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Comment by sbarre | Hacker News Reader

> I think the biggest threat to poor people, would be the ridiculous housing market.

I have heard this referred to as the "financialization of housing" in articles I've read over the last few years. Google that term to find out more..

Basically more and more multinational corporations (structured as REITs and similar) have turned their eyes towards the housing market, buying up stock in major cities and wherever there is arbitrage opportunity...

And of course this means maximizing profits and minimizing costs, which is squeezing the average person harder and harder as rents go up more aggressively than before (which also drives up home prices etc)...

The idea of treating people's homes as "assets" to be bought and sold and optimized for profit is, personally speaking, horrendous..

But hey, capitalism, right?

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You can't arbitrarily set rent prices. You can only ask what people are also willing to pay.

People are willing to pay because they have high paying jobs and want to live near to where they work. And that is ultimately also a good thing.

Think about a brain surgeon, who under socialism would have to commute for two hours to his jobs, and under evil capitalism can live 20 minutes from the hospital. Under capitalism he will get to the job well rested and therefore have a higher success rate for his operations.

Not that I disagree with the notion that "you can't arbitrarily set rent prices", but this is an incredibly simplistic example and does nothing to address literal rent seeking.

If the pandemic has shown us anything, it is that grocery store workers, meat packers, and the supply chain workers that get food (and toilet paper) to our tables are far more important to society than most high paid white collar and knowledge jobs. Does anybody care how well rested the brain surgeon is when you can't even buy produce or rice or meat at the grocery store? Do these employees not have a right to live 20 minutes from their place of employment?

There are ways to address these issues without devolving to some simplistic "capitalism or socialism" (with no in-between) argument.

Groceries salespeople are cheap because there are many people with the skills to do that job. The same does not go for brain surgery. And you can also sell groceries just fine when you are tired - a little slower perhaps, but nobody goes hungry.

The example may be extreme, but in general people pay other people in relation to how much the value or need their services. So it seems the brain surgeon is higher valued than the groceries person, simply because of supply and demand (many groceries people, few brain surgeons).

As for "deserving to live 20 minutes away from ones job", that is where it gets interesting.

Who, indeed, deserves to live in a good location? Good locations are not in unlimited supply. Who determines who gets the best spots?

What would be fair, according to the ubiquitous socialist crowd? First come, first serve? Poor people first? Lottery? Rich people first? Socialist who worked the hardest to bring about the socialist utopia first (that is usually what it ends up with, but I think not what the poor supporters of socialism envision)?

Personally I think by and large the market does get good results in that regard - the brain surgeons get to live in nice places, because of their merit. I prefer brain surgeons living in nice places to socialist activists living in nice places. Just my personal preference.

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