Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
Food and shelter are basic human needs, but food is one of the oldest commodities, and the financialisation of food has real advantages in ensuring an adequate supply of food, stable prices, etc. There&#x27;s extensive empircal and theoretcial evidence here.<p>There are issues with housing markets in many areas of many countries. There <i>may</i> also be issues with the trend you&#x27;ve identified. But if so, you need to identify a much better argument, because I think you&#x27;ve got it exactly backwards - that is, the real problem with housing is that it&#x27;s <i>not</i> a commodity. (Specifically, housing is not fungible, and there is no liquid market in housing. Houses are not like bushels of wheat!)<p>&gt; Aren&#x27;t startups like this just adding oil to the fire which is the real estate market?<p>I mean....are they? Offhand, the problem appears to be a limited supply, and some of the companies buying houses (like BlackRock) have been very, very clear about this - they analyse markets to find places where housing is in short supply, and buy houses there, because they don&#x27;t think market forces will be able to impact prices.<p>In a normal market, money flowing in to a commodoity that&#x27;s in short supply would quickly lead to an increase in capacity, but it doesn&#x27;t here. That&#x27;s a problem!<p>...but it doesn&#x27;t seem like one created by BlackRock, nor is it being exacerbated by them. It&#x27;s not clear they&#x27;re making things worse. But sure, let&#x27;s sock it to them and drive the price of housing down. :)<p>&gt; I do not understand how will someone expect for future generations to achieve their own personal freedom and living inside their own four walls.<p>Also something to consider - there&#x27;s no shortage of housing. There&#x27;s a shortage of housing <i>where people want to live</i>. We could change one side of the equation (build more hosuing) or we could change the other (live other places).<p>It&#x27;s very easy to see how we can expect future generations to have shelter; the world is full of empty land and the materials needed to create shelter; given modern technology, shelter is technically cheaper to provide that at any time in history. It just happens to be illegal to <i>build</i> that shelter in the places people want it.<p>Can we expect future generations to be able to live in the tiny, tiny scraps of land we&#x27;ve decided are incredibly desirable to live in (SF, NYC, London...)? Maybe not.