zlacker

Why are people always championing Singapore as a paragon of free markets while nearly all its residents live in government provided housing

>>wahnfr+(OP)
Given the numerous housing crisis's all over the world, are you sure that the free market is best positioned to provide housing?

>>fragme+B5
Not at all. I'm curious about those who seek to import Singapore's authoritarian climate while praising its free market and rebuking social welfare policies at home

>>fragme+B5
The "housing crisis" all over the world is not really a housing crisis per se. The problem is not with the cost of building more shelter. It's a crisis of land values (they aren't making any more of it, so the free market cannot "provide" it in any real sense) and misguided government regulation, viz. zoning (that has nothing to do with the free market). If you want to improve free market dynamics in the housing sector, get rid of Prop 13 and put a higher property tax on urban land values (that are seeing most of the actual "crisis") while untaxing the built structures. Then local governments will be incented to provide the best living arrangements, since these will directly translate into higher tax revenues.

>>wahnfr+(OP)
Your (likely rhetorical) question presumes that a nation which is devoted to free markets would require housing to be distributed via free markets, but that's not necessarily true. In fact I'd say there's a lot of evidence built up now that the free market is in fact, not actually that great at distributing property, because necessarily to engage with a market, one must have money, and everyone needs a home, but not everyone has money.

Personally in my ideal world, we would distribute life's essentials in such a way as to be free at point of use, and then leave markets to handle things they're actually good at, like televisions and such.

>>wahnfr+(OP)
You're assuming that US federal/states do not also subsidize housing.

They are a "a paragon of free markets" because their social safeties actually work. Housing probably isn't a stock to hoard like in the US, nor owned by private equity to treat as a business. so you can focus on more than just staying alive and do actual work/passions.

>>wahnfr+r7
As pointed out above, we in the US incarcerate way more people as a percentage of the population than Singapore. Singapore's Police don't have qualified immunity making them above the law. Not sure what qualifies more as 'authoritarian' but I'd go with the country that imprisons more people and whose Police are immune from consequences.

>>zozbot+68
It’s a “housing crisis” in the very straightforward sense that a lot of people need a house and don’t have one. Your comment is like saying “this ‘famine’ is not really a famine per se, as the problem is not with the cost of growing more food, …”

>>fragme+B5
Typically building housing is illegal without tons of difficult to impossible permits.

That makes it very far from a free market, even if the preexisting housing units are distributed on a fairly free market to the growing population.