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Comment by jcfrei | Hacker News Reader

It's always interesting to see which parts of our lives are incompatible with free markets (at least for a majority of society). It's a very peculiar moral that you mustn't evict people from their homes after they've lived in a place for a certain amount of time. It shows that being a renter in a neighbourhood after a while creates some sort of (legally enforceable) kinship that is incompatible with a free market for housing. But I think it's very arbitrary that we don't have a problem saying to outsiders "we won't allow you to live here (even though you'd be willing to pay a lot for it)" however saying to someone "you can't live here anymore (unless you pay more)" is a cardinal sin.

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The problem is that housing is not a free market, and there's an uncanny valley effect: free markets are great, socialism is not without its own benefits, but a non-free market has the advantages of neither and the disadvantages of both.

That is, housing is not a free market because it's illegal to build enough of it to meet demand. Employment is not a free market for a variety of reasons, which means employees don't have enough bargaining power to get remote work. And the U.S. has the special problem that Internet access is not a free market either, political corruption has crippled the ability of rural areas to provide it for themselves, which in turn damages the ability of the economy to provide jobs in areas where there is enough housing.

And as long as all that is true, saying housing can be allocated by the market is just saying 'let them eat cake': an abdication by government of its responsibilities to safeguard the most basic rights of the people.

It's also interesting that people genuinely believe this is going to solve the problem rather than exacerbate it.

There is nothing any politician can do to change the laws of supply and demand. If this district in Berlin is in high demand, they're not going to fix the "problem" of high rents by keeping the supply fixed.

The only solution to this "problem" is to let people build additional housing to increase supply.

Instead of keeping the same people in their current units, overtime what will happen is people who currently rent apartments in this district will start to sub-let their apartments to the people who are willing to pay higher prices, acting as a wealth transfer from landlords to current tenants. And yes this will occur even if it's made "illegal" to sublet these apartments (this exact situation exists in NYC with people who have rent controlled apartments and people still do it all the time).

Ditto.

> "The only solution..."

I wonder as a thought experiment, if the city keeps buying more houses to fix the "problem", it might eventually become the dominant landlord, and then in order to raise revenue, it might find that it has to increase rents on its rent-controlled housing...

Rent control is an instance of "chang[ing] the laws of supply and demand". If you need it, you didn't provide a solution. The "build, baby, build" solution would keep supply in line with demand, and prices would be stable on their own. Having rent control even if you don't need it (out of concern for long term tenancy security), you will just create a constituency with a vested interest in you not building any more.

Also, strictly speaking, building is not the only solution. Curbing demand by making the city less attractive would also be a solution.

Ha, you're right that making the city less appealing would also fix the "problem" (lower prices), and I almost included that in my post because strictly speaking it's true...but honestly I didn't want to give politicians any ideas!!

I've occasionally suggested* a dirty bomb as the only way to make London livable again. Just enough radiation to scare away the rich, not enough to actually harm anyone ;)

And in Berlin, I've sometimes seen graffiti along the lines of "cleaner walls == higher rents". So making the city less appealing is already part of the anti-gentrification arsenal.

* for the record, I'm not actually planning to nuke London.

And there you run into the problem: "building more" and "making the city less appealing" are one and the same to a huge proportion of people.

"Why should I pay higher rents or deal with worse traffic/more crowded infrastructure just because you think my neighborhood is suddenly cool or because you're looking to stash a bunch of money in my country?"

Luckily, without constraints on supply and demand, those things will quickly balance each other out.

And if your rent went up, supply didn't. Supply, not gentrification, is the problem in the SF/NY/Londons of the world.

Induced demand can cause both to go up, for extra fun times.

You also seem to have missed the "or" presented by my hypothetical low-to-medium-density-city-dweller: either rents and housing prices get higher when you decide to move to my area, or my life changes in ways I don't want as a side effect of your increased supply.

So now let's imagine I own property and can vote, etc. Which of those scenarios do you think this person is going to support? The one that at least gives me a nice valuable house, I'm betting. You still want to move here? Make it worth my while $$$-wise.

I don't think most policy proposals for increasing density have enough obvious upsides for the incumbents to be very realistic.

One of the interesting political tidbits I read was an article about a homeowner who had started voting against zoning laws because gentrification was making it so bad that their kids would have to move far away to be able to afford rent.

You only get the realise the benefits of increased property values if you move away.

A more valuable house also means more property taxes (unless you live in CA).

> You only get the realise the benefits of increased property values if you move away.

Unless the annual appreciation in value of your house is sufficient to quit your job and live on. The risk of course is, will it continue indefinitely.

This is essentially executing the "move away by dying" plan in slow motion, because you end up owning less and less of your house as a percentage, so you probably move deeper and deeper into debt.

Sure, the city also raises rents when necessary. The cities real estate companies are expected to be profitable, just while keeping to other policies than "maximize profit". An option which is at least in Berlin is often offered to investors, but not always taken. (The city offers a guarantee to not interfere with a deal in exchange for concessions on how the buildings are managed, which allows to achieve the policy goals without having to invest itself. Private investors of course then often prefer other, more lucrative investments).

Keeping existing supply cheap is useful for the cities inhabitants, but additional demand has also to be matched to not make this a conflict forever (and Berlin has afaik a lower rate than other German cities in approving new projects).

>"It's also interesting that people genuinely believe this is going to solve the problem rather than exacerbate it."

No, nobody believes that this one action is going to solve a housing problem, where did you get that from in the article? The point is that Berlin took a pro-resident stance here which is both encouraging and unusual in the current "developer takes all" policies that many other desirable cities around the world have adopted. Berlin also enacted legislation restricting AirBnB rentals in the city. They understand there is a housing problem and are at least taking actions to address the concerns of the residents and possibly buy some time.

>"The only solution to this "problem" is to let people build additional housing to increase supply."

What do you suggest, Berlin gets rid of parks and public spaces and allows high high rise condos to occupy that space instead? Part of the quality of life and charm of Berlin is those spaces. Also there is nothing in this article that suggests that the potential buyers were going to increase the housing supply. Housing is a pretty complex issue and your completely reductionist policy suggestion is absurd and naive.

>"And yes this will occur even if it's made "illegal" to sublet these apartments (this exact situation exists in NYC with people who have rent controlled apartments and people still do it all the time)."

This is completely untrue. Firstly there are barely any "rent controlled" apartments left in NYC. They are an endangered species and this idea that people who don't live there are subletting them out at a profit is a complete myth. See the following:

https://citylimits.org/2015/03/09/nycs-endangered-species-a-...

As of 6 years ago rent controlled apartment in NYC were 1.8% of the total stock. And there are significantly less now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York

What solution do you believe will to lower housing prices in Berlin that isn't decreasing demand or increasing supply?

Regarding rent controlled apartments, you're correct that only about 1% are rent controlled, I should've been more specific. Given the small percentage of apartments that are rent controlled, it likely has little effect on the overall pricing. When I said rent controlled apartments I really meant rent controlled and rent STABILIZED apartments (apartments that are not currently being charged the market rate). And rent stabilized apartments are approximately 50% of NYC apartments.

[0] https://ny.curbed.com/2017/8/28/16214506/nyc-apartments-hous... -- "That brings us to rent stabilization, a much more common way for New Yorkers to secure under-market rent. While only around one percent of New York rental units are rent controlled, roughly 50 percent of the city’s units are stabilized. Rent stabilization generally applies to apartments in buildings of six or more units constructed before 1974."

Rent controlled and rent stabilized are not at all comparable. And yes, I am well familiar with rent-stabilized apartments. And rent stabilized apartments have annual rental increases just like any other de-regulated apartment does. It just means there's a cap on how much the landlord can increase the rent. There are no deals to be had there. And anyone who is fortunate enough to have a rent stabilized apartment is not stupid enough to risk it by subletting without the landlord's permission.

Landlords are looking for any possible way to get rid of their stabilized tenants as each time the apartment turns over it is that much closer to deregulated. Landlords and property management companies watch their rent-stabilized apartments like hawks. You make it sound as if subletting rent stabilized apartments and pocketing the difference is some epidemic("people do it all the time".) Does it happen occasionally? Sure. Is it the common case? No, at at all, not even close. Not only that but rent stabilized apartments have their own issues as well.

http://www.salon.com/2017/06/27/many-rent-stabilized-nyc-apa...

This move of certain municipalities buying housing is not in contradiction to increasing supply; it's just one of many tactics being used to address it. I recall recently reading elsewhere that Berlin govt is also planning for building additional housing and conversion of large unused industrial spaces into housing.

There's a limit to how much you can build out a city before you've permanently disfigured it.

Imagine taking your typical European mid-sized city and starting to allow multiple high rises taller that historical landmarks; or adding purely residential sprawl neighborhoods that distort residents' lifestyle due to long commutes and lack of attractor points outside of downtown.

You've just made a suburban hell out of a human-tailored environment, with the added sin of having destroyed the "experience continuity" which used to be core to community identity. A loss that is permanent and impossible to revert in later generations

I've lived in Rome and Amsterdam, and I know the feeling

Doesn't that mean that european cities simply aren't sustainable? If the city stays 'attractive' more people will want to move there, and the cost of living would rise too much. Really, the only solution seems to be to accept a balance needs to be struck.

Even if you personally believe building large buildings permanently disfigures it, the fact that people are willing to pay for and live in such buildings shows that people still value such "permanently disfigured" cities.

Why should people who own buildings/land, and purchased them under laws allowing them to do as they please with the property now be disallowed from building large buildings on their plots of land and sell/rent them to willing buyers?

Why should the current renters, who don't own the property, receive superior rights to those who own the property and those who would willingly pay more than them?

The "problem" is the movement of middle/upper middle class people into cities. High rents and displacement are one consequence of gentrification, but most people who care about those things are opposed to gentrification itself. The only solution is to keep the middle class in sprawl where it "belongs."

Do you have evidence of your last paragraph ever occurring in such a high frequency to actually matter to people?

    ...I think it's very
    arbitrary that we don't
    have a problem saying
    to outsiders "we won't
    allow you to live here
    (even though you'd be
    willing to pay a lot
    for it)" however saying
    to someone "you can't
    live here anymore
    (unless you pay more)"
    is a cardinal sin.

Pre-existing rights generally count for a lot more than rights that might exist. It has been said that "possession is nine tenths of the law". (Although no one has unencumbered possession of land anymore, in the sense of allodial title.)

Allowing neighbourhoods to be broken up by rich foreigners sets a bad precedent both for current inhabitants and the new ones, who are very likely to find themselves in the same situation well before retirement age (as is happening in San Francisco). City governments are accountable to the people who live there, not the greater good of the One Market, and by serving their interests are merely doing their jobs.

People who have moved somewhere are not foreigners.

The investment firm in this scenario is, as they often are, a foreign firm engaging in speculation. If there are problems for the people of Berlin, no skin off their backs...

People who move somewhere hopefully don't always stay foreigners, but they can still behave in an opportunistic way, enjoying low prices while not really putting down roots or committing to bear any of the long term costs of the community they join. American tech people in Berlin who live there for multiple years and don't learn German are an example of this phenomenon.

It's precisely the anti-transient policies (squeeze them as hard as possible on rent, make them bear all the costs of subsidized housing) which make people transient.

Of course I'm not going to put down roots in a place that's trying its hardest to get rid of me. If you want people to put down roots, stop going out of your way to prevent it.

Not forming new social bonds is an entirely different thing than breaking existing ones. Yes, it maths out to "these social bonds don't exist", but the latter is far more painful to actual humans.

It's also why there's a significant ethical difference between murder on the one hand, and abortion and birth control on the other.

Being stuck in a socially dysfunctional and economically stagnant part of the country - one where you're unemployed or underemployed - is a little more severe than "not forming new social bonds," though I see your point.

The place I was born made sense for my parents - barely. It didn't make any sense for me. I'd be in a world of hurt if it weren't for the ability to relocate to somewhere with job growth.

And we see the reverse problem too; some London local authorities got in trouble for trying to move their social housing recipients to seaside towns where there were no jobs.

In my opinion, capitalism in its purest form must thrive on misery (as it must exploit essential needs). This is what a truly free market implies.

What I find interesting (though I don't think this is the point you're making), is that there are still people defending this obvious flaw and marketing it as a feature. But once essential needs are met (i.e. housing, food and security), what's even left? Luxuries, I guess. But even that can vary drastically between periods and societies (is gas a luxury? is higher education a luxury?).

And yet here we are.

Capitalism thrives on misery only as much as it alleviates it. That's what an increase in prices is - a sign that people are desperate for something and willing to handsomely reward whoever will provide it.

It's why I'm in favor of legalizing price gouging - if someone goes to great personal effort, risk, and expense to buy electrical generators and drive them into a disaster area, that's a good thing and should be rewarded. And when the area has enough generators, the price will fall and the gouging will stop.

The thing we do have to watch out for is deliberately creating a need so that the entrepreneur can swoop in and fill it. I suppose this also applies to many forms of advertising, game design, and website design though, too.

As a former Floridian, here's what I know about Hurricane economics:

* People need gas. Gas stations run out. It's illegal for people to pay more for gas companies to ship extra. People struggle to travel before and after the hurricane.

* People evacuate and buy hotel rooms. Hotels are required charge normal prices. People have little incentive to make efficient use of rooms, and they run out. People struggle to evacuate.

* After 2004 hurricanes, home insurance companies try to increase prices. State passes law limiting premium increases. Insurance companies drop coverage for unprofitable high-risk properties. State creates a government-run pool for people insurance companies can't insure. Thus, taxpayers get to subsidize property insurance for rich people on the coast.

STOP MESSING WITH THIS! If you really insist on throwing supply out of whack, can you at least not do it during a natural disaster??? Things are crappy enough as it is. Thanks.

You're ignoring inelastic demand, which would happen in the case of a disaster area.

If a company is one of or the only company that can bring something important/necessary like generators to a disaster site, and the company knows this, it will charge more than is fair, e.g. more than the cost of the generator plus the expenses of transporting them. Price gouging generally hurts the people that need the product the most because they have no choice, and many people consider it unethical in cases like disasters. This situation is similar to the economics of life saving medicine, because its demand is also inelastic.

Also I don't think it's fair to use the term "someone", because it's often a company that does something like this. Don't humanize companies.

Elasticity of demand doesn't matter, more just elasticity of supply.

What elasticity of demand does in an emergency is help ration goods. If you're considering buying ice, and ice becomes temporarily much more expensive, you'll cut out elastic demand (eg, having cold drinks), which leaves more ice available for inelastic demand (eg, keeping insulin from spoiling).

>Also I don't think it's fair to use the term "someone", because it's often a company that does something like this. Don't humanize companies.

I had a specific example in mind: John Shepperson, who, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, bought 19 generators, rented a U-haul, and drove from Kentucky to Mississippi. He got arrested and the generators were confiscated. This is not the sort of incentive that we want to provide.

If it's possible for higher prices to induce supply, you want to let high prices induce supply and let the magic of price information do its work. The modern capitalist system is high magic, and prices are an important piece of how the magic works. Remember when fidget spinners got suddenly popular? March of this year they weren't a thing, and in April they were in pretty much everywhere. Messing with prices is how you break the magic. Do Not Mess With Prices.

I find your idea of "ethical" and "fair", highly unethical and unfair.

Such social engineering has a long and bloody history of turning around and disproportionately hurting the poor and the weak, in unexpected (sic!) ways. That is the socialist tragedy -- think with your heart, but only one step ahead.

"… the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood."

- Grover Cleveland, 22nd US president, 1887

If this is the 'socialist tragedy', then the capitalist tragedy is to think with your wallet until it's too late to realize your wallet has no morals.

Oh please. Is there great personal risk involved in raising ticket prices to 6000 dollars on flights that would fly anyway? Is there great personal risk in raising the price of life or death medicine to 750 dollars per pill?

Well the fact that demand and prices were higher during the evacuation of Florida meant that airlines were incentivised to have more flights out. It seems like this directly resulted in the huge volume of flights headed to and from Florida, which meant more people were able to evacuate by plane. And those people weren't clogging up the highway so people who couldn't afford tickets also ended up better off.

How was the "price gouging" in this case not an unequivocal good on the macro level? It seems the alternative is that the airlines held prices fixed but ran out of supply immediately.

The thing is that other forms have been tried. It turns out that unless a form of society does not have enough capitalist underpinnings, it indeed thrives in misery of most people: North Korea, Soviet bloc, religious tyrannies, aristocracy with indentured servitude, etc.

It isn't capitalism that prevents abuse of power by the wealthy. It's liberal democracy, and human rights enshrined in laws that are enforced.

Freedom of trade and property rights are hard to separate from other liberal freedoms and rights. Capitalism sort of follows.

But you can have capitalism without free trade, or even many rights at all. Liberal freedoms and rights tend to favor capitalism as an economic system, but not the other way around.

You can have a system that is somewhere between "capitalism in its purest form" and "communism". When both extremes thrive on misery, why not try some kind of middle ground?

That is actually what we are doing. The problem is we can't decide on where the middle ground is.

That's kind of what we already have in the U.S., a mixed economy[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

You've described China and lo and behold most people live in misery there.

That is quite a bold statement with no proof.

China isn't really a communist country at all, it is much closer to state capitalism.

One way to look at this is that displacement causes a loss of value, i.e. culture, kinship, etc, to the extent that capitalism is an attempt to maximise value this isn't crazy.

But I think housing is definitely a thing capitalism struggles with because it is a good everyone needs and there is a finite amount of it, so much of it is zero-sum allocation.

Obviously I think we need to invest more in the non-zero-sum parts of it, but it's also a difficult political problem with lots of common goods and externalities.

Externalizing costs is one of the larger problems with capitalism. If I can pollute the environment with out that cost being captured, then I can essentially extract value from others indirectly. If moving people from their homes causes psychological damage or civil unrest, then I can externalize those costs as well.

Regulation is supposed to prevent or limit those externalizing costs. However it's nearly impossible to put value on something like that.

> Regulation is supposed to prevent or limit those externalizing costs. However it's nearly impossible to put value on something like that.

Could you elaborate? I mean, the common law is littered with examples (stare decisis) throughout the industrial revolution which establishes strict liability for, say, someone else's right to enjoy their own land or property. In the UK, this extends to a tenants right to peacefully enjoy his home, even when he doesn't own it.

Besides external costs, concentration of power due to 'economies of scale' are also somewhat of a downside of capitalism. It is rather non-conducive to a free market and capitalism without free markets really sucks.

> But I think housing is definitely a thing capitalism struggles with because it is a good everyone needs and there is a finite amount of it

I think municipalities that can support high density development are in short supply. High rises are just concrete and rebar. But if there's no transportation, not enough energy, security, etc - then no development will take place. We've left those roles to local government, and I think we should challenge that decision.

The supply of land rebar and concrete isn't that scarce (thanks capitalism). What's scarce is the organization and infrastructure that can sustain a town - and the limited land around it. If there's something that needs more capitalism it's city planning.

What kind of value you think is being lost during a displacement? I’m genuinely interested

Community has value and since people are displaced to different locations, the community does not just re-appear somewhere else, hence value destroyed.

It's also very easy to find negative effects of displacement. The one that springs to mind easiest is that old people who get displaced die many years earlier. These negative externalities fall on people who simply don't have the money to pay enough to cover these downsides.

For a totally trivial example with real dollars: moving costs are non-zero, so when people move against their will we trivially destroy value there.

I disagree with the sibling comment which claims that the existing community/neighborhood have done is what drives gentrification - a LOT of gentrification is driven by a balancing act between price, public transportation and safety. So, I would argue that for the gentrifiers, one neighborhood is often as good as any other, but for the people who have lived there a long time, that specific neighborhood is what is important. So in this sense, it is value destroying to push these people out on a 1:1 basis.

Often gentrifiers aren't even moving to their first choice neighborhood and are merely priced out of the places they actually want to live.

Maybe not value on a material level, but there is definitely value lost in the relationships and sense of community that would disappear from forcibly relocating a large group of people like this. Maybe if they moved everyone to a new area together, but I'd guess they would just be distributed across the district.

In some cases is precisely the value that make the prices go up in the first place.

For instance, people want to live in city x because this city have nice features (good public transport, good public spaces, buildings size that leave to see the sky..). Those features are in some cases due to location but, in other cases, are due to what the people that have been living there for generations have done with the city.

Now outsiders come and out-price the people that "created" the city and, in the process, destroy the value of the place. So, people start to move to another nice city. Rinse and repeat.

This, it seems to me, is not a "fault of the market", but the effect of an optimization process run amok. And I have not even mentioned speculation.

The supply of housing is severely limited by non-capitalist forces. It's hard to take it as an example of anything in isolation. If there was enough housing for all the people who wanted to live in Berlin, then it wouldn't be possible to buy a building and raise the rent.

It is definitely true that cities require many income levels to be sustainable -- preventing monoculture is not just a kind of cultural bias but it is sound economic strategy to keep your city vital and desirable over the long term. There is so much accrued capital into wealthy hands across the world with need to find profitable parking -- allowing your city to become a real estate bubble in service to investment funds is trading short term gains for long term losses.

Yes, it is a little odd. If a polity thinks that long term residence should covey property rights maybe it should pass laws that encourage or require rent-to-own schemes instead of layering confusing quasi-property rights on top of the rental/ownership dichotomy.

I always thought of permanence as the differentiating factor between renting and owning. I actually feel less interested in owning, now that I know these "guaranteed right to rent at the same price for life" deals are out there.

yes, an example of one of the many unintended consequences of trying to interfere with market forces.

This isn't just about the welfare of current renters. The city (and the people in these quarters) are also concerned about the changes a neighbourhood experiences when the population changes.

What often happens is that these cheap but beautiful areas attract students/artists/etc, who create (or support) lots of businesses and events that make the area attractive. When the lawyers/doctors/etc replace them, they destroy exactly what it was that attracted them to it in the first place.

(I live about 300m from the building discussed in the article)

So from an economic point of view (that is lacking in Berlin in general), which value do the artists and students create and which value is created by doctors?

Fine if the leftist gov wants to sustain their neverland but not if the other part of society (dreaded doctors, lawyers, engineers) has to pay for that.

(also living in Berlin)

I was assuming that the same people would still live in the city, only in different areas. So it's all economically neutral if that's how you want to look at it.

This is also not about completely excluding any group from anywhere. There are plenty of doctors and lawyers living in Kreuzberg. It's about preserving a mixture of background/ages/incomes, which has shown to work rather well.

It's also hard to deny the economic impact of this scene on the city, it both includes and attracts startups, for example. Or look at Heumark development: a triple-digit million euros investment that grew out of a nightclub (bar25).

I get that it sucks when this happens to where you live, but is this an actual issue? Why should a neighborhood, once it is made better, be set in stone?

It feels a bit like a nice populist point (ragging on the rich folks displacing the downtrodden trying to pull on their bootstraps). That alone makes suspicious.

You could do worse than to start with those items listed in the Universal Rights of Man and assume that anything associated with those should never be in any way be something that you'd have to pay for. After all, if they are universal rights then you can't put a $ figure on them.

And then you read that list and you realize that those are exactly the things that are being milked for all they are worth, and often more.

Core survival requirements seem generally incompatible with free markets.

This is why markets spring up in societies that developed past mere survival of subsistence farming or hunting. The society of Germany is way past that phase, just in case.

This is completely untrue.

Look at the food market. The food market is extremely close to a competitive, fully capitalistic free market.

Do food sellers monopolize the market and charge extremely high prices because food is necessary for survival? No, they don't. Because the free market would force them out of business.

The current free market for food has a variety of different products, from a variety of sellers, all for a very reasonable cost.

This is especially true when you compare it to NON free market industries like housing, where much of the problems are caused by the government limiting supply.

Agriculture and farming is one of the most subsidised industries in western world. Governments need to subsidise local agriculture as it cannot compete with third world countries and it is a matter of national security to be able to feed your population in case of a conflict, for example. This is a very poor example of capitalism and free market as it's super regulated.

This just shows you have no idea about the food market.

Farming is heavily subsidized in first world countries because local farmers would be outcompeted by cheap imports in a free market. Governments subsidize their farms so that they can compete with the imports because it is extremely important for a country to be able to feed its own population if outside supply suddenly disappears.

This is actually an example of why totally free markets would be disastrous. Imagine for a moment that we let many of the local farms die to the outside competetion and a natural disaster severely reduces supply. You can't just spin up millions of acres of crops and have them ready before people begin to starve. Governments must subsidize as a form of insurance spending. You have to keep the machine running artifically for when you need it. The free market would kill this "inefficiency" for short term gain with potentially disastrous results.

Let's keep in mind the quality of food that the masses have affordably available as well; lack thereof..

I'm not a landlord, but I recently bought my own home. If I moved on and decided to rent my property out, I may be making a small profit. However, if the housing market changes and the rent no longer covers the cost of the mortgage, I wouldn't say it's a cardinal sin to put the rent up. Most landlords are not professionals with large portfolios. Most cannot afford to keep the property if the costs are not covered. Having rented for many years previously, I'd prefer a rent increase to being evicted because the property had to be sold.

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