Terthna
Professional Lurker
That you think anarcho capitalists understand economics just proves you do not; not that this is a surprise, mind you. I learned a long time ago not to believe anything you have to say about the subject.
Business & Finance BlackRock attempting to monopolize housing
- Thread starter Bassoe
- Start date
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Libertarians tend to bluescreen whenever you bring up stuff like zoning regulations and regulatory capture. They basically get their tails caught between "Regulation Bad" and "Business Good" and can't deal with it when you point out that businesses create regulations to protect their interests and smother competition.
Okay, so we can establish here that you aren't aware of the meaning of substitute goods, then. Houses in general are weak substitutes. Rentals and owned homes are substitutes at all, they aren't even in the same phylum, so to speak, given that one's a good and one's a service.
It's easy to prove they aren't substitutes just by looking at price indices. Here's a fairly traditional example of Substitute Good demand curves, precious metals that are used as a hedge in investing.
They aren't identical, of course, but you see the same general broad trends across all four metals as the economy shifts. Substitute goods tend to have similar price curves over time, since a change in one causes substitution and moves demand, and thus drives price change in the other. How do rent and home prices link up?
They don't. They aren't substitutable for each other. Homes require either enormous cash up front or qualification for a mortgage, while Rentals require background checks and references, hence many renters are unable to buy a home while many homeowners can't pass the background checks for a rental, making substitution impossible.
source
You're the only one who keeps claiming there's a big conspiracy. The rest of us are just noting that some businesses are acting as businesses do, and that we've seen this behavior pattern from these same businesses before and it didn't end well.
Positive claim, present evidence or retract.
Positive claim, present evidence or retract.
History Learner
Well-known member
It’s the world’s largest asset manager which, if it was compared to annual GDP statistics, it would be the 4th largest economy in the world.
... Examples outside of just insults please?
Again, you are the one with the overarching positive claim. It's up to you.
You, a few pages ago:
... Followed by no evidence for any company/corporate lobbyist lobbying for more housing regulation. Oh, and this:
With still no evidence that BlackRock is funding lobbys to to get additional zoning regulation.
No, I've claimed no conspiracy. It's a business acting like a business, on that we agree. I just don't see a problem with it.
People claiming a conspiracy:
That you think this, when regulatory capture is commonly cited on reason, the libertarian news source, shows how little you know of libertarianism:
Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Understand Regulatory Capture. That's a Problem for a Would-Be Regulator.
In my most recent Daily Beast column, I wrote that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the darling...
reason.com
Points For Honesty: Pool Contractors Want to be Licensed so They Can Charge Higher Prices
This is how regulatory capture works: Trade association would get majority control of new licensing board.
reason.com
when governments have power, regulatory capture happens. You seem to have an astonishing naïve idea about what a libertarian actually believes if you think they are happy about businesses lobbying to harm other businesses.
Many of the economic articles on Reason.com complain about how a company is benefiting because of being a special interest, and they constantly complain about restaurant zoning. The Institute for Justice (a basically libertarian version of what the ACLU should be) frequently sues on behalf of people harmed by regulation that's run by businesses, especially occupational licensing. The Chicago School of Economics, a huge influence on Libertarians (and it had many libertarians as well), had Stigler, who wrote a foundational paper on it so important that he got a Nobel Prize for his work on that (among other things).
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
You're the one who decided to use a different-than-normal definition of lobbyist, and I agreed not to quibble about grammar on the matter so the ball's in your court now. Your complete refusal to back up any of your claims and attempts to weasel out of providing the slightest bit of evidence speaks volumes. You made the positive claim that BlackRock is building more housing, prove it or retract.
The funny thing here is, you not only shot yourself in the foot you blew your entire leg off already on this point. With this specific statement:
Which, amusingly, absolves me of proving they're going to bid for more regulation, because by your own claims the city will do it for them, so BlackRock doesn't need to lobby for more regulation.
So gonna back up any of your own claims any time soon or just keep proving mine correct?
You accused me of claiming a conspiracy theory, that post doesn't appear to have my username on it. And I don't see any wild conspiracy theories in Bassoe's post either, he's posited facts in evidence even you agreed to, that they're hedging against inflation, that they paid far above market price, and that they are competing in the housing market on a level that private owners can't. At best you can accuse him of speculating as to their motives which is clearly unprovable without mind-reading powers but hardly wild conspiracy theory material, especially as he backed by facts already in evidence.
Put up proof or retract your own statement (and particularly your personal attack on me).
And yet you still can't provide proof for a single one of your assertions somehow and have to keep insisting everybody else has to prove everything but never you.That you think this, when regulatory capture is commonly cited on reason, the libertarian news source, shows how little you know of libertarianism:
Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Understand Regulatory Capture. That's a Problem for a Would-Be Regulator.
In my most recent Daily Beast column, I wrote that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the darling...And I could go on and on. This is well understood by libertarians. Not only well understood, but one of libertarians favorite points about why governments should have less power:Points For Honesty: Pool Contractors Want to be Licensed so They Can Charge Higher Prices
This is how regulatory capture works: Trade association would get majority control of new licensing board.
when governments have power, regulatory capture happens. You seem to have an astonishing naïve idea about what a libertarian actually believes if you think they are happy about businesses lobbying to harm other businesses.
Many of the economic articles on Reason.com complain about how a company is benefiting because of being a special interest, and they constantly complain about restaurant zoning. The Institute for Justice (a basically libertarian version of what the ACLU should be) frequently sues on behalf of people harmed by regulation that's run by businesses, especially occupational licensing. The Chicago School of Economics, a huge influence on Libertarians (and it had many libertarians as well), had Stigler, who wrote a foundational paper on it so important that he got a Nobel Prize for his work on that (among other things).
You are the one who's claimed the massive overpayment is time-based, and that it's generating new home construction, prove or retract, don't try to weasel out of it by changing the subject, nobody else spoke on that matter, it's purely a claim of your own origination.
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Terthna
Professional Lurker
Of what? The fact that anarcho capitalists don't understand economics, despite your claims to the contrary? Or that you, specifically, don't understand the subject? Because if it's the latter, I can just cite your rather embarrassing ongoing argument with Bear Ribs in this thread, and call it a day; because honestly? That man is taking you to school; even if he is being a jerk about it.
Anarcho capitalists are nothing more than Utopian ideologues who lack even a basic understanding of what the "Free Market" actually entails; or that the government is not the only entity than can, and do, impose restrictions on one's ability to engage in commerce. You seem to have a lot of misconceptions; not the least of which being that people and the economy are somehow separate entities, and that one can be considered an expert authority on one without knowing anything about the other. If you don't understand people, you don't understand economics; because they're the ones buying and selling everything.
I also want to point out that Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist who attempted to shoot and kill Andy Warhol, is highly respected within feminists circles and considered one of the founders of modern feminist theory. I want to point that out because I hold just as much reverence for her work as I do for the "foundations of AnCap economist theorizing"; In that I thoroughly reject your attempt at appealing to authority.
Robovski
Well-known member
Part of me wonders if this is a way of making paper profits by inflating property value. See if the comparable sales on house prices in the area are up, the real value of the property is increased, at least temporarily. So, bear with me here as I'm thinking through this idea as I type, but basically if I have a portfolio of property in a market and I want to inflate the value of that property and have basically unlimited money, I could start buying up all the property that became available at a high price. These high offers become accepted and eventually become sales increasing the relative value of my portfolio of other properties. Now if other people are trying to buy in this market, all the better! They will have to make high offers to even be considered, and likely still won't be accepted because I can offer cash while they likely need financing. This makes it seem the market is "hot" further driving up my portfolio's value as well as all the other property in the area. This will entice some to sell and make more supply, but since I have all the money I need I can just buy those too and those sales continue driving up the price of my increasing portfolio of assets. There may be no real endgame, this may be just this cycle of expansion and short term gains driven in part by the illusion of a "safe" place to shelter money in real-world assets. I don't know. It feels kind of like cornering the silver market in a way, but on a more local scale and with houses.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
I do want to talk about this one a bit more because it's a great example of what I mean by Libertarians short-circuiting when you bring up regulatory capture and zoning.That you think this, when regulatory capture is commonly cited on reason, the libertarian news source, shows how little you know of libertarianism:
Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Understand Regulatory Capture. That's a Problem for a Would-Be Regulator.
In my most recent Daily Beast column, I wrote that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the darling...And I could go on and on. This is well understood by libertarians. Not only well understood, but one of libertarians favorite points about why governments should have less power:Points For Honesty: Pool Contractors Want to be Licensed so They Can Charge Higher Prices
This is how regulatory capture works: Trade association would get majority control of new licensing board.
when governments have power, regulatory capture happens. You seem to have an astonishing naïve idea about what a libertarian actually believes if you think they are happy about businesses lobbying to harm other businesses.
Many of the economic articles on Reason.com complain about how a company is benefiting because of being a special interest, and they constantly complain about restaurant zoning. The Institute for Justice (a basically libertarian version of what the ACLU should be) frequently sues on behalf of people harmed by regulation that's run by businesses, especially occupational licensing. The Chicago School of Economics, a huge influence on Libertarians (and it had many libertarians as well), had Stigler, who wrote a foundational paper on it so important that he got a Nobel Prize for his work on that (among other things).
You (and your sources) cannot bring themselves to blame businesses even though they admit it's something businesses are actively doing, so you switch to claiming it's all the government's fault. It's remarkably similar to a die-hard communist explaining that whatever stupid system just collapsed again somehow only fell apart because of Capitalists (or sometimes Jews) no matter what the collapse was, it was never their fault and because of capitalists, that wasn't real communism anyway. No matter what it's never the business's fault and always the government's. But what does your own link say? Pool Contractors Want to be Licensed so They Can Charge Higher Prices. Not the overly-powerful government deciding it wants to start regulating, it's the businesses seeking to create more regulation to give themselves an advantage.
But how would a weak government stop Pool Contractors wanting to be licensed? They couldn't, the government being weaker wouldn't stop Pool Contractors from wanting and lobbying for regulations to get an advantage, unless said government was completely incapable of passing and enforcing regulations at, all which leads straight to, as @Terthna pointed out, Anarcho-Capitalists.
We saw an era of powerful business and weak government. It was the gilded age and it wasn't pretty.
The problem with this idea is that it operates on the assumption the house Blackrock buys will eventually end up back in the market once inflation is under control.
Blackrock won't be selling those properties unless they somehow end up in bankruptcy court, and even then they will probably be bailed out. Those houses will likely never be up for purchase again, and will remain rental properties under Blackrock in perpetuity.
They'll get bailed out. They're too big to fail.
They're taking a "risk," that is backed by our tax dollars.
So no real risk involved because our money will save them.
They are using our tax dollars to play us.
Robovski
Well-known member
Really, the point where you either run out of property to buy or money to buy with is like a future problem, one for a later quarter. Right now they are making sweet paper profits and that asset value "growth" will earn nice bonuses and possibly you can sell this inflated portfolio (or slices of it) off and once the buying pressure is over, yeah, the price falls but again, that's a future problem that might happen to someone else.
An opinion piece?
Terthna
Professional Lurker
It's all opinion pieces these days; at least they're not trying to pretend this one isn't.
I mean, your argument amount why Libertarians and Communists weren't two sides of the same coin convinced me and at least one other person that you and the libertarians are basically communists, just with different preferred methods but trying to get to the same place.
So, that was more or less the tread where I lost my residual respect for Libertarianism as any sort of serious philosophy or effective friend of freedom. That would be were I personally stopped treating you as a serious person.
You're the person who posted libertarianism as the handmaiden to socialism, claiming repeated things about libertarianism that aren't actually true, and showed a lack of understanding of the NAP.
Massive overpayment being timebased is a pretty easy deduction. BlackRock is a business which wants to make money. They aren't looking to sell Real Estate, but acquire it, so some sort of pump and dump isn't a viable reason. So what does overpaying get you? Certainty and speed, and given that BlackRock is buying more than one place and is using them to rent, I doubt they just fell in love with one house, hence speed is what they want.
Second, the entire concept of investment is time based: some money now traded for more money later. So thinking that BlackRock, who's constantly complaining about inflation, is investing in inflation proof assets ASAP seems like pretty solid reasoning to me. Obviously, the only thing that can really disprove a pump and dump is time, but I don't see that as likely.
No, it doesn't. You claimed BlackRock was going to lobby for housing regulation, not about whether it existed or not.
And this has to be the cherry on top of everything here. It's laughably blind of you, and just shows how little of libertarianism you know.
You know what we did at the last Libertarian Party of Alabama meetup? Complained about private prisons, saying that they were generally worse than state ones. And regulatory capture is something we complain about all the time, and though we focus blame on the government, we also put blame on the companies that do this.
Also, libertarians criticizing companies:
San Francisco Falafel Shop Owner Says Neighborhood Has Enough Falafel, Asks City to Block Rival Falafel Shop Next Door
A San Francisco restaurateur is eager to stop a competitor from opening up down the street. The city's byzantine permitting…
reason.com
Now Microsoft Supports an American GDPR. Which Tech Giant Wouldn’t?
Microsoft would like to wish the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a very happy birthday. In fact, now that Europe's…
reason.com
See, companies can choose not to be dicks, we'd like that. But that's not a long term solution, as it's advantageous to for companies to screw each other around using the government, by doing zoning shenanigans or something else. So the companies will eventually go back to being dicks to each other if stupid government regulations are available to weaponize. The solution, as libertarians see it, is to remove regulatory capture as an option by removing the ability to regulate things.
And here's the thing: You, in your absolute fucking blindness, say both this:
Then cite an article saying this:
Which is about pool contractors are screwing each other over (or more accurately, screwing future contractors over). Yes, the focus is on government, as getting them away is the only long term solution. But you apparently also barely read it. It's all about how Caniglia, the head of a private trade organization, is lobbying the government. It's not complimentary about Caniglia at all, except for him being an honest scumbag. It says it's a bad idea. Did you just miss the sarcasm?
I mean, the argument doesn't even begin to work. That's an article criticizing a private trade organization! And you claim it's about criticizing only the government?
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Or it could be predatory bidding, which is what everybody who actually understands economics thinks is happening and is worried about.
The issue here is they're paying 20% over the market. That's not the kind of overpayment that will be covered by mere inflation, especially if speed is a concern. If this was a 5% overpayment that might be the kind of thing we'd see, but 20%?
Let's just do a bit of math. The inflation rate hit 5% this year which is the worst in quite some time. But there are signs the economy is already recovering so it may not continue. Across the bad old stagflation years of the 1970s it was a bit worse averaging 7.1%.
But let's assume things are going to get worse instead of better, and even the 70s were a foregleam, we'll set the inflation rate for 7.5% for the next few years.
Assuming the inflation rate hits that massive level, and real estate doesn't change value, BlackRock will break even in about 2.4 years. So literally, if they just stuffed all their money in a mattress and tossed it in their break room it would take almost two and a half years to match the losses they're taking buying these houses as they are. That's insane for a business. And that's assuming an inflation rate half again higher than we have now, higher than even stagflation. Assume that the 5% we have now is going to hold, and you're looking at about 3.75 years for the money to decrease as much as they're losing today.
If inflation drops as many are expecting, they lose even more, never mind if they put it in some account that collects a bit of interest and blunts that loss even more, we're reaching towards losses that will take a decade to recoup at that point. So they can't be just hedging against inflation because they're losing far more than inflation would eat in any time frame a business would see as investing in time over money.
First off, that's a lie. This kind of bait-and-switch sophistry you're engaging in doesn't work on message boards where anybody can go and check what the messages posted were. The chain is thus:
From there I retracted my statement on lobbyists after you explained you were using a different definition than I was and I did go on to prove that BlackRock has a nice lobbying budget and has done business with companies that lobby for zoning laws (and that you don't understand how depreciation works). But you'll note there's a conspicuous absence of anybody claiming BlackRock is actively making zoning laws right this second, that's purely a strawman you set up. The actual positive claim was on your part, when you claimed that BlackRock can't be a problem because it will just cause more housebuilding, and we pointed out that zoning laws can futz with that, along with your claim that megabusinesses just don't lobby for zoning laws even when it's to their advantage, that's private homeowners and racists doing it.
And at this point it's a bit suggestive just how desperate you are not to provide any proof, you harp on how I haven't done enough but even if that's true (it isn't since what I've failed to prove are your strawmen, not my claims), it doesn't absolve you from proving your own points. "No, you first" is kindergartener tier debate. And even if we accept the kindergarten tier argument, you made the positive claim about who lobbies for zoning laws first and that this will just stimulate new construction regardless of zoning laws first and are still refusing to prove it pages later in favor of insisting "No, you first."
No, I didn't miss the sarcasm, I was mostly just trying to bait you into saying the sentences I boldfaced in the quote and making your position clearer in case any readers weren't sure.And this has to be the cherry on top of everything here. It's laughably blind of you, and just shows how little of libertarianism you know.
You know what we did at the last Libertarian Party of Alabama meetup? Complained about private prisons, saying that they were generally worse than state ones. And regulatory capture is something we complain about all the time, and though we focus blame on the government, we also put blame on the companies that do this.
Also, libertarians criticizing companies:
Or here:San Francisco Falafel Shop Owner Says Neighborhood Has Enough Falafel, Asks City to Block Rival Falafel Shop Next Door
A San Francisco restaurateur is eager to stop a competitor from opening up down the street. The city's byzantine permitting…
Now Microsoft Supports an American GDPR. Which Tech Giant Wouldn’t?
Microsoft would like to wish the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a very happy birthday. In fact, now that Europe's…
See, companies can choose not to be dicks, we'd like that. But that's not a long term solution, as it's advantageous to for companies to screw each other around using the government, by doing zoning shenanigans or something else. So the companies will eventually go back to being dicks to each other if stupid government regulations are available to weaponize. The solution, as libertarians see it, is to remove regulatory capture as an option by removing the ability to regulate things.
And here's the thing: You, in your absolute fucking blindness, say both this:
Then cite an article saying this:
Which is about pool contractors are screwing each other over (or more accurately, screwing future contractors over). Yes, the focus is on government, as getting them away is the only long term solution. But you apparently also barely read it. It's all about how Caniglia, the head of a private trade organization, is lobbying the government. It's not complimentary about Caniglia at all, except for him being an honest scumbag. It says it's a bad idea. Did you just miss the sarcasm?
I mean, the argument doesn't even begin to work. That's an article criticizing a private trade organization! And you claim it's about criticizing only the government?
Again, we already had an era where the government was too weak to regulate things, and it gave us the horrific gilded age. You and I have already tussled on that issue when I introduced the boards to phossy jaw and showed how it was solved in weeks by the government after unions, charities, and businesses couldn't fix it for decades of unimaginable horror.
Any sane person, looking at businesses infiltrating and corrupting the government, concludes that you need oversight, anti-corruption laws, and perhaps another agency doing internal affairs work over the first to prevent corruption. Libertarians conclude that an even weaker government that's less able to deal with corruption will fix it.
It's the same lunatic logic that leads the ultra-woke to conclude that if the police have issues, we should just defund the police so that there's no police to have issues anymore, rather than fix the issues or perhaps increase the budget of internal affairs to prosecute police causing issues. It's hypersimplistic reasoning that's been a proven failure through history.
TL;DR: You've admitted companies won't stop being dicks on their own because it is more profitable. Libertarian reasoning is that we should therefore remove the only thing that actually can prevent companies from being dicks. You're not able to figure out the flaw with that.
Yes, and your arguments in that thread convinced me that that was basically true. And yes, that wasn't real communism, and of course gulags aren't a logical necessity of the communist program. That was basically my sense of that argument with you. "Isn't this a logical outcome of the NAP?" "No, that's not what Libertarians intend to do! Unintended consequences are not my concern when its Libertarian unintended consequences!"
I would point out how Libertarianism interacted with reality, you would say that's not what Libertarian theory wants to happen or is trying to do, I would counter with how that was not what actually happened though, and your counter amounts to "that wasn't true liberalism/libertarianism", since those are very close to being the same thing.
Libertarians and Communists both eventually seem to push towards the liberation of the individual through the implementation of the all powerful super state. That's the logical end state for both mainstreams. Communism simply focuses on attacking the middle company, in practice, that the decisions of wages, benefits, work hours, and all that stuff is concentrated up from the independent companies into the all powerful unified state, because companies can't be trusted to do the right, enlightened, thing. Libertarianism, in practice, focuses its attacks on the middle governing institutions, that local communities can't enforce their morality, control who enters their community, how their communities are layed out, local customs of work, which requires, in practice, requires stripping those powers from the local church and government into the over lording enlightened all power unified State. So that all those little people don't vote for bad things.
This all powerful unified state, of course, in both world views, will eventually dissolve once all the bad things have been solved and we will all live in total stateless freedom.
And this right here just underlines how full of shit you are.
