[6502nerdface]

> I am struggling to find the right words to express how wrong your view is to me.

Then surely I have failed to convey it!

In any case, my edited point about "deadweight loss" is perfectly consonant with the parent poster's feeling of guilt, and with what I presume is your feeling of disgust; it is in fact the economic term of art for that at which you intuitively recoil.

(Although you're kind of equating a very, very expensive home, in the overall scheme of things, with the minimum requirements of decency, if you really think that he's exploiting someone's inability to afford housing, but w/e.)

Now let's get into the controversial stuff...

> Housing is a basic human need like food and clothing.

Agreed. But it's also an asset, because someone has to build and maintain it and have exclusive use of (at least parts of) it, and being a basic need doesn't automatically create a right to something (for obvious reasons) so that asset is gonna trade hands voluntarily like any other. Its price will fluctuate, sorry.

Now, NIMBYs using government fiat to drive down housing supply in their market is an annoyingly common failure mode of local democracy, maybe that's all you're upset about.

[btilly]

No. It really is that your view is wrong, and not that you simply failed to convey it.

You glimpse the problem at the end, only to dismiss it. Your glimpse is when you say:

> Now, NIMBYs using government fiat to drive down housing supply in their market is an annoyingly common failure mode of local democracy, maybe that's all you're upset about.

The triangle that you're looking at is that NIMBYs lead to lack of construction, lead to undersupply of housing, which is a direct cost of both high housing costs and high homeless populations. The profit that I have as a homeowner comes from somewhere. Where it comes from is artificial scarcity that causes renters to struggle, and over 170,000 Californians to be unhoused.

Looking at that without guilt, is like New Englanders whose families made a fortune investing in the triangle trade, congratulating themselves on not having been those evil slave owners. Sorry, but it is tied together. You cannot both profit from the crime, and disclaim a portion of responsibility for it at the same time.

[psunavy03]

Ah, the internet. Where homeownership is unironically being compared to slave trading.

[jwestbury]

> for obvious reasons

What are those obvious reasons?