Your lecture is not even remotely responsive. Please explain how there is no competition in the private market for housing. Because right now someone I care about is moving because their landlord jacked up the rent in the middle of a down market for rents, so they are moving somewhere better and cheaper, and that looks for all the world to me like competition. I know that you mean competition from not-private providers, but that's not explaining why a not-free provider is good. Why not just nationalize all housing?
You argue that housing has a finite supply, but that's true of cars and steel and everything: there is always a finite supply. I couldn't buy more of anything than is currently available no matter how much money I have. You probably mean that housing stock grows too slowly, but even this isn't true. (Where I live rents are falling fast because housing was overbuilt, so it's not even true that excess housing is never built.) Clearly if housing stock were growing at half the rate of the population then we'd have a huge homelessness problem, but we don't.
> You can look it up.
So can you, but you are the one making exceptional claims. So please post some links. Your superior attitude doesn't help your position. For example:
> If you would like contemporary data, I would recommend looking at the impact on the price of housing of European cities which offered nationalized below-market housing.
Links?? And no, I'm not going to look it up. You look it up.
> You argue that housing has a finite supply, but that's true of cars and steel and everything: there is always a finite supply
Land is a finite supply. With zoning (and with exponentially rising costs for skyscrapers over one-story homes), so is housing on land. At least in places where housing is expensive (e.g. major cities like SFO, NYC, Tokyo, Shanghai, etc.), this is a limited, rent-extracting resource.
The Earth's crust is about 5% iron. Cars are limited by our capacity to produce them.
> I know that you mean competition from not-private providers, but that's not explaining why a not-free provider is good.
No, that's not what I mean. I would recommend taking a basic econ course to understand jargon like "free good," "scarce good," and "rent." I won't fix that in a web post.
Khan Academy is not bad for this kind of basic economics.
> So can you, but you are the one making exceptional claims.
Ah yes. The great controversy of Adam Smith and basic economics.
I gave one link, which you clearly didn't bother to even click through.
> Links?? And no, I'm not going to look it up. You look it up.
Fine. Wallow in ignorance. I won't be responding further.
The human population of this planet is set to have big drops in the next 100 years, yet there will still be complaints like yours because the stock of housing will never far outstrip the stock of humans, as unoccupied housing will simply be demolished. We could have only 100 million humans and you'd still have this complaint. I just don't see how you can be made happy on this. Governments building housing doesn't change anything you said about the cost of building it. The market is building enough housing.
> No, that's not what I mean. I would recommend taking a basic econ course to understand jargon like "free good," "scarce good," and "rent." I won't fix that in a web post.
Terms you did not even use. Where is the misunderstanding? Or are you simply trying to be superior?
> I gave one link, which you clearly didn't bother to even click through.
To the Wealth of Nations. The paragraph you quoted applies to ownership via mortgages just as well as to rent (since having a mortgage is renting capital), but also it does not address supply at all. Nor do you address the assertion that we need a non-private provider.
But did Smith say anything like:
> And I think the government should provide very basic, minimal, Soviet-grade housing free to everyone.
or
> Personally, I think we should have all rent-extracting industries nationalized.
which you did?
Does basic economics -Adam Smith's no less!- say anything like this? What basic economics treatises other than socialist or communist ones say anything like this?
Certainly you should not respond, nor should I, any further since it bothers you so much. But I do wonder if telling people they're wrong and then taking your ball home works well for you.
You argue that housing has a finite supply, but that's true of cars and steel and everything: there is always a finite supply. I couldn't buy more of anything than is currently available no matter how much money I have. You probably mean that housing stock grows too slowly, but even this isn't true. (Where I live rents are falling fast because housing was overbuilt, so it's not even true that excess housing is never built.) Clearly if housing stock were growing at half the rate of the population then we'd have a huge homelessness problem, but we don't.
> You can look it up.
So can you, but you are the one making exceptional claims. So please post some links. Your superior attitude doesn't help your position. For example:
> If you would like contemporary data, I would recommend looking at the impact on the price of housing of European cities which offered nationalized below-market housing.
Links?? And no, I'm not going to look it up. You look it up.