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Comment by rorykoehler | Hacker News Reader

What gives someone born in New Zealand any more rights than anyone else? This myopic nationalist mindset is ridiculous. We were all born on the same planet.

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> someone born in New Zealand

NZ is a country of immigration, and gives full rights to all citizens. This has nothing to do with where anyone is born.

> What gives .. any more rights than anyone else

Property rights are laws. They can be made, altered, and revoked. What gives NZ citizens the right to buy existing houses will be NZ laws, promulgated by a democratically elected parliament.

> This myopic nationalist mindset is ridiculous

There's a perfectly reasonable non-nationalist approach to this kind of law change, based on trying to keep housing available for people who can't bid against the global rich. I'm sure plenty of NZ progressives would love to protect the world's poor from the depredations of the 1%. But given the NZ parliament's limited jurisdiction (viz., to NZ), this seems like a reasonable start.

I normally similarly dislike the myopic nationalist tendencies but disagree with you here. When countries/people say "bring back jobs from China" I hate it. Chinese are humans and they aren't taking the jobs to screw you.. They are doing it to put food on the table.. How can you begrudge someone that? Particularly when the standard of living it so much lower on average there than the countries the complainers come from e.g. US, Australia. However, this is a rule preventing NON-RESIDENTS from purchasing. So long as you actually live in NZ a Chinese national could still buy property. I can understand why you'd prioritize residents being allowed to purchase over non-residents but of course this doesn't address wealthy residents buying their 20th investment property so it is at least a little distasteful in my opinion.

Because they actually live there ? As opposed to transient visitors ?

It's like going to your friend's house and rearranging the furniture there because "we were all born on planet Earth".

What constitutes a transient visitor compared to someone who lives there? I don't know what I will be doing and where I will be in a year. Never have. Does that mean I shouldn't be allowed buy property anywhere?

NZ citizens aren't under any obligation to put your interests before those of their fellow citizens. It would be generous for them to consider you, and generosity is good, all things being equal (and NZ has an admirable record as a generous polity). But the side-effect in this case it to allow poor New Zealanders to be predated on by the global rich. They have clearly decided to attempt to prevent this predation.

Americans are told they have to accept unlimited immigration and everything good and bad that comes with it. Not sure why NZ should be any different.

Lol, that's BS. It's very difficult, and impossible for many people to immigrate to the US.

Please see my comment in grandparent thread relating to high quality subsidised public housing for a better approach to the issue.

The best balance of policies to deal with fair & equitable housing supply has been the subject of vast tonnages of reports and research over many decades. It's hardly going to be resolved in a comments page.

That's a different topic from what I was commenting on, ie. NZ's putative duty to write its laws for your lifestyle convenience.

Clearly hardly any governments have read or paid attention to the "vast tonnages of reports and research over many decades" relating to fair & equitable housing supply or they wouldn't be resorting to the level of populist BS that is prevalent in the world today.

You have not provided any further details on why this is better.

And you mention living a transient lifestyle. Please tell me more about the property you own in Singapore then, because i'm sure you're happy paying a double digit percentage stamp duty in a not entirely stable market for 1-2 years of living here.

Because it’s our country? You know how countries work, right?

think of it as an organizational structure.

administrative divisions on multiple levels make sense. this way i can politically participate in shaping society around my physical location. this has nothing to do with rejecting foreigner's ways of live, it's about having a voice in how your own surroundings work and then see how these compare to other places based on other choices on a wider stage.

I agree on the philosophy around organisational structures. In relation to housing this is also a solved problem (hint: it's not solved in the way NZ are doing). In Singapore where I am currently based they have high quality subsidised public housing that is only available to citizens and permanent residents.

Blanket banning foreigners from purchasing does 2 undesirable things. It stops people being able to lay foundations to eventually migrate and it deflects attention from the real solution (perhaps a third is that it encourage cross-border trade but I'm not sure of the reality around that). The real solution is to build denser urban areas with a suitable supply of high quality subsidised public housing. This allows the poorer inhabitants to firstly live in areas that are economically feasible and, secondly, it is well documented that higher density cities have increased economic output of a non-linear nature compared to low density cities. An added benefit is that by fitting more people into less space we reduce our environmental footprint. It should have been part of the Paris climate accord to force cities to zone for building up not out.

Ehm, no immigrating individual ever buys property before having actually immigrated. Unless you’re obscenely wealthy, normals usually immigrate and get ripped off renting a couple years. In the meantime they stabilize, build enough credit data to get a mortgage, explore and learn where they want to setup permanently and then - finally - buy.

Sure they do. If you plan to move somewhere in 3 years and the property market is too expensive where you currently live it's cheaper and makes more sense to rent now and buy where you plan to move (especially since you can't afford local prices in any case).

You forgot to mention that the HDB scheme in Singapore covers about 80% of the population and the private market is also heavily regulated/taxed and prohibitively expensive. Immigration barriers are high and the immigration system is purely based on the needs of Singapore and not any sort of moral obligation towards the rest of the world. (To be clear: i consider the last part to be a good thing). People who use the term "racist" when discussing immigration policies would have to apply it to Singapore as well.

I also live in Singapore, and the high density here has a severe impact on quality of life (i'm using this term in a very wide sense here). I would never use this as a model for my home country. If anything, living here made me much more aware of the benefits of low population density.

Your 2 undesirable things might not be that undesirable for everyone.

If the lower income citizens are taken care of I don't see the issue with heavily regulated/taxed and prohibitively expensive property. It's supply and demand. It couldn't work any other way and it's a much better way to deal with the issue than ridiculous and ineffective knee-jerk blanket bans like in NZ.

Singapore offers a great quality of life. If you don't like it why do you stay here? High density has it's unique characteristics that may be less desirable for certain personalities but if you care about the environment and bio-diversity even in the slightest you would understand that taking a self-centred "I like my garden" approach to housing is absolutely the wrong way to go. This mindset has totally and utterly destroyed Ireland, my home country.

it's certainly not supply and demand if 80% of the market is heavily regulated by the government. nor does it need to be.

i didn't say i don't like it. i said i'm conscious of the consequences of high population density.

this is the first time i'm hearing about ireland being destroyed. do i need to send blankets? potatoes? :)

please cut the hyperbole, it's polarizing and not helpful.

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