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by neilparikh 2184 days ago
> fundamental issue is recognized by society

I don't get the impression that the issue is completely recognized by society though. We see articles all the time in the news about how the real estate market is going up. Clearly, most landowners currently have an expectation that they should get some return on their land ownership.

That's why so many advocate for restrictions on building in their communities.

1 comments

People expect the stock market to always go up too. I don't think that is possible.

I'm not saying it can't be a local, situational problem, I'm saying it's not a universal fundamental wrongness in the way society is structured.

It's like, a certain number of heart attacks happen each year. We may see a trend in heart disease over time. There could be some environmental reason for it. But extrapolating the current trend indefinitely and drawing the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong about the human heart's workings that requires a new mechanism is probably excessive.

> I'm saying it's not a universal fundamental wrongness in the way society is structured.

The supply of land is fixed, but the population (demand) increases, so the land owners have an structural advantage in that sense.

If they owned it before it started increasing in value at the beginning of time, but how can you make money by buying something that is increasing in value in a perfectly predictable manner? Isn't the seller going to charge you enough to balance out the potential profits, on average?