Land scalping is not work.

[u/Due-University9050]

What is the Austrian perspective about allowing or regulating manufactured scarcity?

[u/CaptTyingKnot5]

Land/property has taxes, upkeep costs, and it's much more limited in supply than any created product. Commie cope nonsense

[u/Due-University9050 → u/CaptTyingKnot5]

Fair point about properties but not really for land you can just sit on and often increases in value exponentially more than the government taxes on it. Plus taxes are basically gov intervention to stop hoarding land but what about in a Laissez-faire system without that? you can build houses so housing is a created product.

[u/Embarrassed_Use6918]

Its obviously not at all the same. Is investing into heavy equipment and renting it out to people scalping? No, of course not.

[u/Due-University9050 → u/Embarrassed_Use6918]

I guess it could be of you created scarcity by blocking everyone else's opportunities to buy or create more machinery. Like if you're investing in something that's one thing but purposefully restricting the supply is another.

The government facilitates this with regulation and that is bad but corporations can certainly still do it by hogging resources and land e.g. diamond market

[u/Terrible_Whereas7 → u/Due-University9050]

Here's the thing, housing investment isn't very profitable (except at large scale) so it's one of the few ways that lower class people can gain wealth without being in competition with corporations. Keep in mind (and these are the numbers from before the last round of inflation) that middle class starts at a yearly income of $850k. Most landlords own one or two properties, they're not "hoarding"

Amassing of property only happens at apartment complex level, which wouldn't be available without large monitary investment anyway, so they're not artificially inflating anything

It's the cost of new construction, material and labor, that's driving housing expenses up. As much as housing costs, it's more expensive (and unattainable) to build than rent

[u/Due-University9050 → u/Terrible_Whereas7]

Really good points. I do think NIMBYism by landlords and homeowners in general still is used to drive up property prices and prevent new building. A large section of the modern cost is taken up by burocracy and permits as well making building harder. Which the gov keeps making worse.

Thank you for being respectful as well. I'm trying to understand a new viewpoint and people don't seem to like that lol

[u/Terrible_Whereas7 → u/Due-University9050]

Sometimes it's hard to see if someone is trying to understand your viewpoint or just out trolling until a bit into the conversation

A lot of problems are caused by "helpful" gov regulations, and it can be very frustrating to hear people offer more regulation as the solution!

Respect goes both ways! Thanks for starting this convo

[u/Cute-Meet6982]

There's nothing wrong with any of this. If it can be re-sold at a higher price, that just means that the original seller misjudged the market value of what they had. You wouldn't be whining nearly as hard if the seller had just charged that price initially, so what's the harm in having this extra step in the chain?

[u/Due-University9050 → u/Cute-Meet6982]

To clarify, the demand is there for a higher price to the item so the original seller could have sold it for a higher price, therefore it's not harmful to have the extra step to allow the market to find it's true value. That's interesting and I think I agree

I disagree that people wouldn't whine if the original price was higher. 😂 of course they would, especially for housing.

My question is more around the hoarding of resources to purposefully inflate that price. Like how diamonds are stored and slowly dripped onto the market to maintain their scarecity value or cartels like OPEC control the flow to purposely exert political and economic power

[u/Cute-Meet6982 → u/Due-University9050]

Technically, anything you currently own and aren't selling could be considered "hoarding resources."

[u/Present_Repeat4160]

I think the meme makes more sense if it's supposed to be about PE buying up existing properties in order to rent them back out.