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by shiroiushi 689 days ago
Capitalism isn't the reason your housing costs so much; that's because of crappy government regulations (i.e. Euclidean zoning) and NIMBYs. Remove the regulations and let landowners do what they want with land and it'll be fixed; that's how it works here in Japan.

Conversely, the reason American healthcare is such a disaster is because of really bad regulation. Developed nations have shown that good healthcare systems require strong regulation, but not shitty regulation like the US has.
2 comments
gorjusborg 689 days ago
> '...the reason American healthcare is such a disaster...'

Can you give an example of the sort of regulation making our health systems a disaster?

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lm28469 689 days ago
The world isn't the USA, yet the housing problem is impacting most of the west

It definitely is more than partially brought by capitalism and what comes with it: greed, speculation, &c.

The flat I'm renting right now in Germany is owned by a company who owns 200k flats, the main shareholder in this company is Black Rock. Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years...

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shiroiushi 688 days ago
>Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years...

It's simple supply and demand. Your city doesn't allow building many more units even though demand is high and growing; this greatly increases property values, and creates a potential for big profits for investors. A company of private shareholders in NYC sees this investment opportunity and buys properties up so they can reap the profits. You probably also have some relatively weak tenant legal protections, making it easy to raise rents.

If you don't like it, your city should allow more construction. But western cities don't want to do that, because of NIMBYs, "neighborhood character", shitty zoning laws, etc., so we get what we're seeing here.

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