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Comment by x86x87 | Hacker News Reader

This is going to sound rough, but who gives a fuck? How is it my obligation to pay money and waste my time sitting in traffic to prop up commercial real estate? Or banks? Local governments... Oh, poor local governments!

The future is now and the pandemic showed that it's feasible to do a lot of the work remotely. Companies that jump on it will thrive, the ones that do not will slowly sink.

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Exactly. All those ailing businesses must simply relocate to reach their customer base (which obviously sucks, but that's how market economies are supposed to work). Downtown Seattle, for example, has become a shit-hole (open-air drug market, closed businesses, drugged-out vagrants, lack of law enforcement) but that's not _because_ of empty offices; it's just another pull factor for remote work wherever possible. Why risk getting assaulted on a bus or pay for parking?

If society doesn't find a way to work through these issues before they turn into a crisis, we're bound to see (a) a wave of building bankruptcies, (b) a wave of small-business failures, (c) a wave of regional bank failures, (d) a wave of regional tax-collection holes, (e) significant stock and debt market losses for pensions, endowments, 401(k) plans, individuals, etc., and (f) higher local taxes for everyone, including you.

We need to stop propping up the economy and let the natural cycles take hold.

“Natural”? There’s hardly anything natural about markets let alone the economy unless you believe in god’s hand, of course.

Is there really anything substantive in arguing over the terminology?

I'm fairly certain you understand the intention behind his statement. Markets ebb and flow in accordance with forces of supply and demand, and the government pumping liquidity into a market falls naturally into the same metaphorical linguistic space as "cash flows". Money is as liquid as water.

If the motive behind the argument is suspicion that characterizing capitalism as natural is painting it in too positive of a light, then I'd figure that capitalism is as Hobbesian as the jungle.

It's natural that customer habits change, and that they move around. Brick and mortar businesses need to move to reach their target audience (i.e. to the suburbs, or to non-downtown locations).

When you say "let the natural cycles take hold," do you mean in the way Western governments used to before the Great Depression, say during the 19th and early 20th centuries? Do you realize how horrific the panics of 1818-19, 1825, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1866, 1869, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1896, 1907, 1914 were, in both the US and Europe? And after all those horrific panics, the old systems led to the Great Depression, 1929-1939. Is that what you mean?

To the extent economists today recommend propping things up, it's only because they believe the alternatives are much worse. Judging by the historical record, I'd say they're right to focus on minimizing damage, akin to doctors with their Hippocratic oath.

Economic engineering to save an economy we want seems good.

Economic engineering to save an economy aligned against our interests doesn't as much.

And you can apply some of that engineering toward easing the transition to a more aligned economy.

Okay but they gambled and lost - why shouldn’t they face the consequences? I’ve had to every time it’s happened to me, why should it be different for them?

"Society" can't solve anything. The vast majority of our problems are from people trying to solve crap from a top-down perspective - and failing. As others point out just let the markets rebalance.

Building bankruptcies were always going to happen - even before the virus many urban areas had out of control office building. I was in the metro DC area for 20 years there were buildings never occupied along the Dulles tech corridor - and yet they kept building more. It's a rubber band that has needed to snap for a long time now, and artificially delaying the inevitable yet again isn't going to make the inevitable any more palatable.

Small businesses come and go all the time. Small businesses will die where people no longer are, but new small businesses will sprout up where people now are. And if you truly care about small business you would have railed more against the asymmetric covid restrictions that fostered the largest wealth transfer in human history - it's a collective shame we all share. Amazing that the virus was smart enough to not infect people in big box stores or certain political protests, but freaking lethal in small businesses, schools, churches, etc.

Regional banks participated in the overbuilding - even before covid. Oh well - natural selection at work. What's amazing is that somehow only the big banks get bailouts, not the regionals. It's almost as if consolidation is being government sanctioned.

As for regional tax collection - if those regions were more appealing then people wouldn't be fleeing them and they wouldn't have tax problems. Maybe those regions with new tax collection issues should explore spending less in the first place rather than only trying to increase tax revenue? Actually providing city services and taking care of fundamentals like crime rather than making excuses for or flat out encouraging it?

The stock and market losses are only in one sector. Anyone with a decent investment strategy will be diversified to mitigate one portion of their portfolio taking a hit. If you are all in on real estate that's on you, not all of us.

Also my local taxes are going down due to the tax base increasing from everyone fleeing the sinking cities. Maybe you just need to move to change your tax base - or make your area more attractive so it will expand instead of contract.

Once again, NONE of your concerns justify artificially propping up people who have made piss poor decisions. Indeed, industries continue to make piss poor decisions because they assume someone will be there to bail them out. Screw that. It's time to just let crap fall on the floor, people to learn their lessons and make better decisions in the future. You can't legislate common sense.

When you say "let the markets rebalance," do you mean in the way Western governments used to before the Great Depression, say during the 19th and early 20th centuries? Do you realize how horrific the panics of 1818-19, 1825, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1866, 1869, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1896, 1907, 1914 were, in both the US and Europe? And after all those horrific panics, the old systems led to the Great Depression, 1929-1939. Is that what you mean?

> ... it's only because they believe the alternatives are much worse.

Who is "they"? Surely you're not suggesting that every economist alive today shares the same belief

Surely you're not suggesting the health of economy runs on the beliefs of cherry-picked economists.

2008 was a crisis you conveniently left off your list, also 2020. Bailing out people who make bad decisions and throwing insane amounts of money at people and businesses isn't the answer.

Where were these economists in 2008 and 2020? Have they changed their opinion since then? Do you know what their opinions even were?

Right? Won't someone think of the poor billionaires who are going to lose pennies on the dollar in this shitfest? Have we no empathy for the haves?!

I doubt these property investors were planning to socialise their profits if things had turned out the same way as the last few decades why should their losses be socialised if the assets they bought just fundamentally have less demand now? Will they be stumping up to subsidise workers to work in offices or something?

Make sure noone goes homeless/starves Then let the market decide.

> If society doesn't find a way to work through these issues before they turn into a crisis

True, but the solution shouldn't be to return to the way things were before.

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