Comment by benreesman

I didn’t make my point either clearly or well and your scrutiny is merited.

I also know nothing about living or real estate in Chicago, which is by any measure a “high COL” area. I meant “the Bay and NYC” which I know a little better.

The phenomenon you describe is real in those two places: home owners try to restrict high-density construction, presumably to artificially limit supply. This seems to be more effective in Palo Alto than in Downtown Brooklyn, where high rise condo buildings go up practically every other week despite lobbying, but the effect is conspicuous in either case.

NYC is the more striking case by pick your study of available housing going up in a year, flat seekers trending steady or down, and prices spiking all at once.

But even in your given example: a homeowner pulling some NIMBY kick flip to fuck with black people or line their own pockets or both is by any measure a “market participant”. Manipulating the situation via side-channel to prevent actual functioning markets is what I was talking about whether one is BlackRock or the representative of a podunk HOA.

The meme that needs to die is that markets work absent referees that make rent-seeking unprofitable. This forum is hosted by an enterprise that began with the noblest of intentions and is now by far the most dangerous clique of insiders to get on the wrong side of in this line of work. It’s a selling point that on BookFace, your first several hundred SaaS customers are in the bag. Far from tearing down credentialism and old boys clubs, which is a grand vision requiring a grand strategy, it turns out that the end state was to stuff a monumental vision into a tiny, tinker-toy strategy as old as clay tablets: reshuffle the local oligarchy in my favor.

I hear all the time that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” in the same breath as some faux-Reaganism: “government isn’t the solution to our problems, government is the problem”.

The former sounds like how to get a decent pair of shoes in East Berlin in the 1970s, the latter sounds like someone who is on the take.

Capitalism sounds dope: I hope I live to see it.