[vasco]

You think the government knows better how to identify land that is profitable than private builders? Why? Or is this one of those opinions based on "is OK for the state to pay for it because there's infinite money for my pet project"?

[nsnzjznzbx]

Because I grew up in the UK and there is a fuckton of government housing from 60s and 70s. It is ugly but it is housing people.

Government doesn't need to make a profit due to taxation.

[vasco]

Hello https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=1...

UK public housing is widely known for being shit. Unsafe, puts all the poor people together in a block. There's bunch of crime, and your kids will be likely to stay stuck there or go to jail due to bad influences.

Social housing should be sprinkled around it has been found. So nice example of what I was saying.

[nsnzjznzbx]

I would rather have more housing than less though. Government can build it at scale without worrying about profit.

And privately built appartment blocks are awful. One cracked in Sydney had to be evacuated. Concrete cancer and water ingress issues. It is concrete enshittification.

[vasco]

The question is not if, but who and how.

[Spivak]

Because government has a unique pricing advantage, they get additional value from the houses they build in the form of all the positive externalities and property tax revenue. So projects that wouldn't be profitable for private builders might still be worth it to the government. So it should be both.

They're just gonna pay builders a sum anyway so it's not like they need to shoulder the full upfront cost anyway.

[vasco]

Do you have example of another area the government has higher profit margins than private industry? I can't. And if I was going to think a government would build housing, it would be in places that are cheap and I could mass house a bunch of people, not in hip expensive cities which is what people want when they talk about this.

But surely soviet style huge blocks of tiny t0 apartments all stuck together is a dream...

[wongarsu]

> Do you have example of another area the government has higher profit margins than private industry?

Public transit. Capturing enough money from fares is difficult, maybe impossible, but it's quite profitable if you can capture the value generated by the enabled economic activity and raised property values.

The same really goes for most infrastructure. There's a reason the government operates nearly all the roads. Also the fire departments and police stations

[raybb]

Likely the same for public schools and maybe universities. Having educated folks in your city increases productivity and revenues and incomes.

[vasco]

Yes and that reason is not because they are better at doing it profitably it's because they are commons that are wildly unprofitable to do well. If you let private industry build roads you'd have nice roads in cities and dirt in the rest of the country.

In this case what people want is the reverse. They want the government to build in Austin.

The government should be involved when market forces won't solve an issue, ie no market will make it profitable to send an ambulance to a town 3h away in the mountains. You don't need affordable housing in the center of Austin just because it's trendy though.

[hnaccount_rng]

Isn't the US example: Medicare/Medicaid? It has far less costs (i.e. more of the money spend ends up with patient care) and has a reasonably good reputation?

[neom]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

[vasco]

This is a government literally putting their money in private companies instead of using it themselves (for idk schools or infrastructure for their people instead of giving it to nvidia and tesla). It's the most literal illustration of "private" beats "public" investment. Not sure what point you tried to make.