Comment by alasdair_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alasdair_ | Hacker News Reader

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>Yes, housing is a right not a speculation opportunity.

Let's say I agree with this idea and let's also ignore the fact that by stating it's a right, we are implicitly stating that someone else needs to pay for it with their own money if you cannot.

If housing is a right, does that necessarily mean that housing in a specific area is a right? I mean, I'd love a beachfront property in Maui but we can't all have that.

If we build a few million houses in the middle of Kansas and tell people "there is your free house, as is your right", is that enough? Or do people have a right to a free house somewhere just because someone in their family happened to be lucky enough to live in the same general area at some point in the past?

People in the US are generally allowed to move where they want. If a place becomes too expensive for them to live there, it's possible for them to move elsewhere if they must. I can definitely see that offering help with relocation could be good for society, and I can also see that having a mix of different people in an area is also good for society, but ultimately I don't agree that just because someone happened to pay rent at some point in the past, they and their descendants should be granted a perpetual right to stay in that proximate location forever.

> Let's say I agree with this idea and let's also ignore the fact that by stating it's a right, we are implicitly stating that someone else needs to pay for it with their own money if you cannot.

Yup, we do that sort of thing all the time in Europe. I know zero people that went bankrupt because of an unexpected serious illness and I know zero people that dislike the idea that we should all pool our resources so that universal health care is possible. This also applies to education, unemployment and other things. And yes, housing.

In fact, most of the western world is more similar to Europe than to the US in this regard. Surprisingly, people from the US speak as if social-democracy is impossible somehow... It is not perfect for sure, but many aspects of modern US sound like a a dystopia to me.

> If housing is a right, does that necessarily mean that housing in a specific area is a right?

Agreed, but it should be possible to have renting contracts that do not make you move out of the place you have lived for half a century because some rich kids arrive with macbook pros and a taste for overpriced bad coffee. In fact, this is the case in Berlin, which of course means that some landlords start playing dirty tricks.

I am for freedom. I think that people should, as much as possible, live as they wish. If you and your friends want to build Galt's Gulch, more power to you. If Berliners want to stay away from those games, more power to us.

I am a renter in Berlin, so it is in my temporary interest if rents are limited (not talking about side effects, just in terms of short term thinking). But honestly, if you want to live in the same place for 30 years, maybe you should consider buying it?

If somebody offers my landlord double the price I am paying, why exactly should he be liable to keep me as a renter?

> "I mean, I'd love a beachfront property in Maui but we can't all have that"

The person you're replying to is basically saying: "having a place you can stay in, to keep you alive and going rather than homeless and broken, a safety net in essence - should be a right". Your response: "but we can't hand over free beachfront properties in Maui for everyone".

You're diverting the discussion ("but look at what communism did to Venezuela"). This isn't about free beachfront properties or luxury homes in Maui. This is about a single bedroom apartment with the most basic of utilities for people that wouldn't otherwise have the money or means to afford anything better: students, older folks, sick people, people that face hardships.

This isn't just about having shelter, this is about having it in Berlin specifically. Who is entitled to that? The answer can't be "everyone".

So people with money are entitled to it then?

There's no entitlement in trades between landlords and people with money - everything happens on mutually beneficial terms. Landlords own property by the right of their investment into it, which was also a mutually beneficial transaction between them and the developers who built it and got rewarded for their work.

Yes, these are the rules of a free market. But if a society or a governing body has additional priorities, rules can be added to such a framework. So, in the end it actually is a question about entitlement. Is a landlord entitled to rent to the highest bidder or not. I'm not saying I'm necessarily entirely against this concept, but I doubt it should be the default situation.

They are not entitled to it, they PAY for it. Amazing concept, I know.

I don't understand why you need to be obnoxiously sarcastic here. There are quite a few situations where governments set limits on how much a good can be priced at. It definitely is entitlement to be able to rent to the highest bidder.

It's only entitlement if you come from a socialist perspective and think property is a frivolous concept.

Germany - like many other countries - is not a libertarian state. Pricing caps are not new here, underpricing and overpricing are defined and limited in certain scenarios and for a number of goods like doctor or lawyer fees, medication, books, your ISP, etc.

Obviously one can debate such decisions and their merit but if you simply reduce this to having a "frivolous concept of property" it's difficult to have a conversation with you because it seems like you're choosing to be destructive instead of using arguments.

To simplify: to be entitled to something and to pay for it are some very different things. I'd argue that somebody who claims wealthy people paying for stuff is the same as entitlement is the person who is actually destructive.

As for the other German laws: I can't think of anything good that has come from them. Socialism has a way to sneak up on countries. That's all there is to it.

The problem is that you're simplifying in the first place. You seem to use "entitlement" only in a negative fashion akin to "freeloading" or "expecting something for free". I am using entitlement in a legal sense, in this case being entitled to/having a claim to/a right to buy at the highest price. The German word here would be "Anspruch".

So, we can debate whether the highest bidder has a claim to something. I certainly understand the arguments for it. But there are scenarios where I do argue that this is something that should not be permitted or at least not for 100% of the available goods.

As to your point about nothing good having come from such German laws, I disagree. Health care, legal counsel, medication, among other things are affordable in Germany while they can pose an existential risk in places without such limits.

You are of course not entitled to buy, as in general nobody is obliged to sell.

If somebody should be forced to sell at a lower than their preferred price, the question is, by what rights should he be forced to do so? The government would effectively be stealing from that individual. By what rationale/right? As I said in another post, I personally did not get the benefit of a cheap place to rent in the center of Berlin. Why should I think other people have a right to it?

You mention healthcare, but I don't think you can force physicians to work for an arbitrarily low fee. That's not how the system works in Germany, either. Public health insurance defines how much they are prepared to pay for things in the healthcare system. That is not the same as enforcing a maximum price. And especially with the German health care system, I'd argue that normal people have no idea of the actual upsides and downsides of the system.

If there is a maximum price on health procedures, it means certain procedures won't be available.

I've actually heard that there is already a health care tourism industry in Germany, which means the most skilled physicians might not be available for publicly insured people anymore, because they serve rich people from Saudi Arabia. Sure, in that sense it is bad for the normal people. On the other hand, highly skilled people might not even exist without high incentives, and in the end more people might decide to train to become highly skilled. Expensive machinery might be used for less solvent patients if there is a downtime. It's not so easy to claim benefits of limiting laws.

> Who is entitled to that?

People whose home is Berlin, for starters.

No he doesn't. People get worked up about having to pay high rents in attractive locations (Berlin, or San Francisco, and so on).

There are actually places in Germany where it is difficult to find tenants and houses decay because nobody wants to live in them.

This is ALL about the beachfront property in Maui. That is the whole issue.

And frankly, as I personally didn't luck out to get one of those dirt cheap apartments in the center of Berlin, I don't quite see why I should consider other people to be entitled to it.

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