Interventions might fail, just like leaving this to the market might fail. It's all a constant juggling of incentives, unforeseen consequences and catching up. UBIs and minimum wage are not designed to solve house affordability, so I'm not even sure why you'd lump it into capping rents, etc.
Without interventions you leave all the power to the profiteers, to the ones seeking to rent-seek as most as possible, so I'm very sure your approach of "less intervention" would just bring another set of unforeseen consequences with a worse side: complete lack of accountability. At least a failed governmental intervention has someone accountable for it, leaving the system to regulate itself (free market™) leaves no one accountable for the suffering it causes. Or even worse, it becomes a personal responsibility™ issue and the victims will be blamed for not trying hard enough.
Enough is fucking enough of this...
We became richer, thanks to the industrial revolution, not government coordination, and could afford to abolish slavery and work less. Same way we stopped wars of conquest conveniently when they stopped being profitable compared to large scale manufacturing and trade.
Government is at the mercy of these large trends just like the people.
That's not my narrative. The government was forced to give more rights after a lot of bloodshed in multiple countries, it was ultimately a governmental intervention in the labour market which turned those protections into law.
The industrial revolution made societies richer, the workers through social movements and the power of government made the industrial revolution livable. If left by its own devices the industrial revolution barons would still be requiring people to work 12-14h days, including children over 12 years old.
Government is the collective voice of the people, we should let a decently democratic government have power over the markets, that's my narrative.
Those laws should be abolished.
I don't think you completely understand what a regression to a world with no labour protections would mean. Either that or you'd be the one exploiting such lack of protections.
What's your proposal for the abolishment of labour protections, exactly?
There is no trick to make a free market work, for certain things we are in this together and should funnel a lot of money to lift up the poor.
The essence of civilization is helping out each other, that's why the first civilizations are defined as the ones where archeologists could find signs of medical procedures.
I suspect it inhibits NIMBYism by keeping asset values down. Land is more scarce than construction materials and labor.
High rents->high asset values->freaking out about your riculous mortgage->freakimg about additional supply driving down your property price->turning up to town planning meeting to declare a laundrette "historic".
Incentivize construction and cutting red tape to mass produce housing of a few million houses a year. This will hurt property owners but will open up affordability.
How it will work you all can argue
E: over comment limit
@Eisenstein They're not. I'm a fan of them. Like JP mega cities are relatively affordable with greater Tokyo having "reasonably" 22M people. But for US/west, highly desirable cities + high immigration, cities like NYC, I think has capacity draw/support people that push past what's stustainable based on regional geographic ceiling. NYC's already depend on stupidenous water transport infra. I feel (based on no evidence in particular) that NYC would grow to 40M people and run out of water, but rent stays the same/if not higher because there's even more opportunties and 80M people wants to move there.
Because it's the same system proposing and implementing them. A broken system is very unlikely to ever produce correct results.
I’m from New Zealand.
We live in a world of abundance where kids in developed countries (UK, US) still go hungry, and it got worse in the past 10 years.
I don't think most left-ish people like me are asking to a return of 19th/early-20th century economic models, we are asking for a return of social democratic values over the hegemony of markets and finance. It's not that hard to imbue some humanity back unto an amoral system, we know now through empiric experience that pricing simply has not taken into account human suffering and externalities wreaking havoc into our environments, we just look for more humane ways for markets to function. Left to their own devices markets will only seek profits, at all costs, we, the people and workers, are the ones who can steer it into boundaries where profit-seeking isn't, ultimately, life-destroying.
> A broken system is very unlikely to ever produce correct results.
I agree there are plenty of net positive regulations made by good systems _at the time_. But it’s not producing good regulations _now_ and is very resistant to change.
Second, there are some functions of society that may operate better outside a capitalistic system.
One could make the argument that the police are a necessary function of society that should not be governed by market forces.
I wonder if basic housing is a similar necessity?
I'm of the mindset where if you need housing, the community or government should provide housing. American is wealthy enough to do this and it's just the ethical thing to do. I also feel that if you are given housing, it should be local, but not always your desired location. For example, if you grew up in the East Village and you now need public housing, be prepared to move to Inwood. You're still in Manhattan, but its a 30 minute express train to your old neighborhood.