zlacker

Given the numerous housing crisis's all over the world, are you sure that the free market is best positioned to provide housing?

>>fragme+(OP)
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+(OP)
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+Q1
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+v2
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+(OP)
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.