> St. Patrick’s Cathedral used the new [air rights] system in 2023, selling some of its rights in a deal worth as much as $164 million to fund its maintenance

I don't see how this creates a sustainable dynamic, rather than merely making a more comfortable journey to that same financialization attractor (ie Moloch). It's easy to feel good about this church (or that farmland) was given a cash infusion and could keep on running its same cute bespoke non-IREAM (inflation rules everything around me) operation, but what happens when that bolus of cash has been inevitably spent and they need another one?

It feels like this is the fundamental problem with every heady touting of market-based reforms. Of course the initial trend is consensual and both parties benefit (positive sum) - otherwise it wouldn't happen! But then as the feedback loops from market optimization set in over the longer term, those positive qualities gradually disappear in favor of a dystopian nonconsensual dynamic.

(FWIW I'm personally undecided whether the root problem here is that capital inevitably coalesces and therefore government intervention is required to keep it distributed, or whether the agglomerating dynamic stems from the centralized money-printing fountain that flows to the politically connected. But there is enough dumb money sloshing around these days that the distinction is probably moot)