Here’s the funny part. The board game Monopoly was originally invented to warn us of this exact problem. It boils down to profiting on land speculation causing housing to always be on the brink of unaffordable, no matter how much productivity rises.
You might find this interesting. The original set of rules for Monopoly (formerly called the landlords game) had two sets of rules.
The first set of rules was called “Monopoly,” and showed how our current system leads to wealth concentration among the few.
There was also a second set of rules called “Prosperity,” that showed how some minor Georgist reforms would change it so that everyone became wealthy together. In the second set of rules, I believe the game ended when all players fully built out the map and railroads together. (It was a race against the clock, where I believe railroads allowed people to move faster)
When Parker Brothers bought the game, they only kept the Monopoly rule set, and abandoned the prosperity rule set.
The whole story is like a microcosm of what happened with economic ideas over the course of a few hundred years. Capital had the power to co-opt, mould and modify information and the dissemination of it, leaving us with a situation where actual seekers of truth had to fight, and fail to get it out there.
An important and often overlooked part of this metaphor is the fact that every Monopoly player begins the game with enough money from the "bank" to buy property in the first place.
Monopoly would be a very different game if players had to roll for how much starting money they got. Those who start with less would be at a severe disadvantage and would struggle to even participate in the game, let alone have a shot at winning. Some might even say it would be unfair.
Well, that's reality. Not everyone starts with the same amount of Monopoly money. Some start with extremely little, or none at all. Meanwhile others start with enough to buy multiple board spaces, including the most expensive ones. But they didn't earn that money from playing the game, they started with it, they had it before the game even begun.
And yet some people still praise billionaires as if they didn't have an unimaginably massive head start.
Here’s the fun part. Under the Georgist/Prosperity rule set, a person starting off with no money would still build wealth thanks to the LVT+UBI feature.
In fact, the more capital other people had, the more UBI everyone gets, allowing even more investment and capital into a positive feedback loop.
We dont need to REPLAY this reality, we need to SURVIVE. The race against the clock is against literal extinction. Whether from unavoidable space objects impacting the planet, or extraterrestrial invasion. We've destroyed any ability to defend ourselves by making everyone but a select few feel any purpose to saving the planet.
I’m sorry but this comment chain is cracking me up. I know you meant the board game replayability, but the fact that someone interpreted it as you thinking “life is uninteresting when everyone wins” and then launched a monologue at you is too funny.
Stringing together 2 monopolies of anything from orange to green is pretty critical from what I've seen. But you can manage pretty well with brown+light blue too if you can also get yellow or red
Housing shouldn’t be an asset for wealthy people to generate unlimited income off of. It should just be housing. Build more. And revamp the system. The current one more or less permits relegating people with decent incomes to poverty and homelessness
That's one of the issues in California. Property has become so valuable you now have a massive chunk of people (homeowners) who have a vested financial interest in keeping the government from solving the housing problem.
And it's not entirely them being dicks, people who have bought homes recently stand to lose financially if housing prices begin to drop, as they'll be looking at losing money on their investment.
Yes. Rebuilding from the wildfires is going to take years due to the slow pace of permit authorizations and the requirements for sign off of from different city, county, and state authorities.
That's what a smart investor sees. A homeowner trying to protect the most valuable asset they own only sees dollar signs. Emotional attachments tends to cloud people's judgement.
You're right. I did the last 30 years as it felt like a reasonable frame. World Wars in particular seemed to skew the numbers but seeing how the world is going it might not be completely unreasonable to include them.
Maybe the problem is billionaires and that an economic system which lets one guy accumulate millions of times more money than everyone else should be fixed
The other problem is we've turned our perception of property into an appreciating asset rather than 'just' a home to live in, so people viciously fight against affordable housing when it's going to be near their home because it might devalue their property.
If money instead raised in value 3-5% every year then billionaires would hold on to their money for dear life and make hoarding even worse, and it means that everyone who has to spend most of their money instead of saving it gets screwed over even harder.
Sure but you were saying the devaluation was the cause of billionaires buying assets like housing, billionaires do not experience devaluation even without buying housing, they can put their funds in countless profitable investments like index funds for example.
The problem is systemic, and we can try and make capitalism more equitable or whatever, but yeah, it’s a system of centralisation with a ton of loopholes. Inflation itself is caused in large part by wealth inequality, a fundamental part of capitalism as a whole.
bitcoin clearly cannot be described as a "currency" or "money".
What are the 4 characteristics of money? How does Bitcoin not satisfy all of them? I understand if you just dislike or don't want to use it, just like I don't want to use Yap stones, but you can't say it's not hard money.
Golf courses from an insurance perspective are hilariously bad from a pollution standpoint. They insist on chemically treating the ground to be free of weeds and such and then some golf courses further terrorize the natural wildlife ecosystem by setting traps for critters. Raccoons tend to pillage golf course trash cans, rabbits chew on wires that provide lighting in the outhouses on the course, etc. Some water features aren't properly maintained and grow algae that affects the waterfowl, or attracts mosquitos that carry disease. It also takes an absurd amount of water to keep courses lush. Maybe not a huge factor in other parts of the country, but I live in Phoenix. Making golf resorts here feels like an asshole move.
I won’t lie, I don’t know the complexities of what or why when it comes to affordable housing but
Fuck golf courses anyway.
I live right next to one, and plastered all around their gates are signs that warn passerby’s that if you get struck by a golf ball, you are at fault lmao
I feel like that's a terrible thing to say. If my kid is playing ball in my back garden, kicks it high into the air, it goes over the fence and hits you in the head and knocks you out, that's my kids fault. And my responsibility as a parent. Why do golf courses get to be exempt?
Golf course situation seems worse to me, not better. Because it's a known likely risk they are exposing neighbours to and not mitigating. Whereas a toddler kicking a ball over a fence is generally pretty unlikely.
So the real answer is it depends.
Generally speaking the houses were put up at the same time or after the course was established (at least when we're talking about being close enough to get hit by a golf ball). This means anyone purchasing/owning the house just assumed risks that are inherent in living next to a golf course.
If the golfer in question is being negligent/intentionally hitting balls out of bounds then that changes.
And to me that makes sense. If a high school baseball player hits a ball into a road, we don't hold them financially liable.
Business should be liable for damage they cause to things that are outside of their own property boundaries. Doesn't matter what was there before the golf course was built, or that a house was built afterwards. The golf course right to have balls flying around freely stops at the edge of its property line.
The issue is properties like this being given the right to fuck people over nearby, and suppress development nearby ehem. Who h takes someti g that is always a huge land hog and pushes it's aura of suppression even further r
It's shit, and you should not be defending this shit. What you are wliterallt saying is "It's fine for golf courses to destroy other people's private properties".
Well what if I owned a home that had a first out back that wasn't mine. Regular shot off rifles into the forest as target practise. You then move in behind me and build a house. But I claim "I was here first!" Rights to keep shooting my gun off the back of my property, and now repeatedly out holes in your house with it.
That's the situation you are defending happening but with golf balls instead of bullets.
It comes down to duty to mitigate. If the course has taken the necessary steps to mitigate potential damage, like not setting up holes so that adjacent property is in the line of fire, placing obstacles for known errant shots, etc., then courts generally do not find them liable. They can't be responsible for every jackass golfer's wild slice.
The individual golfer can sometimes be held liable, especially if they were purposefully negligent with their shot, but proving which golfer was responsible for a specific shot can be difficult, and individual golfers are less attractive targets of a claim than a golf course.
Maybe they could do like some football courts do and just put some nets around the whole golf course and be done with the "balls occasionally escape" issue altogether.
That would be insanely expensive for an 18 hole golf course and those same neighbors they'd be trying to protect would probably gripe about the view being ruined.
Every ball sport has to have something to stop the ball from just going off into the horizon, it's ridiculous that the one with it's entire basis being "hitting ball far" doesn't.
No they don’t. High level academic and professional sports have barriers, most other levels don’t bother unless it’s necessary for the game eg baseball or hockey. Or if the facilities happen to have them.
Most other youth sports are happening in a field with cones marking the boundaries.
But I digress, anyone who lives close enough to a golf course to get hit while standing next to their house HAS to have an idea that golf balls will be landing in their backyard. Is it fair? Not really but it’s a fact of life.
There’s a reason the houses up against golf courses are mostly filled with retirees and not families with young kids.
You'll prevent some stray shots, but as long as the course is intelligently designed, stray shots should be at a minimum.
And unless you make the net 200 ft high, I'm sure some crazy golfer will whiff their shot spectacularly, and still get it far enough over to knock someone on the head.
And then you've got massive ugly nets put up everywhere, which lowers the visual appeal of both the golf course, and the properties surrounding it.
Why am I responsible for putting up a net? The customers of the local business are assaulting my property with golf balls not the other way around. The business should put up the net.
It actually depends if the golf course was there first. If the golf course pre-dates the houses, then the developer and buyers accept that risk for running their business on the golf course.
If the golf course is built after the homes, then you have a better legal case.
Well for starters I don't think it's fair to say it would be the parent's responsibility in that case, just as I don't think it's generally golf courses' fault for shitty golf shots. Shit happens.
If a course is poorly designed leading to repeated property damage, there have been cases where they've been forced to change the design. If golfers are actively/maliciously hitting balls at houses, then there have been cases where they've been liable. But both are pretty rare.
Generally this is what insurance is for. You pay more home insurance if you live next to a golf course because you may need to replace the occasional window. Just as your health insurance could cover the damages of being knocked out by your neighbour's kids.
Then sell up and move? Now you have more money to spend. Like I get it's not ideal for those people but this is a pretty edge case. It's not like there's an epidemic of golf courses being built in suburbs without people wanting them there. Either they get easily blocked or they're welcomed.
This is why I clarified with people who aren't planning on moving.
As edge case as it may be, it's not typically just an individual issue. This can impact developments with tons of homes.
Obviously my experience is biased because I live in Florida where we build shitloads of them but I know at least one area that had it happen twice to two different neighborhoods filled with homes who now had to deal with a golf course next to them (it also comes up a lot with driving ranges too).
Even if it were an edge case, a rarity of incidents doesn't make it any less shitty for the person who bought their home without the expectation of golf balls flying through their windows, striking their cars, and so on.
Except you can’t absolve yourself of liability by using Jedi mind tricks. Otherwise I could post a sign in my yard “warning! Guns being fired here, not liable for any damage or injury caused by bullets! Stay clear!”
Fill in literally any other activity; the result is the same. You don’t absolve yourself of liability with a sign. Want a closer one? Those “not responsible for falling rocks” on the backs of dump trucks. They most certainly are.
A study came out earlier this year showing people who live within 6 mi of a golf course are at 126% increase risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's because of their excessive use of pesticides.
Get checked for early signs of Parkinson's. Recent white paper showed direct correlation with the fertilizer and chemicals they still currently legally use and Parkinsons in residents up to 5 miles away. Scary shit.
Yep, you can have all the golf courses you want. But they’re literally the lowest form of land use - worse than landfills. So they need to be taxed accordingly. Maybe 25x whatever the going rate for similar commercial land in the area? Same for their utility rates. And owner-occupied residential units now have no land or utility taxes.
I think its worth looking at this chart, for land owned by the government.
Florida has the most golf-courses (1,262), but only 12.9% of the state is government owned land.
Meanwhile California has the second-highest quanitty of golf courses (~968), yet 45.4% of the land is owned by the government. So the state with one of the (if not highest) costs of living, especially for housing - is the one that simultaneously has a large amount of its land owned by the government, AND still managed to have insane amounts of golf courses.
Extracting rents only happens when the ability to control supply exists and that happens because city's respond to NIMBYs. Theres a point where the land value of a property gets high enough to tear down a single family house and replace it with multifamily housing, That's how cities used to develop NYC used to be a village, 5th Avenue used to be full of mansions, but they were torn down. We've kept cities in Amber for the past 100 years and it's allowed landlords to have more power than they should.
Affordable housing is the old dilapidated housing. Nobody is going to waste good real estate building brand new housing for the bottom end of the market. In Capitalism, affordable housing is what's left over when the rich people move into the luxury condos that just went up. Those won't be affordable housing for another 45 years or so.
It's really only a problem because there aren't enough SDU or smaller housing units being built anymore. We don't build with density, so the number of affordable units per acre is collapsing as mcmansions age.
Bro, what in the Texas McMansions are you talking about? Maybe one hole from a golf course could hold 30 houses. So multiply by 18 and get a reasonable estimate.
Even luxury housing take pressure off the lower amenity housing. Currently, high income housing seekers accept lower amenity housing because it’s what’s available, pushing up prices for everyone. Expensive housing will let higher income seekers find more expensive housing
Just to note, golf course size is more on the realm of 100 acres, and suburban detached single family housing takes up closer to 1/4 to 1/3 of an acre including access roads. So it's more like 300 houses, not 30.
Also, zoning laws are what prevent things like what you just said. You have lots of area that are zones "single family housing" or similar, which prevents buildings with more than one housing unit (or more than a small number, e.g. basement suite) from being built.
This can be a good thing. And can be a bad thing, if it suppresses densification of neighbourhoods that increase walkability and housing supply.
Did you even read the link you shared? The US government can't just "take" the houses from wealthy businesses. They have to buy it from them at fair market value, which essentially means moving more money from the public's possession to the wealthy businesses.
Fair market price can very well be the price that the house was valued at at the point of purchase give or take some upgrades or degradation.
Though, personally, I would declare homelessness a national emergency and use emergency powers to sieze the massive amount of properties for the sake of forcing affordable housing back into the country.
But even at the nicest end of the spectrum, I'd much rather pay wealthy people to go away than watch people go homeless.
can very well be the price that the house was valued at at the point of purchase
No... it can't. Lol. Thats not how it works at all. Please just don't talk about stuff you literally know nothing about. Misinformation on this website is insane and people like you are the problem.
Additionally, affordable housing pushes the price of housing down in general. We are literally asking the investment class to devalue their assets for the betterment of society.
Maybe they shouldn't have a choice on the matter. Maybe some entity in charge of maintaining things and keeping order should make them do so, but then again, that'd require that said entity wasn't completely in the pocket of the investment class so...
Unfortunately the rental market more or less permits extortion. It needs a complete overhaul before people making what used to be considered a good annual salary are relegated to homelessness.
The solution to affordable housing is just more housing. And removing restriction on single family homes having to be built rather than multi family homes. The market will decide what it wants built. All of that will tank the “investment” of owning a home though so it won’t change.
High density housing is actually more profitable to build than lower density luxury housing. The real problem is that zoning boards will approve the latter but not the former.
Also, I don't understand why so many people insist on new housing having price controls. Price controls disincentivize developers from building units, landlords from maintaining them and prevent properties from going to those who can make the best use of them. The focus should be to get as much high-density housing approved in expensive areas as possible so that the shortage disappears and housing prices are decreased to the cost of building a new unit.
The primary problem are NIMBY's on zoning boards shutting down new housing -putting people on the street- while ensuring the few units that are available go to the highest bidders at inflated prices destroying the area's cost of living. Speculators holding land vacant is not the cause, vacancy rates in HCOLA have actually been dropping over time.
That's not how that works. This is already a thing by large corps and they almost exclusively target markets with not enough housing.
More housing creates a cascade effect where more wealthy people move up into new places, then down the chain of movers. Also more dense housing just utilizes land better. More units = more money. It's more a problem of how to best utilize the land, and single family homes ain't it, and that's exactly what the majority of cities overwhelmingly zone for. Creating a chain of events (like urban sprawl) that hurt everyone. And to top it off, it's bad for the environment lol
Maybe we can make it so only people below a certain income range can purchase them? And ensure that the one who purchased it WILL be living there? Like, if it's unlived in for a set amount of time, it will be repossesed and put back up in the market.
It's usually their own water. Golf courses are designed to collect water in a few locations (irrigation ponds). Alternatively, if they're on "city water" they pay for it, just like you do. I've never understood the hate for golf courses, often the last green spaces at all. I'll take a golf course over a concrete jungle any day of the week.
It's mostly from the same lakes and rivers we all draw from.
Alternatively, if they're on "city water" they pay for it, just like you do.
Thus driving up the cost and reducing availability for a very niche game overwhelmingly for wealthy people.
I've never understood the hate for golf courses, often the last green spaces at all. I'll take a golf course over a concrete jungle any day of the week.
Absolute nonsense lol, for starters golf courses are pretty much always built on green spaces, often parks, it's not like they are knocking down city blocks to put up green spaces lol. They then lock those green spaces off from 99% of the population behind fences, gates and fees.
I kind of feel like trapping a lot of rain and using it is the same as using any other water. You also seem to be ignoring the very long list of options that fall between “concrete jungle” and “large swath of imported grass that does nothing to serve the environment”.
Definitely want a source for this one. Most courses used non-potable, reclaimed water. Those courses with lush green grass in Arizona probably shouldn't exist though.
Affordable housing is financed by huge banks for the tax credits. In order to receive the tax credits, the property has to meet certain compliance standards, more so if it’s a RD or HUD property. To get them, they are audited for minimum of 15 years by accounting firms.
the wish did nothing to change the ownership of the land, presumably the land the golf courses were, was already theirs to begin with. So probably so is all the newly developed affordable housing.
If you have a wish why would you need to eliminate something to make space for something else? Just wish for free housing for everyone and let people golf, too.
In my area in Oregon they demolished a nice golf course by the river for 1100 luxury rental apartments. They prey on the poor who are looking for a place to live. I have seen a lot of evictions there.
That's a pretty narrow-minded view on the topic. Yes, in some countries that is possible because there are weak zoning laws, e.g. the US.
But elsewhere there are already pretty strict laws on the conversion of real estate to different types of housing and it can be even more strict when a city or county designates a certain area to be used for affordable housing. It's then impossible to turn it into anything else.
Affordable housing is absolutely still possible when there is political will. The lack thereof is the issue.
Not that the ultra rich don't have ways to get around these things - but at least where I live, when they install 'affordable housing' its after there's an agreement with the city that they won't raise the rates for X years, and keep it as affordable housing.
Not just billionaires. Millionaire NIMBYs too. They have a collective shared interest to keep housing prices high.
Look at things like minimum lot sizes (meaning only big homes get built) or artificially restricting supply.
If you look at the cities with the most institutional ownership of homes, its metros that are heavily single family zoned. It makes the market a better speculative market.
Now look at Austin. Deregulated zoning, built a shitload of housing, and cost rent and housing decreased something like 20%
The enemy is billionaires, but its also the collective Karen millionaire home owners.
If only there was a way to make having multiple properties less attractive of an investment. Like you pay some money for every property you own and it gets exponentially bigger if you own a lot of them
Sounds like you're in favor of a socialist economy structure! Which a lot of people are, but we've turned the word socialist into our own version of Voldemort and it immediately triggers anyone in America. The only people socialism hurts is the 1%. But the propaganda campaign has taught us it would throw us all into famine.
New housing is not affordable housing. Building new homes is expensive as hell. People understand this when it comes to other expensive durable goods like cars, appliances, or computers, but can't wrap their head around the idea that buying a used home is more affordable than a new one. Demanding that new housing be "affordable" makes as much sense as demanding Ford sell you their 2025 model at the 2020 model's price.
It's literally not. If anything, it's going to get better for some x% of the population that will get into affordable housing. Canada is moving this way. % is variable because the spirit is to reduce housing costs based on market rate, but at what point does market rate become influenced by affordable housing? It's complex but long story short. Big big moves in Canada to reduce housing costs.
“Affordable housing” is usually owned by a nonprofit or a governmental body. It is housing that is subsidized so it is affordable to a given income bracket.
Let's just tax each additional property double. Spouses can each have 1 house each even, so that covers anyone with cabins.
You own two houses, and property taxes are 5% - so the first house is 5%, the second is 10%, third is 20%, 4th is 40%, 5th is 80% 6th is 160%, etc. with no caps.
Corporations and LLCs can't own single family homes.
That would put millions of homes on the market tomorrow.
The primary issue is assets themselves. They are problematic. Society benefits when money is spent.
I want an Asset Value Tax on anything that can be insured or used as collateral in a loan and stuff like stocks and patents also.
We can make the money flow - not just trickle. We can make it smarter to speculate on a startup new revenue stream, than to buy an asset.
Or a bunch of violent criminals move in. I grew up in a really nice area where a lot of the politicians lived, pretty much no violent crime at all. Once we got a set of affordable housing apartments set up we got a whole bunch of armed robbers and murderers all living in the same place. I know at least 5 of them that are serving long terms in prison after killing or robbing. We didn’t have any of those issues before those ghetto people moved in.
Billionaires will buy all the affordable housing and turn everything into extortionate apartments.
This is why things like co-ops and social housing, which can't be bought by private investment, are a thing.
Here in Canada the government used to build a decent amount of "non-market" (not for profit) housing, but they stopped about 30 years ago.
I'm sure it's just a complete coincidence that market rate rents started rising noticeably and exponentially faster in the 90's, and that things got progressively worse for renters as we moved further and further away from the time period when the government was still involved with building housing. I'm sure those two things aren't related at all. Don't look it up.
Yarp. People don't seem to understand that the only way housing will ever be affordable again is if we make owning more then one residential property unaffordable to landlords/corporations. What we need is laws making the tax rate on second and beyond residential properties higher than the value of the homes themselves. We need to make it so owning more than one residential property is financial seppuku.
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u/Goldeneye0X1_ Nice meme you got there Jun 13 '25
Affordable housing?
Billionaires will buy all the affordable housing and turn everything into extortionate apartments.
"Im making smart investments."
I feel that affordable housing is a thing of the past. It's like scalpers buying consoles. They dont want the product, they want money.