Bezos isn’t going to miss a chance to dick people over. Because apparently he’s not rich enough yet.
Imagine what the world would be like if we treated sociopathy as the vividly destructive mental illness it so obviously is, rather than rewarding sociopaths with wealth and power.
What is his goal? More zeroes on a spreadsheet? Does he take satisfaction in being evil?
It’s likely the same as corporations.
Once they get so much money, they focus on quarterly profits. Then you compare percentage change from last quarter/month.
So he just doesn’t think about the billions he has banked.
Or the multimillions he makes a year
It’s a small percentage of change, and making 90 million after 100 million can be viewed as losing money this way, which makes these fucking psychopaths believe they need to be even shittier to make more money.
He’s not looking at his wealth, but at the rate he’s accumulating it, even though he literally can’t spend what he has now if he tried.
I could spend it on creating positive change in the world, but nah; better for the corporations to have it I’m sure.
This is more likely the case. I’m in operations management and it’s truly a game for us. Addicting like sports.
Another thing with corporations (afaik) is that they’re obligated to make more money quarter over quarter because of shareholders. Big number must go up at all costs.
Having the most wealth which leads to the most power is clearly his goal.
I would assume it’s just a compulsion.
Like a compulsive gambler constantly looking for the next thing to bet on, or a compulsive eater looking for the next thing to eat, he’s constantly looking for the next way to dick people over for profit.
I can understand a dick measuring contest of racing to commercial space travel. But rentals? That’s just for money and just for evil.
The richer he gets, the more it affirms his egotistical belief that he deserves it.
There’s many people that think the more money they make, the more social good it does. That making money is by definition good for everyone, society, etc.
a trillion is never enough
This is a fund for small investors to make money on the housing market, so probably not either of the above
This is a good business idea that just happens to only function because one of our systems is totally broken. The business itself is not the problem.
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I would add a progressively higher tax rate for each property beyond 2-3.
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HOAs should be banned too. They’re nominally constitutional under the first amendment but the restrictions they impose are not worth the price you pay in dues and they only serve to restrict the actual property owner from pursuing happiness. Everything the HOA could do is a function of local government, there’s no sane reason to pay both property taxes and HOA fees.
I don’t think they should be banned, but their power should be severely restricted.
My HOA is actually useful because they’ve banned short term rentals, put a cap on long term rentals, and cover the insurance. Granted, this is a place where walls are shared.
I also don’t see my local government ever taking care of these things under any realistic scenario.
You’ve got my vote.
I absolutely agree that we need to focus significant energy on a more stable housing (not homeowner) market.
However
Ban companies (including hedge funds, etc) from owning condos and houses. Apartment complexes are still fair game, because society needs high occupancy buildings which require more capital to build and run.
This just means fewer homes get built, period, adding to the problem. Id support restrictions on these groups purchasing homes specifically on the secondary market instead of an outright ban/strong Pigouvian tax.
Heavy penalties for selling in under 2 (as an example) years. This will also curb the short term rentals due to added risk, as well as curbing the flippers relisting at 30%+ (and I’ve seen 100%) markups after 3 months.
This will straight up just lead to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and then cheap speculation. This would be incredible dangerous, and you’d need to put a lot of protections in for homeowners that wouldn’t somehow be abused by flippers.
I’d also love to see protections baked in for people who purchase prior foreclosure/condemned properties and turn those into marketable/livable homes - that’s an increase in supply and we should encourage it
What we primarily need is to rip our zoning policies out by the root and encourage lots of building, as I’m sure you’d agree, but that’s a local problem. These changes at the federal level, once hammered out, could help a lot.
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Besides which, as someone else in the thread mentioned, perhaps a heavy capital gains tax in the first 2 years is more appropriate.
I didn’t see this, but I would definitely agree with this. Really simple lever to pull, something that can be offset if need be, and will definitely have the impact we’re looking for.
Realistically, building high density living won’t make a dent in housing prices, because new high density living in high demand areas will always be built as “luxury” condos that demand a high price
This frees up housing downstream, and the builders make money by building, not by the eventual value of the home.
This ties in with point 1 above and why I think it will cut production. Right now there is essentially 0 risk in serving as capital to build housing, and we should be piling on that to build as much as possible.
I think there is value provided when someone buys a dilapidated house and renovates it into something worthwhile to sell, even if it takes less than 2 years.
Or for me personally, I bought less than 2 years ago but the experience has given me a better idea of what I really want and I’d love to be able to sell to break even on this place and buy a different place that more fits my needs.
High short term capital gains taxes would help with the 2nd case (as I don’t intend to make money from owning this place briefly) but not the first.
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We still need rental properties, and small local landowners should be the priority.
Landlords aren’t necessary for rentals to exist. We built hundreds of thousands of government owned properties every year(!) the UK’s post-war period. Some of them have bad rep for looking like soviet blocks, but modern social flats look like any other now so that isn’t a valid complaint anymore (I have to point them out to friends, they otherwise wouldn’t have a clue). These can and have been very much used for temporary accommodation, like private rental units.
If you’re more of a market economy fan: we also state-funded housing cooperatives, democratically owned housing. Vienna is the popular example where they even have shared communal swimming pools, but 20% of Norway’s entire population lives in them and they’re still growing steadily despite not having gov. funding for decades. It’s not impossible to come up with a way to use these as rental units while retaining the democratic element (i.e. the renters “own” the flat while they rent it and “sell” it on when they move). In Norway, for example, you’re exempt from property transfer taxes when you sell a coop flat meaning there’s no tax friction if you want to move from one coop flat to another. Since the flat is never technically yours in a coop (only the share giving you the right to reside there) it just goes back to the coop when you move out, and they can handle renting it on to someone else (so you don’t need a slow bartering process to move out). Your rent can also straight up go towards a larger share in the property, so you’re not propping up some landlord, the only thing you’re really paying for is management of the coop like you would with a privately owned block of flats anyway (except the coop probably wouldn’t spend thousand on an Xmas tree).
If we’re going to be thinking about government regulation and law changes anyway, we may as well try more than just small ““ethical”” landlords. They may well be part of it in some limited way but let’s think beyond just that.
The worst got torn down after 20ish years.
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I’d argue that better urbanism is part and parcel of real estate reform. It would be much more difficult to entirely fuck up the housing market if we weren’t so utterly dependent on single family homes and there were more apartments being managed by small to mid-size firms.
I’d go a step further and say you can only rent out what you built. No buying existing housing in cheap areas to rent out.
If you want to be a landlord then you can pool your money with other people to actually create housing.
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Probably a controversial opinion but companies should not be able to own residential real estate at all, the reason most people cant get a house is because big companies are buying them up with limitless sums of money so they can rent them out infinitely, its not a free market when the big company will pay 20% over your entire life savings just to make sure you don’t own anything.
Not just limitless sums, companies are borrowing at very low interest rates and skyrocketing real estate prices with free money. Consequelty also causing mass inflation. So you’re paying for them owning houses.
Absolutely nothing controversial about the truth. In fact, I’d say it’s the exact opposite of controversial, at least in this case.
Controversial would be, “if the government won’t stop corporations from buying up single family homes, we should do it ourselves by any means necessary.” That’s controversial.
Controversial but true.
Not controversial at all. The world would be a better place if residential real estate “investment” didn’t exist.
Yeah no this isn’t controversial. Private landlords serve no purpose in society. You just pay them their mortgage for the privilege of living in their house. It’s ridiculous.
I agree in the case of single-family homes. Even in cases of 3 or 4 unit buildings. But how do you propose full-on complexes get run if not by a company? Very few individuals have the capital to buy a 50-unit building, and honestly, the US needs more dense urban housing to help reduce our impact on climate.
Easy. Non-profit co-ops, ideally as part of land trusts. They keep prices reasonable, give all community members a say, and the people who are lucky enough to live in them love them.
My opinion that would be just like asking who would own the streets you use to get to it.
We don’t wonder how that really expensive bridge gets owned… Sometimes it’s due to tolls but not always.
Cooperative-like legal structures and public housing are viable options.
Condos. (for non-Americans, this means “apartments except owner-occupied, or at least individually owned and then rented out”
I lived in a 200+ unit condo building. Owned my unit and some proportion of the common stuff and had voting rights and such in the HOA.
%100 no brainer
100% tax over a billion dollars.
Yeah all the $40k/yr MAGAts gonna haaaaaate that
Also tax stockpiled stock.
residential property should not be able to be bought by corporations, there is no benefit in allowing that to happen at all
It’s sure beneficial for the rich fucks behind these companies. Everyone else gets fucked.
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Then pray tell, how is private equity purchasing homes benefiting everyone else?
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Only if these corporations are actually required by regulation to make these houses available for rent, and at market-adequate rates. If a company is as cashed up as this one is likely to be, they’ll only rent to people who are willing to pay higher rents, and if there’s nobody who wants to rent a specific property, they’d rather leave it sitting vacant than lower the rent.
This isn’t hypothetical, it’s happening in practically every property market where wealthy investors are buying up housing stock.
Free market doesn’t exist without regulation
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Lol please tell me this comment is a joke.
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Please humble yourself and acknowledge that maybe you’re not an expert on the subject after reading “the basics of…” book about it. Just a thought.
Keep in mind that there are people who have dedicated their careers/lives to studying this stuff. Don’t disregard rebuttals just because your “basics of economics” or whatever book didn’t get there yet.
The real world just doesn’t work that way. But maybe if you went beyond Econ 100 level shit (or honestly, not even), you would have learned that.
Have you considered looking outside every now and then? What’s your answer to the discrepancy between any previous generation and modern day? https://www.investopedia.com/millennial-homeownership-still-lagging-behind-previous-generations-7510642 https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/millennials-still-underperforming-amid-gains-in-homeownership-rate https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/
It’s been bought by them for a long time now.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/603416/leading-apartment-owners-in-the-us-by-units-owned/
They used to just buy your mortgages, then they started cutting out the middle man.
People should not be able to buy residential building? /s
Sure there is. Just not to the regular person.
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Oh look… a capitalist shill using homeless people as a propaganda prop to do apologetics for the capitalists that caused all the homelessness.
Yawn.
The reason those houses are vacant is because companies bought them and are now pricing them out of the reach of most consumers
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Free market can work in fields where competition is plenty and entering is cheap.
When the amount of “players” in the market is so small they can collude to keep prices high it all falls apart.
No, free market never works, because all people cannot be experts on all subjects at all times.
Because of that, you end up with people dying as “collateral damage” while the free market “corrects itself.” Things like: “Well they should have done their research and known that brand of car has faulty brakes, and went to a different company instead, so it’s kind of their own fault.” Or, “this is just part of the process. Now everyone will know (lol right) that this company makes cars with faulty brakes and stop buying their products,” while completely ignoring that these are fucking people that are dying. That’s not ok.
And what if a company decides to hide things about their product from the public? What happens when that very product ends up giving people mesothelioma, but because that’s an illness that can take decades to manifest after exposure, there’s no clear causal link to the regular consumer. How does the free market correct that one? Or do we just let people suffer and die horrible deaths so that we can keep using the cheaper kind of insulation and save a few bucks?
Sorry but the loss of human lives is not ever acceptable “collateral damage”. Especially not when the loss is 100% unnecessary.
That’s not price regulation though, it’s more about quality control. I’m assuming there’s already laws in place that prevent glaringly faulty products from being sold (…unless the lobbyists start messing with stuff, but regulations wouldn’t really solve that either).
It was more about the “free market keeps prices low” argument. It does if we’re talking about easy-to-access markets, but it falls apart if the entry barrier is so high and the only parties can easily collude.
Do you know that real estate investment exists? A house is an asset, and unless the entire economy crashes (like in 2008), then owning homes (even if empty) will make you easy money. It’s an appreciating asset. I could be wrong, but I also believe it’s very good for laundering money.
Wealthier Chinese nationals have been doing this for years in the US and Canada (look at what Chinese real estate investment has done to the housing market in Vancouver, for example).
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So far they actually have nothing to say beyond “nuh uh you’re wrong”, which is effectively nothing at all. I’ve asked them to explain, we’ll see what we get.
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… Proceeds to let the crickets explain their position
Then what the fuck are you saying lol
They don’t know. Look at their comment above, the book they recommended to everyone was “the basics of economics” or something.
I really hope it’s a troll, because holy shit the narcissism it takes to read an Econ 100 level (if even that) book, and think you’re an expert on the subject. Wild.
It reads like a landlords son lol
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so, you think the reason that the homeless people don’t live in these homes is because… they wouldn’t be able to pay rich people money if they did?
how high do you have to be to make the statement “look I would love to not freeze to death, but only if I get to pay half my income to Amazon” seem reasonable?
A surplus of homes does not equal less homeless people. If their prices, either as rentals or for buying, is too high, it can actually increase the number of homeless people.
Vacant does not mean unowned.
Plus I’m pretty sure Amazon doesn’t want thousands of crackhead row houses in shit areas.
If there are 15 million vacant homes now, then a company made up of wealthy investors buying up heaps of them at the current inflated prices isn’t going to change anything. Those houses won’t become living spaces for poor and homeless people - they’ll sit vacant until someone comes along who’s willing to pay the exorbitant rent.
Fuck these rich assholes.
“Fuck our parents and their generation”
If you have an investment account and own some mutual funds, you probably own shares of some REIT.
Yeah we get to hold the loss for the nex5 bubble, useless office buildings.
We could also just not do that. Ban all of those.
Literally straight up evil
It will not stop. The government won’t step in, because they are all in on it. Their money comes first, above all else. The way they treat me homeless people today is how you will be treated tomorrow.
There is only one way to stop the runaway cancer of greed, and it’s not by writing angry notes.
I feel like the answer is a tax strike. Most of what taxes do today is move money from the poor to the rich, while occasionally moving some from the middle class to the poor (and constantly threatening to take that away). A tax strike could break all of this pretty quickly, or at least force them to attack and show what they’re really about.
A tax strike could take care of a number of problems, like this and the complete unwillingness to address climate change.
If you were to actually get people to participate in a tax strike, the government would just round everyone up for something like tax fraud or some other tax related crime and ship them to the for profit prisons and make them even more money. Only solution would be, in my opinion, to overthrow the rich and let their heads roll.
Actually, there are a lot of people who do tax resistence for religious reasons. Quakers regularly resist taxes because they assert their religious right not to pay for war. There are both legal and illegal ways to resist.
Let’s compare two scenarios: (1) a large number of people carry out a peaceful tax strike and are arrested, (2) people start killing “the rich.”
In scenario 1, even after arresting people the system is still starved of resources. A violent reaction could even elicit more people to join or prompt a violent resistence that would overthrow the system.
In scenario 2, if people actually end up killing anyone they’re arrested or just straight killed. They are seen as crazy people. The dead rich people are replaced with new rich people. Nothing changes. This has been tried a lot of times before. Even getting to the point of killing one billionaire would take several people working together. Spend some time just imagining how it would actually work, like how a plan like that would actually work, and you’ll understand why it’s not a good first option.
The dead rich people are replaced with new rich people. Nothing changes.
It will absolutely change things. The only reason this won’t work is because things aren’t actually bad enough yet that anyone is willing to go to jail for this. I don’t even want to go to into detail because I don’t know if that’ll get my banned or put on a list (lol) but if enough if the rich are publicly brutalized, it’d make the next person hesitant. This isn’t a movie where there’s always another evil general ready to replace the first.
If that was going to work it would have on September 6th 1901. It didn’t work then, or any other time. Do whatever you want, but if you want to be useful there are much more effective things to do. Honestly, rich people are also trapped in this machine.
Capitalism, like patriarchy, means suffering for everyone involved. This includes the dominant group. They are also victims, just in a very different way. Brutalizing them would do nothing because they’re already afraid. That’s why they’re killing us. They’re afraid that if they give up power we’ll exact revenge. That’s why they can’t just stop even though they know we’ll all die.
eat the rich!
As a thought exercise sure, that would work if it could be done at coordinated scale.
Practically though, doesn’t seem achievable considering how manipulated most of the population is on billionaires.
It depends on how it’s done. It definitely requires scale to work, but it’s not unachievable and it doesn’t have to start at scale. I don’t even think the majority of the population is that manipulated. The majority wants radical change. Authoritarianism relies on the illusion that most people are brainwashed, and that illusion simply isn’t true.
Why people are mad at the USA
This right here is the modern slavery and politicians are condoning this predatory behaviour.
The richer the rich get, the less the rest of us look like the middle and lower classes and the more we look like peasants. Serfs.
The more wealth inequality widens that gap, the more modern capitalism starts to look like techno-feudalism.
And that’s really what they want without saying it, isn’t it? They don’t want us to own anything of our own…work their fields and factories, pay them to live in housing they own, and convert all other possessions into subscription services, all in an effort to create a system where the rest of us only exist as a source of labor and wealth for them, where even what they pay their serfs comes right back to them.
Renting is literally just a subscription for your home
Serfs worked less.
How the fuck does anyone even afford to buy a house now? Billionaires keep buying them all out just to rent them out, to buy more houses. It’s almost as bad as me trying to use a hula hoop.
It’s not just billionaires buying up all the housing, it’s anyone who can afford the investment. Real estate makes interest in value year over year with minimal upkeep costs AND it generates revenue every year from rentals. If you manage to secure permits to convert it to multifamily you instantly split your house into two parts with nearly the same individual value, almost doubling the value on the spot at the cost of adding a couple of walls and doors and maybe a kitchen.
Real Estate as a source of investment and revenue goes contrary to the idea of accessible housing for everybody. If it’s a lucrative investment with greater low risk returns than any other low risk investment type, why would anyone take more risk?
My landlord is 45 and owns 4 properties with a total of about a dozen units. He bought a small business with the income and retired from his job at a defense contractor. His total wealth is under 10m and he started with probably little more than 50k ~25 years ago. Low interest loans have done wonderfully for anyone turning a small amount of cash into a big amount, assuming you bought in the right place with the intent to rent out to middle class workers.
Not to mention REITs, or real estate investment trusts. Entire corporations dedicated solely to buying up property for share holders.
Yeah it’s not necessarily billionaires, it’s anyone old enough to have accumulated any meaningful amount of wealth that they were suddenly able to leverage into the housing market while interest rates were near zero. Couple that with the birth of services like airbnb that markedly simplified the process of securing rentals and rent, and you have a recipe for a bunch of upper-middle and upper class speculators who first wanted a vacation home, then wanted a retirement home, and then in the process realized how easy it was to turn a few cheap mortgages into a huge chunk of passive income.
Got a buddy on that exact same path.
- Military Contractor
- Started with “very little” money
- Bought a rental here a rental there. Has like 10 now
- Now he “works” for himself (read that as plays games on steam all day) and enjoys his passive income.
It’s a bunch of shit that he’s not taxed to below fiscal feasibility for his multiple single family homes.
Make it so 50%+ of rent becomes equity and instantly housing becomes accessible to all. Can’t rent without giving ownership to your tenants. Banks would get the lion’s share of the income (it’s their money anyway if you have a mortgage…) and owner occupied properties are still feasible.
No one’s “value” would disappear either.
Yes. Vicious circle for the plebeians and virtuous circle for the rich. The rich get richer, the poor (I’m including the middle class because it’s not like the 60s, 70s, 80s) get poorer.
I got permanently injured in the military, so qualified for a mortgage with no down payment. Just the total amount on the mortgage.
It was still cheaper then renting anything close to a comparable house.
People always talk about interest rates, but down payments are the real barrier to entry
I had some lucky timing with an inheritance. Also two software engineer’s salaries. Even then, it took a chunk out of our finances. We also got a bit lucky. The house was probably selling a little below its value and we got in right before the Fed really started pumping the brakes with interest rate increases.
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You get a subscription and you get a subscription!
There is a need for some home rentals. Like taking a job in a new city that may or may not pan out long term but you still want to bring the whole family.
Or you need a few more years to save up for a down payment.
Or you are ready to buy a house, but the current mortgage rates are frikkin’ insane and you want to wait a year or two for the rates to come down.
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Neofeudalism. Having fun yet?
Brought to you by unchecked rent-seeking behavior:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
When the goal is no longer to be productive to earn money but to earn money in whatever way possible.
You’re not rich if you own a home. You’re rich when you own everybody else’s home
Fuck this fucking fucker
So is this guy, like, the Devil? Every headline I see with him is like “Emperor Palpatine is buying single family homes” where I just assume it’s for some nefarious purpose that’s gonna benefit his regime and dick over a looooot of people.
So is this guy, like, the Devil?
Well, he’s a billionaire, so basically yeah.
To become a billionaire requires sociopath levels of compassion.
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I would take Grand Admiral Thrawn over this guy any day. I think.
