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Comment by jlangenauer | Hacker News Reader

If, in the Soviet Union, people had to live in tents while working, most sensible people would blame the economic system in place.

Yet in capitalist America...?

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> Yet in capitalist America...?

Restrictive zoning is the prohibition of creating housing capital, so it’s ironic and incorrect to blame capitalism for the housing shortages in restrictive metros such as the Bay Area. Landlordism or rentierism might be better words for the capital repression.

Its still an economic system in place, whatever you wish to call it that causes these issues.

But the economic system in place is not producing those effects in all countries that subscribe to such a system, so saying so is a poor conclusion. Many capitalist countries do not have housing shortages, so it seems very glib to blame capitalism when there are more accurate and more granular phenomena to point to.

I mean out of these, which seems more accurate?

1) In some capitalist countries, there is a housing shortage.

2) In countries with restrictive zoning regulations, there is a housing shortage.

If this was caused by the economic system you would see it in every city not just the wealthiest.

I would blame are current economic system, which is pretty damn far from Free market Capitalism as over the last 80 or so years we have instituted a wide range of socialist inspired programs and regulations that have largely stopped and in some cases rescinded the gains against poverty that a actual free market system brings.

if you look at any economic data you will see Poverty rates where Plummeting until the "War on poverty" began and the government started trying to "solve" the problem.

Government: If you think society has problems, wait until you see our solutions

Free market capitalism has never existed and will never exist.

the housing market, especially in the US, is far from being capitalistic. You have all kind of weird rules, zoning laws maybe are the first culprit, and guess what is the result? You don't have enough houses, people are homeless and prices are most often ridiculous. This despite the fact that you have really a lot of land and the kind where you could build really high structures to house people.

I would point you to the following expose on Homelessness.

https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is...

It is an excellent discussion on the causes and remedies.

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