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Comment by kaashif | Hacker News Reader

> Local government will not be able to compete.

Local government is, by and large, NIMBY and thus on the side of the megalandlords.

Local government does not compete with property investors, it is already controlled by them.

More often I'd say they're on the side of all local landlords, not necessarily megalandlords specifically. But your point is correct and I have yet to see a city council that wasn't stacked with property investors.

Counterpoint: NIMBYs in SF preventing development of new housing by even a small entrepreneur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4

Something tells me JP Morgan would have an even tougher time getting past the NIMBYs.

I'm saying local government is generally heavily influenced by local property investors and will thus try to block all development.

You are right that NIMBYism isn't good for developing new housing, which is what JP Morgan is trying to do. How do they get past that initial hump? I don't know, but they obviously think they can.

But once that housing is built, there will be every incentive for JP Morgan to go ultra-NIMBY to protect their investment. Luckily, local government is very easy to push in that direction.

That's not my experience; that is, it happens, but certainly not always. Look at major cities with rent control, for example.

Rent control is, I regret to inform you, also NIMBY; it benefits current residents at the expense of future ones.

I don't think there is any way to get a voting system to stop favoring people who vote in the current election over people who can't or don't, but the OP was talking about something different: local governments favoring a slight minority of voters (landlords, some of whom are nonresidents and can't vote at all) over the larger number of tennants. I say "slight minority" because quite a few "landlords" are not the Victorian aristocrats our cultural legacies from Marx's time make them out to be but rather individual people who saved up and now let one property.

The "problem of faction" is theoretically solved via representative democracy. That was the idea in the Federalist Papers.

It's not perfect but absolutely works better than direct democracy which has led to things like Prop 13 and it's endless extensions

> any way to get a voting system to stop favoring people who vote in the current election over people who can't or don't

Would that even be desirable? I feel that serving the desires of the voters is an essential (and desirable) property of democracy.

We do want majority decision making, but Democracy, outside a theoretically extreme sense, is self-determination for all, not just the majority.

That's the reason for rule of law, human rights, and limited government - to protect those without power. The people with power always have had self-determination.

Totally agreed; nevertheless, any voting system capable of expressing the desires of voters should result in an outcome that better meets their desires than the desires of non-voters. If it didn’t, why would anyone vote?

> I don't think there is any way to get a voting system to stop favoring people who vote in the current election over people who can't or don't

The purpose of human rights is to protect those people.

> I say "slight minority" because quite a few "landlords" are ... individual people who saved up and now let one property.

I agree, but that seems to be changing as these large investors buy up homes. That change is the point.

Agreed. Whether there is rent control, the local authority should be obliged to offer to let houses at the controlled rent to people wanting them, building new houses if necessary.

The question was, 'are local governments controlled by landlords?' Rent control is evidence that they are not.

Local governments are controlled by property owners. Rent control harms landlords but they are still property owners and the lack of competition makes selling apartments more lucrative.

You repeat the claim, but the evidence says otherwise.

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