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Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

I agree on the "not giving a shit" part and in my observation, the effect is also strong in Germany and Italy.

But I believe it's not due to Covid. While Covid was happening, it became blatantly obvious that wealthy investors can still make 40% appreciation from their housing investments even while the majority of the population was struggling just to get by (and pay their rent). Similarly, investors profited handsomely from stock price increases while the same companies (whose market cap went up) were abandoning their employees, in some cases slashing an entire division with just a prerecorded Zoom call.

In short, Covid showed everyone that there's 0 loyalty for the little man and that trickle down doesn't work.

And I can easily understand how the realisation that hard work will almost never earn you a good place in society will lead to people avoiding the hard work.

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> and that trickle down doesn't work

This isn't a problem with "trickle down". There's more demand than supply, so prices go up. Make your population grow more slowly, or build more houses, or pay more to live in smaller places. Those are your only options.

Another option would be to distribute wealth more fairly, so e.g. inner city apartments are used for young professionals instead of as occasional holiday homes for the wealthy.

Imagining the state as a perfect parent who'll make everything fair, so should have all the power, is really not a great option, I think. It's better to think of it as a service provider that should get out of the way where possible, including managing things like supply and demand.

The state exists to help solve collective action problems. It’s not about giving it more power, it’s about making it do its job. Taxation is a primary tool for dealing with collective action problems to help align incentives. If people don’t give a shit because the game is rigged, and they know the game is rigged, you have to change incentives so at least people are happy to play the rigged game.

> The state exists to help solve collective action problems. It’s not about giving it more power, it’s about making it do its job.

This is licence to do anything. That's far too broad. E.g. in this case: you're defining too much demand vs supply as a collective action problem, when it's really a political problem (net immigration to country), a state problem (net immigration to particular cities) and another state problem (too costly to build to make it worth people's while). Calling that a "collective action problem" is taking what's a pretty detailed picture and redrawing it in crayon, and then calling for a parent to "solve" it. Just fix the things that need fixing, and leave the things that you want left alone (but you accept the consequences of). Don't give power where it's not needed. Your parents weren't perfect, and the state is far less likely to get it right than your parents were.

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