Our entire economy is being price fixed in a way that defies actual, economic capitalism. Rent Seeking, is not value producing activity, says every legitimate capitalist economist ever. This economy is an aberration, a deformity, a lie.
Land access would fix it for everyone;
Imagine yourself as a business owner with a few employees and you are going to be the best boss you can be. Two thirds, more, of your expenses are rent, and the rents of your suppliers, and the rents of your staff.
Now look around your city, any city, and see all the vacancy that these USSR, (bad macro policy) style communism is producing. Ghost cities. One of the basic tenants of capitalism, is that the self-balancing system of resources keep capital both employed and in its most valuable use.
Instead we're a nation of structures going derelict. Value being destroyed in the name of producing value for the rest of the building owners (broken window economics) by shrinking the AVAILABLE supply of capital, land, buildings, including actually valuable buildings whose existence represents lifetimes of labor spent building them, to increase the price for the rest.
In capitalism, all of these empty, derelict, price supported factories, outlets, malls, office towers, would be sold, at a price justified by the use they will be applied towards, the person with the best offer, is the one with the best idea, and because the money they make represents the economic value created, the highest value to society, and highest value to the *new* owner, are captured by being the highest bid. And thus these failed enterprises are turned into value for someone else and everyone wins.
Bargain basement for new restaurants. Low price means lower menu costs and more money for the owners to pay better wages. Owners, who used to be employees, giving themselves a promotion. Everyone wins.
Office complexes, hotels, strip malls, naturally turned into housing. By this mechanism, the structures most ideal for conversion to housing, would do so, because it would be the next most valuable use, meaning it'd get the best price, and create more housing for everyone in the process.
The cost of housing is extremely manipulated. Fundamentals, destroyed, with access denied. A basic ADU, solar, composting toilet, well water, costs very little. The bottom dollar for “affordable housing” quoted by builders, is 250k per door. WTF? They're price fixing housing, real estate, by limiting the market and excluding anything that isn't luxury, doesn't have a bunch of extra value added.
We could be doing basic housing, for a cost of ownership, in the tens of thousands. Land access, without restrictions, to anyone who needed, wanted, it, or even a property auction with less desirable lots being progressively offered until individual demand was satisfied, in conjunction with property taxes to ensure use and pay for fire protection, would fix this automatically because landlords and builders would have to compete with the cost of people doing it themselves, capitalism, and simply having that option, and some (like myself) doing it, would fix prices for everyone. Start at the city center, every city, and just go progressively further out, including everything the city, state, and federal owns or controls except for parks, until there is no individual demand left.
Only tenants pay property taxes. All these vacant buildings, towers, malls? No taxes. If they were, they'd get sold for losing money. We need everyone who think they want access to the public goods, to be paying property taxes on their land, regardless of whether they're using it or trying to keep it empty to distort the market and milk programs while passing it to their next generation tax free.
Commercial property mortgages are being propped up because derivatives “investing” on and around their bonds created a bubble like in 2007 with the residential mortgage bond derivatives, and if commercial mortgages fail, bonds fail, and bad financial institutions who underwrote fraud and gambling again, go bankrupt. This would have a corresponding massive stock market crash because of how much of the supposed 'value' of it, is actually debt, held by these same players.
It should be allowed to fail, but we can't, in the name of, you guessed it, the individual homeowner, who will not be losing their home, just bubble price.
These are all capitalist ideas, libertarian capitalism. I bet you like it.