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Comment by snidane

Good analysis.

What we are experiencing is an inevitable decline in a late stage of an empire.

Land and real estate market under current laws doesn't clear, so leaves too many city lots vacant or unused. Lots don't come back to market and new properties are promptly snatched up by speculation on even less availability. This forms a monopoly in housing and land markets. Orders of magnitude larger than any big tech, oil or railroads that we've ever experienced. In effect, most of disposable income of orninary people is eaten away by the monopoly. Everyone pays a "rent" tax which is impossible to avoid. This is well described by Georgist economists.

What is not described yet and what the article touches on is important. The real estate monopoly, sucking away all incomes, doesn't allow for many winners in the economy. In the 50s every man could have been a "winner" in an environment of half of the world destroyed after ww2. Nowadays there are only a few winners at the top. Women only mate with winners and would rather hold out than having to reproduce with losers. You witness rise of feminism, break down of family units and rock bottom birth rates. Beginning in Japan which suffered from the mega real estate crash first, now the same scenario spreading to the rest of the world.

The land monopoly won't be dismantled because both parties benefit and most importantly, population is invested in this pyramid scheme of ever increasing house prices. You can't expect people to vote away their ponzi life savings stored in crumbling houses.

The inevitable stage that follows is a next-gen feudal society with landed aristocracy as we know it from history. You only win in life if you get born into the right family with enough inherited real estate, getting paid rent taxes by serfs.

parent snidane 5 years ago

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