Also to get on a soap-box, this is the truth of reparations, it is not in relation to a single event, it is an attempt to solve injustices that exist institutionally in our world today.
The primary purpose of any and all reparations rhetoric in the US today is to divide the electorate by anything other than economic position in order to maintain a status quo whose legitimacy is beginning to erode. And it's working quite well, since you're delivering grandiose proclamations while advocating for nihilism and ignorance towards the existing legal processes that will actually impact the lives of millions of people in the coming years.
So I don't discount the legal processes, I am saying they must be changed. That is how we can actually solve issues like this, instead of simply putting a band-aid on each time we have systemic issues like this.
I find myself to be an anti-nihilist as a matter of fact. Reparations is not an _ideal_ for which I have grounded in nothingness (nihilism). Reparations must be a state of being for our government, whose material being should be solving injustice and not propagating it.
I would be happy to die for habeas corpus, the right to face your accuser, the right to a trial by jury, freedom from ex post facto expropriation, public trials, the right of appeal, and countless other things which literal wars were fought over for a good 700 years of hammering out common law.
To be ignorant of the protections this brings and the costs its absence imposes is legal nihilism, the focus on a single outcome in the present with no provision for the future.
I hope the prosecutor makes their case well and the jury follows the judge’s instructions and returns a verdict favorable to tenants. But if the prosecutor drops the ball or the jury makes a decision that baffles me, upholding that process is more important to justice than any single outcome.
Many Americans are not only willing to die to uphold this, but part of their job is also to kill in its defense. The pseudo-heidigerian stuff about government having a state of being just reads like you’re gearing yourself up to rationalize imposing your beliefs through nominative positioning.
Punishing landlords for colluding against tenants by forcing them to give back the money is pretty much the opposite of the status quo and about as focused on pure economics as you can get.
Returning some money to some tenants as a one-off and restricting some forms of landlord collusion is about as far as you can get from pure economics or structural reform. Both capital R reparations and reparations as a social justice hobby horse are ultimately intended to preserve and legitimize the existing system, even in their maximalist demands which tend to deflect and discredit more concrete advocacy.
Economics is a vast field with a long history and many possible futures so it's quite sad that the horizon for many people is "american neoliberalism with more regulation and redistribution" or "american neoliberalism with less regulation and redistribution."
I can think of at least three actual opposites of the status quo: one would be a georgist tax that makes holding land speculatively unprofitable, one would be a singapore style nationalization where the government purchases all of the apartment buildings at their tax-assessed rate but allows for a market in 99 year leases, and still a third would be ex post facto arbitrary expropriation without compensation in the style of many communist revolutions.
"Some landlords return .01% to 15% of their last 2-3 years of passive revenue increases and promise to raise rents more arbitrarily" is not a bad thing for those renters, but in terms of economic trends and policy it's quite literally using existing law to _return_ to the status quo.
You’re basically saying that because this violates your code of ethics, it should be punished by the legal system wherever or not they’ve actually broken a law. So the system of laws is meaningless, what’s important is how you feel, and your moral code.
And I get it, we probably all feel this way on some level. But I’m glad society doesn’t operate that way.
There should be no 'punishment' of the landlords truly, I am saying we make a system where landlords can not unjustly profit from us (and I do speak generally here).
Stuff like this is what causes the housing crisis, it must be dealt with systemically, not by giving a few people none-the-wiser a lesser life.
There's for better or worse no law against 'too much profit' in the general case. How would one define 'too much'? A certain margin? That has historically led to merchants increasing their costs so they can profit more in absolute terms once the relative profit cap is met.
Seems like the answer is just to allow more construction and densification, which in turn creates a more competitive market for housing. If they then tried to aggregate, roll-up and collude they would fall under the Sherman act no?
The landlords see their rent prices increase in their checks each month, it is not as if they have not noticed increased profit over the last years due to this.
So if this is allowed, we will start to see increased centralization and then passive acquiescence to gross profit.
Define 'exceedingly.'
> So if this is allowed, we will start to see increased centralization and then passive acquiescence to gross profit.
The market is already fairly efficient, except where laws like rent control forbid market efficiency.
The issue is that while demand exceeds supply of housing in metro areas, the cost to acquire/rent will tend towards the maximum amount a renter/buyer can bear. On the other hand, when supply exceeds demand, it tends towards the cost of construction.
This software just makes the market more efficient in the same direction it was already heading.
More houses solves this. Suing the pricing tool for existing does not.
Well no, they're going up because there's not enough houses near the jobs. Studies show the US is short 2-6,000,000 homes. Until that changes, prices will only keep going up. The centralization here is making it move faster than it otherwise would but the bounds and direction remain unchanged.
Please translate "fairly efficient" into percentage terms. Also, what instrument are you using to perform your measurements?
Coming in and harassing people for definitions and quoting economics 101 while ignoring the empirical evidence isn't a good way to discuss an issue.
The system very often doesn't actually support that in fact, so I don't find it a particularly compelling argument.
Sometimes systems suck from the get go, sometimes they degrade over time. Some of us are getting tired of the heads I win tails you lose "democracy" magic show, and the runtime we are in supports recourse outside of the "agreed upon" (wink wink) legal conventions, and I suspect it is more of a coordination problem than a consensus or will problem.
What if I create software that recommends rates to charge, and I market it. Proven to get you up to 20% or more extra rental income! Then everyone just happens to use my software, and the rates are then 'recommended' to everyone based on an analysis of what the market will bear. No collusion. Is a law broken in this case? Or is the market just lacking in competition.
The software isn't making landlords do anything, it's recommending an optimal market price. Is it any different than a quote from a commodities futures exchange being used to price corn at the local grocery store?
Commodities exchanges (I believe) work on a competitive bidding system, which is basically the opposite - you have willing buyers and sellers with roughly equal power/information.
How is a Zestimate or Redfin home value estimate legal then? Or a Redfin rental estimate? [1] Would it become illegal - or a cartel - if too many people started using it to set rents?
Should we forbid tools to help landlords figure out how much their places should rent for?
> Should we forbid tools to help landlords figure out how much their places should rent for?
It depends? Playing moneyball (i.e. charging the maximum the market will bear without a serious, violent response) with a necessity like rent should be illegal, and many of these tools seem designed to do that using market power, which is explicitly illegal. If the tool just gave some local averages based on things like amenities, that might be ok.
knowing what it does, yes that is collusion. Look at the etymology of the word: it literally means 'playing together'. It doesn't require people to meet up in a smoke filled room in supervillain outfits and say 'let's collude, heh heh heh'. Everyone is sharing their rental data to help the software calculate the optimal price, and everyone wants to get extra rental income, per your scenario. The diffrence from the commodity exchange is that exchange operators are not promising specific price outcomes for commodities.
Funny how feelings are brought up and mocked when it’s about the disenfranchised. Meanwhile, the ruling elite gets their fee fees hurt by socialists and it’s how it should be.
Strange, isn’t it?
Remember, every major group had injustices committed against them at one point and by them at one point.
It’s a well-meaning idea that’s proven stupid by even elementary school math. Anyone who suggests it is clearly incapable of rational though.
And saying that people who argue for reparations are incapable of rational thought is quite rude.