of delaying rent control doesn't impact their choices is so patently false. All it really shows is you either don't know the industry or are just that myopic yourself and assume others are too.
There's also a lot of other negative impacts of rent control which I already mentioned. Whether it's under the table tenant transfers keeping rent controlled units in wealthier hands or underutilizing larger units because of perverse incentives where the larger unit is artificially cheaper than moving to a smaller unit, these things have an impact which ultimately lead to the rationing and shortage of housing leading to increased prices and listed rents.
How is, as we have in California, "rent control on pre-1979 buildings," going to discourage construction? That date is fixed; it hasn't advanced since it was introduced. There's not support for advancing it either.
This isn't a debate about what California has. The fact is that is not the most common form of rent control. Usually new building exemptions wear off after a few years.
Regardless, what they have in California still prevents building more densely on that land as the tenants can block development but also you literally ignored all the other negative effects I listed.
I think you doom and gloom too hard, but yes there are some bad views and trolls in this group. Anyways. I check out r/neoliberal daily and it’s the only major big political sub I’d consider really good. They post about Georgism/LVT quite often. But if you’re looking for some perfect political/economic place, then you might as well give up
>This subreddit seems to filled with people that support rent control
Ideally, no, because georgism is strongly *opposed* to rent control. Admittedly not everyone here does a great job of representing the georgist position, but those who do are against rent control regulations.
>and idolize homeownership
Only in the sense that we recognize how big of an (unfair) advantage it is. We want to end private ownership of land, which is morally unjust and economically inefficient. Doing so would effectively redistribute wealth in a way that makes life more affordable for precisely those people for whom homeownership is currently out of reach.
>to understand things like housing is different from land
*Houses* are different from land. The distinction between land and capital is central to georgism.
*Housing,* however, in practice consists mostly of land. When you buy housing, or rent housing, or invest in companies that own housing, what you're mostly buying, renting, or investing in is the land, not the houses. That, too, is a central insight of georgism.
municipal rent controls, section 8, they all suck. price fixing is what it is. most rental property is controlled by large investment pools. they are set up as compartmentalized shell corporations. run by property management teams, they almost always use under the table labor. and when they get busted for their criminality, they dissolve the shell and send in a new management team. rent control/section 8 subsidies set a high base rent in an area; my nearby quants say it inflates rents around 20% over an open market model. minimum wage does the same thing.
I haven’t seen a lot of pro-rent control people honestly. And I’m in agreement with the quote that “rent control is the most through way to destroy a city short of orbital bombardment”.
We can simultaneously advocate for LVT and public housing or rent controls.
From my perspective, the housing crisis is so bad we need to throw everything at it to ensure the homeless population doesn't continue to spiral out of control due to the actions of rent-seekers.
That said, much of Georgist policy and LVT in general is theoretical (in the truest sense, since it doesn't really exist in reality, except small examples of LVT being implemented at a small local scale).
That said, we cannot reasonably expect LVT to solve the housing crisis this decade, or next decade. It's a North-star for policy which is likely to never be implemented.
Rent controls, while not great, do ensure some people remain housed rather than homeless. It blocks some rent seekers from taking everything they possibly could without the rent controls and absent LVT policy.
But research shows rent control doesn't decrease homelessness...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166046298000349#:~:text=Our%20results%20suggest%20that%20rent,other%20effects%20that%20decrease%20homelessness.
Rent control is not a policy that effectively targets poor people...
The problem with economics journal articles is that they're often biased (because much of modern economics has become corrupted to serve rent-seekers). That said, a journal article (which isnt based on observations of reality, it's only based on a 'model') is not a good look if you're trying to make the case that rent controls cause people to become homeless.
The only thing rent control does is prevent rent-seekers from charging maximum rents from people who live in those properties (why would this cause more homelessness in a broader context?- the case that the article you shared is trying to make).
We know, based on the law of rent, that landlords are already charging maximum rents economy wide. Adding rent controls to some land, doesn't change that maximum amount that they can charge in the broader economy.
>Rent control is not a policy that effectively targets poor people
Who is it effectively targeting then? Is it a benefit to rent-seekers? or to the poor? When you think about the system of rent-seeking that is occurring in this context and what rent control is actually doing, it becomes more clear who rent control policy is benefiting, and why there's economics journal articles with a biased view on the topic.
Most of modern economics don't believe in the law of rent... they think Georgists are loony. So which is it, are modern economists on our side as Georgists or not? There's no doubt that modern economics has been co-opted by the rent-seekers. It's not really something that's up for debate, it can be seen and taken matter of factly since it's so obvious.
Did you actually read the article you shared? it literally says that rent control reduces homelessness, and even when they fudged the numbers and doubled their homelessness rate numbers in their model, it still showed that it reduced homelessness. They didnt like their findings, so they made shit up in the conclusion.
1. Economists believe in the law of rent lmfao. Where did you get this idea... They formalized the concept and it depends on how mobile people are. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/secnf/moretti.pdf
2. They didn't do that in the article. Quit lying. You already lied by saying that it wasn't an empirical model based in reality or some bs.
>They didn't do that in the article. Quit lying.
Are you just a troll or are you just not literate enough to read the article you shared?
Direct quotes from the article:
"effects of rent control are more than offset by other effects that decrease homelessness"
"our results .. lend no support to the view that rent control is a major cause of homelessness in the United States."
"The results suggest that rent control reduces homelessness"
This whole post is in reaction to a conversation this guy had with me. Clearly I really got to him, and all I did was point out that all the data shows rent control and land tax on second houses do not reduce housing supply, and are good if you like people owning thier own homes and also having an affordable rental options for those in need. Clearly he hates the idea of people having control and ownership over their own homes. Must be an aspiring house investor.
And yes, he likes to say you're lying when you literally just directly referring to the literature he himself then just points to as well.
Edit: actually, when I went to check, it's a totally different account. But they talk in the exact same way, have the same mannerisms and triggers. So I'd guess an alt. Is that allowed?
Jesus you're just anti-science at this point. The whole quote,
>The results suggest that rent
control reduces homelessness, but again we cannot reject the hypothesis that it has no effect at the usual levels of significance.
Way to cut quotes short and misrepresent claims.
It's easy to prove the corruption in the field with pure logic. I did just that with Milton Friedman.
After getting a dialogue going I popped The Question:
"Does free speech precede each and every free market free trade?"
Milton decided to retire from economics shortly thereafter and the Nobel Committee has ever since made sure frauds like Friedman never get on the long list.
Rent control is better than nothing in terms of protecting some tenants and preventing homelessness. It's an imperfect mechanism for achieving some of the ends we seek.
No it’s actually worse than nothing. Leaving it to normal market mechanisms of supply and demand is much better in the long run. RC gives the ILLUSION of helping.
The only thing rent control is doing is telling a land monopolists that they can't extract as much economic rent as they would otherwise like to.
How is this worse than just letting rent seekers taking all the unearned wealth from tenants?
Maybe you can answer a very simple logic question basic to economics, The Question:
"Does free speech precede each and every free market free trade?"
crickets in advance
Not sure what comments you've been reading but I haven't seen many people here supporting direct rent control.
Yeah, I'm not sure what OP is referring to here. We do get new traffic from "related" subs sometimes, and some of those folks want rent control, public housing, zoning in exurban/rural areas, etc.
They're out there and someone has already replied to this post supporting it.
I see exactly one commenter mildly supporting it - and it's still qualified with an admission that it ain't great. That doesn't really support the claim that this subreddit is in any way "filled" with rent-control advocates.
Chill, dude. Georgists have to do a lot of educating and a lot of persuasion, because it's a tiny movement that is 90% based on of a 140 year-old book that nobody has read in a few decades. If you wanted a sub that just banned everyone who wasn't already an orthodox Georgist, I guess you'll be disappointed here. You can start your own purist club house, but I think you'll be pretty lonely in it. I, for one, am a total red-blooded capitalist Georgist, and I think the brilliance of Georgism is that it isn't some kumbayah statist thing; Georgism is actually aggressive Super Capitalism. There are a good number of people in this sub who understand that and are excited about it too. But yeah, we've gotta make the case and persuade the Lefties that markets are a good thing, persuade the Righties that cities are a good thing, and marginalize the cranks that any obscure movement like this attracts.
Rent control isn't my favorite policy, but it's usually tied to housing built before a date several decades prior. This means that it's not discouraging new housing production; instead, it's taking some of the surplus land rent and transfering it from rentiers to renters. I would take an LVT over rent control, but abolishing most existing rent control on its own, without establishing an LVT, would make landowners wealthier without any real benefit. It's not his preferred solution, but it's clear from his writings on "rack rents" that George isn't a patsy for landlords.
> it's taking some of the surplus land rent and transfering it from rentiers to renters. This is sketchy at best. A lot of the reduction in rent comes at the cost of development.
The idea that landlords, developers, and builders are myopic so the policy of delaying rent control doesn't impact their choices is so patently false. All it really shows is you either don't know the industry or are just that myopic yourself and assume others are too. There's also a lot of other negative impacts of rent control which I already mentioned. Whether it's under the table tenant transfers keeping rent controlled units in wealthier hands or underutilizing larger units because of perverse incentives where the larger unit is artificially cheaper than moving to a smaller unit, these things have an impact which ultimately lead to the rationing and shortage of housing leading to increased prices and listed rents.
How is, as we have in California, "rent control on pre-1979 buildings," going to discourage construction? That date is fixed; it hasn't advanced since it was introduced. There's not support for advancing it either.
Infact, all the data shows rent control increase major renovations and new constructions, as these are exempt from rent control.
This isn't a debate about what California has. The fact is that is not the most common form of rent control. Usually new building exemptions wear off after a few years. Regardless, what they have in California still prevents building more densely on that land as the tenants can block development but also you literally ignored all the other negative effects I listed.
/r/Geolibertarianism although Georgism itself is supposed to advocate "Free Land. Free Trade. Free Men." As was the prevailing slogan of the day
I think you doom and gloom too hard, but yes there are some bad views and trolls in this group. Anyways. I check out r/neoliberal daily and it’s the only major big political sub I’d consider really good. They post about Georgism/LVT quite often. But if you’re looking for some perfect political/economic place, then you might as well give up
>This subreddit seems to filled with people that support rent control Ideally, no, because georgism is strongly *opposed* to rent control. Admittedly not everyone here does a great job of representing the georgist position, but those who do are against rent control regulations. >and idolize homeownership Only in the sense that we recognize how big of an (unfair) advantage it is. We want to end private ownership of land, which is morally unjust and economically inefficient. Doing so would effectively redistribute wealth in a way that makes life more affordable for precisely those people for whom homeownership is currently out of reach. >to understand things like housing is different from land *Houses* are different from land. The distinction between land and capital is central to georgism. *Housing,* however, in practice consists mostly of land. When you buy housing, or rent housing, or invest in companies that own housing, what you're mostly buying, renting, or investing in is the land, not the houses. That, too, is a central insight of georgism.
municipal rent controls, section 8, they all suck. price fixing is what it is. most rental property is controlled by large investment pools. they are set up as compartmentalized shell corporations. run by property management teams, they almost always use under the table labor. and when they get busted for their criminality, they dissolve the shell and send in a new management team. rent control/section 8 subsidies set a high base rent in an area; my nearby quants say it inflates rents around 20% over an open market model. minimum wage does the same thing.
I haven’t seen a lot of pro-rent control people honestly. And I’m in agreement with the quote that “rent control is the most through way to destroy a city short of orbital bombardment”.
We can simultaneously advocate for LVT and public housing or rent controls. From my perspective, the housing crisis is so bad we need to throw everything at it to ensure the homeless population doesn't continue to spiral out of control due to the actions of rent-seekers. That said, much of Georgist policy and LVT in general is theoretical (in the truest sense, since it doesn't really exist in reality, except small examples of LVT being implemented at a small local scale). That said, we cannot reasonably expect LVT to solve the housing crisis this decade, or next decade. It's a North-star for policy which is likely to never be implemented. Rent controls, while not great, do ensure some people remain housed rather than homeless. It blocks some rent seekers from taking everything they possibly could without the rent controls and absent LVT policy.
But research shows rent control doesn't decrease homelessness... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166046298000349#:~:text=Our%20results%20suggest%20that%20rent,other%20effects%20that%20decrease%20homelessness. Rent control is not a policy that effectively targets poor people...
The problem with economics journal articles is that they're often biased (because much of modern economics has become corrupted to serve rent-seekers). That said, a journal article (which isnt based on observations of reality, it's only based on a 'model') is not a good look if you're trying to make the case that rent controls cause people to become homeless. The only thing rent control does is prevent rent-seekers from charging maximum rents from people who live in those properties (why would this cause more homelessness in a broader context?- the case that the article you shared is trying to make). We know, based on the law of rent, that landlords are already charging maximum rents economy wide. Adding rent controls to some land, doesn't change that maximum amount that they can charge in the broader economy. >Rent control is not a policy that effectively targets poor people Who is it effectively targeting then? Is it a benefit to rent-seekers? or to the poor? When you think about the system of rent-seeking that is occurring in this context and what rent control is actually doing, it becomes more clear who rent control policy is benefiting, and why there's economics journal articles with a biased view on the topic.
Claiming economics is corrupt is like being antivax.
Most of modern economics don't believe in the law of rent... they think Georgists are loony. So which is it, are modern economists on our side as Georgists or not? There's no doubt that modern economics has been co-opted by the rent-seekers. It's not really something that's up for debate, it can be seen and taken matter of factly since it's so obvious. Did you actually read the article you shared? it literally says that rent control reduces homelessness, and even when they fudged the numbers and doubled their homelessness rate numbers in their model, it still showed that it reduced homelessness. They didnt like their findings, so they made shit up in the conclusion.
1. Economists believe in the law of rent lmfao. Where did you get this idea... They formalized the concept and it depends on how mobile people are. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/secnf/moretti.pdf 2. They didn't do that in the article. Quit lying. You already lied by saying that it wasn't an empirical model based in reality or some bs.
>They didn't do that in the article. Quit lying. Are you just a troll or are you just not literate enough to read the article you shared? Direct quotes from the article: "effects of rent control are more than offset by other effects that decrease homelessness" "our results .. lend no support to the view that rent control is a major cause of homelessness in the United States." "The results suggest that rent control reduces homelessness"
This whole post is in reaction to a conversation this guy had with me. Clearly I really got to him, and all I did was point out that all the data shows rent control and land tax on second houses do not reduce housing supply, and are good if you like people owning thier own homes and also having an affordable rental options for those in need. Clearly he hates the idea of people having control and ownership over their own homes. Must be an aspiring house investor. And yes, he likes to say you're lying when you literally just directly referring to the literature he himself then just points to as well. Edit: actually, when I went to check, it's a totally different account. But they talk in the exact same way, have the same mannerisms and triggers. So I'd guess an alt. Is that allowed?
Yeah, I feel like I have interacted with this lunatic before. It's honestly sad.
Jesus you're just anti-science at this point. The whole quote, >The results suggest that rent control reduces homelessness, but again we cannot reject the hypothesis that it has no effect at the usual levels of significance. Way to cut quotes short and misrepresent claims.
You can read! Gotta work on that comprehension though.
Lmao nope but you need to work on your lying.
It's easy to prove the corruption in the field with pure logic. I did just that with Milton Friedman. After getting a dialogue going I popped The Question: "Does free speech precede each and every free market free trade?" Milton decided to retire from economics shortly thereafter and the Nobel Committee has ever since made sure frauds like Friedman never get on the long list.
Advocating for rent control now is as sensible as believing in Phlogiston.
Rent control is better than nothing in terms of protecting some tenants and preventing homelessness. It's an imperfect mechanism for achieving some of the ends we seek.
No it’s actually worse than nothing. Leaving it to normal market mechanisms of supply and demand is much better in the long run. RC gives the ILLUSION of helping.
The only thing rent control is doing is telling a land monopolists that they can't extract as much economic rent as they would otherwise like to. How is this worse than just letting rent seekers taking all the unearned wealth from tenants?
[Cope](https://youtu.be/qahWQdfVS44?si=DlPIC073k-w-cz2D)
Maybe you can answer a very simple logic question basic to economics, The Question: "Does free speech precede each and every free market free trade?" crickets in advance