It would be far more efficient to simply tax away all rent collected from land instead of grossly warping markets and creating terrible incentives for all involved.

The reason is that you can’t produce more land. Fixed supply will also warp economic markets and create terrible incentives (land speculation).

If you want the best solution, you implement a land value tax. If you want the 2nd best solution, tax property (Land + Building value). If you want the worst solution, implement rent control.

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bluegatty 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Rent control is not 'warping markets' - it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped' - that's the basis of the problem.

The workaround is to build more dwellings, and rc generally is not an inhibitor there.

Funny enough 'wealth taxes' may actually be the worst of tax of all - aka a double negative - like a double negative.

What we want to do is make it so that 'rich people get rich' not from rent-seeking but from real value creation.

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solatic an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped'

A market in this case isn't a literal street market with vendors hawking their goods. The word "market" describes the relationship between people who have more than they need selling to people who need and would prefer to exchange their money (or vouchers etc.) to acquire it.

Housing can't not be a market anymore than food or labor could not be a market. It's like saying it's warped that water evaporates and becomes clouds and turns into precipitation. It's a word that describes one of the natural systems of how the world works.

Even in communist societies where the State owns all the land and all the housing and decides how to distribute it, you still have a State-owned-and-directed market between citizens who need housing and a State that has excess housing and provides it to citizens.

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culopatin 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who builds them? Private party. What’s their incentive? Making money.

	▲	bluegatty an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's not the 'building' that's the problem - it never wars. It's property ownership this is the core problem. It's a zero sum game, of no value creation and mostly just economic rent extraction. It's the 'property problem' not the 'thing on it'. We have no problem getting people to 'make stuff and sell it'.