[crashedsnow]

Yeah! I should have rent control! I should be able to live where I want and pay below the market value. Screw the free market, I want to live in someone else's house and pay them less than it's worth. I don't care if their costs go up due to increased maintenance costs, or inflation, or wage increases. I don't care if the value of their property increases due to basic, fundamental, elementary economics like supply and demand, and their property taxes increase. Screw them. It's my right to live where I really really want to live. I especially don't care that nobody else can move to where I live because there are no new houses being built, and therefore no new money into the local economy. I'm not moving to a more affordable area, why should I? And I'm definitely not going to save money for a deposit so I can borrow money at some of history's lowest ever interest rates. Then I'd be working for the man. Screw that, I've got avocado toast to pay for.

[nwah1]

Supply and demand isn't a magic incantation that makes a particular process valid. Slave markets have supply and demand, too.

If the fundamental property rights under consideration themselves are unjust, then efficiency arguments are missing the point

Of course, I also oppose rent control, because of the inefficiency. But I very much sympathize with and understand the brutal truth behind how land ownership is acquired. It is a simple matter of force... ownership is decided by whoever wields control over the application of violence.

That fact, combined with the fact that land is not a fruit of labor, means that individual ownership claims are unjust. And even from a pure efficiency standpoint, the ability to own and speculate on land creates a huge amount of idleness and underproductivity. People are able to afford to sit on idle land indefinitely, if there's little cost to do so.

The obvious solution is to tax land by value and use the revenue for infrastructure and public goods, and any remainder should go to a Citizen's Dividend. Wise use of such funds would always flow back into the value of land itself, and thus pay for itself. Without needing to tax production or labor. This would be much fairer than our current process of creating perverse incentives by taxing labor, and then allowing landlords to reap unearned benefits from nearby public works.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

On the plus side, anybody who gets in to owning apartment buildings at this point knows the score. The risk is not that you won't be able to find tenants. The risk is that you won't be able to charge them enough to make a profit (because of regulation). If you don't want to roll the dice, don't invest in rental housing. You can't claim that you didn't have notice. If you want good performing investments, you'd better prepare to be a slumlord, or you'd better invest somewhere else.

I say this as an opponent of rent control. The people you should feel sorry for are not the owners. It is all the people who want to come to SF, would have a better life in SF, would have a lower impact on the environment, would be more productive and make this a better country, who can't because housing prices are so high and there are no vacant units.

[hnarn]

I feel like this comment is way below par for HN.

[imtringued]

It is successful at showing the root cause: people don't want to change.

[asdff]

When you first start renting in a rent controlled apartment, it's at market value. Rent control in California just caps rent increases to 5%+inflation to prevent price gouging by landlords.

In CA, the landlords property tax will be the same as the day they bought the property.