[andkon]

I know a lot about libertarian viewpoints. I think they largely ignore reality in favour of positing stronger property rights as an unfalsifiable solution to what have proven to be systemic and intractable problems. You don't appear to live here, so you get the benefit of being able to idly perform that sort of theorizing. There's a lot you could learn by engaging with the situation Vancouver has built itself into, but I haven't learned a lot from being told (many times before now, too) that libertarianism will solve every issue we have.

The thing, too, is that I agree that zoning is usually the problem with housing prices. San Francisco and the Bay Area have decided to opt out of building enough places for many decades, to the point where some communities there prefer to push jobs and businesses out and away in favour of getting higher housing prices.

But we aren't San Francisco, because we have no underlying economic engine that's driving in-migration and pushing up housing prices. We're just chilling here, broke as ever, wondering how on earth even a small condo could have gotten so out of reach.

[gravypod]

> we have no underlying economic engine that's driving in-migration and pushing up housing prices

Then there is no way that these prices are natural. These must be forced.