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Comment by beeflet | Hacker News Reader

ideally this would always happen equally everywhere, such that everyone is forced to list an accurate price.

If you are low-balling the price to save on taxes, you run the risk that someone swoops up your property for cheap.

That's fine when it's a megacorp with a team of analysts to pick the best price. Business is cutthroat, and in exchange for a business sometimes getting to win against its competitors, sometimes their competitors also win against them.

It's not fine for grandma. She doesn't have a team of analysts, she just wants her house. The main criticism of capitalism is that it's bad for the little people. Replacing it with something else that's also bad for the little people isn't really any better.

You could try to find compromises like locking the family home until death or voluntary sale... then you have extra complications like making it legal for someone to start a small business at their family home without also creating a grey market for people to rent their family homes for other people to start businesses in (or just to live in) and getting the system we already have.

This situation isn't about an accurate price. This is an example of how to abuse the process to increase someone's taxes without the intention of buying.

The whole point of this system is price discovery.

You can't submit bids in this system without the intention of buying, if you have the highest bid you're forced to buy.

Wealthy people with enough money could still submit offers that are calculated not to be accepted with the fallback being actually accepting.

Basically a new variation of SLAPP lawsuits. It puts a ton of power in the hands of wealthy individuals and corporations.

A practical implementation of such a system would allow arbitration by the courts, have limitations such as a minimum bid increment (e.g. 10%), etc.

If you can demonstrate that the purchase offer is made because of personal animus, or the buyer has no reasonable and specific plans for the property (i.e. the billionaire buying out a small town without a workable business plan), then the courts would overturn it.

Ultimately, billionaires have lots of ways to mess with someone they don't like. If we don't like that, we should circumscribe what billionaires can do with their power.

And it would still be costly. 10% bid increments is vastly different than today and would lead to property inflation. Going to court is costly. There are plenty of examples of how unfair the courts can be when people with lots of money face off with normal people. It wouldn't have to be billionaires. You could even have private equity abusing the system to manipulate the market in their favor.

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