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Comment by blurbleblurble | Hacker News Reader

The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on. Because of concentration of wealth and return on capital exacerbating that concentration. Because of rent seeking pyramid schemes. Which I imagine artificially restricts demand for improvements like solar panel roofs: who has more inventive to invest in things like solar panel roofs? Owner occupants who are in it for the long term, or rent seeking landlords just trying to make their mortgage payments on time and turn a buck?

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>The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on

Is this based off an SV mindset? There are plenty of homeowners that aren't rich around the country.

Plus less pollution in the air helps the masses too, with fewer health issues and less extreme weather on a long term basis.

Of course it is, and unfortunately you see it a lot on HN - apparently no one in any country can afford houses anymore. It's like this Futurama joke - "no one drives in Manhattan anymore - there's too much traffic". On this side of the pond it's the London residents saying that no one except for the ultra rich can own houses, forgetting that in other parts of the country you can buy a (new!) house for as little as £100-120k.

As little as? For many people living in those parts of the country that isn't as magically affordable as you might think!

No? Because I live in one of those shitty parts of the country and since minimum wage laws still apply here turns out that saving £5k for a mortgage deposit isn't as impossible as saving £50k down in London is.

Yeah it's true inside London. I was there a few years ago looking at house prices. 500k pounds gets you a two bedroom studio flat in the London and a 4 or 5 bedroom fully furnished family home 1hr outside of London. That same 4 bedroom house inside London was between 3 and 5 million pounds.

But for the working class/lower middle saving up 10k pounds for a deposit is real work.

I live in the Midwest.

>The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on.

64% of Americans own the home they live in.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United...

I’m not sure that is a useful number. Don’t most of that 64% own only a fraction of their home? How many homeowners are not paying off a mortgage?

This is vastly moving the goalposts of the discussion. The point is 64% of Americans are dealing with issues like deciding when to replace their roof, and what material to replace it with.

Is it though? When the money that could be going to solar roofs is mostly just going to the rent seekers?

Yes, for purposes of the discussion about installing roofs, you are correct. I am just bemused by this statistic. The vast majority of “homeowners” are paying a lot of interest to lenders.

Outside some strips of land on the coasts much of the masses do own homes. Some people get them at 30, some people get them at 50 but for the most part everyone who isn't just bouncing around minimum wage jobs will be a homeowner. That's not to say that the home isn't just a trailer on land and that the location and/or upkeep of the home won't make most upper middle class HN-ers recoil in horror but the fact of the matter is that a heck of a lot of people are homeowners and most of them aren't rich by any stretch.

Home ownership in the US is north of 64% currently.

Even if everything you say is true, it still doesn't negate the fact that it's a new technology which is expensive and needs investment in order to bring down the cost.

When computers were new, only rich organizations like governments, banks, and large corporations could afford them. Now you can buy a raspberry pi for close to nothing.

Photovoltaics (PV) is not a new technology. It’s been in production-state since the 50’s and powering percentages of some countries for at least the past ~5 years.

Adopt the existing, proven and cost-effective implementation of PV (~3’ x ~5’ aluminum framed panels).

Waiting on Elon to figure out boutique solar so the affluent can all install it first and drive mass adoption (decade?) stalls PV development as much as the US tariff on Chinese-made solar!

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