alt Hacker NewsRent control is not 'warping markets' - it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped' - that's the basis of the problem.
The workaround is to build more dwellings, and rc generally is not an inhibitor there.
Funny enough 'wealth taxes' may actually be the worst of tax of all - aka a double negative - like a double negative.
What we want to do is make it so that 'rich people get rich' not from rent-seeking but from real value creation.
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RC of course is inhibitor. It lowers value of the house, which lowers builder's profit, which lowers number of new investments.
Who builds them? Private party. What’s their incentive? Making money.
If homes can be bought and sold, then there is a market. Is your are taking about a society without money, that is a different discussion entirely.
Anyways, there are many studies showing that rent control is bad in the long term for housing affordability.
> it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped'
A market in this case isn't a literal street market with vendors hawking their goods. The word "market" describes the relationship between people who have more than they need selling to people who need and would prefer to exchange their money (or vouchers etc.) to acquire it.
Housing can't not be a market anymore than food or labor could not be a market. It's like saying it's warped that water evaporates and becomes clouds and turns into precipitation. It's a word that describes one of the natural systems of how the world works.
Even in communist societies where the State owns all the land and all the housing and decides how to distribute it, you still have a State-owned-and-directed market between citizens who need housing and a State that has excess housing and provides it to citizens.
> Rent control is not 'warping markets' - it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped' - that's the basis of the problem.
something can be essential + morally important + still governed by supply/demand constraints, this is such a silly statement to make. If there was no market, there would be no efficient allocation of resources. You need to make homes abundant to have the most economically (and thus, morally) efficient outcome.
> What we want to do is make it so that 'rich people get rich' not from rent-seeking but from real value creation.
Agreed! Tax the full rental value of land (rent seeking) and do not tax the value of the productive value creation that happens on it (building, capital, labor).