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Comment by teambayleaf | Hacker News Reader

Actually this kind of "micro apartments" are pushed by landlords rather than dwellers.

The basic problem is that there are a lot of small patches of lands in Tokyo that are too small to build a normal flat (recall that a patch of land is very, very expensive in Tokyo and you cannot just buy an adjacent land to expand it). Until recently, these small patches were left vacant since there was really not much use.

Recently, due to lots of cheap money floating around, some speculative developers (Spilytus, referenced in this article, is one of them) try to utilize these lands, by building such micro housings.

So it is a relatively new thingy pushed by supply side speculators and I honestly do not think these small housings have so much popularity among actual dwellers as this article suggests.

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A speculator necessarily performs no capital improvement, so developers are by definition not speculators. They're turning an unproductive piece of land into a useful commodity. Calling productive activity, that people apparently value, does a disservice to creators everywhere and entrenches NIMBY attitudes.

Their success is reliant on housing staying unaffordable. That is the only way to make "microhousing" profitable. They don't create anything unique. If anything this will make sure housing remains unaffordable and no one will create much of anything. What do you think "entrenches NIMBY attitudes" is if not financial interests?

This is like calling farmers speculators, because their success relies on food continuing to cost money.

No, I don't think that is the same thing. In this case they are specifically lowering the standard of living. If the standard of living returns to a more normal state, where more traditional accommodation becomes more affordable, their investment becomes unprofitable. That is more like if a farmer would permanently change their fields to something that is high priced at the moment. Which would be speculation.

Building additional housing lowers the standard of living? Obviously some people think it's more attractive than the alternative, or else they wouldn't live there...

> I honestly do not think these small housings have so much popularity among actual dwellers as this article suggests.

Perhaps "popular" isn't the right word here.

If it's not popular, then how can they charge the rents that they do?

A larger space at the same price would only be possible in a less desirable area, and a larger apartment in the same area would be too expensive.

Perhaps you mean they find the small spaces uncomfortable, or even undignified. That could very well be true, but even then, not so much that they are willing to leave.

How can you push supply? They would not build it unless there was some demand to meet it. They could build larger flats but they would cost more. There is apparently a market for people that want to live in a specific neighborhood at a certain budget.

Supply side is the "if you build it, they will come" idea. It's the idea that supply has a way of generating demand just like demand has a way of generating supply. Take smartphones. By making smartphones, an entire market was created. The supply created the market and all the apps, etc.

I may be mistaken but I think my economics professor said that supply side economics is the dominant economic theory. Rather than the demand side, it is the supply side that's moving the economy. The supply side tells you what to like, what you need and what to buy. But as all things, it's a bit of an oversimplification.

> I may be mistaken but I think my economics professor said that supply side economics is the dominant economic theory. Rather than the demand side, it is the supply side that's moving the economy.

It’s the politically dominant theory, insofar as it is the political dogma that provides justification for endless tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations and much bleating about how jobs are created by “job creators” rather than robust demand.

In terms of actual academic economics at this point it has about as much rigour and seriousness as phrenology.

Smartphones came about as a response to a demand, not something the supply side dreamed up out of thin air.

Before smartphones, there were feature phones. Before those, there were PDAs and WAP on cellphones, and so on. A long history of carrying information with you and being able to access new information on the go. Smartphones are simply the latest iteration on a theme.

My neighborhood, going rate for a whole standalone house is around $2200/month, while an apartment might be $1500. I'm just guessing that's the most they can get in both cases, so demand is setting the price, not features. So clearly, if you're a landlord, it's most profitable to buy a building and divide it into as many $1500 units as possible.

Quite. The supply argument implicitly assumes that there is no limit on the amount of money available to express demand - and the sound of hollow laughter is now heard in the background from the working class.

Frankly, it always made me wonder who actually does the shopping and pays the bills, in economics households, because it clearly isn't the Professors in question.

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