When talking to people who dislike UBI about UBI, they'll often say both that 'people need a purpose in life' and that 'nobody will work if they get free money'. : showerthoughts

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The sad thing about UBI in places like the US is they further systematic change needs to happen prior to UBI being implemented.

If you have UBI added on to our current capitalist hellscape (since UBI rates will be publicly known) landlords and corporations will just hike prices to make life cost just as much as UBI—therefore forcing people to work for any scrap above that. So essentially UBI will be fed back into corporations/the elite, who will also continue to make profit on the labor the lower class does to afford anything above basic necessities.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

who will also continue to make profit on the labor the lower class does to afford anything above basic necessities

If someone can afford basic necessities, they aren't going to choose to work three jobs at minimum wage where they are treated badly, forcing an improvement in pay/conditions to find any workers. As for setting prices arbitrarily, that isn't actually possible except where a monopoly is held, the idea that supply and demand influences price is not a myth. Having money and the choice of how to spend it does actually give you additional agency and leverage, and UBI would serve as a form of redistribution if it is funded by taxes of some kind.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Except that landlords are coming together to set prices so that they can all set them high. I don't remember what the group is called, but someone was discussing it a while back. Doesn't have to be a monopoly if they're conspiring, which is what is happening with so many consumer goods and services.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I've seen that stuff but it's too much to assume that this kind of coordination is the controlling factor in housing prices, or most other prices. You do need a monopoly because there's too much incentive for defecting from the conspiracy if the fixed price is too far away from what the market price would be. I think housing is expensive mainly because of supply being suppressed and wealth inequality, and UBI would begin to address the latter.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How do you explain cereal being $8 a box, when it was $5 pre-COVID or the million other products that now cost more? There are recordings of board meetings that were leaked of board members admitting that they inflated prices or unnecessarily kept prices inflated because they knew people would pay it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why could that not have an explanation that is primarily about economic forces? They printed a ton of money around when Covid happened, and the distribution of wealth shifted significantly. I can buy that businesses could be eking out a little more efficiency by coordinating, but not that we are in a secret command economy and economics is basically all fake.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

the "printing of money" has fuck all to do with inflation, and mainly comes from pop-economics that is stuck somewhere around mercantilism.

Corporation simply realized that they are playing the prisoner's dilemma with prices, and are now going for the "optimal solution"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How do you figure you can increase the number of dollars in circulation, while shrinking the economy, and not have each dollar be worth less wealth as a result?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

because the value of money isn't tied to the amount in existence, never has, even the rare metal backed gang is just extrapolating the value axiom by one

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/thanks-to-big-data-landlords-know-how-to-squeeze-the-most-out-of-renters-eb7e5f02

https://www.housingwire.com/articles/yardis-rent-setting-software-illegally-drove-rent-prices-up-for-millions-of-renters-lawsuit/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

the use of this software prevented landlords from courting would-be renters through the use of different discounts, said the lawsuit. For instance, landlords sometimes offer move-in deals or compete on prices but the use of Yardi’s algorithmic pricing tool disrupted that practice, claimed the attorneys ...

Overall, the rate of rent growth has fallen back toward historical norms after nearly two years of historically high growth.

Like I mentioned in another comment, I can see how this kind of thing could make some difference in pricing by avoiding giving renters deals that wouldn't have actually been necessary to secure a lease. That's very far from being evidence that supply and demand doesn't even apply and the market price is dictated by fiat, which is an absurd conspiracy theory that doesn't follow at all from any of the articles being linked.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Studies in motivational theory have been around for years which generally agree that at a very basic level people need security first, not necessarily to motivate but to be in a position to be motivated. Repeatedly pay has been proven to be a poor motivator over time. By removing the basic insecurity that people face, you give them a chance to focus on actual motivating factors like job satisfaction, self-worth and realisation.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely. Security is the enemy of fear and capitalism. Fear as Frank Herbert put it, is the mind killer. If we have security, all of a sudden the horrendous business practices capitalism has been built on and motivated by. Sort of fall apart. Go to work in a soul crushing job, with a toxic environment, for too little pay? Why, when you could stay home and start your own business, maybe even become a better competitor. Or just wait for something better to come along.

Fear is the tool of the powerful. Whether it's fear of some group they tell you to fear. Or fearing them directly. Without fear, many of the crises we seem to constantly be juggling. Would find themselves solved. Humanity has the ability to feed and house everyone. Right now. The reason we don't is that the wealthy and powerful would lose wealth and power. And we can't have that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If security is the enemy of capitalism, how do you explain people who have their needs met, who still strive under capitalism?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

People who have their needs met would strive regardless of capitalism. You need to show that they strive because of capitalism. The problem is, capitalism doesn't meet the needs of a large amount of people. No matter how hard they strive. Nor should it be necessary for them to. Worse capitalism short changes them. And is very inefficient.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My issue with it is that you haven’t run trials with people min-maxing how to squeeze people for their UBI checks. As a start, just raising rent until it eats all the UBI

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

As a start, just raising rent until it eats all the UBI

You can’t just arbitrarily raise the rent to whatever you like.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You must live in VENEZUELA or some other SOCIAMIST HELLHOLE!

Americans have the freedom to literally arbitrarily raise the rent to whatever they like YEEEEEEHAW!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Okay let’s say I own a condo and I’m renting it out. I raise the rent to a million dollars a month.

What happens next?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Depends on the location but most likely demand will be zero.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

So I don’t get my million dollars a month??

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I agree, we should abolish landlords

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Landlords also have to comply with the law, which limits the height of the rent they can charge and the maximum yearly increase.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

With the absurd increases of rent globally, record profits for landlords, and massive amount of empty properties have these laws worked?

If properties are seen as an investment, as they currently are, they must always increase in value at a greater rate than inflation. This means that, in order for investment properties to work, housing must always become more expensive. This increases rent and makes buying a home more impossible yearly. If they lower in price, then the investment fails. The cost of making housing accessible is the economy.

The issue isn't simply increasing rent arbitrarily this is a marathon. They'll raise rent at a higher rate than workers accrue money as they currently are. This makes housing unaffordable. UBI is a band-aid solution that doesn't fix the root issue.

Even Adam Smith agreed landlordship was a poor idea in a capitalist market. Renters should accrue equity, or housing should become public.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This means that, in order for investment properties to work, housing must always become more expensive.

This is true of everything. For income to keep pace with inflation, it must always be increasing. In fact, to keep pace with inflation, prices must rise by the amount of inflation.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To clarify, in order for investment properties to work the value of a property must increase quicker than inflation in order to profit. Otherwise, you're not investing, you're simply retaining current buying power. This is true of all investments. You want your buying power to increase, not stagnate. This means that the cost of housing must increase at a higher rate than general inflation, and thus the cost of mortgage and rent must take up a larger portion of a persons salary otherwise the investors (landlords, investment property owners) will not profit.

Along with that income has not kept pace with inflation and hasn't for more than 50 years. Both these issues have compounded to create the issue we see today. This is a closed system, and in order for one piece of the economy to be more profitable other pieces must decline. Otherwise, you are stagnating. Stagnation under capitalism is death.

I agree though that the prices of housing should be tied to inflation (or, better, to a percentage of average wage) but that would, necessarily, mean that the property does not accrue profit, it only sticks to inflation. This is not profitable, this is not an investment. This would, essentially, abolish landlords but in a much more economically violent way as their investment portfolio is now worthless (as an investment).

In other industries the cost of each product can decrease as efficiancy increases, and volume increased through incremental changes and diversification. This allows for profit to increase while the cost of goods matches inflation (or, like with computers, they get cheaper). Now, I'd argue this is unsustainable as eventually you'll hit a wall where it's not possible to decrease cost to manufacture, and you must now increase cost to purchase quicker than inflation, but there are ways to mitigate this and in it's whole that is another conversation.

Apologies for novel, thank you for your kind argument though. You seem like a chill person

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If your method of investing in housing is just buying and selling the same house, then yes it’s not going to work. That’s also a good thing because someone who just buys low and sells high isn’t producing any value.

But people can invest in properties by improving them before selling, and also by renting them out. And neither of those situations requires a housing market whose average price is outpacing inflation. In those situations, it’s the production of actual value that is the source of the profit.

Profiting from arbitrage requires a fucked up market, and a lack of information. Profiting from producing value just requires clear communication and competency. Two very different kinds of profit seeking.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If you improve the building, thus increasing it's value, you've increased the proportional value of this house compared to the market. Now, since this house has increased in value, the average price of housing goes up and this house is less affordable. If everyone does this then the same effect takes place of average housing increasing in cost but now there's a large quantity of very nice unaffordable housing. You no-longer increase it's proportional value and the average price still goes up. Your house is in the same class as other housing bought at the same time.

If all landowners continually improve their housing in order to increase profits the profits must increase to a point where the cost to improve is matched and exceeded. This means that all property one wants to profit off of must still increase in price quicker than inflation. Under your proposed solution this only means the housing is nicer.

The outcome is the same, less affordable housing. If more, cheaper, housing is created then the value of these improved properties must decrease as well (supply and demand) and these cheaper houses if the price stays tied to inflation the profit gained is stagnant. There is no incentive to increase housing.

Currently though this is not happening. Most investment properties increase in value without improvement. Most landlords simply profit off of ownership of this land and housing not in their added value. If all landlords were to improve housing instead of simply raising price then that would increase investment price while not increasing overall profit. They'd make the same amount of money they would if they simply didn't improve it. There is no incentive to improve as this adds risk for no reward. This is only possible on a small scale, and why we see few companies making profit off of buying housing, improving, and selling.

On rentals, even if they did cause value to be added, it would be through the money of the tenents and the labor of the workers. They are simply a middle man who adds no inherit value to this process. They produce no value, they simply take money from one hand, pocket some, and place some into another who adds value for them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

I'm going to respond by parts. Let's see how this goes:

If you improve the building, thus increasing it's value, you've increased the proportional value of this house compared to the market.

Yes

Now, since this house has increased in value, the average price of housing goes up and this house is less affordable.

No: the demand for housing stays the same, thus the amount of money to be had for housing stays the same, and hence if the same number of units exist then the average unit does not change in price by one unit improving. It's only that this unit moves up within the mass of units, while all the others move down a little.

But also some yes: There is the fact that the improvement could be so good as to convince someone to switch a portion of their spending from some other luxury to the housing feature, like someone might decide to go for the house with the pool instead of the corvette. Then overall housing demand goes up, and hence average housing price goes up.

If everyone does this then the same effect takes place of average housing increasing in cost but now there's a large quantity of very nice unaffordable housing. You no-longer increase it's proportional value and the average price still goes up. Your house is in the same class as other housing bought at the same time.

No, because this stuff all follows from the previous sentence which I NOed too. The sum of a lot of average zero changes is zero. It doesn't cause contagion to the rest of the market.

Except for rich people's luxury money coming into the housing market, but that's going to affect pricing of housing full of luxuries, because that demand is targeted to a different market tier than the one you're worried about which is the cheapest housing for the people with the least money.

If all landowners continually improve their housing in order to increase profits the profits must increase to a point where the cost to improve is matched and exceeded. This means that all property one wants to profit off of must still increase in price quicker than inflation. Under your proposed solution this only means the housing is nicer.

Well, this is one way in which people with money can decide to invest it in housing: improving the housing. But they can also invest by building new housing. You do cover this here:

The outcome is the same, less affordable housing. If more, cheaper, housing is created then the value of these improved properties must decrease as well (supply and demand) and these cheaper houses if the price stays tied to inflation the profit gained is stagnant. There is no incentive to increase housing.

Well, if the set of players in the market stays the same this is true. But if new players can enter, then it's not. I'll try to demonstrate with the simplest scenario: one player controls all housing. Big Boss Casamio owns all housing and he's the only guy who can build new housing. What are his incentives? Well, it's like you said. If he builds new housing it just dilutes the value of his existing housing and he's just spent money for nothing.

But what are someone else's incentives? What if there are two big property owners in town? Then they gain something when they get more of the town's population living in their houses: a higher portion of that housing demand becomes cash to them. That's an incentive to build new housing. Yes, ALL housing's earning potential drops, but you get 100% of the new property and only lose say 50% of the existing housing value to dilution.

And that's when there's two players.

If there's 100 players, and someone owns 1% of the housing, they can build a new house and get the value of that house in terms of earning potential, while their other houses only lose 1% of their value to market-wide devaluation.

This is why free markets are important. The incentives are different for monopolies than they are for market players. A free market is like a market without strict border control. Each person is allowed to come and go, to bring their money into or out of the market, if and when they see fit.

Big Boss Casamio's crackdown on housing construction is a corruption of the free market into a controlled market, a suppressed market.

Currently though this is not happening. Most investment properties increase in value without improvement.

I agree, and that's a serious problem. Even the increase in quality witthout increase in number would be a problem, though slightly less. Only increase in number can bring prices down.

Incidentally, this steady increase in price is because of population increase, not property improvement. The improvement of properties isn't pushing average pricing; only individual pricing up and the whole thing balances due to demand being finite. But the demand itself increases with population (I mean, with money in the system, and each person anywhere is going to be pushing a certain amount of cash toward housing, by necessity).

As the number of empty houses dwindles toward zero, the amount each person has to pay rises super fast. The result of supply and demand ratio shifts are nonlinear; population doesn't have to double for the price of housing prices to double.

Most landlords simply profit off of ownership of this land and housing not in their added value.

True. I think that happens because we subsidize that by using government force to slow the building of new housing. I think that the government is taking the profit away from those who work to make new construction happen, and is giving it to the people who simply own existing buildings. I think this happens through building code enforcement.

And I think that's okay. Building codes are important. If they skew the market so as to produce non-consensual homelessness, that's a serious cost. But the thing they avoid is scenarios like the Chicago fire, where 1/3 of the city died.

I also don't think that's entirely a bad thing. If we have to suffer the existence of homelessness as a possibility in human life, in order to avoid some kind of Chicago fire scenario where shit safety planning led to 1/3 of the population dying, maybe it's worth it. Anyway.

If all landlords were to improve housing instead of simply raising price then that would increase investment price while not increasing overall profit. They'd make the same amount of money they would if they simply didn't improve it. There is no incentive to improve as this adds risk for no reward. This is only possible on a small scale, and why we see few companies making profit off of buying housing, improving, and selling.

Yeah we do have the Big Boss Casamio scenario, to a degree, due to both totally valid building codes, and totally invalid straight-up corruption and NIMBYist gerrymandering of building codes to protect certain wealthy people's property values.

On rentals, even if they did cause value to be added, it would be through the money of the tenents and the labor of the workers. They are simply a middle man who adds no inherit value to this process. They produce no value, they simply take money from one hand, pocket some, and place some into another who adds value for them.

There are many types of valuable things.

Like, imagine if a worker wanted a house, but didn't have time to build one himself. He works all day driving a bus. Another worker happens to build houses for a living. So the bus driver hires the house builder.

Even if the bus driver makes way more than the house builder per paycheck, he's going to be in a tough situation to have to pay the house builder's income during the time it takes to build the house.

Even so, I think they can figure out how to make a deal that works. Maybe the house builder is taking his time, doing an hour or two a day on multiple houses. So his living is spread out among the others'.

I hope you can see where I'm going with this because I don't. I think it was something about how it's valuable to have the opportunity to just rent a place instead of investing all that energy to build a house, just to have a place to live. Houses are costly even if there's no capitalist middleman taking a cut, and it's nice if there's an option to pay for a place that isn't going to be your house, just to get a roof over your head.

Rentals are a value to the renter, by virtue of being rentals, and it's a value that houses don't have when you own them. It's simply the lower cost of entry to the living situation.

Like having a cabin for new villagers to live in while they get their own cabin constructed. It's a source of value to have a building where people stay, but they don't have to take ownership of it just to sleep there. Maybe the ownership in the village is the entire village. Like, nobody lays claim and everyone just pitches in to fix it when needed, because it's valuable. The owner is the village, not the villager staying there.

Obviously, our current situation is fucked up and way too skewed toward being trapped. I personally think that would get better if we cut back with the suppression of new construction. Some building codes are good, but ours are bloated and that's economically inflaming the homelessness crisis AND the declining mental health of the entire lower and middle classes.

I hope that didn't get too incoherent toward the end. I'm quite tired.

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