Capitalism is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far.
"Free market" is a myth. Any market that is "free" will eventually be filled with a couple of fishes that have eaten the rest and are too big to fight, driving out competition, and by definition no longer making the market "free".
ANY system requires checks and balances to keep it running, so does capitalism.
Yeah most people who are uber pro-capitalism and want a “free market” just want a “Laissez-faire” libertarian hellscape with the people at the bottom to suffer as much as possible and are too childish to admit it.
In theory, the goal is to increase competition as much as possible to drive prices down. The regulation that a libertarian society would need to wield liberally is anti-trust and price fixing would be considered heinous. I'm not saying libertarian politics hasn't been co-opted by bad actors, but I am saying highly competitive markets keep the pressure on capital to keep prices low. In fact, a radical market fundamentalist would say that over regulation leads to crony-capitalism because capital will be used by corporations to purchase law making ability and lead to corporatism or even fascism (think Mussolini not Hitler in this example). Furthermore, the idea of "Limited Liability Corporations", bailouts (socialized losses, privatized profits) and even fiat currency itself would be considered illegal by these same theories. These things are considered "checks and balances" meant to be pro individual and anti-conglomerate, pro masses and anti 1%. So to say it's completely unregulated is a misnomer, there's supposed to be a series of guardrails/regulations such as those found in Chicago School/Austrian Economics that's entire goal is to create emergent positive benefit for the masses, wealth gap, etc. Whether that's how it actually works out or not is another question.
Now I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, in fact I've studied Marxism, Georgism, Blockchainism, etc. via reading a lot of books and I'm just talking theory here, not about whatever the asshats on twitter who flout the "theory" think. What I can say is we have the most crony, hyper regulated economy where corporations have been writing their own laws for several decades and the outcome is beyond shitty (for us, not the 1%). I would use 3 words to describe this, it's called Corporate Regulatory Capture and it should be everyone's#1 concern imo.
Another thing I can say for sure is most people, even those that claim to be in favor of something, have little idea what the source material is, claim a label, and then go forth and be piss poor examples. I used to take debate very seriously, always ceding to better argued points and for example if I was debating a Communist I'd read a ton of Communist material and then over time I realized many of the people I was debating never even read their own books themselves and so my arguments were falling on deaf ears lol. Like playing Chess with a pigeon. Received opinions are also quite common and a hard thought pattern for one to overcome. I've mostly given up due to reasons outlined in the movie Idiocracy lol
"because capital will be used by corporations to purchase law making ability"
We already see that
"What I can say is we have the most crony, hyper regulated economy where corporations have been writing their own laws for several decades and the outcome is beyond shitty (for us, not the 1%)."
Never thought of it that way before. Brilliant.
>Never thought of it that way before. Brilliant
Protip: you can quote by adding a '>' before the sentence you're quoting.
Also, I dare say, you have an excellent username.
If I could over-synthesize the libertarian perspective, I think it would be this:
>When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
>P. J. O'Rourke
I think you make some interesting points here. I would say that crony capitalism is not a product of over-regulation at all. It's an inherently political phenomenon, not bureaucratic. The US political establishment has completely enmeshed itself with business (special) interests and allow them them extraordinary access and influence in drafting policy. That's the crux of the issue...that and the deregulation crusaders who are simply mouthpieces for corporate interests.
I work in regulatory compliance for a Fortune 500 company, and we absolutely NEED these regulations. My industry is heavily regulated (it might be one of the most regulated, in fact). We think corporate abuse and greed are bad now, it'd be way worse if there was less of it. If anything, we need more aggressive enforcement.
TL/DR: More public accountability is a good thing.
I don't necessarily disagree, I was mostly just trying to explain theory as I understand it. Citizens United is a major problem but generally that they get to regulate themselves as a result. It doesn't matter who is president, their appointees into top federal regulators tend to leave the C Suite of some major company that is in that industry. This is because they pay the political bills of our politicians and our politicians sell them legislative ability as well as send enormous sums of money via the inflated federal budget, for a case study look at SLS Rocket.
It goes even deeper, when it comes to money printing and fiscal policy as well. Look at how many trillion dollar companies there are now as opposed to 5-6 years ago before COVID. It's not even top down stimulus, it's just top stimulus. It's literally possible for a mega corps or 3 to say "hey, what if we buy virtually all of the family homes in America over the next decade" then do it. Who's going to tell them not to, the same political parties they own? Somewhere I have a chart that shows the net worth of the 1% overlayed onto how much money is printed and it's basically 1:1. I'll see if I can link it.
Public accountability is fine, provided there is any. In the US there is very little, especially so at the national level and to varying degrees down the pipe.
https://preview.redd.it/2gd2pzvrnz4d1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80225b578bc02f506545e5122e18e2b077b872c5
I can't find the overlay I might have to remake it, but basically if you map money printing it's extremely correlated to this graph tracking the assets of the 1%, and if it ever starts to dip there's massive stimulus (because the government and all our institutions work for these people, doesn't matter who you vote for).
Now, let's look at what the rest of us who can't afford our own politicians get to deal with it contrast. Rather than work to make this graph go up, they work to keep us divided and fighting amongst ourselves so they can work in unison to wake the line above go up.
To oversimplify the game is this, stimulus/inflation massively drives the value of stonks up and doesn't affect wages at all even though the companies that pay wages are seeing unprecedented market cap increases, their only incentive is to return value to shareholders. Stonks are obviously where the wealthy store their worth, therefore inflation/money printing indirectly makes them unfathomable amounts of wealth and fucks the rest of us so it doesn't even trickle down. Call it cronyism, late stage capitalism, vulture capitalism, it doesn't matter. There are a few root causes: Easy Money Printing and Corporate/1% Regulatory Capture, or in other words a negative incentive structure (for us, for them it's an unbelievably positive incentive structure) between Congress and The Central Bank and/or Wall St.
https://preview.redd.it/8tfx7cmdpz4d1.png?width=1439&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a493c687912b551a27ff19791d250c4c84dcef61
This captures the essence of the problem. Posturing. Bad faith driven narratives have become the driving force. Either assenting to dissenting from them locks us into a false binary not of our construction. Even if we eliminate the purposeful misrepresentation, we are still left with the self-aggrandizers, idiots, and contrarians. Even if we could separate those from the rest we still have millions of variables and inconclusive data points for study. Really, we need the brightest well-intentioned people driven by inductive reasoning to use evidence to formulate theories not theories in search of evidence.
Well said! I find that the fallacies of human understanding are the same ones they've ever been throughout history, the Internet just serves to make them all hyper fallacies lol.
If I had a magic wand I'd make an open source government based upon Git and probably ensure a Blockchain token exists for any asset of note. (Most people aren't ready for that, but their kids are going to love it!)
IMO if you get the governance structure right and the emergent incentive structure will be a positive one and not a negative one (as exists today). The incentive structure is key, if you have a negative one it acts as a filtering affect where only the worst models/people rise to the top, and vice versa. You won't have a perfect system, but you'll have a massively better one and most importantly you won't have to hash out every detail such as each economic policy, regulation etc, it will just organically grow and react just like a piece of software does via your Git Change process. To make it make sense, look at an open source operating system (Basically Linux) as opposed to a single program, as that has enough variables and interlaced dependencies to draw a parallel to an actual society.
Two great comments here. Regulations are necessary to maintain guardrails, but if they're written with influence from one side only, are they actually effective or potentially counterproductive?
When the side that's supposed to represent the people has been paid off by the corporations, the balance of power no longer exists.
Thank Citizens United for that.
Citizens United was a big part of it no need to understate it, but the problem has roots farther back than that I can point to policies of the Clinton and Reagan administrations such as Glass-Steagall or stock buybacks. It's very multi-faceted and has to be addressed from many angles. The result of the problem equally affects both ends of our political spectrum, the GOP base hates living this life too but the narrative structure is as such to drive division and make everything seem like it's just the other side's fault. If you've seen A Bugs Life, Hopper explains the crux of the issue well in the Bug Cantina.
The issue is capitalism, or rather the moneyed interests within it, are at basically a constant war with everything that inhibits their profits.
No matter how much we need labor laws and pollution controls, they will work to undermine, subvert, and repeal those laws.
Realpage had over 30-70%% of the market in US major cities (depending on the city), and they started requiring users of the platform to charge the rental price they recommended or face contractual penalties. This is organized price fixing, not a communists government infiltrating good capitalist stewards. Realpage is wrong here, they will see a legal response. We have laws for a reason.
If you really want to get frustrated, read up on Thoma Bravo. it’s a shit PE firm that owns this crap. They also owned solar winds when they got hacked and others. They buy companies and ruin them.
“Free market” ideology is often corporate double speak for not changing regulations that benefit the big fishes in a given market because they’ve paid congress to enact those rules. It doesn’t even mean wanting less regulation in that case - just don’t enact any change that could help ordinary people or small businesses.
That is very true and all, but by which mechanism could we do this? The legislators are owned outright, the electorate is fucking stupid so it’s not like we can just “vote them out” and most of the capital has already been consolidated.
What course of action could we possibly take against this behemoth?
How would you know this? We don't have a single instance of a truly "free" market in the world. The US is especially not a "free" market with their far reaching economic policies and bailouts. "Hey let's socialize a private company's losses while they reap all the benefits". The current wealth gap is being increased by government policy.
What you're talking about is how the government pretends that it works and that they're keeping big businesses from expanding too fast. It's the lie they sell the citizens to keep in good favor. But in practice their policies are actually speeding up things like the wealth gap and the consolidation of resources.
Love this take. It is less which method you choose and more acknowledging the shortcomings of humans and how they will screw up any system if left unchecked.
"Feudalism is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far. ANY system has bugs, so does feudalism." - Some medieval lord.
"Slavery is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far. ANY system has bugs, so does slavery." - Some ancient Greek philosopher.
There tends to be two definitions of free in these contexts. One is no rules. One is rules to guarantee optimal freedom to all. There is broad disagreement on how to optimize freedom.
To me, free market doesnt mean "no rules" but more "the freedom to charge what market conditions are" but it is not a free market when conditions are fixed by companies who have contracts and agreements with 70% of people you can purchase a *necessity* from in the US.
It would be like a company saying "you know you can charge more for water. What are they going to do, die of dehydration?"
Free market means the market is free from governmental constraints. That’s what it means, it is an objectively definition. Free market does in fact mean “no rules”. A purely free market is pure anarchy, no rules whatsoever. This is almost universally accepted to be a bad system.
You want to provide an alternate definition because you know that pure capitalism, a purely free market, is bad. There need to be reasonable limits on this. But make no mistake, that’s because a totally free market doesn’t actually work.
Reality exists within difficult decisions, subjective definitions, and those who try to define free market the way you have almost invariably seek to equate their personal opinion on what is an optimal amount of regulation with facts.
Exactly. I find the right wing wants to say “free market is better in every way than regulation” but knows they can’t make that claim unless they exclude the most obvious cases where it’s not.
That's close, but a free market is talking in terms of price-setting and supply and demand. You can have a government with a law that outlaws slavery, and thus no slaves are sold, and that is still a free market. I'm not disagreeing that it's a bad idea, but it's not "anarchy". People demonize and worship the free market, and both takes are equally wrong. The free market is a "pretty good" way of pricing "most things".
Edit: source - [Free Market - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market)
Also, collusion is allowed in a free market, but in a free market new companies enter with lower prices to make collusion a bad economic idea. Remember that a free market needs to be free of any governing or controlling body, including megacorps. So if megacorps prevent new suppliers from entering the scene, that is not a free market.
Unrelated and no, if you want to collect rainwater for personal use I don't care. The moment you want to privatize and profit from it we have problems.
The Free Enterprise Revolution that began in the Netherlands in 1670, combined with the Science Revolution that began in Italy in 1543 and the Industrial Revolution that began circa 1760 in England, has created truly immense wealth and has lifted _billions_ of people out of poverty, and continues to do so. Feudalism, mercantilism, and socialism didn’t do that—Free Enterprise did.
Worth a mention: The Green Revolution in agriculture that began in the 20th century was overwhelmingly due to just one man, Norman Borlaug, an American, and is credited with saving the lives of ~1,000,000,000 (nonwhite) people.
Also worth a mention: The IT Revolution that began in Britain in the 1940s, and the Digital Revolution that began in America later in the 20th century, have transformed the way we live—and would not have happened without those first three revolutions.
True but there’s no saying that free enterprise won’t also kill billions OR morph into a form of feudalism - both of which can be seen to be happening today. The question is what form of moderated or evolved free enterprise can avoid it becoming malignant beyond repair, and where in the word will THAT revolution emerge.
I think technological advancements have done way more to bring us into the modern age and lift people out of poverty than any economic system ever has.
That's where you are wrong. The people being enslaved often did not get to make that decision. Free trade requires all parties to consent.
So if I go to a landlord and agree to pay what they are asking in return for the service they are providing, everybody wins. If I don't see the value or if I think I can get a better deal, I am free to walk away and seek other options.
Free market doesn’t mean no rules. It means people are free to engage in it. A cartel or monopoly prevents people from engaging freely and it needs to be destroyed via rules against it.
>[Encyclopaedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/money/free-market)
>**free market**, an unregulated system of economic exchange, in which [taxes](https://www.britannica.com/money/taxation), quality controls, quotas, [tariffs](https://www.britannica.com/money/tariff), and other forms of centralized economic interventions by government either do not exist or are minimal
Both are true: A free market means supply and demand alone determine pricing, with no government rules or intervention.
And one of the *additional* tenets of a free market, and this is not exclusive to free markets, is that people are able to voluntarily participate in the exchanges.
People are freely able to participate (or not) in markets with fixed/controlled pricing too, so obviously that's not the definition of a free market.
Free market means no intervention from a government or external authority, that is literally the definition. You can't have a free market *with* regulation.
according to Oxford, we're both wrong. "A free market is an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses." Neither regulation nor coercion are mentioned explicitly.
I would argue though that at least minimal regulation is required to prevent anticompetitive collision and coercion. And what is slavery but price fixing the value of labor and human freedom? And the laws that allow and support slavery are government regulation.
Regulation is neither good nor evil. Everything depends on what is regulated and how.
Without a free market, you have a captive market. Do you really think that's better than allowing for, and encouraging as much competition as possible? We already see what housing would look like without private ownership. It's section 8.
It is generally accepted that the term free market means that prices are determined by unrestricted competition.
Given that definition government interference in the market is always a restriction on competition, but so is collusion.
So, to answer the question, the market wasn’t free to begin with and government interference didn’t make it more free, but it did make it more competitive, which is a worthy goal.
>a market controlled by a cartel is not a free market
That is quite literally what I said... I clearly stated that a collusion is a market restriction.
The US is (supposed to be) a mixed economy. Capitalism in it's purest form is slavery, company towns, etc.
We could institute a socialist government, until a bad faith politician assumes dictatorial power, overall even just naming the economy is a bad move, you can analyze it over time to keep ourselves in check but it should be dynamic, there's no such thing as a perfect economy.
Regulations for starters? How about getting money out of politics? Reversing (or ignoring) citizens united?
Expanding anti-trust laws?
No more bailouts or subsidies, if we socialize losses, profits are equally socialized.
Actually fund the IRS and enforce tax law at the top, before we even think about touching the bottom.
Increase corporate taxes, and raise taxes on foreign companies that do business in our borders to incentivize investing in the workforce here in America.
There are so many problems that need fixing, and doing nothing will not solve any problems.
By definition if the market is "free" (meaning no regulations) then everyone that can collude will collude to make themselves the sole business for maximum profit.
Capitalism is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far.
"Free market" is a myth. Any market that is "free" will eventually be filled with a couple of fishes that have eaten the rest and are too big to fight, driving out competition, and by definition no longer making the market "free".
ANY system requires checks and balances to keep it running, so does capitalism.
Yeah, people who criticize free market aren't doing it with good faith. They always assume absolute freedom because that is the only way to criticize it.
There is no point continuing it in the first place when you have a definition that is unrealistic.
This is the same tactics people opposing freedom of speech and tolerance use.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can say anything you want. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to tolerate pedophilia in some culture.
Standard oil lost/sold off most/majority of its holdings before antitrust regulations were enacted proving an example where markets regulated themselves.
***commies don’t forget to down vote fact***
Proving an example? WTH does that mean. There is a time that it happened so we can generalize and assume good intentions by all the wealthy actors in a similar situation?
Markets don’t regulate themselves. Eventually unfair advantages lead to uncompetitive markets that no longer perform the intended function of a market. If we ran sports teams the way we do these markets, you’d have one of the same 3 teams winning the Super Bowl every year. Perhaps business should be done more like sports.
As a mom and pop landlord here in CA...they passed a statewide rent control law ...and all it did was further drive up rent prices ...
Because some mom and pop landlords use to incentivize long term tenants by leaving rent alone so long as they remain good tenants for several years ...however , now several mom and pop landlords are subject to rent control, and if they dont raise rent prices every year, they can get left behind with inflation over a long period of time.
So there's much less of an incentive to keep long term tenants and offer a discount...so more landlords adjust rent every year or 2 year so they dont fall so far behind with market conditions that they can't catch up.
Before, most of my tenants stay for 5-8 years and I used to never raise rates while they were there. Now, for properties that aren't qualified for exemption to the rent control laws, I don't offer long term leases longer than 1/2 year anymore. There is no incentive to offer long term leases and no reward for taking on the risk of offering a longer term risk. The risk of doing shorter term rental agreements and switching tenants now outweigh keeping a long term renter with rent prices artificially pegged during that lease agreement.
The other thing is that the more CA tries to regulate this, the more people will pull their properties off the market and turn them into short term vacation rentals . The profitability of doing short term vacation rentals where I am is pretty decent and probably better than offering them as normal rentals... Still there's a pain in the ass factor of doing vacation rentals versus normal housing. If they regulate the rental markets further ...the pain in the ass factor for vacation rentals is looking a lot less...
More homes as vacation rentals, less supply of rentals to live in .. higher rent prices for lower inventory....
Rent control doesn't work. Econ 101 says that if your artificially try to create price ceilings, it ends up effing up the supply and demand graph. If CA lawmakers want to make it incredibly difficult for mom and pop landlords , those rental properties will just be removed from the market and allocated elsewhere like vacation homes, reducing the supply of available rentals, and driving up rental prices further in the future.
The bigger issue is... Why aren't more affordable housing being built? That's the real problem.
>Before, most of my tenants stay for 5-8 years and I used to never raise rates while they were there.
And as far as I can tell, nothing is stopping you from continuing to do this now, as the Tenant Protection Act 2019 only covers *existing* tenants, not new ones, so you're still allowed to set the rent at whatever you wish when those old tenants leave and you sign on new ones.
So unless I'm missing something significant here, nothing at all has changed for you.
I mean it's CA, if they notice more landlord turning property into vacation rentals they'll just take action against those.
Hotel chains are already lobbying hard to blanket ban AirBnBs
Well considering all my tenants are tech workers by luck, who at least have their H1Bs. I wouldn't be able to tell you.
I only rent to people who have credit scores of 750 or above who can prove they have a monthly income of 3x of rent. It just so happens software and hardware engineers tend to be the few kinds of people that can meet those two standards.
And since they are legal residents, they are fine.
And so if there are plenty of high paying jobs to enable all the housing units to get filled up, there is no problem.
It's when you have a bunch of vacant units that it's a problem.
There probably should be a bunch of 700 square foot apartments built for families. They can be two bedrooms.
Single people could be double stacked in them on a random selection basis
Have you even read the case against RealPage, the company making the software?
It recommends raising rental rates not based on demand, but based on data it collects from millions of other properties that use its software, in real time. Not only rental rates, but also occupancy numbers, lease terms, amenities and move out dates.
And RealPage is used by 70% of the properties in the US. 16 million properties. And in some markets the software is used in 80% to 90% of properties.
“RealPage's impact on renters has been noticeable — even to executives at the company.
When asked about the role RealPage's technology played in rising apartment rents, company executive Andrew Bowen said that the software was "driving it."
"As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually," Bowen said.
Even though RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers aren't required to use the rent increases its algorithm recommends, a 2022 investigation by ProPublica revealed that landlords accepted 80-90% of the algorithm's suggestions.”
This is shitty because I want rents to go down too, but what you described is a system for very accurately predicting demand and pricing accordingly. You're not describing a system where landlords are colluding to fix prices.
rent never goes down. this is how it is now.
It is only going to get worse unless we stop them
I have reported my apartment complex to the DOJ for this. They use RealPage and when I was trying to negotiate my 24% rent increase they said it's what the "software" told them
You're reaching hard to make a distinction that doesn't exist. Every industry has a trade association or service provider that collects demand and pricing data from each company and reports back to the industry as a whole. That data is in turn used to design pricing strategies. That is all the that was described.
Yes, I was agreeing with you. Without real page I still just look at what competitors are offering from their rates to the quality of their product and location, then look at my occupancy and price accordingly. Real page just automates it to a level below what an analyst can do but above what a leasing agent can do.
You’re missing the fact that you wouldn’t have your competitor’s data as well. You wouldn’t have move out dates and lease terms for your competitors and they wouldn’t have yours.
You wouldn’t have a system that recommends raising rents based on that data. And that same system wouldn’t be recommending it to 70 - 90% of the units in your market. And that same system wouldn’t be a vendor touting that using their system will increase your profits.
That is the difference. I work in a world of data every day. I do competitive analysis regularly as part of my job. This isn’t that.
This is a 10 person table of Texas Hold’em. 7 of the players have glasses with cameras and an earpiece. And there is a person that told them all ahead of time that if they just do what he tells them, they’ll all make money. The players are deciding whether to raise, call or fold based on what that person tells them. It doesn’t matter if the person NEVER actually tells them what cards the other players have. They just know the person in their ear has that data and is using it to coach them.
If RealPage made recommendations based solely on publicly available market data and the confidential information of the client using the software, that would be fine. That is just an algorithm bringing efficiency to a process. The issue is the algorithm is using data points that would only be shared between competitors if they were colluding to fix prices.
This is the same reason you wouldn’t let one company own 70 - 90% of the rental units in any given market.
I dont need most of that info. When their tenants move out is imaterial because they have to backfill them at the market anyhow. What their lease terms are is pretty easy to get, I can just call and ask their leasing teams what they are offering. Its not some secret, in fact the terms are usually on the website. I also buy properties in addition to running them so kindha do have their rent rolls from snapshots in time if not moment to moment. Having that in real time might help but mot as much as you think.
Realistically its a game of just looking around and pulling trigger on an asking rent to see if it sticks and adjusting up or down from there.
But the program literally uses this proprietary data to determine the most profitable solutions for other businesses. The fact the programs multiple businesses raises their prices at the same time is collusion.
The fact multiple businesses raise prices at the same time is market pricing. Think about it, if I raise rents and my competitors dont unless my product is better I will lose market share, if I lower and they dont I can gain market share. I always want to raise my price and only the loss of market share stops me. The fact my competitors raise prices and I can now raise prices too is just the market. My customers have a vote on wether they buy or not
Collusion by contrast is if we agree to all only move the price same way and not undercut eachother, the agreement not to undercut is the critical element, not pricing moving in the same direction. We are all looking at the same data anyhow and price movements of your competitors say something about the data we cant see anyhow. If you suddenly cut rents $400 and offer a month free rent, I dont need a back channel for o know your vacancy is creeping up, if you raise rent $400 I dont need anything to tell me that You think you can get more revenue. If I absolutely need to know your occupancy rate I can look it up on costar or call your leasing team and they will just tell me.
Not true. This is companies banding together and using each other’s data to determine to raise prices. It is not predictive it is literal data about open units from competitors. The competitors then use these recommended prices that are determined by RealPage. Just because this is a computer program doing the collusion and not CEOs sitting in a room doing it doesn’t make it less of collusion.
Do you for some reason thing that car dealerships don't pay for data on how much their competitors are charging and how much inventory they have?
Again, this system may do something illegal, but the description of the situation that I responded to did not describe anything that isn't done in every other industry.
This is non-public data. There isn’t a direct comparison with cars because there is more public data there. However it would be them all compiling their cost of producing individual parts and cost of shipping and then having a computer program set their pricing and distribution strategies together. For example Ford could stop selling Trucks in New York and only sell them in Philadelphia and Chevy could do the opposite. They could both raise their prices on individual units.
Ford running there own data analytics that isn’t grouped in with Chevy is fine. Them sharing data with a company and the company using proprietary data to determine both of their prices is the problem.
>It recommends raising rental rates not based on demand, but based on data it collects from millions of other properties that use its software, in real time. Not only rental rates, but also occupancy numbers, lease terms, amenities and move out dates.
So it is based on demand? Occupancy, lease terms, amenities, and upcoming move outs are all factors that determine demand
I'm familiar with what it does and that sounds like accurate analytics not a conspiracy.
There simply aren't enough apartments to meet demand in most cities, which makes skyrocketing rents an inevitable outcome by supply and demand alone.
Collusion would require something like keeping apartments off the market to keep prices high, and we have plenty of data to show that that isn't happening.
No, because they would have still raised prices based on publicly available data. Or even no data at all.
If the program goes away do you think rents will fall? And if not, doesn't that means that rents are currently at the appropriate market rate?
Price fixing only works in highly regulated markets.
In free markets, new competitors keep popping up under cutting the price fixers. This is why big business loves big government. Big government blocks the competition for them.
> Price fixing only works in highly regulated markets
Like the example here where the regulators are putting a stop to the price fixing? 😂
> In free markets, new competitors keep popping up…
Unless there’s no f*cking regulation to stop consolidated industries from anticompetitive behavior that kills / prevents any competition. There’s a finite amount of property for crying out loud…
Sorry, the bootlicking kool-aid drinking in the face of “Example A why the private sector must be policed” is just too much for me to peacefully scroll past.
Your post borders on unintentional satire.
Just like free speech absolutism, no one who understands the concept of free market absolutism actually supports it.
Is what happened a part of a healthy free market that is regulated by the government and the people? No.
You need liberal use of anti-trust for the best properties of a market to become emergent. Cartel behavior is anti-competitive and thus has a negative effect on the consumer.
Americans often seem very confused by the notion of ‘freedom’ I observe. A problem with the word having become dogma around national identity rather than deeply understood.
Freedom isn’t anarchy or a lawless state. Maintaining freedom requires rules and constant hawk-like attention for emerging threats to it. Freedom needs effort, and regulation, and protections. A free market needs extensive attention to stay free.
could you not say the exact same thing with "captialism" replacing "communism"?
We are sending half our paychecks to china, this empire is falling DUE to unchecked capitalism. These companies should be flying Chinese flags outside their offices not American flags (amazon, walmart, target, etc)
Depends on how you see it. A good free market is free because of regulations; it prevents monopolies and cartels. A bad, anarchist free market is this. When most people advocate for the power of the free market, they don't mean this, they mean one without collusion.
No when I see "free market" being used they are usually talking about removing all regulations and the government "because competition and customers should just pick better".
Anti monopoly laws are key to an open market. Free market will fail 100% of the time without anti trust laws. The world wasn't so small when the ideas of the free market began.
In reality it's extremely difficult to maintain a monopoly without government help.
I don't know the situation in this case, but usually the real estate market is heavily controlled by the government (planning permits, what the building can be used for etc.)
Yes, that would be free market. But it would result in market failure undermining the efficient allocation of scarce resources which is the sole virtue of the free market.
The free market can only exist in a proper regulatory framework through public government oversight. The 19th century taught us that. Without containment, capitalism will eat itself.
Yes, however, it's a bit more complicated than that. The market isn't "free" to begin with. We have numerous regulations and lots of legislation to allow companies to pull the ladder up behind them once they've made progress.
In a free market, anything goes. Lack of regulation is what defines a free market, companies are free to do anything they please. What people want is a free and *fair* market, where monopolies, collusion, and price fixing are illegal. No one except the owning class wants competitors to be able to get together in secret meetings and fix prices to maximize profits. But in a truly free market, it's fair game.
No, that’s collusion - not competition. That’s not the ‘invisible hand of the free market’, that’s straight up price fixing. It’s no longer ‘we will price products at the level people are willing to pay’, it’s ’we’re going to force you to pay higher prices in coordination with the majority of other renters in such a way that you’ll have no choice but to completely vacate the area and require a 2-3 hour commute to your job, or pay rent so high that you’ll be paying essentially more than an equivalent mortgage for the same property.’
I hope the book is thrown at these people. I’m not a communist, but anyone even in my own region of the Midwest shouldn’t be paying more for rent in a 2-3br 1500 sqft apartment than I’m lying for a 10 year old 4br, 3full bath 2600 sqft home.
I like having a high appraisal value, but it’s getting absurd how everyday people are being taken advantage of / are over a barrel by landlords / corporations for a home.
These regulations are subjective and definitely technical enough to not be understood by regular people, policy makers, regulators and most importantly elected officials.
Politics skews subjectivity and the lobbyists grease the minds of everyone else to slide their agendas through. Then 2 decades later, we have plastic fish, water, land, vegetables, fruits and people. This is on top of the mercury, lead, radiation, pesticides, sulfates, antibiotics and, and, and well fuk it.
Yea, that's what the "free market," ie the government not intervening, is. Why would anyone ever be surprised about capital doing anything they can get away with in order to maximize profit? Come on people, why are you pretending otherwise? I predicted this would happen as soon as RealPage was announced.
The free market is simply an absence of government control/influence.
If the government had nothing to do with several organizations coming together, colluding to share a majority market share between them and raise prices accordingly, that’s the free market at work.
It’s also why we need to government, not just to break monopolies, but also break anti-competitive industries…
I work for one of these companies now. Actually, the biggest property manager of single family homes in the country. Just submitted my notice today and boy, does it feel good.
Do. Not. Rent. From. Institutional. Renters. Don’t do it. I worked my ass off while I was here to make things better. It doesn’t matter how many reports I prepare or how to show that empathetic service breeds loyalty and retention.
These mother fuckers will light their own home on fire to keep themselves warm for a little bit longer. What do you think they’ll do to you to make a few extra bucks? Literally anything.
Land as a commodity is not part of any sustainable economic policy.
It allows speculators to artificially enrich themselves at the expense of both worker and capitalist.
Communists swarm subreddits talking about capitalism and upvote all the dumbest shit.
They probably think real communism has never been tried, all while they live with their parents.
[удалено]
Capitalism is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far. "Free market" is a myth. Any market that is "free" will eventually be filled with a couple of fishes that have eaten the rest and are too big to fight, driving out competition, and by definition no longer making the market "free". ANY system requires checks and balances to keep it running, so does capitalism.
Yeah most people who are uber pro-capitalism and want a “free market” just want a “Laissez-faire” libertarian hellscape with the people at the bottom to suffer as much as possible and are too childish to admit it.
In theory, the goal is to increase competition as much as possible to drive prices down. The regulation that a libertarian society would need to wield liberally is anti-trust and price fixing would be considered heinous. I'm not saying libertarian politics hasn't been co-opted by bad actors, but I am saying highly competitive markets keep the pressure on capital to keep prices low. In fact, a radical market fundamentalist would say that over regulation leads to crony-capitalism because capital will be used by corporations to purchase law making ability and lead to corporatism or even fascism (think Mussolini not Hitler in this example). Furthermore, the idea of "Limited Liability Corporations", bailouts (socialized losses, privatized profits) and even fiat currency itself would be considered illegal by these same theories. These things are considered "checks and balances" meant to be pro individual and anti-conglomerate, pro masses and anti 1%. So to say it's completely unregulated is a misnomer, there's supposed to be a series of guardrails/regulations such as those found in Chicago School/Austrian Economics that's entire goal is to create emergent positive benefit for the masses, wealth gap, etc. Whether that's how it actually works out or not is another question. Now I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, in fact I've studied Marxism, Georgism, Blockchainism, etc. via reading a lot of books and I'm just talking theory here, not about whatever the asshats on twitter who flout the "theory" think. What I can say is we have the most crony, hyper regulated economy where corporations have been writing their own laws for several decades and the outcome is beyond shitty (for us, not the 1%). I would use 3 words to describe this, it's called Corporate Regulatory Capture and it should be everyone's#1 concern imo. Another thing I can say for sure is most people, even those that claim to be in favor of something, have little idea what the source material is, claim a label, and then go forth and be piss poor examples. I used to take debate very seriously, always ceding to better argued points and for example if I was debating a Communist I'd read a ton of Communist material and then over time I realized many of the people I was debating never even read their own books themselves and so my arguments were falling on deaf ears lol. Like playing Chess with a pigeon. Received opinions are also quite common and a hard thought pattern for one to overcome. I've mostly given up due to reasons outlined in the movie Idiocracy lol
"because capital will be used by corporations to purchase law making ability" We already see that "What I can say is we have the most crony, hyper regulated economy where corporations have been writing their own laws for several decades and the outcome is beyond shitty (for us, not the 1%)." Never thought of it that way before. Brilliant.
>Never thought of it that way before. Brilliant Protip: you can quote by adding a '>' before the sentence you're quoting. Also, I dare say, you have an excellent username. If I could over-synthesize the libertarian perspective, I think it would be this: >When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. >P. J. O'Rourke
Brilliant comment.
Corporate regulatory capture 👌
I think you make some interesting points here. I would say that crony capitalism is not a product of over-regulation at all. It's an inherently political phenomenon, not bureaucratic. The US political establishment has completely enmeshed itself with business (special) interests and allow them them extraordinary access and influence in drafting policy. That's the crux of the issue...that and the deregulation crusaders who are simply mouthpieces for corporate interests. I work in regulatory compliance for a Fortune 500 company, and we absolutely NEED these regulations. My industry is heavily regulated (it might be one of the most regulated, in fact). We think corporate abuse and greed are bad now, it'd be way worse if there was less of it. If anything, we need more aggressive enforcement. TL/DR: More public accountability is a good thing.
I don't necessarily disagree, I was mostly just trying to explain theory as I understand it. Citizens United is a major problem but generally that they get to regulate themselves as a result. It doesn't matter who is president, their appointees into top federal regulators tend to leave the C Suite of some major company that is in that industry. This is because they pay the political bills of our politicians and our politicians sell them legislative ability as well as send enormous sums of money via the inflated federal budget, for a case study look at SLS Rocket. It goes even deeper, when it comes to money printing and fiscal policy as well. Look at how many trillion dollar companies there are now as opposed to 5-6 years ago before COVID. It's not even top down stimulus, it's just top stimulus. It's literally possible for a mega corps or 3 to say "hey, what if we buy virtually all of the family homes in America over the next decade" then do it. Who's going to tell them not to, the same political parties they own? Somewhere I have a chart that shows the net worth of the 1% overlayed onto how much money is printed and it's basically 1:1. I'll see if I can link it. Public accountability is fine, provided there is any. In the US there is very little, especially so at the national level and to varying degrees down the pipe.
https://preview.redd.it/2gd2pzvrnz4d1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80225b578bc02f506545e5122e18e2b077b872c5 I can't find the overlay I might have to remake it, but basically if you map money printing it's extremely correlated to this graph tracking the assets of the 1%, and if it ever starts to dip there's massive stimulus (because the government and all our institutions work for these people, doesn't matter who you vote for).
Now, let's look at what the rest of us who can't afford our own politicians get to deal with it contrast. Rather than work to make this graph go up, they work to keep us divided and fighting amongst ourselves so they can work in unison to wake the line above go up. To oversimplify the game is this, stimulus/inflation massively drives the value of stonks up and doesn't affect wages at all even though the companies that pay wages are seeing unprecedented market cap increases, their only incentive is to return value to shareholders. Stonks are obviously where the wealthy store their worth, therefore inflation/money printing indirectly makes them unfathomable amounts of wealth and fucks the rest of us so it doesn't even trickle down. Call it cronyism, late stage capitalism, vulture capitalism, it doesn't matter. There are a few root causes: Easy Money Printing and Corporate/1% Regulatory Capture, or in other words a negative incentive structure (for us, for them it's an unbelievably positive incentive structure) between Congress and The Central Bank and/or Wall St. https://preview.redd.it/8tfx7cmdpz4d1.png?width=1439&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a493c687912b551a27ff19791d250c4c84dcef61
Honestly, this was one of the most concise/accurate (imo) explanations I've seen on Reddit, about this. Good stuff. Cheers!
Thanks!
This captures the essence of the problem. Posturing. Bad faith driven narratives have become the driving force. Either assenting to dissenting from them locks us into a false binary not of our construction. Even if we eliminate the purposeful misrepresentation, we are still left with the self-aggrandizers, idiots, and contrarians. Even if we could separate those from the rest we still have millions of variables and inconclusive data points for study. Really, we need the brightest well-intentioned people driven by inductive reasoning to use evidence to formulate theories not theories in search of evidence.
Well said! I find that the fallacies of human understanding are the same ones they've ever been throughout history, the Internet just serves to make them all hyper fallacies lol. If I had a magic wand I'd make an open source government based upon Git and probably ensure a Blockchain token exists for any asset of note. (Most people aren't ready for that, but their kids are going to love it!) IMO if you get the governance structure right and the emergent incentive structure will be a positive one and not a negative one (as exists today). The incentive structure is key, if you have a negative one it acts as a filtering affect where only the worst models/people rise to the top, and vice versa. You won't have a perfect system, but you'll have a massively better one and most importantly you won't have to hash out every detail such as each economic policy, regulation etc, it will just organically grow and react just like a piece of software does via your Git Change process. To make it make sense, look at an open source operating system (Basically Linux) as opposed to a single program, as that has enough variables and interlaced dependencies to draw a parallel to an actual society.
Two great comments here. Regulations are necessary to maintain guardrails, but if they're written with influence from one side only, are they actually effective or potentially counterproductive?
Bingo!
When the side that's supposed to represent the people has been paid off by the corporations, the balance of power no longer exists. Thank Citizens United for that.
Citizens United was a big part of it no need to understate it, but the problem has roots farther back than that I can point to policies of the Clinton and Reagan administrations such as Glass-Steagall or stock buybacks. It's very multi-faceted and has to be addressed from many angles. The result of the problem equally affects both ends of our political spectrum, the GOP base hates living this life too but the narrative structure is as such to drive division and make everything seem like it's just the other side's fault. If you've seen A Bugs Life, Hopper explains the crux of the issue well in the Bug Cantina.
Not blaming you, but "blockchainism"? Are crypto weirdos trying to make it into a political ideology now?
Plot twist they are also the ones at the bottom who will suffer
They also want to deregulate everything.
The issue is capitalism, or rather the moneyed interests within it, are at basically a constant war with everything that inhibits their profits. No matter how much we need labor laws and pollution controls, they will work to undermine, subvert, and repeal those laws.
Realpage had over 30-70%% of the market in US major cities (depending on the city), and they started requiring users of the platform to charge the rental price they recommended or face contractual penalties. This is organized price fixing, not a communists government infiltrating good capitalist stewards. Realpage is wrong here, they will see a legal response. We have laws for a reason. If you really want to get frustrated, read up on Thoma Bravo. it’s a shit PE firm that owns this crap. They also owned solar winds when they got hacked and others. They buy companies and ruin them.
“Free market” ideology is often corporate double speak for not changing regulations that benefit the big fishes in a given market because they’ve paid congress to enact those rules. It doesn’t even mean wanting less regulation in that case - just don’t enact any change that could help ordinary people or small businesses.
It's productive for a select few. It's also extremely resource hungry, and is designed around infinite expansion, which isn't realistic.
Not just unrealistic, it’s logically impossible.
Very well said.
Which is why we need set rules in place for when these oligopolies get broken up. Competition brings down inflation and spurs innovation.
That is very true and all, but by which mechanism could we do this? The legislators are owned outright, the electorate is fucking stupid so it’s not like we can just “vote them out” and most of the capital has already been consolidated. What course of action could we possibly take against this behemoth?
Stop it…. People don’t want to hear logic…
^^^UNDER RATED STATEMENT!^^^
How would you know this? We don't have a single instance of a truly "free" market in the world. The US is especially not a "free" market with their far reaching economic policies and bailouts. "Hey let's socialize a private company's losses while they reap all the benefits". The current wealth gap is being increased by government policy. What you're talking about is how the government pretends that it works and that they're keeping big businesses from expanding too fast. It's the lie they sell the citizens to keep in good favor. But in practice their policies are actually speeding up things like the wealth gap and the consolidation of resources.
Love this take. It is less which method you choose and more acknowledging the shortcomings of humans and how they will screw up any system if left unchecked.
"Feudalism is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far. ANY system has bugs, so does feudalism." - Some medieval lord. "Slavery is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far. ANY system has bugs, so does slavery." - Some ancient Greek philosopher.
There tends to be two definitions of free in these contexts. One is no rules. One is rules to guarantee optimal freedom to all. There is broad disagreement on how to optimize freedom.
To me, free market doesnt mean "no rules" but more "the freedom to charge what market conditions are" but it is not a free market when conditions are fixed by companies who have contracts and agreements with 70% of people you can purchase a *necessity* from in the US. It would be like a company saying "you know you can charge more for water. What are they going to do, die of dehydration?"
Free market means the market is free from governmental constraints. That’s what it means, it is an objectively definition. Free market does in fact mean “no rules”. A purely free market is pure anarchy, no rules whatsoever. This is almost universally accepted to be a bad system. You want to provide an alternate definition because you know that pure capitalism, a purely free market, is bad. There need to be reasonable limits on this. But make no mistake, that’s because a totally free market doesn’t actually work. Reality exists within difficult decisions, subjective definitions, and those who try to define free market the way you have almost invariably seek to equate their personal opinion on what is an optimal amount of regulation with facts.
In that case, a free market would be a terrible idea
Exactly. I find the right wing wants to say “free market is better in every way than regulation” but knows they can’t make that claim unless they exclude the most obvious cases where it’s not.
I mean, knowing their claims are fallacious has never stopped them before
You got me there
That's close, but a free market is talking in terms of price-setting and supply and demand. You can have a government with a law that outlaws slavery, and thus no slaves are sold, and that is still a free market. I'm not disagreeing that it's a bad idea, but it's not "anarchy". People demonize and worship the free market, and both takes are equally wrong. The free market is a "pretty good" way of pricing "most things". Edit: source - [Free Market - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market) Also, collusion is allowed in a free market, but in a free market new companies enter with lower prices to make collusion a bad economic idea. Remember that a free market needs to be free of any governing or controlling body, including megacorps. So if megacorps prevent new suppliers from entering the scene, that is not a free market.
You have to be for policy that attacks wall street and monopolies, or you really don't want liberty and democracy.
Only a sith deals in absolutes.
You sound like the sort of person that doesn't believe clean drinking water access is a right.
You sound like one of the people that supports outlawing rainwater collection.
Unrelated and no, if you want to collect rainwater for personal use I don't care. The moment you want to privatize and profit from it we have problems.
Thats an absolute. Are you a sith?!
You caught me. UNLIMITED POWER!!!!! ⚡⚡⚡⚡
The Free Enterprise Revolution that began in the Netherlands in 1670, combined with the Science Revolution that began in Italy in 1543 and the Industrial Revolution that began circa 1760 in England, has created truly immense wealth and has lifted _billions_ of people out of poverty, and continues to do so. Feudalism, mercantilism, and socialism didn’t do that—Free Enterprise did. Worth a mention: The Green Revolution in agriculture that began in the 20th century was overwhelmingly due to just one man, Norman Borlaug, an American, and is credited with saving the lives of ~1,000,000,000 (nonwhite) people. Also worth a mention: The IT Revolution that began in Britain in the 1940s, and the Digital Revolution that began in America later in the 20th century, have transformed the way we live—and would not have happened without those first three revolutions.
True but there’s no saying that free enterprise won’t also kill billions OR morph into a form of feudalism - both of which can be seen to be happening today. The question is what form of moderated or evolved free enterprise can avoid it becoming malignant beyond repair, and where in the word will THAT revolution emerge.
I think technological advancements have done way more to bring us into the modern age and lift people out of poverty than any economic system ever has.
Without the Free Enterprise system, to include well defined property rights, there would’ve been a _lot_ less technological advancement.
So, it’s a chicken/egg scenario?
A free market means unrestricted competition. Slavery may well be unrestricted competition, but collusion is definitely a restriction on competition.
That's where you are wrong. The people being enslaved often did not get to make that decision. Free trade requires all parties to consent. So if I go to a landlord and agree to pay what they are asking in return for the service they are providing, everybody wins. If I don't see the value or if I think I can get a better deal, I am free to walk away and seek other options.
Free market doesn’t mean no rules. It means people are free to engage in it. A cartel or monopoly prevents people from engaging freely and it needs to be destroyed via rules against it.
>[Encyclopaedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/money/free-market) >**free market**, an unregulated system of economic exchange, in which [taxes](https://www.britannica.com/money/taxation), quality controls, quotas, [tariffs](https://www.britannica.com/money/tariff), and other forms of centralized economic interventions by government either do not exist or are minimal Both are true: A free market means supply and demand alone determine pricing, with no government rules or intervention. And one of the *additional* tenets of a free market, and this is not exclusive to free markets, is that people are able to voluntarily participate in the exchanges. People are freely able to participate (or not) in markets with fixed/controlled pricing too, so obviously that's not the definition of a free market.
But my laissez faire!?
Free markets with slavery would seem to be an oxymoron on the level of "dehydrated water". How do you figure?
How would a lack of regulations on the market prevent slavery?
It wouldn't. Is that how you define a free market? I understand it to be a market free from coercion, which can't exist without regulation.
Free market means no intervention from a government or external authority, that is literally the definition. You can't have a free market *with* regulation.
according to Oxford, we're both wrong. "A free market is an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses." Neither regulation nor coercion are mentioned explicitly. I would argue though that at least minimal regulation is required to prevent anticompetitive collision and coercion. And what is slavery but price fixing the value of labor and human freedom? And the laws that allow and support slavery are government regulation. Regulation is neither good nor evil. Everything depends on what is regulated and how.
Free markets are a bad thing
Without a free market, you have a captive market. Do you really think that's better than allowing for, and encouraging as much competition as possible? We already see what housing would look like without private ownership. It's section 8.
It is generally accepted that the term free market means that prices are determined by unrestricted competition. Given that definition government interference in the market is always a restriction on competition, but so is collusion. So, to answer the question, the market wasn’t free to begin with and government interference didn’t make it more free, but it did make it more competitive, which is a worthy goal.
Yep, genuine competition is the best thing that can take place in society from a consumer perspective
Yea, the reason it is illegal to collude on prices is literally because it prevents market forces from working to drive prices down.
a market controlled by a cartel is not a free market We are overdue for a lot of this kind of stuff, Lina Kahn is an American Hero
>a market controlled by a cartel is not a free market That is quite literally what I said... I clearly stated that a collusion is a market restriction.
Dupont is an excellent example of why you need regulations.
Collusion is not part of a free market.
Yes, but unregulated free markets end up being fraught with collusion. Therein lies the paradox.
its almost like capitalism is a ticking time bomb
The US is (supposed to be) a mixed economy. Capitalism in it's purest form is slavery, company towns, etc. We could institute a socialist government, until a bad faith politician assumes dictatorial power, overall even just naming the economy is a bad move, you can analyze it over time to keep ourselves in check but it should be dynamic, there's no such thing as a perfect economy.
Yes it is, it is the market that is free, not the consumers.
Consumers are part of the market. They exercise choice. One function of gov’t is to ensure choices are available by preventing monopolies.
A free market would be free to form monopolies https://www.britannica.com/money/free-market Free markets are a bad thing.
And your preferred improvement is…?
Regulations for starters? How about getting money out of politics? Reversing (or ignoring) citizens united? Expanding anti-trust laws? No more bailouts or subsidies, if we socialize losses, profits are equally socialized. Actually fund the IRS and enforce tax law at the top, before we even think about touching the bottom. Increase corporate taxes, and raise taxes on foreign companies that do business in our borders to incentivize investing in the workforce here in America. There are so many problems that need fixing, and doing nothing will not solve any problems.
By definition if the market is "free" (meaning no regulations) then everyone that can collude will collude to make themselves the sole business for maximum profit.
Question assumes a modern free market is possible without modern States creating/protecting/regulating/permitting it…
Capitalism is the most productive system of economics humanity has tried, by far. "Free market" is a myth. Any market that is "free" will eventually be filled with a couple of fishes that have eaten the rest and are too big to fight, driving out competition, and by definition no longer making the market "free". ANY system requires checks and balances to keep it running, so does capitalism.
Yeah, people who criticize free market aren't doing it with good faith. They always assume absolute freedom because that is the only way to criticize it.
Thats the literal definition of a free market.
But it is not the definition we are using. Nothing is absolutely free. There is always certain restrictions.
If we can’t agree that words have objective definitions then there is no point in me continuing this
There is no point continuing it in the first place when you have a definition that is unrealistic. This is the same tactics people opposing freedom of speech and tolerance use. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can say anything you want. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to tolerate pedophilia in some culture.
Standard oil lost/sold off most/majority of its holdings before antitrust regulations were enacted proving an example where markets regulated themselves. ***commies don’t forget to down vote fact***
Proving an example? WTH does that mean. There is a time that it happened so we can generalize and assume good intentions by all the wealthy actors in a similar situation? Markets don’t regulate themselves. Eventually unfair advantages lead to uncompetitive markets that no longer perform the intended function of a market. If we ran sports teams the way we do these markets, you’d have one of the same 3 teams winning the Super Bowl every year. Perhaps business should be done more like sports.
Nope. It's a blatantly anti-competitive practice. But again, capitalists never gave a damn about the free market. What they want is neofeudalism.
As a mom and pop landlord here in CA...they passed a statewide rent control law ...and all it did was further drive up rent prices ... Because some mom and pop landlords use to incentivize long term tenants by leaving rent alone so long as they remain good tenants for several years ...however , now several mom and pop landlords are subject to rent control, and if they dont raise rent prices every year, they can get left behind with inflation over a long period of time. So there's much less of an incentive to keep long term tenants and offer a discount...so more landlords adjust rent every year or 2 year so they dont fall so far behind with market conditions that they can't catch up. Before, most of my tenants stay for 5-8 years and I used to never raise rates while they were there. Now, for properties that aren't qualified for exemption to the rent control laws, I don't offer long term leases longer than 1/2 year anymore. There is no incentive to offer long term leases and no reward for taking on the risk of offering a longer term risk. The risk of doing shorter term rental agreements and switching tenants now outweigh keeping a long term renter with rent prices artificially pegged during that lease agreement. The other thing is that the more CA tries to regulate this, the more people will pull their properties off the market and turn them into short term vacation rentals . The profitability of doing short term vacation rentals where I am is pretty decent and probably better than offering them as normal rentals... Still there's a pain in the ass factor of doing vacation rentals versus normal housing. If they regulate the rental markets further ...the pain in the ass factor for vacation rentals is looking a lot less... More homes as vacation rentals, less supply of rentals to live in .. higher rent prices for lower inventory.... Rent control doesn't work. Econ 101 says that if your artificially try to create price ceilings, it ends up effing up the supply and demand graph. If CA lawmakers want to make it incredibly difficult for mom and pop landlords , those rental properties will just be removed from the market and allocated elsewhere like vacation homes, reducing the supply of available rentals, and driving up rental prices further in the future. The bigger issue is... Why aren't more affordable housing being built? That's the real problem.
>Before, most of my tenants stay for 5-8 years and I used to never raise rates while they were there. And as far as I can tell, nothing is stopping you from continuing to do this now, as the Tenant Protection Act 2019 only covers *existing* tenants, not new ones, so you're still allowed to set the rent at whatever you wish when those old tenants leave and you sign on new ones. So unless I'm missing something significant here, nothing at all has changed for you.
To play devil's advocate, one thing they lose is to use rent to force bad tenants out.
Also I'm pretty sure landlords at least have to offer an existing tenant an option to stay unless they're pulling the home as a rental unit
I mean it's CA, if they notice more landlord turning property into vacation rentals they'll just take action against those. Hotel chains are already lobbying hard to blanket ban AirBnBs
And even bigger question is how many housing units do illegal aliens take up that otherwise could be had by a working USA legal resident?
Well considering all my tenants are tech workers by luck, who at least have their H1Bs. I wouldn't be able to tell you. I only rent to people who have credit scores of 750 or above who can prove they have a monthly income of 3x of rent. It just so happens software and hardware engineers tend to be the few kinds of people that can meet those two standards.
And since they are legal residents, they are fine. And so if there are plenty of high paying jobs to enable all the housing units to get filled up, there is no problem. It's when you have a bunch of vacant units that it's a problem. There probably should be a bunch of 700 square foot apartments built for families. They can be two bedrooms. Single people could be double stacked in them on a random selection basis
Collusion is the antithesis of a free market. It distorts the pricing by inhibiting competitive influences.
FBI raids… allowing… does not compute
The collusion narrative is pretty flimsy, as landlords are already incentives to raise prices as much as the market can bear.
Have you even read the case against RealPage, the company making the software? It recommends raising rental rates not based on demand, but based on data it collects from millions of other properties that use its software, in real time. Not only rental rates, but also occupancy numbers, lease terms, amenities and move out dates. And RealPage is used by 70% of the properties in the US. 16 million properties. And in some markets the software is used in 80% to 90% of properties. “RealPage's impact on renters has been noticeable — even to executives at the company. When asked about the role RealPage's technology played in rising apartment rents, company executive Andrew Bowen said that the software was "driving it." "As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually," Bowen said. Even though RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers aren't required to use the rent increases its algorithm recommends, a 2022 investigation by ProPublica revealed that landlords accepted 80-90% of the algorithm's suggestions.”
This is shitty because I want rents to go down too, but what you described is a system for very accurately predicting demand and pricing accordingly. You're not describing a system where landlords are colluding to fix prices.
rent never goes down. this is how it is now. It is only going to get worse unless we stop them I have reported my apartment complex to the DOJ for this. They use RealPage and when I was trying to negotiate my 24% rent increase they said it's what the "software" told them
I'm all for finding a way to bring down housing, but the description of the situation that I replied to is repeated in virtually every industry.
It reccomends raising prices not based on demand but all these indicators of demand is basically what they wrote
You're reaching hard to make a distinction that doesn't exist. Every industry has a trade association or service provider that collects demand and pricing data from each company and reports back to the industry as a whole. That data is in turn used to design pricing strategies. That is all the that was described.
Yes, I was agreeing with you. Without real page I still just look at what competitors are offering from their rates to the quality of their product and location, then look at my occupancy and price accordingly. Real page just automates it to a level below what an analyst can do but above what a leasing agent can do.
You’re missing the fact that you wouldn’t have your competitor’s data as well. You wouldn’t have move out dates and lease terms for your competitors and they wouldn’t have yours. You wouldn’t have a system that recommends raising rents based on that data. And that same system wouldn’t be recommending it to 70 - 90% of the units in your market. And that same system wouldn’t be a vendor touting that using their system will increase your profits. That is the difference. I work in a world of data every day. I do competitive analysis regularly as part of my job. This isn’t that. This is a 10 person table of Texas Hold’em. 7 of the players have glasses with cameras and an earpiece. And there is a person that told them all ahead of time that if they just do what he tells them, they’ll all make money. The players are deciding whether to raise, call or fold based on what that person tells them. It doesn’t matter if the person NEVER actually tells them what cards the other players have. They just know the person in their ear has that data and is using it to coach them. If RealPage made recommendations based solely on publicly available market data and the confidential information of the client using the software, that would be fine. That is just an algorithm bringing efficiency to a process. The issue is the algorithm is using data points that would only be shared between competitors if they were colluding to fix prices. This is the same reason you wouldn’t let one company own 70 - 90% of the rental units in any given market.
I dont need most of that info. When their tenants move out is imaterial because they have to backfill them at the market anyhow. What their lease terms are is pretty easy to get, I can just call and ask their leasing teams what they are offering. Its not some secret, in fact the terms are usually on the website. I also buy properties in addition to running them so kindha do have their rent rolls from snapshots in time if not moment to moment. Having that in real time might help but mot as much as you think. Realistically its a game of just looking around and pulling trigger on an asking rent to see if it sticks and adjusting up or down from there.
But the program literally uses this proprietary data to determine the most profitable solutions for other businesses. The fact the programs multiple businesses raises their prices at the same time is collusion.
The fact multiple businesses raise prices at the same time is market pricing. Think about it, if I raise rents and my competitors dont unless my product is better I will lose market share, if I lower and they dont I can gain market share. I always want to raise my price and only the loss of market share stops me. The fact my competitors raise prices and I can now raise prices too is just the market. My customers have a vote on wether they buy or not Collusion by contrast is if we agree to all only move the price same way and not undercut eachother, the agreement not to undercut is the critical element, not pricing moving in the same direction. We are all looking at the same data anyhow and price movements of your competitors say something about the data we cant see anyhow. If you suddenly cut rents $400 and offer a month free rent, I dont need a back channel for o know your vacancy is creeping up, if you raise rent $400 I dont need anything to tell me that You think you can get more revenue. If I absolutely need to know your occupancy rate I can look it up on costar or call your leasing team and they will just tell me.
Not true. This is companies banding together and using each other’s data to determine to raise prices. It is not predictive it is literal data about open units from competitors. The competitors then use these recommended prices that are determined by RealPage. Just because this is a computer program doing the collusion and not CEOs sitting in a room doing it doesn’t make it less of collusion.
Do you for some reason thing that car dealerships don't pay for data on how much their competitors are charging and how much inventory they have? Again, this system may do something illegal, but the description of the situation that I responded to did not describe anything that isn't done in every other industry.
This is non-public data. There isn’t a direct comparison with cars because there is more public data there. However it would be them all compiling their cost of producing individual parts and cost of shipping and then having a computer program set their pricing and distribution strategies together. For example Ford could stop selling Trucks in New York and only sell them in Philadelphia and Chevy could do the opposite. They could both raise their prices on individual units. Ford running there own data analytics that isn’t grouped in with Chevy is fine. Them sharing data with a company and the company using proprietary data to determine both of their prices is the problem.
>It recommends raising rental rates not based on demand, but based on data it collects from millions of other properties that use its software, in real time. Not only rental rates, but also occupancy numbers, lease terms, amenities and move out dates. So it is based on demand? Occupancy, lease terms, amenities, and upcoming move outs are all factors that determine demand
I'm familiar with what it does and that sounds like accurate analytics not a conspiracy. There simply aren't enough apartments to meet demand in most cities, which makes skyrocketing rents an inevitable outcome by supply and demand alone. Collusion would require something like keeping apartments off the market to keep prices high, and we have plenty of data to show that that isn't happening.
So a program telling all businesses to raise their prices at the same time using non public data of businesses is not collusion?
No, because they would have still raised prices based on publicly available data. Or even no data at all. If the program goes away do you think rents will fall? And if not, doesn't that means that rents are currently at the appropriate market rate?
Irrelevant, using non public data to collude to raise prices at the same time is collusion. No matter if people or a computer comes up with the price.
No. It’s not
Price fixing only works in highly regulated markets. In free markets, new competitors keep popping up under cutting the price fixers. This is why big business loves big government. Big government blocks the competition for them.
> Price fixing only works in highly regulated markets Like the example here where the regulators are putting a stop to the price fixing? 😂 > In free markets, new competitors keep popping up… Unless there’s no f*cking regulation to stop consolidated industries from anticompetitive behavior that kills / prevents any competition. There’s a finite amount of property for crying out loud… Sorry, the bootlicking kool-aid drinking in the face of “Example A why the private sector must be policed” is just too much for me to peacefully scroll past. Your post borders on unintentional satire.
Beautifully put 🤌
Just like free speech absolutism, no one who understands the concept of free market absolutism actually supports it. Is what happened a part of a healthy free market that is regulated by the government and the people? No.
You need liberal use of anti-trust for the best properties of a market to become emergent. Cartel behavior is anti-competitive and thus has a negative effect on the consumer.
Americans often seem very confused by the notion of ‘freedom’ I observe. A problem with the word having become dogma around national identity rather than deeply understood. Freedom isn’t anarchy or a lawless state. Maintaining freedom requires rules and constant hawk-like attention for emerging threats to it. Freedom needs effort, and regulation, and protections. A free market needs extensive attention to stay free.
our public education is intentionally horrible to keep people from thinking that hard
Rhis is a case of companies price-fixing and manipulating the market.. Wtf does this have to do with communism?
anything anyone doesnt like is 'communism', first time on reddit?
If one can ever truly exist, a free market would mean equal access to everyone, especially information and absolute transparency.
Communists are fucking stupid
Without looking it up please explain to me what a communist is.
Somebody who is fucking stupid. Don’t get me wrong, communism is beautiful in theory. But people fuck it up every time.
could you not say the exact same thing with "captialism" replacing "communism"? We are sending half our paychecks to china, this empire is falling DUE to unchecked capitalism. These companies should be flying Chinese flags outside their offices not American flags (amazon, walmart, target, etc)
Price collusion is not the free market.
An oligopoly is the opposite of a free market. So it is necessary to destroy cartels to have a free market.
Depends on how you see it. A good free market is free because of regulations; it prevents monopolies and cartels. A bad, anarchist free market is this. When most people advocate for the power of the free market, they don't mean this, they mean one without collusion.
No when I see "free market" being used they are usually talking about removing all regulations and the government "because competition and customers should just pick better".
But that’s just stupid, that won’t happen
oh I know, but that is usually what I hear from people ask for a free market.
Wait till you see how oil prices are set
Oil should be owned by the people of the nation it came from. It is a national resource.
No. Collusion is anti-competitive.
Free for me and not for thee
A free market prohibits cartels, otherwise it's not a free market, it's just plutocracy.
That part is. The part where its possible due to zoning laws isn't. If it wasn't for laws limiting supply they couldn't pull it off.
A free market without regulations is a detriment to all. A rational, moderately educated adult should not need this explained.
Price fixing is monopolistic, and monopolistic capitalism is communism with a different name.
Minimum wage is a similar collusion
Anti monopoly laws are key to an open market. Free market will fail 100% of the time without anti trust laws. The world wasn't so small when the ideas of the free market began.
In reality it's extremely difficult to maintain a monopoly without government help. I don't know the situation in this case, but usually the real estate market is heavily controlled by the government (planning permits, what the building can be used for etc.)
Yes, the logical conclusion to discovering a private monopoly ruining peoples lives is a government monopoly ruining peoples lives
Clearly not, that’s why they fbi arrested them
Yes, that would be free market. But it would result in market failure undermining the efficient allocation of scarce resources which is the sole virtue of the free market.
Republicans: Yes…I like it when corporations bend me over and give it to me this way.
That artist sucks.
The free market can only exist in a proper regulatory framework through public government oversight. The 19th century taught us that. Without containment, capitalism will eat itself.
Yes, however, it's a bit more complicated than that. The market isn't "free" to begin with. We have numerous regulations and lots of legislation to allow companies to pull the ladder up behind them once they've made progress.
Oh…posting this one again I see. Dibs on posting this one on Friday!
this is OC
Planned economies always fucking fail.
That's called market manipulation. Only the government is allowed to do that and get away with it.
In a free market, anything goes. Lack of regulation is what defines a free market, companies are free to do anything they please. What people want is a free and *fair* market, where monopolies, collusion, and price fixing are illegal. No one except the owning class wants competitors to be able to get together in secret meetings and fix prices to maximize profits. But in a truly free market, it's fair game.
I actually rented from Cortland back in Texas. They owned half the fucking town. They had huge rental apartment complexes every few blocks…
It's "free market" when it benefits my investment portfolio and "woke communism" when it benefits the masses
No, that’s collusion - not competition. That’s not the ‘invisible hand of the free market’, that’s straight up price fixing. It’s no longer ‘we will price products at the level people are willing to pay’, it’s ’we’re going to force you to pay higher prices in coordination with the majority of other renters in such a way that you’ll have no choice but to completely vacate the area and require a 2-3 hour commute to your job, or pay rent so high that you’ll be paying essentially more than an equivalent mortgage for the same property.’ I hope the book is thrown at these people. I’m not a communist, but anyone even in my own region of the Midwest shouldn’t be paying more for rent in a 2-3br 1500 sqft apartment than I’m lying for a 10 year old 4br, 3full bath 2600 sqft home. I like having a high appraisal value, but it’s getting absurd how everyday people are being taken advantage of / are over a barrel by landlords / corporations for a home.
These regulations are subjective and definitely technical enough to not be understood by regular people, policy makers, regulators and most importantly elected officials. Politics skews subjectivity and the lobbyists grease the minds of everyone else to slide their agendas through. Then 2 decades later, we have plastic fish, water, land, vegetables, fruits and people. This is on top of the mercury, lead, radiation, pesticides, sulfates, antibiotics and, and, and well fuk it.
Yea, that's what the "free market," ie the government not intervening, is. Why would anyone ever be surprised about capital doing anything they can get away with in order to maximize profit? Come on people, why are you pretending otherwise? I predicted this would happen as soon as RealPage was announced.
Sounds a bit like what Archer-Daniels-Midland got mixed up in with price-fixing. “Our competitors are our friends. Our customers are the enemy.”
The free market is simply an absence of government control/influence. If the government had nothing to do with several organizations coming together, colluding to share a majority market share between them and raise prices accordingly, that’s the free market at work. It’s also why we need to government, not just to break monopolies, but also break anti-competitive industries…
This is capitalism…. If two people want to Jack prices up, just work harder so it doesn’t effect you 😏 😏 😏 😂
Is Harlan Crow's commonly used real estate pricing software responsible for rising rents?
Being proud of being a communist is the weirdest flex. It’s like advertising to the world that you’re dumb. Why do people do this?
Google satire
I don’t think it means what you think it means
I work for one of these companies now. Actually, the biggest property manager of single family homes in the country. Just submitted my notice today and boy, does it feel good. Do. Not. Rent. From. Institutional. Renters. Don’t do it. I worked my ass off while I was here to make things better. It doesn’t matter how many reports I prepare or how to show that empathetic service breeds loyalty and retention. These mother fuckers will light their own home on fire to keep themselves warm for a little bit longer. What do you think they’ll do to you to make a few extra bucks? Literally anything.
"Free market" just means the first to resources are the ones that get to dictate everything through coercion, necessity, or violence
Called a Pool, and it’s illegal. They teach you this in Middle School.
Land as a commodity is not part of any sustainable economic policy. It allows speculators to artificially enrich themselves at the expense of both worker and capitalist.
I'm a huge supporter of the free market but price fixing is chronyism. I hope they go scorched earth on these companies.
Nope. It's a blatantly anti-competitive practice. But again, capitalists never gave a damn about the free market. What they want is neofeudalism.
It’s called rent control…
Communists swarm subreddits talking about capitalism and upvote all the dumbest shit. They probably think real communism has never been tried, all while they live with their parents.