[epistasis]

Given that a regulatory change about AirBNB is under consideration, perhaps they should also consider changing the regime that has created the housing shortage and is actively putting working families on the street.

Until they change this bad regulatory regime, and regulate to provide enough housing rather than regulate to keep existing conservative homeowners happy, then they will continue to put regular folks in Hawaii through a meat grinder of housing austerity.

[eej71]

We will likely disagree.

My perspective is that you can only regulate things out of production. You can't regulate things into production. If that were true, politicians could have made us all rich by their wise words and actions. But they don't. Because they can't. That's not the source of wealth.

[epistasis]

Where we do agree is that things can be regulated out of production. That's clearly what's happened in Hawaii, intentionally, to limit the number of people in Hawaii. That's the entire source of the permitting costs, high labor costs, etc. etc. etc.

The prices were intentionally set high for new housing by regulation. That can be changed.

Further, it's slightly more tricky to regulate things into production, but we do it all the time. Take for example, roads, or water treatment, or any other public service. That's entirely the product of regulation, not of the free market, and would not happen otherwise.

Further, we can regulate non-publicly owned entities into production, and we do so frequently. For example financial products like a 30-year mortgage are entirely a creation of regulation, and would not exist without hearty regulation backing them. We can do similar things for construction loans, for training in the trades, for social housing, for pretty much anything.

Housing is a very solvable problem. However we actively choose not to solve it, and in fact we actively choose to make it more expensive in order to benefit those who already have housing, and to benefit those who speculate on it.

So if I have these views of housing, why am I not opposed to AirBNB? Because AirBNB is actually meeting some real need from real people, it's not pure speculation, or pure rent-seeking, like the regulatory regime that institutes housing austerity. There's real human gain from AirBNB, it's not merely an economic gain.

And I'm not entirely in favor of AirBNB either, it's just that it really really grates me that this is being falsely sold as a solution to the housing crisis. It is not. It's barely related, but related in a way that shows the true underlying problem: supply versus demand for housing.