[paulmd]

the notional ability to leave the cartel doesn’t mean there isn’t anticompetitive cartel pressure in action. let alone the direct consequences of breaking the contract or any other adverse action resulting.

idk why some people are so desperate to ignore the documented pressures here, like are people just completely opposed to the idea that cartels can exist without a notarized agreement to break the law? And apparently you literally don’t even think that is sufficient, because “you could just break the contract” or something lmao.

the amount of openly bad-faith posting and commenting on HN has only continued to get worse and I have to think it’s partially due to the fact that it’s not supposed to be acknowledged. Such “suggestions” really only make it more potent as a weapon on a site/subculture that is already overly predisposed to rules-lawyering as a fallback when they lose an argument.

increasingly realizing the guy whose site redirects referrers from HN to a nutsack is right.

[chii]

the rent being high is not in itself evidence of cartel behaviour. And if the cartel allegations are true, what of it if they do not manage to actually affect the market? The resources spent on trying to catch cartels might be better off spent elsewhere if the cartel is ineffective.

There's also many other explanations of rent increases, such as lack of supply, which are more likely imho.

Pinning this on cartel like behaviour, when the market clearly has a lot of competition, is just moving the spotlight away from the root cause - that of a lack in supply. This is region specific - some regions that have increased supply have then seen rental decreases, while other regions which did not have increased supply (in new builds) have not.