Below is my column in The Hill on the new housing plan of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to seize the properties of the “worst landlords” and hand them over to tenants or tenant groups. It is a plan that is hardly unexpected given the socialist agenda of the Administration. However, it promises to replicate the failures of socialist systems of the past.
Here is the column:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised in his inaugural address to introduce New Yorkers to “the warmth of collectivism.” It now appears landlords will likely to be the first to feel the heat.
This week, Mamdani revealed an effort to transfer properties to tenants and non-profit groups. Mamdani announced that “through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City.” For landlords, it has been clear that the fix was in for some time.
Mamdani faced criticism for his appointment of Cea Weaver as the new director of the Office to Protect Tenants. She previously called for efforts to “impoverish the white middle-class” and called homeownership “racist” while demanding the seizure of private property.
Videos of Weaver echoed thread-worn socialist mantras that are the signature of the Mamdani Administration. “I think the reality is, that for centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good,” she said. “And transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently and it will mean that families — especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well — are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.”
Weaver famously tweeted out her beliefs about private property, which are apparently widely shared in the Mamdani administration: “Private property, including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of White supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”
Other socialists on the national level have pursued the same policies to target landlords. In pushing national legislation, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) joined fellow Democrats in calling for the passage of the HELP Act to “crack down” on some evictions and bar the use of evictions on credit reports. Pressley has declared that “evictions are an act of policy violence.”
Mamdani insists that he will be targeting “the worst landlords in New York City.” Yet, who constitutes the “worst landlords” could prove a relative notion to the ardent socialist. Mamdani proposes to transfer their properties to “responsible stewards,” including tenants and nonprofits.
In his 112-page report, Mamdani is again pushing to unleash his “Block by Block agenda for expanded rent controls, promising not to exempt landlords from Rent Guidelines Board limits. He and his allies have previously heralded Cuba and South Africa as models for policy changes.
Mamdani faces a considerable challenge in fulfilling his pledge to build 200,000 new affordable homes, with an additional 200,000 stabilized units over the next decade. There is reportedly only a 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate, with 100,000 New Yorkers sleeping in shelters each night.
Rent controls have generally been a disaster, reducing landlords’ ability to make improvements to their properties. They cannot recoup those investments due to rental limits as costs, particularly insurance, skyrocket.
The result is a type of planned failure. As landlords postpone improvements, they are often cited by the city in housing hearings. When those findings and fines increase, the landlords risk being declared “negligent” and subject to a transfer due to unpaid citations.
There is no argument that the worst landlords warrant the loss of their properties. But transferring such properties to tenants or non-profit groups is a new and costly form of subsidy. Ordinarily, delinquent properties can be sold on the free market to pay off outstanding debts. That allows neglected properties to be put to the most profitable use, which in turn generates more taxes and jobs for the city. If these properties go to non-profits or tenants, that can further reduce the city’s tax revenues.
More importantly, neither tenants nor nonprofit organizations have a proven track record of maintaining properties without substantial city subsidies. It is a mirage created by activists, hiding the true cost to taxpayers.
Mamdani continues to pursue policies that will suppress, not surge, new construction. His administration is requiring construction companies to pay a minimum of $40 per hour for city-funded affordable housing, which will further discourage investors.
He announced a $22 billion subsidy for housing costs, with 25 percent going to the New York City Housing Authority. These increased costs will likely grow as fixed budgetary items for the city.
Although it is economically dubious, it is politically dynamite. Much of Mamdani’s support comes from young people who have no memory of or experience with the failures of socialist policies in the twentieth century. He simply promises things like free buses or city-run grocery stores as if they can be supported by free money without addressing their true costs.
His grocery stores show the same economic sleight of hand. The city is planning to spend $30 million to create the first store — four times what such stores normally cost. On top of that cost, it was discovered that the city had already appropriated $25 million for the improvement of the site. That is $55 million for a site that will not go on the market for the highest bidders, but rather be operated by the city at a loss.
In my book Rage and the Republic, I discuss this trend in Western countries toward socialist policies. It is what I refer to as the “economic factionalism” that has been used in prior years by figures ranging from Huey Long to Bernie Sanders.
With the highest rental rates in the country (with median rents at $3,616) and a shortage of units, there is widespread support for building new affordable housing. But government rent controls, mandatory wage increases and property seizures will inhibit such efforts.
Mamdani’s free buses, city-run stores and this new housing effort will achieve one overriding goal: introducing socialism in New York City, “block by block.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
From my own observations over several decades the worst landlord you can have is the government. Private property is foundational to a free society. Socialism and its big brother communism are the favorite economic systems of the authoritarian. They transfer freedom and wealth to the governing class. They also kill millions of their own citizens to cement their absolute control over the rest. Hugo Chavez was elected by the Venezuelan people on the same promises Mamdani is making. He destroyed a wealthy country but became wealthy himself in the process. Socialism is fine for the masses but the governing class lives under a different system.
This whole debate over Mamdani’s plan and “bad landlords” keeps bringing me back to a line I use often:
The ceiling of government competence is set by the floor of citizen capacity for self‑government.…Period.
If citizens are formed to be dependent clients instead of responsible, economically literate adults, they will keep voting for officials who promise more control, more seizure, and more centralized “solutions,” and those officials will keep hitting their ceiling long before the problems are solved.
Excellent point. At the most basic level, property ownership is a model of self-government. Feudalism assumes that most people live on property owned by others. Because the American continent opened property ownership to almost everyone, the American experiment liberated the masses of people from the feudal model. The metropolis, slavery, and socialism are all vehicles for returning to the feudalism. Small landlords challenge the feudal model by working and saving to acquire property. This challenges the hegemony of large landlords and government. Our governing classes, in promising the generous welfare state, uphold the feudal model—as long as they can be the overlords.
Did you come up with that by mimicking https://oertx.highered.texas.gov/courseware/lesson/1879/student/?section=4
or maybe https://www.productiveflourishing.com/p/floors-and-ceilings-self-worth?
There are dozens of such metaphors on the Internet
If you cannot see the distinction between a generic self‑help metaphor and a claim about the structural limits of republican government, that is precisely the citizen‑capacity
problem I am talking about.
OLLY
Give it a rest buddy !!!
You keep pounding away with the same tired old comments here.
No matter what the topic you find away to expound on your ridiculous theories about “forming” citizens, whatever that means, and “government ceilings” and self-government. We have heard it all before, and you keep regurgitating the same nonsense over and over again using terminology that you have invented for yourself and which no one else understands.
We have heard it all before.
If you don’t have anything new to say, then I suggest you keep quiet and stop polluting the comments section with your gibberish.
OLLY’s comment was spot on. It needs repeating as we are seeing the failures of American public education, higher education, perhaps society as a whole, failures to produce well formed citizens. What we are getting are Gen Z failure to launch whom are embracing socialist ideals, while living off their parents hard work in a capitalist society.
Same applies to you Fake Farmer who spends all day every day here reading every post and commenting incessantly with your sycophantic praise and “well said” comments that add absolutely nothing to the discussion.
All you do is heap praise on other commenters like the well trained and brainwashed cult member that you are.
If you don’t have anything new to say or add to the discussion apart from your pathetic, sycophantic, servile and obsequious praising of other commenters, then I suggest you stay quiet.
Ruh roh. X did not get laid once again over the weekend.
🎶 Be quiet, big boys don’t cry 🎶
🤣
UF is responding to and repeating centuries of well established laws of economics.
Mamdani has chosen to identify himself as a socialist even communist.
Anyone with a brain already knows how this ends.
Does Mamdani have a magic wand that makes what did not work for idiots from Lenin to Chavez magically work in this instance ?
Actually bother to learn something about reality.
Ronald Coase got the economics nobel for proving that with strong property rights free markets will produce better outcomes than anything else.
We know what works.
We know what does not.
It would be one thing if this was 18th century france, but it is not.
We have thousands of real world examples of this nonsense failing.
We know it fails, and we know why it fails.
But somehow you have missed – both the history and the economics and the core understanding of human nature.
John Say,
“Does Mamdani have a magic wand that makes what did not work for idiots from Lenin to Chavez magically work in this instance ?”
That is the part that boggles the mind. Is this another instance of,
“I am doing it! It will be different this time!”
I noted your predictions of how this will turn out below and I am inclined to agree. We should bookmark this column, wait and see how things turn out by the end of Mamdani’s 1st term. Granted I am sure the pro-Mamdani/socialists will spin it in some way to make it appear a success but if we really peel the layers of spin back and get to the facts, we will see if their spin holds up to scrutiny.
I want to be careful about making SPECIFIC predictions regarding the SPECIFIC negative impact of trying to game the laws of supply and demand.
There is ZERO doubt that the results of this will be BAD.
Past experience tells us the MOST LIKELY form of Bad we will get.
But the rules of supply and demand – which are actually just immutable rules of aggregate human behavior.
But the free market response to attempts at manipulation – are not always Identical.
They just ALWAYS punish those who pull this stupid stuff.
One of the perfect examples is Minimum wage laws.
These do not ALWAYS result in significantly fewer employees.
Fast Food joints are well known for hiring lots of unskilled workers at low wages.
But there are plenty of skilled workers in the restaurant business that do not work for fast food.
A Fast Food joint can fire everyone and hire an entirely new and slightly smaller more skilled staff and function at similar Return on investment.
I would further note fast food is normally a LOW profit venture – Why ? Because it is also LOW risk.
Change the profit risk ratio and capital will change the way it flows.
If something is High profit low risk – capital will flow towards it until risk rises or profits drop. If you reduce the profits further in something that is low profit low risk – the capital is going elsewhere.
Somewhere today I heard that 51 Grocery stores in NYC announced they were closing.
So Mamdani has now reduced the availability of Groceries in NYC.
The Left is gunning for Wall Street – but as Jamie Diamond noted – he now has more staff in TX than NY.
If you treat people like schiff – they go somewhere else.
Sergi Byrne just announced support for Spencer Pratt in LA and has provided him funding.
People are moving from blue states to red ones – not just Billionaires.
While there are still hickups and puihback COVID forced us all to work from Home.
Many people liked it, and worse for the left still, they came to realize that if they work from home – it did not matter where their job was. They could move to places with a slower pace, lower cost of living – i.e. a Red State.
Are these changes happening overnight – Nope. But they have been occuring for a long long time, and they are slowly accelerating.
On one hand – people do not stay where they are not wanted. On the other – sever the strings that FORCE someone to be in a specific place and they will look for “a better place to be”
Further the young are growing up – maybe slower than in the past.
But it is still happening.
People do not stay 20 forever. They start relationships, get married have children – and start voting republican.
Same applies to you Ano who spends all day every day here reading every post and commenting incessantly with your sycophantic praise and “well said” comments that add absolutely nothing to the discussion.
Upstate, thank you for this. We all know the familiar line that the Constitution was made for a moral and responsible people. What almost never gets mentioned is that it was also made by that kind of people. The Founders were not designing on speculation for some hoped‑for future generation. They were sent to Philadelphia by colonists who were already living the habits of self‑government in family, church, local office, militia, and real economic responsibility.
The system they built assumed that kind of citizen as its starting condition. For it to keep working, each new generation had to renew that same formation. We have not done that. The result is a culture in which the very language of “formation” and “self‑government” is unrecognizable to people like Anonymous. That is why I keep saying everything else is downstream of citizen capacity.
OLLY
You really are a predictably ignorant piece of work.
So many metaphors come to mind.
One trick pony.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
You sound like a broken record.
The issue here is municipal ordinances, and building codes, and the rights of tenants. And yet you veer off into your same tired old themes of what the Founders intended, and what self-government should be, and whether citizens are properly “formed”
Psychologists have a term for this behavior- the Einstellung Effect.
This is basically a cognitive bias whereby an individual persists and perseverates with his preconceived ideas and notions of problem solving, even when other much simpler and more appropriate solutions or explanations exist.
Give it a rest. We have heard your gibberish before. You add nothing to the conversation of the issue at hand. You are a victim of the Einstellung Effect.
You are indulging in pseudo-intellectual, nonsensical psychobabble.
I also note that you respond to the Fake Farmer’s servile and sycophantic praise with equally obsequious praise and thanks.
Basically just a mutual masturbation society. You indulge in activities that make you feel good, but that are not the real thing.
Anonymous, the irony here is that you have just given a textbook example of what I am talking about. You insist the issues are “municipal ordinances, building codes, and tenant rights,” as if those exist in a vacuum. They do not. Ordinances are written, enforced, and interpreted by human beings. Tenant rights are expanded or ignored by human beings. Those human beings do not drop from the sky. They are formed.
I did not arrive at “formation” because I am stuck in a bias and looking for nails to hit. I arrived there by doing the opposite of what you accuse me of: years of working backward through the surface fights to the root causes that keep showing up underneath all of them. I have asked, again and again, what explains the way we write laws, enforce codes, choose leaders, and respond to crises, and the answer that keeps surviving contact with reality is the condition of the people themselves.
You are right that I return to the same themes. That is not because I only have a hammer. It is because some things really are upstream. Name any problem you like: housing codes, crime, corruption, schooling. The details change, but one thing does not. The way a community chooses and applies even the “simple” solutions will always be determined by the kind of men and women it has produced. That is what I mean by formation.
You are entirely free to try to prove that wrong. Show me a functioning constitutional republic whose citizens are not formed for self‑government, or a broken one whose citizens are. But simply labeling the argument “gibberish” or “Einstellung effect” is not a refutation. It is a way to avoid doing the same root‑cause work I have already done. In that sense, your reply does not undermine my point. It illustrates it.
Oh, where to begin with yet more of your nonsensical gibberish ???
You start out saying that “I have just given a textbook example of what you are talking about.”
Really ???
And what “textbook” would that be pray tell ??
Perhaps the stupid little book that you self-published for yourself. Was the book peer reviewed? Did you get input from anyone else who shares your ideas?
Your comment is nothing more than a self-referential platitude wrapped up as if it is some profound observation to be found in the thoughts of other authorities.
You also state that, “I have asked, again and again, what explains the way we write laws”.
Really ???
Who have you asked?
What are their names?
The reality is that you have simply asked yourself these questions and replied to yourself, and then formulated completely nonsensical theories of “formation” in an ideological vacuum. I am not aware of any other authoritative figures who share your ridiculous theories.
You also acknowledge that you always return to the same themes. So you are acknowledging that I am correct in my observations. You are trapped in the Einstellung effect by your own admission.
You claim that my comments are a “textbook” example of what you talk about, but the only “textbook” is your stupid little self-published diatribe.
I would respond that you are a classic “TEXTBOOK” example of the Einstellung effect.
And the TEXTBOOK to which I refer is the classic work by Luchins and Luchins entitled “Rigidity of Behavior: A Variational Approach to the Effect of Einstellung.”
Anonymous, you are actually a textbook example of my point. You have been formed to think that critique, by itself, is meaningful, even when it makes no attempt to prove anything wrong. You can attack my book, my terms, and my motives all you like, but you still have not touched the core claim.
If “formation” is such nonsense, the test is simple: show me a healthy constitutional republic whose citizens were not formed for self‑government, or a failing one whose citizens were. Until you do that, you are just proving how thoroughly you were trained to confuse insult with argument.
ATS – My criticism of Psychology is an attack on YOU – not psychology.
Any competent psychologists knows what he does not know and knows the limits of psychology today.
You not only do not – but you are off in never never land.
Your “Einstellung effect” is about delusion – people disconnected from reality.
That would be YOU.
Your Luchins citation has absolutely no bearing on people who are repeatedly and correctly Telling idiots like you how Reality actually works – while you continue to pretend that first order solution that are divorced from reality actually work.
YOU are the person suffering from delusions.
Your entire psychological thesis – unlike the ACTUAL Psychologists in question, ignores ACTUAL reality.
We KNOW how this nonsense ends – it has been tried over and over and over again.
How many examples do you need ? Quite often this idiocy ends in copious amounts of blood – why ? Because when it does not work – those of you on the left blame everyone else and resort to FORCE.
If people point out that Reality is in your way – they are Nazi’s or suffer from some mental disorder whose CRITICAL component is NOT repeating the same thing over and over. It is repeating the same DELUSIONAL approach over and over – despite evidence that it never works.
That is YOU – not Olly, not any of those you criticize.
While you are wrong about Psychology, and the Einstellung effect
which clearly YOU suffer from, and about Luchin and Luchin – who I doubt you have ever read. Even if you were actually right – ultimately REALITY wins.
In the unlikely even that Luchins and Luchins actually made the stupid claims you say – they are overruled by reality, and dozens of nobels in math, economics, science, …
ATS
If the municiple code says nails must be hammered in while hopping on one foot – do you think that is going to produce good results.
Are you being told much the same thing over and over ? Absolutely.
Truth and reality are immutable. You can not wish them into working differently.
Is there some basis in law for Mamdani’s actions – possibly.
Will the results be net positive not a chance.
There are only a few unknowns regarding this stupidity.
How fast will it fail ?
How big will the failure be ?
What oligarchs will profit from the misery this causes ?
What will be the specific mechanism of failure this time ?
Regardless A is A.
Reality is.
“The issue here is municipal ordinances, and building codes, and the rights of tenants.”
Nope, Nope, nope.
You can pass any ordinance you wish – that does not make it work.
One of the major problems – and saving graces of modern society is none of our regulations work and many when enforced produce disaster.
The good news is MOST politicians understand that and do NOT enforce the nonsense they passed. Like most left wing nuts – they pass feel good laws and then avoid actually implementing them – because they KNOW they are bad.
A tenant has the contract right to what they and their landlord agreed to in the lease – providing they have paid their rent.
This is free exchange – no different from you trading your labor for a wage.
Your employer has no RIGHT to your labor – he must pay for it.
You have no RIGHT to a wage – you must work for it.
If you do not like your landlord – MOVE.
That is ALWAYS an option. Of course you may have to pay more – because better places cost more.
If you can not afford ANY place to live – then vote out of office the idiots who passed all these
“municipal regulations, building codes and other nonsense that makes housing unaffordable.
The laws of economics – the laws of supply and demand are immutably rooted in human behavior, which in agregate does not change. And as communists and socialist throughout the world have proven over the past 200 years – can only be changed very tiny amounts by absolutely draconian use of force and copious amounts of blood.
I had thought we had gotten past this confiscation of private property nonsense with Kelo and the little pink house.
Regardless NONE of this stuff EVER works as those of you on the left intended.
The road to h311 is paved with good intentions.
It was expected that Mamdani would destroy NYC – he is not disappointing.
That matters little to me – I am 2.5 hours from NYC and rarely go there.
But the very people you are pretending to be helping – are going to get SCREWED.
If you do not want to hear the same truth over and over – like a broken record.
Quit making the same mistakes over and over.
“And yet you veer off into your same tired old themes of what the Founders intended, and what self-government should be, and whether citizens are properly “formed””
The truth is immutable. It never changes. SOMETIMES our perception of it does,
but truth itself is unchanging.
“Psychologists have …”
Not the left wing nut amateur psychiatry nonsense again.
If you break a leg – Medical doctors know how to cure it.
After over a century – psychology can not reliably cure any mental health issue.
Physics has advanced greatly since ancient greece when Democritus proposed the first atomic theory.
Psychology has gone nearly nowhere since Freud.
Given that REAL Psychologists have a great deal of trouble getting anything in their field right – why exactly should anyone pay the slightest attenton to a bad uneducated internet shrink ?
And please please please keep channeling your inner Nazi with terms like ” Einstellung Effect.”
With respect to your psycho-babble – Psychologists are NOT experts in problem solving.
That is fundamentally the domain of STEM.
No one wants a lecture on problem solving from someone who can not tie their shoes.
Logic and history seem to enrage you…why is that?
Anonymous, I repeat these themes because everything else is downstream of them. In a constitutional republic, nothing ultimately works if citizens are not formed for self‑government. Policy fights, personalities, headlines, all of that sits on top of the basic question: what kind of citizens are we producing.
If “formation” and “citizen capacity” sound like gibberish, that does not make them unimportant. It shows how far we have drifted from thinking about the foundations that make any of this sustainable.
Olly,
Your ‘formation theory’ turns a standard municipal business problem into a grand metaphysical lecture. A city does not enact code enforcement to ‘form’ the souls of its citizens; it does so to stop buildings from collapsing and catching fire. When an owner accumulates massive hazardous violations under NYC Administrative Code § 11-401, the city intervenes to mitigate an immediate physical hazard and recoup unpaid taxes. Frame this as an ideological battle over human nature all you want, but a broken boiler is a math and engineering reality, not a state-sponsored script to build dependency.
X, no one is denying that a broken boiler or a fire trap is a math and engineering problem, or that cities need code enforcement to deal with real hazards. The question you are not asking is why we keep getting so many of these problems in the first place, and why our “solutions” so often mean bolting more bad governance onto an existing framework of bad governance. It is like expecting a landlord to wallpaper over a black mold problem and then congratulating yourself for solving it.
Formation is not just a theory. It is an actual, ongoing process. It is not a one‑off lecture you sit through and forget. While all the specific issues we argue about here come and go, formation is happening all the time in the background. Name any problem, anywhere. The details of the problem will vary, but one thing never changes: 100 percent of the time, the solutions will be determined by people who have been formed in a particular way. How they use code, how they define “bad landlord,” whether they stop at hazard mitigation or slide into selective seizure and redistribution, all of that is downstream of the kind of citizens and officials the culture has produced.
OLLY
You really can’t control yourself can you.
This is just more of the same tired old pseudo-intellectual, nonsensical gibberish and psychobabble that you spew every day no matter what the actual topic at hand.
You expound your absurd theories with ridiculous terminology that you invent for yourself, and which has no meaning for any one else.
Einstellung Effect
A competent psychologist could guide you in breaking free of this weird fixation that afflicts you.
Anonymous, you keep repeating insults, not arguments. You slapped a psychology label on me without showing where my root‑cause claim is actually wrong. If “formation” is such gibberish, then do the simple thing: name one healthy constitutional republic whose citizens are not formed for self‑government, or one failing republic whose citizens are. Until you can do that, you are just hiding behind vocabulary, not refuting anything.
The problem with this latest ridiculous comment of yours is an inherent assumption on your part that your concepts of “formation” have any actual meaning. This theory of “formation” is something that you have invented for yourself in an ideological vacuum, and I am not aware of any other authoritative sources that share your views.
You challenge me to “name one healthy constitutional republic whose citizens are not formed for self‑government”. However you assume that this challenge has some meaning to others, but in reality it is a completely empty challenge based on the assumption that your theories are some reflection of reality. As such, it is impossible to formulate a response to something that is not real.
I repeat, your theories are nothing more than a self-invention, using weird terminology that is not shared by others, and understandable only in your own mind.
You accuse me of “hiding behind vocabulary”, when the reality is that you are the one hiding behind a vocabulary and terminology that you have invented for yourself in an ideological vacuum, and which has no meaning outside of your cozy little vacuum.
Anonymous, I did not build this framework in a vacuum. I built it on top of the work of historians and thinkers across each major era of our constitutional history.
In the founding and colonial eras, I leaned on people like Bernard Bailyn (Ideological Origins of the American Revolution), David Hackett Fischer (Albion’s Seed, Paul Revere’s Ride), Patricia Bonomi (Under the Cope of Heaven), Alice Morse Earle (Home Life in Colonial Days), and others who document, in detail, how family structure, church life, local associations, militia duty, and economic hardship formed the colonists into a people already habituated to self‑rule long before 1776. They show that the generation that wrote and ratified the Constitution was not an abstraction. It was a population formed by specific environments into citizens capable of operating a republic.
For the 19th century and westward expansion, I used works like Ray Allen Billington’s Westward Expansion, Richard D. Brown’s studies on information and civic communication, and similar accounts that trace how frontier conditions, local governance, and voluntary associations kept reinforcing those same capacities in new contexts. Again, the point is not nostalgia, it is that the environment kept forcing people to act as self‑governing adults.
For the Progressive Era and the rise of the administrative state, I relied heavily on Herbert Croly (The Promise of American Life), Richard Hofstadter (The Age of Reform), Robert Wiebe (The Search for Order), David Tyack (The One Best System), W. Elliot Brownlee (Federal Taxation in America), and related work. They show, in their own terms, how responsibility for problem‑solving, moral judgment, and risk management was deliberately shifted from local citizens to expert systems and national agencies. My dashboards simply measure what that relocation did to capacities like self‑reliance, moral‑compass ownership, and citizen influence.
For the modern mass‑media and digital eras, I drew on Daniel Boorstin (The Image) and Nicholas Carr (The Shallows), among others, who document how pseudo‑events, spectacle, and digital environments reshape attention, judgment, and the line between evidence and emotional narrative. Those are formation arguments, even when the authors are not using that word.
Across all fourteen eras, I then applied a consistent set of twelve measurable capacities and asked, era by era, what kind of citizen these environments were producing. You are welcome to argue that I have misread these sources. But it is simply not true that I invented the concern about formation in an ideological vacuum. I am systematizing what they already show in pieces: that the ceiling of government competence really is set by the floor of citizen capacity for self‑government.
Olly, I don’t think Anonymous knows what you are talking about. I assume that you are discussing how individual human agency interacts with societal systems. (I came in late to the game and haven’t read everything.)
SM, that’s a fair way to frame it. I’m looking at how individual agency is constantly being pushed and pulled by the larger systems we live inside: families, schools, churches, markets, media, law, technology, and so on. Over time those systems form people into a certain kind of citizen who either can sustain a constitutional republic or gradually turns it into something else. And it is far more than morality and civics education in the narrow classroom sense that John is talking about. Those may be one small piece, but the larger formative environment is doing most of the work long before anyone sits through a civics lecture.
Another piece I have not really put on the table is that formation is not limited to citizen capacity for self‑government. There is a hierarchy of formation wherever people gather to do anything together: business, the military, schools, nonprofits, government agencies, HOAs, churches, families. Every one of those settings has a measurable output, and every one of them depends on some prior formation of the people involved for that output to be possible. All I have really done is move up that hierarchy to the level where the root formation is happening and ask what kind of citizens that root level is now producing.
Olly, this is an important discussion, more so than many will admit. When GWB went into Iraq and then wanted to democratize it, I remarked that doing so would be great, but the people had to first learn how to deal with a judiciary (and other things). Today, our judiciary is threatening our existence because trust is a necessity in a truly democratic republic.
“This theory of “formation” is something that you have invented for yourself in an ideological vacuum, and I am not aware of any other authoritative sources that share your views.”
Your belligerent ignorance is truly stunning.
Citizen formation has long been an academic topic. There are numerous *recent* books and essay collections on that topic — written and edited by academics at Harvard, USC, U Colorado, U Chicago.
Are those sources “authoritative” enough for you?
P.S. The authors I’ve read are very clear about the meaning of “citizen formation” — so clear that one can actually “formulate a response.” You might try reading one of them, and then formulating an educated response. Or not. Because your desire is *not* to know, but to tear down.
“Your belligerent ignorance is truly stunning.”
Sam, your analysis of this anonymous is precisely on target. In his case, his formation theories arise at the bottom of the bottle.
This “Anonymous” has a compulsion to attack any member on Turley’s web. Maybe it’s from living in a basement, or inability to have a general discussion of the issues. All he has is rant, so much so that I skip over any of his posts.
phantom, you’re right and normally I wouldn’t bother. But I had the time and couldn’t resist the opportunity.
Olly: Just coming on, and yes, I believe it is the same amorphous Anonymous that appeared in Saturday night’s Svengoolie episode and showed up addressing my inquisitive comment yesterday as well, ha ha.
You and I and a few others seem to irk his/her/its sensibilities.
Of course, S. Meyer mentioned that it is likely AI with doodling additions from George/X/Svelaz/Gigi, etc.
Anyway, keep your comments coming! And Meyer too!
You’re right, lin, whatever combo of AI and usual suspects is behind it, we seem to trip the same circuit breakers every time. I’ll keep posting, and I’m glad you and Meyer are in the cast of regulars who still appear to be human.
So you had the time??
Figures.
You obviously have way too much time on your hands, so you spend it on your absurd journeys of fantasy, with completely meaningless pseudo-intellectual theorizing and ramblings about matters of which you have no knowledge.
People with mental health issues and a poor grip on reality should not be bring up psychology.
OLLY,
Exactly.
I had a, let us just say, intense discussion about the Pretti shooting with a friend (may be not a friend any more, have not heard or seen her in months). She kept saying it was ICE’s inadequate training, referencing a video she watched. Turned out it was a fake using the “rocking” video technique and she had been duped. She did not like it when I pointed that out. Anyways, I keep asking her the root question she was not asking: Why did he and others like Reene Good, feel their actions were justifiable, even going so far to use a vehicle as a battering ram or Perrti bringing enough ammunition to commit a mass shooting?
And I do believe it is “the solutions will be determined by people who have been formed in a particular way.”
The lessons that should have been learned in primary school or civics class for formation have been replaced with . . . I am not sure what to call it other than brainwashing as their behavior and the behavior of various others from anti-ICE, No Kings, celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk etc.
We are being treated to a veritable lovefest of nonsensical, irrelevant gibberish from our resident Mutual Masturbation Society today.
Fake Farmer, what exactly is the relevance of this absurd anecdote to the topic at hand today. The only reason you post this ridiculous comment is a pathetic attempt to align yourself with a fellow cult member. This mutual admiration and obsequiously sycophantic praising of each other is nothing more than an attempt to reinforce your mutually held fantasies in such a way that they have the appearance of some sort of meaningful reality in the real world.
I can assure your that your ideas are nothing more than fantasies, completely unrelated to any form of reality.
Multiple people have posted critiques of the idiocy of Mamdani’s policies – based on centuries old laws of economics, as well as the long historical record of failure of those policies.
And your response is ad hominem – attacking the person not the argument.
Upstate, that is exactly the kind of root question I have been working on. To get past slogans and gut feelings, I broke our history as a constitutional republic into 14 distinct eras and looked at each one through the same lens: a set of about a dozen concrete measures of citizen formation. Things like how families, schools, churches, local associations, and work life actually shaped people’s habits of responsibility, independence, and moral judgment.
When you line the eras up that way, the pattern you describe comes into focus. Periods when those formation systems were strong produced citizens who, whatever their faults, had a very different sense of what was justifiable than the people you are describing now. Periods when those systems hollowed out gave us exactly the kind of “solutions” we are seeing today. That is why I keep pressing this angle. It is not a theory I pulled out of thin air; it is what emerges when you track citizen formation across our 250 years.
Olly – I will deny that Most of what X claims is a serious hazard – is not.
Your citizen formation thesis rests on learning morality and civics.
But also absent from learning todays is many aspects of simple reality.
Much of what we consider to be a life safety threat today – was just ordinary life a few decades or a century ago.
The night time temperature on the summit of Mt. Everest is 5F in May and -75F in the winter.
People climb everest and they do NOT bring boilers or other sources of heat with them.
What they have is warm clothing. Good sleeping bags and their body heat.
Absolutely a landlord that fails to provide what they have contracted to provide should be held accountable by the government – that is what Contract law is for.
Most if not all of our so called life safety laws should not exist.
To the extent anything is needed – they are covered by breach of contract or tort claims.
I would further note that without any relation to laws – life saftety, workplace safety all over the world rises directly in proportion to standard of living.
OSHA is virtually useless today – nearly all industry has their own workplace safety standards far higher than OSHA laws require.
Whether we like it or not – when the standard of living is low – Life is cheap.
We see that everywhere and through time in poor countries – and the value of life is directly proportionate to standard of living.
As standard of living rises working conditions and living conditions rise proportionately.
They do this irrelevant of any law.
Most manufacturing in the US – and increasing the world strives to comply with 6Sigma – that is manufacturing defects of a less than 4 per million. That is hard to acheive – but if you do not meet 6 sigma standards – other businesses will not add you to their supply chain.
While 6 sigma deals only with production defects that get out the door.
They indirectly involve safety. Quality production requires skilled people performing at their best. It requires production lines moving smoothly. Every disruption increases the odds you fall short of 6 sigma. Lose a skilled employee for an hour or a week – and you could get blackballed as a supplier until your quality improves.
There is no “standard municipal business problem” here.
There is not even a problem that is governments business.
The US constitution denies states the power to interfere in contracts.
Again the intelligence of our founders – even if it has been lost since FDR threatened to stack the court.
This is NOT the business of government for good reason.
There is no right to the use of another persons property.
You gain permission to do so by FREELY contracting with that person.
Contra the left – there is no coercion involved.
You are as free to rent a different apartment as the landlord is free to rent to a different tenant.
In the realworld – SOMETIMES – often the consequence of idiots like you doing stupid things in government – there is a shortage of apartments – that creates an advantage for the landlord.
YOU did that.
In a functioning free market – ie one restrained by govenrment ONLY in that FORCE can not be used, and actual agreements are enforced by government – NOTHING else is needed.
Not for apartments, not for hamburgers not for breakfast cereal.
Olly talks about “forming citizens” by which I presume he means moral and civics education.
Those are of value. But to all but the blind even they are unnecescary.
Each and every one of us engages in a near infinite number of free exchanges – we are unfortunately oblivious to the FACT that these go right 99.99% of the time.
McDonalds does not poison us. We get paid for our work. We may not get everything we hope for, but our actual needs are met 10,000 times over. We SHOULD from that learn what works and what does NOT.
But clearly you have NOT.
What does that mean ? It means you are having great difficulty learning from reality and
John, Formation, as I am using it, is much broader than “moral and civics education.” These are part of it, but I’m measuring 12 distinct capacities that a constitutional republic needs its citizens to have, and these are the domains I’ve identified so far as most critical; I’m open to refining them as I learn more and test them against our history:
Source of Rights
Whether people understand rights as inherent and prior to government, or as favors granted by institutions.
Law or Force
Whether they can distinguish legitimate law (rooted in consent and due process) from raw power, manipulation, or mob pressure.
Center of Gravity
Whether responsibility for solving problems is assumed to lie first with individuals, families, churches, local associations, and markets, or reflexively with distant institutions.
Citizen or Subject
Whether people see themselves as active owners of their government or as passive recipients of what rulers and experts decide.
Scope of Government
How clearly they grasp and respect limits on what government is for, versus assuming “if there’s a problem, government must fix it.”
Citizen Influence
Whether ordinary people have real, effective feedback loops into public decisions, and know how to use them.
Moral Compass Ownership
Whether individuals take responsibility for moral judgment in their own sphere, or outsource it to regulations, bureaucrats, and slogans.
Evidence versus Emotional Narrative
Whether they habitually weigh facts and causal chains, or let feelings and stories drive their political judgments.
Players or Spectators
Whether citizens practice doing hard civic work themselves, or mostly watch and comment while professionals and activists run the show.
Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honor
Their willingness to bear real personal cost for principle and for the common good, not just signal virtue at low risk.
Self‑Reliance
Not rugged isolationism, but the default posture that you are responsible for your own livelihood, risk‑management, and resilience before you go looking to the state.
Action or Paralysis
Whether people have the practical competence and courage to act under uncertainty, or collapse into helplessness when systems wobble.
Moral and civics education touch several of these, but only as part of a much larger environment that includes family structure, economic practice, media, technology, law, and institutional design. My claim is not that we need better lectures. It is that these twelve capacities are being systematically shaped by the way our whole system now operates, and that drift shows up in exactly the kinds of housing, contract, and property debates we are having.
Olly
I am not looking to debate you – we are generally on the same side.
But I do have one difference.
All of what you indicate are necessary – and to an extent they are,
Are just CONSEQUENCES of reality.
We have arrived where we are today through many millennia of thought and trial and error.
There is absolutely a philosophical underpinning for morality, ethics, civics – are of what you want.
But even if there was not – we would arrive at the same place regardless.
Why ? Because humans exist in a specific way that despite our variation is still fundamentally immutable.
We have arrived at the core values and principles that we have today through many thousands of years of thought and trial and error.
While we are not at the end of the evolution the human race, self government etc.
We are at the current high point – built on what we have learned in the past.
Our Founders were brilliant and made something incredible.
But if they had not – humanity would have gotten there eventually anyway,
Whether it is X or Mamdani or the left we are NOT debating the long term future of mankind.
We are debating whether NYC is going to F#$K over its people in the short run.
And how much it is going to F#$K them over and whether left wing nuts will ever learn from their many mistakes.
I do not focus as much about the things you do – because they are inevitable
They are a part of what works.
But humans have free will.
We can CHOOSE to screw up.
Paraphrasing Lincoln – Some of the people will screw up some of the time.
Some of us will screw up all the time.
But all of us will not screw up all the time.
John, the way you are talking about “arriving there anyway” sounds to me like someone watching a factory whose widgets are drifting further and further out of spec and saying, “Well, given enough time and trial and error, it will eventually come back into spec on its own.” In the real world, that never happens. Processes do not correct themselves without someone noticing the drift, identifying the root causes, and deliberately intervening.
My argument about formation is exactly that kind of intervention. On the twelve axes I am tracking, our “citizen factory” is producing people less and less formed for constitutional self‑government. The fix is not to wait for human nature or history to nudge us back into tolerance. It is to return, as consciously as the founders built it the first time, to the kinds of formative environments that made this form of government possible in the first place.
Those are good markers
Especially this one: “Moral Compass Ownership.”
The worst thing an individual can do is surrender his moral autonomy to others. That is a straight path to statism.
Excellent comment Sam! Our moral compass directs where we go as free people. Handing that compass over to any other entity moves us one step closer to being subjects instead of citizens.
How many people die in NYC each day as a result of violations of various apartment related building codes ?
I would wager the number is tiny – possibly non-existant.
I would bet that hundreds of times more people die of cancer, heart attacks, strokes,
getting hit buy a bus.
What does that mean ? It means that there are few if any actually hazardous apartments in NYC. It means that when the municipal code is defining something as hazardous – that it is disconnected from reality. It means when you confiscate someones property because you claim it is hazardous – you are lying and engaged in Theft.
How many people freeze to death in their apartments from a broken boiler ?
Any ?
Further – though in NYC and other major cities there are likely more older buildings with central heating, no one builds apartments that way anymore – and they have not for almost 75 years.
And most of us with older apartments like mine have converted them from central plants to unit heating.
Why ? Because when HVAC systems are part of the apartment – the tenant pays the operating costs. My apartments – like most older buildings that have been converted – have baseboard electric heat. That pretty much never breaks down. But it is one of the more expensive ways to heat an apartment – but I do not care – because the tenant pays the electric bill.
But lets assume that I have an apartment building with a central plant – with a boiler.
The boiler breaks down and I do NOTHING. LONG before the tenants are in any actual danger – pipes in the basement are going to freeze and break and the cost to ME to repair is going to increase exponentially. And LONG before the pipes freeze – I am going to do something to make sure that does not happen.
Of course I might not rush on the broken boiler – Why ? Because it would take a really really long and very very cold, cold snap to get cold enough to freeze the pipes.
My apartment building is just slightly south of NYC – so it might be a degree or two warmer in the winter – but NYC has a massive Urban Heat Island effect – and it is likely 5-10F Warmer in NYC than it is where my apartment is.
Currently I have NO BOILER in my apartment building. But I do have an unheated basement.
In 20 years the water pipes only froze ONCE – and then it was between the street and the building NOT in the basement. I.E. it was MUNICIPAL problem.
Why didn’t the pipes freeze before ? Because even without heat – enclosed building rarely get cold enough to freeze. They rarely get cold enough to pose a threat to life.
They rarely get cold enough to be a “hazard”
In an occupied apartment the average sedentary human adult puts out about 450btuh of heat.
People freeze to death out in the open – where all of that heat is lost.
If you go to the smallest room in your apartment – your body heat will keep it warm enough that you will not freeze.
Humans climb Mt. Everest and sleep out in the open – in incredibly cold temperatures – with nothing but a Good sleeping Bag to keep them warm.
Are landlords required to provide apartments with working heat ? Absolutely – it is either explicit or implicit in leases today.
If your apartment building has a boiler and the boiler breaks down – your landlord is obligated to fix it – and you are free to go to small claims court to sue him for damages.
Absent municipal law that screws this up – you are ever free to escrow your rent until the landlord corrects the problem. In many municipalities you can only escrow through and with the permission of the municipality.
Mamdani is behaving just like a king. Where are the protests? Oh, right, Democrats don’t really care about kings, they care about Trump. Never mind.
Mamdani isn’t behaving like a king. He is behaving like a Communist.
We are talking about generations raised from the cradle to be dependent on every level – is this really a surprise? It’s like watching children cosplay adults. Heaven help NYC, and heaven help the rest of us if there is a true mass exodus from it and similar places.
Why is the Professor focusing on the economic challenges and not the Constitutional questions? If SCOTUS’ recent ruling regarding redistricting declared you can’t discriminate against ANYONE based in race, INCLUDING white people, why not focus a blog dedicated to Constitutional Law in that?
Yeah Baby – straight up Communism is the path to a bright future! The industrious poor, uneducated, and low skilled need to OCCUPY NYC!!! The filthy Racist, Colonialist, Supremacists that built the city need to be run out of town AFTER BEING TARRED AND FEATHERED – oh and stripped of as many assets (including CASH) as possible. Only CITY Bureaucrats know how to effectively (notice efficiently is left out here?) manage residential property for the benefit of those electing not be entrapped in the Capitalist Scheme of WORK!!! Viva FREEBIES for EVERYONE FOREVER!!! And just think – if they can get the city income tax to reach out and touch even those who depart after being stripped then we have a BONUS CASH situation. Stalin is smiling!!
Just decade or so ago, Argentina addressed its budget needs by confiscating the savings accounts of almost everyone (under the guise of protecting them). Landlords aren’t the only ones whose private property becomes vulnerable in the warmth of collectivism.
Holly hell.
“Ordinarily, delinquent properties can be sold on the free market to pay off outstanding debts. That allows neglected properties to be put to the most profitable use, which in turn generates more taxes and jobs for the city. If these properties go to non-profits or tenants, that can further reduce the city’s tax revenues.”
The idea that the sole focus of housing stock to maximize corporate profit is part of the reason we are in this mess to start with. Also having tenseness or non-profits own buildings is not socialism. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production.
This is like 1984, Animal Farm, Dr Zhivago, The reign of Terror, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, and The Iranian Revolution of 1979-1980 all wrapped in one package. And useful idiots galore.
I wonder who goes to the Guillotine first (rhetorically speaking, of course)
No good will come of this.
What a stupi_d comment.
If you posted reasonable replies, you’d get more kudos to your posts. Then again, your posts always seem to bash anyone and their ideas which may be different than yours.
Young adults are drawn to socialism because they were not gradually inducted into capitalist culture as children.
They were coddled and provided for instead of challenged to exercise financial independence.
Look at contract law. You have to be 18 to act as an independent actor. The attitudes and skills to thrive as one don’t magically appear by throwing an age switch!
We could relax child employment law if adults who abused and exploited their naivite would be humiliated and imprisoned for failing to develop youth to their benefit.
Children should learn earning, saving, investment and self-insurance starting around age 5 at home. By around age 12, they should begin taking on paid responsibilities outside the home with trusted adults. Quarter-time employment with ethical employers should begin by age 14, half-time by 16. Abusive employers should be heavily fined, with a chunk of the award going to the teenager. Sexual harassers and coercers should go to prison where they belong. One idea is to allow teens over 14 to have an agent to represent them and coach them.
Do that and young adults will already be players in the market at 18, enjoying their freedom, and not looking for continuation of dependency. Face it. We have to prepare and condition a young person to do well in capitalist culture. It was a serious theoretical omission in the works of Adam Smith, Von Hayek, and Friedman not to address the childraising process. It wasn’t so much a problem in agrarian times or the 1960s industrial economy, when anybody with a pulse could be paid to stand at a machine. It’s very different today with a knowledge-based service economy — those ill equipped as earners at age 18 face what looks like walking into a buzz saw.
It’s way past time to make these necessary adjustments to capitalist theory and practice.
We’ve conservatives only ourselves to blame for the appeal of socialism — which is a rational choice for a young adult unprepared to provide for themself.
pbinca, thank you for this comment. It really sets the tone for the whole discussion.
I often talk about “citizens formed for self‑government,” but you are pointing to the uncomfortable truth that we are actually forming a different kind of citizen. When we shield kids from real responsibility, keep them out of meaningful work, and never ask them to earn, save, and take prudent risks, we are training them for dependence, not for freedom.
On paper, the law treats them as independent actors at 18. In real life, they reach adulthood with very little practice operating in a market society. In that condition, socialism looks like the rational choice. If you have not been formed to provide for yourself, the promise that “the system” will provide feels like safety, not a loss of liberty.
So I agree with you. Until we repair how we form the young, from the home forward, we should not be surprised when they vote for a managed economy instead of a constitutional republic.
Young adults are drawn to socialism because they were not gradually inducted into capitalist culture as children. Really? You have proof for that nonsense? You’re 75 years old, what do you know about 18 y/o’s?
What do 18yr olds know about the world ?
Every 75 yr old was once 18.
While nearly every 18yr old has virtual zero experience with the world as an adult.
It is not new that younger people tend to be less familiar with the world and more willing to try radical ideas that have repeatedly failed in the past – they are far less familiar with the past – at the best they have read about it.
Anyone who is 75yrs old has seen first hand the failures of communism and socialism all over the world.
Anyone who is 18 has not.
The post by Anonymous to your post reflects his rants, not ideas.
I can recall being a teenager, thinking I had the whole world figured out. Then when I got out into the real world, on my own, I discovered how much I did not know. I had to learn very quickly to be an adult.
Here is a group that does not seem to have learned what it means to be an adult, Two-thirds of parents say their adult Gen Z kids still rely on them financially for support—even though it’s putting them under strain
“Around 64% of parents with Gen Z children, aged 18 to 28, said that their adult kids still rely on them for money, housing, or other financial support, according to a new survey from Wells Fargo.”
https://fortune.com/2026/03/31/two-third-parents-adult-gen-z-kids-rely-financial-support-putting-them-under-strain/
pbinca,
Good comment.
I got my first part time job, working at a local grocery store when I was 13. It was then I discovered what capitalism really was. I entered into a agreement with a company to work for them, labor, in trade for pay. I also saw, first hand, what taxes were.
Later, I worked at a fast food chain. Opened my own savings account.
But it was not until much later, pre-military, out on my own when THEN I learned what cash flow really meant.
“Eminent domain, when it comes to jobs, roads, the public good, I think it’s a wonderful thing.”
And
“I happen to agree with it 100%. If you have a person living in an area that’s not even necessarily a good area, and … government wants to build a tremendous economic development, where a lot of people are going to be put to work and … create thousands upon thousands of jobs and beautification and lots of other things, I think it happens to be good.”
– Orange Dumbbell
Eminent domain requires the fair compensation of those whose property you take
It is still a horrible idea – even if Trump has spoken in favor of it. Which is unsurprising, the normal beneficiaries of eminent domain use are private developers.
And despite the spin here – that is likely to be true with what mamdani is proposing too.
Please cite any instance in which a tenant group or non profit has ever successfully managed a rental property – or anything else.
Ignoring all the other stupidities associated with this – this ill with certainty make things WORSE not better.
Just below the surface in Turley’s exposition is the FACT that maintaining property requires capital.
That capital MUST come from somewhere.
In the free market it comes from rents.
Landlords nearly always use “profits” from rental to make improvements. They do so because that increases the value of their property and the rents they can charge.
I am both a small landlord and run a due diligence business. I have evaluated hundreds of rental properties.
Those due diligence evaluations occur – because someone is borrowing money from a bank and part of those loans is always going towards the improvement of the property.
AS a landlord – my rents increase solely because my operating expenses increase. My “profits” are solely because the value of the property increases. It increases because I make improvements. It increases because there is a shortage of housing. It increases because real estate is one of the great hedges against inflation. Because I have not sold my property – I have actually made little or nothing over the many years I have owned them. But the mortgages are nearly paid off and when I do eventually sell them – that is when I will be paid for all the work I put in over years.
If there are properties in NYC that are poorly maintained – that with certainty means that either rents are not being paid or that rents are too low to cover maintenance costs or both.
Regardless NYC is not going to confiscate the property without fair compensation – even trying ill land them infront of the supreme court which while unfortunately not hostile enough to confiscation – has grown much stronger in requiring fir compensation.
While Government forced fair compansation is never really fair – it would still be a massive cost to NYC.
Next – if these properties need maintance – that will cost money. If the collected rents were sufficient to cover the maintenance – that already would have happened. Either NYC will have to pony up the money to maintain these places – or these non-profits and tenant groups will have to. And that means they are borrowing money from the banks. And that means they will have to collect rents to pay for it all.
My personal prediction as to the outcome of this:
NYC will be forced to shell out a fortune in fair compensation for the property they confiscate.
Tenant groups and non-profits will fail disastrously and quickly. Ultimately the city will be forced to bring in developers.
They will buy the properties at discounted prices, and raise rents. Further there will be lots of corrupt backroom deals determining which developers get the opportunity for windfalls from this.
Contra let wing nuts – there is no substitute for Free markets. Contra the left wing nuts – it is literally the price system – which is a part of the laws of supply and demand that makes everything work. Throughout the world EVERY system that did not allow the market to control prices has FAILED.
I would further note that in actual free markets prices DECLINE over the long run.
In the modern world steadily rising prices are driven EXCLUSIVELY by inflation and government
Adjust free market prices for inflation – and with rare exceptions of areas like education and healthcare heavily controlled by governent – the REAL price – after removing inflation has gone DOWN.
Nearly everything is more affordable today than when I was a child.
John Say,
Your experience as a small landlord doesn’t apply to the predatory equity models seen among NYC’s ‘worst landlords,’ where deferring maintenance is a deliberate cash-extraction strategy, not a cash-flow problem.
The city isn’t using traditional eminent domain; it uses established in rem foreclosure and police powers to seize assets from tax-delinquent public nuisances—a process that does not require market-rate compensation.
As for your request for examples:
look at the 1,200+ HDFC tenant-owned cooperatives created via NYC’s TIL program, or non-profits like MHANY, which successfully manage thousands of affordable units. Non-profits succeed where private owners fail because they qualify for massive property tax exemptions (like Article XI) and low-interest public capital, allowing them to redirect operating costs straight into building repairs rather than pocketing it as profit.
Finally, real estate is governed by land scarcity; adjusting for inflation won’t magically make a finite island like Manhattan cheaper over time.
Also, You are looking at this through a commercial balance sheet, where taxes and profit margins squeeze out maintenance. Let’s look at the actual math of a 20-unit NYC building. A private landlord pays full property taxes and market-rate commercial interest, leaving barely 25% of rental revenue for actual repairs.
When that same building transitions to a non-profit or HDFC tenant co-op, it instantly qualifies for an Article XI tax exemption, cutting property taxes by up to 90%. Combine that with 0%-3% subsidized municipal financing from HPD and the elimination of a private profit margin, and the non-profit suddenly has triple the cash flow available for capital repairs than a private owner, without raising rents by a single dime.
The capital doesn’t come from ‘free money’—it comes from eliminating the steep overhead of private real estate speculation.
GSX: “By removing the property from the speculative market entirely, these models insulate affordable housing from the inflationary pressures inherent in finite geography.”
You don’t know what you are talking about despite your use of AI, which doesn’t inform you of the actual results that occur from the government’s attempt at theft from private citizens.
The City weaponizes a potentially good law, impoverishing the landlord, so that he is forced to transfer his land value, a total loss of investment value, to the City, which then runs the property on a lower cost basis (Ninth Amendment plus others). This impoverishes the city due to lost tax revenue while inflation continues unabated. Despite the city’s ability to pervert its own laws, it is unable to do the same for the macroeconomy, since the city will still have to run and repair the building while the price of materials and labor rises because it is not controlled by the city. All this happens while it creates municipal debt that finances the purchase at a lower interest rate for this new non-profit, but the difference between that and market financing costs is paid entirely by the taxpayer.
Now you can look up my response on AI and see what a moron you are.
A. Meyer,
You are fundamentally confusing the law. The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause applies to Eminent Domain, where the government takes land from a compliant owner. It has absolutely zero application to in rem tax foreclosure or public nuisance abatement.
As established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Nelson v. City of New York (1956), when a landlord accumulates severe municipal debt and code violations, the city has the constitutional right to foreclose and transfer the asset without paying a single dime in ‘fair compensation.’ The owner loses their investment value through their own legal and financial negligence, not ‘government theft.’
Furthermore, your vague citation of the Ninth Amendment is a sovereign-citizen-style category error that has never once succeeded against a municipal housing code. The lower operational cost of an HDFC co-op isn’t a taxpayer-funded mirage—it is the direct math of eliminating real estate speculation, commercial interest rates, and private profit margins from the building’s balance sheet. A non-profit still pays market rates for plumbing labor, but it is completely insulated from the predatory land-value spikes that drive private market inflation.
Before you tell someone they don’t know what they’re talking about, you might want to learn the difference between basic municipal code enforcement and a Marxist conspiracy. But please, keep citing the Ninth Amendment to your local housing court judge and let us all know how that works out for you.
“. . . where the government takes land from a *compliant* owner.” (emphasis added)
Or from *non*-compliant ones.
Why did you omit that fact?
Citing Nelson v. City of New York (1956) is an elementary doctrinal error that relies on a profound conflation of routine administrative default with systemic regulatory expropriation. You are citing a case involving simple tax neglect to justify a multi-tiered regulatory regime that actively manufactures the very insolvency it seeks to penalize. Under modern Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, when a municipality utilizes confiscatory price controls to compress an asset’s cash-flow velocity, it creates an engineered operational deficit. Utilizing that state-mandated insolvency as a pretextual basis for an in rem foreclosure without just compensation is not routine code enforcement; it is a regulatory taking.
Furthermore, your economic analysis relies on a fundamental accounting fallacy. Eliminating an equity yield or a private profit margin does absolutely nothing to immunize physical bricks and mortar from the ineluctable pressures of macroeconomic inflation. A non-profit entity or HDFC remains entirely exposed to the escalating market costs of capital improvements, raw materials, and specialized labor. Your model has not magically insulated affordable housing from geography; it has merely created an extractive fiscal arrangement whereby the true liabilities of deferred maintenance, foregone property tax revenues, and subsidized municipal debt service are permanently shifted onto the broader taxpayer base.
Your reliance on generative AI tools to script these defenses is precisely why your argument fails. AI models excel at synthesizing superficial legal summaries, but they lack the capacity to analyze the underlying structural incentives or recognize when a legal precedent is being applied as a category error. By feeding the AI an idealized view of non-profit balance sheets, you have received a highly polished but economically hollow defense that collapses the moment it encounters the realities of public finance and macroeconomics.
On Inflation vs. Subsidies: Since you concede that a non-profit must still pay market rates for plumbing labor, materials, and energy, by what specific macroeconomic mechanism is the physical building “insulated” from inflation once the initial, fixed tax exemption is applied?
On the Taxpayer Burden: If cutting a building’s property taxes by 90% via Article XI doesn’t eliminate the city’s operational costs (schools, infrastructure, safety), which specific segment of the remaining private tax base is absorbing that foregone revenue?
On Debt Financing: When the city issues municipal bonds at market rates and lends that capital to an HDFC at 0% to 3%, who covers the financial delta between the city’s borrowing costs and the subsidized interest rate?
On Regulatory Takings: Where in Nelson v. City of New York does the Supreme Court state that a municipality may use state-imposed price caps to legally prevent an owner from generating the revenue required to maintain an asset, and then seize that asset based on the resulting distress? __ AI to AI
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GSX: The difference between you and me is that I understand what I say, and you don’t have the foggiest idea of the subject matter. Your use of AI doesn’t get anyone closer to the truth.
You stupidly rely on an AI script to fight, which is why your argument fails. AI is great at picking out summaries, legal and others, and parroting old citations like Nelson, but it doesn’t know how these systems work in the real world. By providing AI with your view of non-profit balance sheets, you were provided with an empty defense ignoring the realities of public finance, tax-shifting, and macroeconomics.
Just to be clear the 5th amendment takings close applies ANY time that government confiscates and/or devalues property. It is not limited to eminent domain.
SCOTUS has been quixotic in treatment of takings – often severaly restricting govenrment, but in other instances allowing government to get away with way too much.
Regardless, as Turley describes what NYC is doing – it is unlikely to get past SCOTUS.
John, thanks for your input and for further clarification on the Fifth Amendment because it clarifies what it means. I am mostly upset by the people who put so much faith in the politicians governing NYC and America, never thinking of the future. NYC is a great city that I love, and like you, owned property, even in the City, and still have a long-standing residency. GSX talks but knows absolutely nothing.
X
Left wing nut jargon does not alter reality
The laws of supply and demand apply to all free markets.
The even apply to unfree markets.
First – I have much more than “my experience as a landlord” – Among other things I do commercial property condition assessments – I have probably done several thousand in the past decade.
All types of commerical buildings – half the buildings I do are apartment buildings.
I have been in some absolutely fantastic apartments, and some really $hitty ones.
Unlike you I have a GREAT DEAL of experience with commerical real estate.
As I said before – it is called Real Estate for a reason. The people who own apartment buildings are NOT in the business of renting apartments. They are in the business of investing in real estate.
Renting apartments is just something that comes along.
Regardless there is no such thing as your “predatory equity models”
How do I know ? Easy. If there was a strategy to make more money in real estate at the same level of risk – Everyone would rush to it.
But there are other reasons you are OBVIOUSLY full of $chiff.
Mamdani/NYC’s Targets are NOT Billionaires engaged in preditory equity models.
There is a reason the Trump’s are no longer involved in “affordable housing”
Significant investors, go where the real money is, and where risk is low and profits high.
The landlords who You/Mamdani/NYC are targeting are people who are barely getting by as landlords. They are smaller landlords.
They can not sell the properties they own – because the investors YOU think are playing some predatory equity game would not touch their properties.
Contra your claims – most of these are also people who do not have the money to perform the maintanence you want – and can not borrow it – because banks will not lend them money.
Why ? Because they can not manage on their current cashflow and they certainly will not be able to manage if they add interest on a loan for repairs to the mix.
Absolutely if they could charge higher rents – they would be able to borrow to make improvements – but either because of idiotic left wing nut rent controls – or because the market will not support higher rents for their properties – they can’t.
Your “Predatory Equity Model” stuff is just left wing nut nonsense.
If you can boost cashflow for more them a short period by ignoring maintance – everyone would do it. But you can not.
Further in an actual frere market – and particularly in NYC if it had an actual free market for housing – the route to real profits is Trivial – Throw all the tenants out – renovate and rent at higher rates to better tenants.
Every Single Landlord on the planet knows that.
There is an ACTUAL “predatory equity model” today – which if you owned any rental property you would know – and that is large institutional real estate businesses buying up much smaller properties like Mine renovating them and renting them at much higher rates to new tenants.
I get atleast 3 offers a week to buy my properties for Cash at far more than I paid for it.
And someday I will sell.
While I called that a “predatory equity model” – it is really just – free markets at work.
Every landlord I know Hates the local municipality. They will not say so publicly.
They have to live with these people.
My apartments get inspected every 2 years by a complete Jackass with a tiny fraction of the knowledge I have – I smile and say “yes Sir, whatever you want” and do stupid things – often solely to get rid of him. And in the end it is my Tenants that pay. Rents go up Every time there is an inspection – because of the idiotic costs incurred making the municipality happy.
While most of my commercial Due Dilligence work does not involve regulations and codes.
I am an actual building code expert – I have been doing Code reviews with municipalities and the state since BEFORE I graduated from High School – and that was a LONG time ago.
But it is dangerous to be right when government is wrong – or put differently – you can not fight city hall. You do what they ask – stupid or not, lawful or not.
Regardless – you are delusional.
There is no great conspiracy of NYC landlords to bilk tenants out of more cash and leave them in $hity apartments. Any large real estate investor that tried that would be class action lawsuited into total bankruptcy.
While many of the landlord for these places are better off than I am – there liquid assets are small compared to the maintenance costs you think are needed. Nor can they borrow – unless they will be able to charge higher rents after they renovate.
While I KNOW this from direct personal expeirence – including in NYC.
I also KNOW this – because it is just the way the laws of supply and demand work.
And you can try all you want – but no left wing nut has EVER succeeded in legislating around the laws of supply and demand.
When you try – you make things worse – ALWAYS.
“The city isn’t using traditional eminent domain; it uses established in rem foreclosure and police powers to seize assets from tax-delinquent public nuisances—a process that does not require market-rate compensation.”
This nonsense has been to the supreme court recently – and YOUR WRONG AGAIN.
The 5th amendment still applies. Municipalities can not use exhorbitant fines to work arround the 5th amendment – municipalities other than NYC have tried.
I would further note – you are undermining your idiotic predatory equity model claim
These properties DO have real value. No property owner in existance will take the risk that government will confiscate their valuable property if they actually have the means to avoid it.
This is quite litterally Theft.
You are providing these property owners with three choices – pay exhorbitant fines for what I have already established ARE NOT actually hazardous conditions, just to hold on to their Valuable properties, or make repairs they can not afford and which they can not borrow for – because no lender will write a loan that can not be paid back, and if they can not afford the maintance now, the only way they will be able to do so after borrowing is to raise rents.
Either they can not raise rents because there is no market for hire rents in their location,
Or because idiotic rent control laws make raising rents impossible.
I do not know the specifics in NYC – but the economics is not much different throughout the country. A typical 10 unit apartment building is worth about a million dollars.
it takes in 100,000+ per year in rents. But after taxes, utilities, trash, repairs, debt service, depreciation – it is likely in the red slightly. That is not usually a huge problem it also acts as a small tax shelter for other income of the owners. So lets say the municipality comes in and demands 100K in “repairs” – or they are confiscating the property.
The property is worth $1M – so the owner is not going to just walk away if they can avoid it.
But the banks are going to look at their cashflow and say you can not afford to repay $100K unless you raise rents about $100/month per tenant. If the landlord can not do that – their choices are find 100K – knowing that the city will be back after them again next year, or fold and give up their $1M property.
This is reality George. No landlord is going to give up a $1M property if they can possibly avoid it.
And I was just dealing with a 10 unit property – this could be a 50 or 100 unit property.
What Mamdani is doing is called STEALING.
But lets go further. Lets say you confiscate the property and turn it over to the tenants.
Lets even assume you give it to them for FREE.
The cashflow is STILL NEGATIVE on each unit. It still costs more in taxes utilities, maintanence etc than the rent was before. While they own it and no longer have to pay rent – they DO have to pay all the things the landlord was paying before – and that is MORE than their rent was.
So even if you give the place to them for Free – they are still screwed.
I will tell you what is likely to ACTUALLY happen.
The city will take over the properties – some group – probably Chronies of Mamdani or the people who funded his campaign or the modern NYC equivalent of the Soviet Aparatisches will come in and THEY will buy the property from the City for a song. They will agree to renovate the crap out of the place and provide “affordable housing” – but they will Get a “reset” on the rent controls to a much higher rent. And they will get rich from the Cities theft.
Why is that what will happen ? Because if it was possible to maintain these properties as the city demands without raising rent – the landlords would have done so.
John Say,
You are severely misreading Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023). The Supreme Court explicitly stated that tax foreclosure is entirely constitutional; it only ruled that cities cannot keep the surplus cash after a tax sale. New York’s property transfer laws comply with this by ensuring any equity beyond the tax debt is accounted for. If a landlord owes more in back taxes and emergency housing liens than the building is worth, there is zero equity left to steal.
Your 10-unit math problem exposes exactly why bad landlords fail. If an owner cannot afford a structural repair without forcing tenants into hazardous conditions, they are running an insolvent, over-leveraged business. A non-profit or HDFC tenant co-op succeeds on that exact same rent roll because they instantly qualify for an Article XI property tax exemption and low-interest municipal financing. By cutting out the property taxes and the commercial bank interest, the non-profit generates the necessary repair capital directly from the building’s existing cash flow.
It’s not ‘stealing’—it’s replacing a failed, debt-strangled business model with a structurally sustainable one.
“You are severely misreading Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023)”
Not the only case – SCOTUS is extremely skeptical of municipalities playing games to confiscate property
“The Supreme Court explicitly stated that tax foreclosure is entirely constitutional”
Of course they have – but this is NOT tax foreclosure.
This is using exorbitant fines to confiscate property – it is NOT the same thing.
“8th Amendment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
Still theft.
X – you keep changing your argument.
First – this article is NOT about landlords who are delinquent on their taxes.
While I have have major problems with property taxes – they should be entirely eliminated.
Taxes on capital are the stupidest form of tax there is – they are the most economically harmful – that means they have the highest negative impact on the rise of standard of living.
The least damaging means to funding government is sales taxes. They are also the most transparent form of taxation, and they properly place the cost of government on consumption.
Regardless, This article is about confiscating the property of “The worst landlords” – not confiscating property to pay delinquent taxes.
Fines are NOT taxes. And excessive fines are a violation of the 8th amendment.
YOU claimed fines were being levied because of “hazardous conditions”
Yet you have provided no evidence that there is some epidemic of death or serious injury occurring in these apartments. As best I can tell your idea of “hazardous” is something I do not like.
The rest of your idiotic analysis – and what NYC is doing is independent of How you stole the properties. But is rife with YOUR evidence that you are only able to successfully operate them by FURTHER theft – not from the original owner, but by the people of NYC.
You are proving Rothbard correct.
“There can be no such thing as ‘fairness in taxation.’ Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a ‘fair tax’ is therefore every bit as absurd as that of ‘fair theft.'”
While I am a libertarian – not an anarcho-capitalist – you are doing an excellent job of proving AnCaps correct.
You are also doing a great job demonstrating why the USSR failed – and why NYC is failing.
Because your idea ofd a “successful program” requires massive amounts of theft to make work.
Real Estate is one of few investments that you can make – particually on a small scale, and particularly residential real estate that is very very very hard to fail at.
Outside of the peoples republics – like NYC – pretty close to the only way a landlord actually fails – if by failing to collect rent, and failing to evict tenants who do not.
Local papers have an article about some landlord that has gone bankrupt.
These stories pretty much always run the same.
Elderly landlord – bought a number of properties while they were younger, They manage the properties themselves, and as they got older they did not raise rents to cover rising expenses – usually taxes, They did not put in the effort to collect rents – and tenants took that as permission to stop paying. And they did not evict. Usually the process is gradual.
Tenants do not all stop paying at once. They fall further and further behind slowly.
Regardless getting from a viable real estate business to bankruptcy usually takes a decade of failing to keep on top of rent collection.
I exempted NYC – because Rent control and impossible eviction processes can bankrupt a landlord – who stays on top of management – but that only occurs in places where Government imposes idiotic constraints on landlords.
Frankly SCOTUS should rehear the constitutional argument against Rent control.
They have already under the 5th amendment correctly made unconstitutional municipalities attaching conditions to properties in order for the owner to get local approvals that they are entitled to.
Basically they have said that Reducing the value of a property constitutes a taking under the 5th amendment – and rent control is absolutely a taking
They have also said that constraining a property owners ability to profit from the use of their property constitutes a taking.
Contra your claim – while SCOTUS has NOT unfortuntunately reversed the idiotic 5-4 Kelo decision. Despite the fact that several justices who voted for Kelo publicly regretted the decision later. In a number of other 5th and or 8th amendment cases SCOTUS has been restricting municipalities ability to deprive property owners the ability to use their property as they wish. While they have not – as the constitution requires – reinstated the contracts clause AND gotten rid of Zoning and other heinous govenrment regulations. And unfortunately they are never likely to adopt a bright line consistent with the constitution,
They are moving further away from the Post Wikard Everything goes nonsense.
They are being heavily influenced by REALITY.
Kelo – like virtually ever taking for some private use that purportedly had a public benefit ultimately has FAILED. The planned beneficial private use either never materializes or comes and then goes.
Milton Friedman noted that govenrment has confiscated and torn down significantly more housing than it has built – and you wonder why there is a homeless problem.
Regardless, government interfering with property rights never ends well – and never produces the predicted benefits.
I would venture that your 1,100 TIL properties or whatever they are – are already failing.
But if that has not happened – it will.
You claim these are Tenant Owned properties. But I would Bet the Tenants do not “feel” that way.
I noted before that profits in apartments are highest at the top of the market – not the bottom. While it is absolutely true that the more upmarket you go the more demanding the tenants are – it is also true that the less destructive they are.
My tenants – and MOST of the tenants we are talking about in NYC are “judgement proof”
I can evict a tenant that gets behind on their rent – but I will never collect any back rent owed.
They do not have the money, and you can not get blood from a stone.
Conversely at pretty much every other level of tenant – if you fail to pay your rent, if you damage the property – a judgement will be entered against you and YOU WILL be made to pay. Why ? Because you have good credit you wish to keep, and you have property you do not wish to lose. That is not true of my tenants – it is not true of the tenants we are dealing with in NYC.
That means something.
The focus in this post is on maintenance.
Tenants who are not “judgement proof are more demanding AND they are less prone to break things. If they break something – they will have to pay for it.
My tenants KNOW they will never have to pay to fix what they break.
Outside of absolutely critical repairs – I do not rush to make repairs.
Why ? Because if a tenant knows that if they break something – it may take me days, weeks, even months to fix it – they are less likely to break things.
Judgement proof tenants are ALWAYS trying stupid things.
My lease used to be barely two pages long. Now it is 9.
Though honestly – nearly all the provisions in the lease are meaningless – tenants do not read the lease, they certaintly do not abide by it. And when they do not – my choice is ignore it or evict.
But did you think that a lease needed to say – you can not have more than 2 pets ?
I had a tenant who tried to keep 9 chihauhau’s in a one bedroom apartment.
Did you ever think you needed to say – you can not put 14 people in a 2 bedroom apartment ?
I can go on and on – Tenants that are NOT judgement proof – tenants that have credit, have bank accounts, have cars, rarely do this crap – we arer having some problems with the young socialists that YOU have indoctrinated – becausew most of the behave like my poor judgement proof tenants – until a court starts garnishing their wages – then they try to change the laws – make evictions and judgements and being held accountable harder.
But they do tend to behave – either as they get older or as the experience the consequences of their own actions.
Regardless, with RARE exceptions I NEVER renovate or make improvements on an occupied apartment – that makes renovations hard and slow. It has taken me 15 yrs to make improvements I thought I would have done in 3. Of course – my ideas from 20 years ago have changed. The materials I use today – are not what I would use in a home.
I go for cheap and indestructible – nice is secondary. My apartments all now have hardwood – which I get used on FaceBook for next to nothing. It looks good, but more important it is indestructible. Carpet and lots of the flooring that you can buy at Home Deport or Costco – lasts about 9months in an apartment.
Further – trying to work in an apartment that is occupied is NOTHING like what you see on TV. There is no room to work, tenants belongings need moved – and sometimes they get broken. Simple tasks take 4-5 times longer than they would in my own home or in an empty apartment.
So you break your shower door – I will drop off a shower curtain – and someday I will replace the door – probably when you move out.
You clog a toilet – I will buy you a plunger.
Contra YOUR and NYC’s claim – there is very little that can go wrong in an apartment that is an ACTUAL hazard
If my tenants had any credit – much less good credit – if they were not “judgement proof”
If the CLEAN ones did not fill their apartments to the gills. I would fix the things they break and charge them for it – and they would not break them again.
But that is not reality.
While I appear to be maligning my tenants – this is just reality.
And I am providing them a place to live – they are certaintly better off than the near homeless paying $50/month for places that are little more than shelter from the weather.
But the KEY to all of this is a Free market.
My tenants are Free to go elsewhere – few are not on Month To Month leases – but I will let anyone out if they want. I will not force a tenant to stay that wants to leave.
They do not leave – because though there are better (and Worse) places to live,
There are not better places that they can afford.
Turley is absolutely correct – that Rent Control will ABSOLUTELY result in poorer maintanence.
But no landlord will risk damage to their property by deferring maintenance.
The property is valuable.
What I wont do – is maintain an apartment for a judgement proof tenant to the same standard I would for a tenant who is paying a real market value rent, and who will have to pay for damages.
And as I said there are significantly WORSE places to live.
My apartments are an order of magnitude better than those I lived in while I was in college.
Svelaz, if my memory serves me correctly, then perhaps Tyler is the case that invalidated New York’s in rem tax laws, stopping NYC from its scam, and declared the practice as unconstitutional home equity theft. The liens you talk about expose the scam used by NYC.
It seems your use of AI led you in the opposite and wrong direction. You need to be able to think before you can appropriately use AI.
“look at the 1,200+ HDFC tenant-owned cooperatives created via NYC’s TIL program, or non-profits like MHANY, which successfully manage thousands of affordable units. Non-profits succeed where private owners fail because they qualify for massive property tax exemptions (like Article XI) and low-interest public capital, allowing them to redirect operating costs straight into building repairs rather than pocketing it as profit.”
Presuming you are correct – which is dubiuous – have you bothered to think about what you just WROTE ?
These properties that you have STOLEN from their rightful owners manage to function as the city wants because they are MASSIVELY subsidized.
I have told you over and over – the owners of these properties will not give the properties up – if it is at all possible for them to comply with the city’s requirements.
They would have ZERO problems keeping the properties – if the City waived their property taxes,
if the City allowed them to get low interest or no interest loans.
All you are doing is stealing – and here you are openly admitting that.
And BTW you clearly can not do math – if it was possible to farm into building repairs – these illegitimate entities would not need tax reductions and low interest loans.
Your own example PROVES that the people you are stealing from are NOT engaged in some manufactured preditory equity model.
NEXT – how much do you want to bet these places do not rapidly devolve back into $hitholes ?
You say these are “tenant owned cooperatives” – if tenants were actually capable of owning property – they would.
You have CLEARLY never had to deal with real tenants in the real world.
It does not matter whether they are Rich or Poor – they are fundamentally unable to get along.
There is a “preditory equity model” – and you just outlined it.
Steal properties worth millions – give them to someone else. Avoid raising rents by Destroying the value of the capital – that is literally preying on equity, but as that is still not enough to make this work – subsidize them with tax cuts and subsidized loans.
Once again it is called STEALING.
IF you have managed to do all this – without raising rents – you have managed to do so by:
Destroying millions in equity (capital) – literally stealing it. And you have not even actually given it to someone else – because absent the low interest loans and tax subsidies – the value of the property is gone.
By destroying your tax base,
By government wasting money on subsidized loans.
John Say,
Your argument completely unravels on its own logic. You claim the free market is the only viable system, yet you openly admit that these private landlords can only maintain their properties if the city gives them massive, unearned corporate welfare via tax waivers and free loans. If your business model requires the government to wipe out your tax liability just so you can provide your customers with functioning plumbing, your business model has failed the free market.
Furthermore, your claim of ‘stolen equity’ is mathematically illiterate. The city only forecloses under the TPT program after a landlord has completely refused to pay property taxes for three consecutive years and piled up massive emergency repair liens. When an owner owes more in back taxes and city-funded structural repairs than the building is worth, there is no equity left to steal. The owner is legally bankrupt and toxic to the tax base.
Finally, your dismissive claim that tenants are ‘fundamentally unable’ to run property is shattered by 45 years of empirical history. The NYC TIL program has successfully established over 1,200 self-governing HDFC tenant cooperatives since 1978. Buildings like the Nina Dunn HDFC in the Bronx have been continuously owned, managed, and financially maintained by their low-income tenants for 40 years. They boast lower default rates than commercial slumlords because they invest their cash flow directly into boilers and roofs rather than using public capital to subsidize private real estate speculation.
“Your argument completely unravels on its own logic. You claim the free market is the only viable system, yet you openly admit that these private landlords can only maintain their properties if the city gives them massive, unearned corporate welfare via tax waivers and free loans.”
No X I have said the opposite.
I have said that NYC can only manage these idiotic coops if they give discounts on taxes and subsidized loans.
The landlord you are stealing from do not and should not get any of that.
NO ONE SHOULD.
All government subsidies are THEFT from those who do not get them.
I am opposed to ALL govenrment participation in the markets.
No regulations
no rent control
not subsidized loans
No tax breaks.
I will absolutely guarantee you that as it has through all of history the results will be that everyone that wants a home – will have one. Not necescarily the one they hoped for.
But they will get what they can afford.
And as standards of living rise – so will the overall quality of homes.
Absolutely no governnent – beyond enforcing the terms of leases – both on tenants and landlords.
That is all that is required.
Beyond – NO GOVERNEMENT AT ALL – the rest is irrelevant.
It is not your business or mine – how one landlord manages their properties.
And if you are a tenant and do not like how your landlord does things you are FREE TO CHOOSE – Move.
In an actual free market – there will ALWAYS be other choices – and as standard of living rises there will be MORE CHOICES.
Again the goal is NOT to give everyone what they want.
It is to give everyone what they can afford.
I have raised the guy renting little more than shelter from the weather for $50/month.
That violates every NYC regulation.
But he is giving some people – what they are willing to pay for.
Without him – those people are out on the streets.
I noted earlier that absent stupidity people do not freeze to death in most any apartment –
The slightest bit of shelter – will keep you alive.
But people on the streets – die in NYC.
When you shutdown the landlord offering $hitty apartments for $50/month – you are sentencing some of his tenants to death.
In an actual free market there is an apartment or place to stay for every single person that wants one at the price they are willing to pay.
What there is NOT is an apartment to meet YOUR arbitrary standards.
” If your business model requires the government to wipe out your tax liability”
AGAIN – until you suddenly jumped to Taxes – the ONLY mention of Taxes in Turley’s article is the lost Tax Revenue that NYC is experiencing as a result of Mamdani’s nonsense.
Absolutely NYC’s taxes are far far far too high.
Therefore I CHOOSE not to rent apartments in NYC.
At the same time – My municipality has too high taxes and stupid regulations.
I own apartment buildings in that municipality anyway – the taxes and cost of regulations gets passed on to tenants. That is another of the idiotic flaws of Rent control – it precludes landlords from placing the cost of an apartment on the tenants – where it belongs.
Almost no one works for free.
I rent apartments. Essentially I trade benefiting from the investment in real estate, for the effort of managing a place to live for people who can not or chose not to themselves.
I make sure the taxes get paid, the trash gets paid, the water gets paid, the mortgage gets paid, the fascilitis work – but the Tenants actually pay fort that – I just collect the money and pay it to whoever is owed.
As I said before – very few real estate investments OPERATE at a profit – your profit argument is NONSENSE – Profits are NOT part of cash-flow for residential apartments.
There is little or no profit in residential real estate on a Revenue/expense basis.
The PROFIT is that I bought the building for 20% of its value. The rest I borrowed – and I am able to do that – which my tenants can not – because I have handled money wisely my entire life and have stellar credit. As the mortgage is paid off – I own more of the building.
As the building appreciates in value – usually faster than inflation – the value of my asset increases. But NONE of that is cash in my pocket – until I sell the place.
That is why it is called investing in real estate, not renting apartments.
The profits you think you are saving by taking these properties over – does not exist.
There is little or no cashflow profit in real estate investments.
We have addressed this before with Trump – you commented that his tax return shows him losing money most of the time.
That is absolutely NORMAL for real estate investment.
The profits you think you are saving do not exist.
And the actual profits – either continue to exist in your arrangement – ie you have not excaped them – if you have not screwed up so badly the value of the building fails to appreciate. Or if you have destroyed the appreciation of the building over years – then you have not improved operations by not profiting – you have DESTROYED THE CAPITAL VALUE OF AN ASSET.
The reality is it is YOUR model that is “predatory” – you are preying on landlords, and tax payers while destroying actual wealth.
“Furthermore, your claim of ‘stolen equity’ is mathematically illiterate. The city only forecloses under the TPT program after a landlord has completely refused to pay property taxes for three consecutive years”
Again – YOU introduced TAXES. It is not in Turley’s article.
It is not in any argument I have made.
While NYC’s property taxes are criminal – and I would be happy to debate them – they have NOTHING to do with this article – aside from Turley’s CORRECT assertion – confirmed by you , that Mamdani is destroying the NYC tax base with these actions.
While I have established that your “hazard” claim is nonsense.
The NYC model of handling this is garbage.
In my municipality – while the NORM is that unless things are really really bad the municipality stays out. They inspect properties once every two years – that is too frequently and they do a pi$$ poor job and the inspectors are clueless as to what matters and what is not.
AGAIN all of that is a separate debate.
In the actual event that there is a REAL problem FIRST the municipality issues a demand to the owner. When they do not comply, they direct tenants to send Rents to the Municipality,
and when they have collected sufficient funds – they hire private contractors to make necescary repairs.
I would note this virtually NEVER happens – why ? Because in the real world there are very very very few actually hazardous problems.
While I have problems with this model too – it is far better than the Nonsense NYC is engaged in.
The CORRECT way to deal with this is to leave it to the free market.
If your landlord has failed to maintain your property as YOU wish – a decision YOU THE TENANT make – not the city – MOVE.
Or in the alternative – withhold the cost of repairs from the rent and hire someone to make the repairs. I want to suggest caution on the latter – because MOST municipalities have made that illegal, and you could get evicted.
But in an ACTUAL free market you can not get evicted if your landlord has failed to meet his contract obligations and you deduct the cost of damages from your contractually obligated payments.
That is actually the OPTIMAL way to deal with all of this.
“and piled up massive emergency repair liens. ”
There should be no “emergency repair liens” – as noted there is a constitutionally correct contracts clause free market compliant model – that only involves the courts – if the landlord tries to evict you for withholding rent, or for moving out because your landlord breached the contract.
In the alternative – unconstitutional – but not as bad as NYC model – repairs are paid for by the city out of escrowed rents.
There is no sane reason for the city to issue excessive fines.
There is no sane reason for the city to make or fund repairs.
In the extremely rare event that there is a condition that is TRULY hazardous – the City should remove all the tenants and be done with the matter.
In the even rarely event that there is an actual failure in the building that threatens more than the occupants – such as the building is collapsing – then and only then can the city step in – not to protect tenants – those you just remove.
But to protect Other property owners.
Part of the social contract is ACTUALLY protecting property from harm due to the negligence of others.
But ALWAYS if an issue can be resolves using ONLY the contract rights of the landlord and tenants – and the courts enforcing those contract rights – not idiotic city regulations – it should be handled that way.
Either tenants chose to move – and the courts protect them from eviction – because the landlord breached. Or the tenant witholds rent and pays for the repairs out of witheld rent.
No city involvement at all.
By involving the city – all you have done is created an unnecescary mess in a system that works fine before you meddled.
I do not know enough about the actual structure of the NYC TIL program – and honestly neither do you.
YOU have made claims regarding property taxes and Government loans that if True establish that the NYC TIL program is theft from Tax Payers – even if everything else was legitimate.
We KNOW that NYC housing went to h311 when you imposed Rent control.
Ultimately that benefited more wealthy tenants and screwed the poor.
None other than NYC Rep. Charlie Rangle lived in a Massive 2 unit Manhattan apartment for something like $2000/month rent for something that would have been 10’s of thousands otherwise.
You drove landlords out of rent controlled areas.
And caused the very decay that you are complaining about.
When I try to find history on this – I get nonsense about “the legacy of Red lining”
Actual redlining was struck down in 1917 by Buchanan v. Warley, using the contracts clause.
Actual redlining – like Jim Crow is done by LAW – government.
Red Lining did not exist in the 70’s – but Market responses to stupid laws did.
Unfortunately we still have Covert Redlining – which is accomplished by zoning and other housing regulations.
Even Rent Control laws – function to effectively Red Line.
If landlords are limited in what they can charge for Rent – they will do there best to find tenants who are never going to be a problem – they are actively going to try to get rid of poor tenants. And to a large extent that happened in NYC Manhattan has one of the highest average incomes in the country – SF is slightly higher. Basically the number of poor people was reduced by rent control.
The laws of supply and demand are immutable – and they dictate that if you Control prices – they will find a different method of calibrating supply and demand – like getting rid of poor tenants.
Aside from lots of left wing nut nonsense the FACTS I has so far been able to find on
Nina Dunn HDFC is that it is a PRIVATE corporation registered in NYC with approximately 5 employees managing 1-5M in real estate. There is no indication it is not for profit.
Or that it is anything but an ordinary corporation.
There is little that I can find that separates it from other Private HUD subsidized complexs that I deal with all the time.
I have a problem with ALL govenrment subsidies – and HUD is unconstitutional.
But you are making claims that do not appear supported by facts.
ND specifically has Income and Residency requirements While the income must be low enough to qualify for affordable housing – it must be high enough to assure that the tenant can maintain the apartment.
AGAIN – the intended or unintended consequence of all this left wing nut “affordable housing” nonsense is to subsidize a Small segment of the working poor to the exclusion of everyone else. The result is MORE homelessness – not less.
At approximately the same time as your nonsense in NYC was started a pilot program was started in Chicago with residents of Cabrini Green.
An army of social workers, financial advisers, counselors, lawyers, etc. was sent in,
Applicants were accepted and thoroughly vetted. The best ot the best were selected.
They were provided significant assistance and moved into apartments in middle class neighborhoods.
This was a Tremendous success and within about 18 months nearly everyone on the program had good jobs, and was off all forms of government assistance.
Congress heard about the program and expanded it nationwide – it is still with us today. You would know it as “Section 8”.
Two decades ago the Atlantic – when it was merely liberal and not falling of the left edge of the world reveiwed Section 8.
They found that:
The careful selection of candidates had ended – many of the approved applicants were now drug addicts, gang members and even drug dealers.
The significant support resources had dwindled dramatically – there are really only so many top social workers, counselors, lawyers, etc who are also involved in public service. There were just not enough to go arround.
BTW this is a common left wing nut problem – in ANY field – from ditch digger to Engineer – 80% of what is accompolished is done by about 20% of the people (recursively until you get to people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, or in other fields nobel prize winners).
Any problem that requires more skilled people than we already have – can not be solved by government – and probably can not be solved at all.
As Economist Julian Simon’s opus notes – The Ultimate Resource and the only truly limited resource is capable humans. The rise of standard of living directly correlates to the number of highly capable people – and more weakly to the raw number of people.
The Free Market is the ONLY mechanism for directing resources – including capable people to where we want them. It does so via the law of supply and demand.
If the supply is low and the demand is high – the price rises – until more of the resource (people) shift from elsewhere to where they are wanted.
Further this is occurring all across the market concurrently – so our demand for competent police, lawyers, social workers, scientists, ditch diggers is all coordinately by the free market, prices and the law of supply and demand.
In the real world – lawyers make more than teachers – because we demand good lawyers more than good teachers and are willing to pay more for them. That does not mean all lawyers are good – Parettos law still applies – we get more bad ones than good ones – but that is true in ALL fields.
There are many reasons that programs like Section 8 do not scale.
But ONE of those is the competent people needed to vet poor people select the most likely to succeed and provide them with the resources they need are also needed for many many other things that we value even more.
I noted that when Section 8 went nationwide the vetting and support went to h311.
The results also went to h311.
Section 8 move massive numbers of gang members and drug dealers into successful working class minority neighborhoods – exploding the drug problem and ravaging lower middle class minority families.
Section 8 still exists – it probably can not do any more damage than it has already done.
But asside from the above – it has many other problems typical of government programs.
When I have an apartment to rent – about 1/4 of the applicants are Section 8.
They ask if I take S8 – and I respond honestly – absolutely – I have had ONE section 8 tenant in 20 years. while she was no better or worse than other tenants – which is to say she was lots of trouble but NOT extra ordinary trouble. 80% of her rent was paid electronically by the government right on time every time – that was great. You do not know the effort needed to pry rent out of judgement proof tenants. That is probably the most time consuming part of being a landlord.
But there is still a problem – it typically take S8 6 weeks or more to approve an apartment for a tenant AFTER the tenant has qualified. The approval is no big deal – they are not demanding – and I would give them anything they wanted for a guaranteed check on the first of the month. The problem is 6-8 weeks. I turn apartments in 2 weeks when they are available. Most institutional landlords turn them in 2-3 DAYS.
You rant about maintanence and all kinds of other things you do not know about.
Empty apartments are a REALLY BIG PROBLEM. I have 5 units and as I have told you over and over – I do not make money on rent/expenses. I dance near negative cashflow ALL THE TIME – again the Profit is NOT in the rental – it is in the real estate. Renting just allows me to sit while the property appreciates and is paid off.
Asuming my rents are the same – one vacant unit is a 20% drop in cashflow. In reality it could be more or slightly less. Regardless it is hundred of dollars that are coming out of my pocket every month an apartment is vacant. I do not have 6-8 weeks to wait for S8 to send someone to look at the apartment.
I take S8 apps. I let them go through the process – but I tell them UPFRONT – this is First Come First Serve (aside from vetting). Except that once I have never had an apartment remain available long enough for an S8 tenant to rent it.
You raised HDFC – there are myriads of similar FOR PROFIT affordable housing providers.
A significant portion of my Apartment Due Diligence involves “affordable housing”
These project either involve significant subsidies and 100% affordable housing – and high vacancy rates. Or a significant portion are institutional real estate investors who set aside a portion of their untis for Affordable housing – in return for the same schiff you rant about
Tax breaks, low interest loans, other subsidies. These are fully private for profit companies.
The “affordable” portion of their housing which is the same as the rest of the units – just government subsidized, like Section 8 – has a very high vacancy rate. While the rest of the units turn in 3-4 days.
So to accomplish “affordable housing” – we are stealing property taxes from the public.
We are stealing by giving private businesses artificially low interest rates.
We are then subsidizing the tenants – more stealing from the public.
And finally – we have a high vacancy rate.
With respect to Nina Dunn – I would bet two things:
First they vet the crap out of their tenants.
If you are not a near perfect tenant – you are not getting in.
Next – they have a low turnover rate – because they have vetted the crap out of their tenants and because housing is scarce in NYC and if you lose an apartment in Nina Dunn you are likely screwed for life.
Regardless – if you subsidize the crap out of things AND you cherry pick those most likely to succeed – your failure rate – Like Section 8 initially will be low.
But my tenants as an example – probably could not get into Nina Dunn – and still I hold on to most tenants for several years – I receive absolutely no government assistance of any kind.
And I provide “affordable housing” to people Nina Dunn likely would not rent to.
“They boast lower default rates”
Because they cherry pick tenants and they are heavily subsidized.
My one S8 tenant was not evicted, and paid the rent on time all the time.
During Covid – all my tenants qualified for assistance – and noboy got evicted – not because of the moritorium – in my county that ended in August 2020,
But because the subsidies lasted until 2022.
But when the subsides ran out – everything went to h311 – tenants forgot they had to pay rent and get in big trouble really fast. Several got evicted.
Like everything we did during covid Rental Subsidies were a huge mistake.
The ruined lots of peoples credit – especially poor people.
“Finally, real estate is governed by land scarcity; adjusting for inflation won’t magically make a finite island like Manhattan cheaper over time.”
While this is actually incorrect – Real Estate is governed by Return on Investment.
Scarcity is just a factor in the laws of supply and demand – and short supply raises prices with either reduces demand or increases supply – or both.
Manhattan will not likely get cheaper over time – but that is NOT for the reasons you claim.
It is because Manhattan is – or atleast WAS a place in which people WANT to live – Wealthy people wanted to live there – Businesses want to be headquartered their, There are myriads of competing interests with lots of many who wish to be in Manhattan.
There is just slightly less than 10 acres of land per person in the US – Real Estate is NOT governed by “scarcity” – it is governed by DEMAND, The demand for real estate in Manhattan is greater than in Wyoming.
John Say,
To claim that a market is governed by demand but not scarcity is a massive contradiction that fails basic economics. By definition, the entire price system exists solely to allocate scarce resources. If an asset isn’t scarce, its market price is zero. You cannot claim to champion the free market while fundamentally misunderstanding how supply and demand works.
Furthermore, your ’10 acres per person in Wyoming’ comparison is a massive category error. Real estate is defined by spatial scarcity. You cannot satisfy the housing demand on a finite, 22-square-mile island like Manhattan by pointing to empty dirt in Wyoming, because you cannot commute from Cheyenne to a job on Wall Street.
Finally, your claim that real estate is ‘governed by ROI’ gets the math completely backward. ROI is a metric calculated after factoring in land costs; it doesn’t set the price. In fact, because Manhattan land is so physically scarce, it features some of the lowest immediate cash-flow ROI percentages (cap rates) in the country, because investors pay a premium just to hold a finite asset. You are trying to apply the economics of mass-manufactured consumer goods to geographically fixed land, completely ignoring David Ricardo’s foundational law of economic rent. Scarcity isn’t ‘just a factor’—it is the entire reason Manhattan real estate is expensive.
“If an asset isn’t scarce, its market price is zero.”
That is economically illiterate.
Bottled water in the U.S. is not scarce. And its market price is not zero. BIC pens are not scarce . . .
“To claim that a market is governed by demand but not scarcity is a massive contradiction that fails basic economics.”
Nope – nothing is actually scarce. There is just more demand than we can meet at the current cost to deliver. Julian Simon Bet Paul Ehrlich on exactly this – and won.
We were supposed to run out of oil in the 30’s and then the 70’s and …..
We have greater reserves today than ever.
When demand exceeds affordable supply:
First the price spikes.
Then one of three things happen.
As the cost is too high people quit buying and the price drops
People find an acceptable substitute and the price drops.
New ways of meeting the high demand at the current high price emerge – and the price drops.
Please name a SINGLE resource that costs more in real dollars ($ adjusted for inflation) today that at any time in the past.
The only things that are not CHEAPER priced in units of labor needed to aquire are those things government has meddled with the most – education and healthcare being top of the list.
There is no resource that we are using more than a tiny fraction of what exists on this planet.
But if costs get high enough – there are other planets.
This may sound crazy – but Musk and others are working towards it.
I doubt we will see practical space mining soon – but I have no doubt it will eventually occur.
Scarcity does not exist. We have orders of magnitude more of every resource than we currently need – hear on earth. We have several orders of magnitude more within the inner solar system – and on and on and on.
The limit to a resource is the cost to acquire using current means.
History is among other things – the history of finding new means to acquire more resources at lower cost.
If you talk of scarcity as anything more that an issue of the current cost given the current demand – you are far outside of reality – and economics.
Most of us are familiar with Fracking – atleast that it has vastly increased affordably recoverble oil. What most are not aware of – is if the need is large enough and the willingness to pay great enough – ANYTHING becomes abundant. And when that happens it also becomes affordable.
This is literally one facet of the law of supply and demand.
It is the very perceived scarcity and significant demand that ultimately results in it becoming more abundant and affordable.
The conflict right now with Iran – has all the Gulf Nations looking at alternate means to get energy out of the Gulf. There are two pipelines that currently bypass the Gulf – these are now running at Over there official capacity and delivering 50% of what was going through the gulf in January.
More importantly every gulf state is already examining proposals for additional pipelines.
The Saudis are looking to build a major pipeline through Israel to the Mediterranean.
There are plans for pipelines through the caucuses to Europe.
This is also a major factor in this conflict – Stop Iran from destabalizing the region – and many more options become available.
Why are the Saudis talking about a pipeline through israel to the mediterainian ?
Because Israel is actually the most stable country in the mideast.
All other routes go through countries that could shift politically and have the pipelines shutdown. Or there could be terrorist attacks.
No one worries much about those transporting oil from Canada to the US – both canada and the US have stable governments.
Eliminating Iran as a destabalizing force in the mideast will ultimately make the entire region wealthier – because people will invest in things like pipelines when they are not worried about their property being confiscated – which loops back to the importance of the takings clause and excessive fines clause.
Violate those and you are little better than Iran fomenting instability in the mideast.
The more creative, arbitrary and capricious govenrment acts – the less investment occurs.
Billionaires, Companies, and people are leaving blue states like California and NY – not because of the climate – California has one of the best climates in the nation.
They are leaving because of the political instability.
“That government is best which governs least.”
Henry David Thoreau
That is not just a philosophic statement – it is an economic fact.
Investment requires stability
” By definition, the entire price system exists solely to allocate scarce resources.”
Not quite. While the price system does allocate scarce resources – the law of supply and demand – which the price system is a part of, converts scarcity to abundance.
“If an asset isn’t scarce, its market price is zero. ”
Nope. Water is not scarce – yet people buy it from the municipality, and even go to stores and buy high priced water.
There are myriads of ways to take something that is so abundant it is free and make it worth more.
“You cannot claim to champion the free market while fundamentally misunderstanding how supply and demand works.”
I don’t.
“Furthermore, your ’10 acres per person in Wyoming’ comparison is a massive category error”
There is 10 acres per person in the US. Land is NOT scarce.
In Wyoming there is actually about 1/5th square mile per person.
Regardless you do not know what a catagory error is
“Real estate is defined by spatial scarcity.”
False the value of real estate increases with its proximity to other things people value.
” You cannot satisfy the housing demand on a finite, 22-square-mile island like Manhattan by pointing to empty dirt in Wyoming, because you cannot commute from Cheyenne to a job on Wall Street.”
Of course you can – and people ARE – that is why the outflow of people from blue to red states.
First – you have again basic supply and demand problems.
Apartments in Manhattan are not affordable by people in the working class BECAUSE more wealthy people wish to live their – they Value what Manhattan has to offer highly and so they will pay premium prices for it.
Left alone one of 4 things MUST happen.
The wages of the working class in Manhattan must rise – and that has absolutely happened, so that they can afford to live there.
Working class people move out of Manhattan to nearby cheaper areas – and either get jobs elsewhere or commute – and that has happened – not just in the working class but in white collar and even relatively wealthy people. Massive numbers of people commute to Manhattan.
People leave manhattan never to return – again that is happening in All classes.
People leave manhattan and work remotely.
There may be other possibilies – but what is important is that the laws of supply and demand dictate that the “problem” will solve itself. And it does.
Even when govenrment meddles – while that negatively distorts the results – making us all worse off – the free market and the laws of supply and demand continue to work.
This is what the left hates – and one of the reasons why communism and socialism always fail.
The Free Market is NOT something we have to create – it happens automatically without any assistance from Government – regardless of the form of government.
While it works BEST when Government does its ACTUAL job – providing the rule of law.
The free market is ALWAYS present – you can call it black markets or grey markets.
This is why we will NEVER win the war on Drugs as an example.
The free market is not merely free in the sense of Freedom – it is free in the sense that it costs you nothing and is always there.
Socialism, Communism – Every system where Government excercises control over the economy results in the free market working arround govenrment – ALWAYS.
There is only one way to preclude this – MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF FORCE.
And that is why communism ALWAYS leads to copious amounts of blood.
Because you literally have to kill people to stop the free market – and even that really does not work.
” You cannot satisfy the housing demand on a finite, 22-square-mile island like Manhattan by …”
Correct – there is NO top down solution to this or pretty much any other supply and demand problem.
But you can solve the same problems – by doing NOTHING – the free market will solve the problem for you.
YOU said that the laws of supply and demand allocate scarce resources. – while the reality is they turn perceived scarcity into abundance, the details do not matter.
The free market AUTOMATICALLY solves your manhattan problem – if you let it.
And even if you interfere – it STILL solves the problem – just not the way you would like.
One of the HUGE problems that you have in Manhattan is that the demand for housing in Manhattan is enormous – therefore the laws of supply and demand dictate that the price will rise until enough people let go of their demand to live in Manhattan.
When you impose price controls – the laws of supply and demand do not go away.
If you can not get a proper return on a valuable asset – One solution some in the free market might choose is to reduce your cost to maintain that asset.
And as I noted regarding top down solutions – the result is “bloodshed” – while the government is not yet killing very many people in Manhattan – it is using FORCE – to confiscate peoples property.
YOU claim that this is somehow a net benefit – profits are eliminated and prices are maintained while keeping properties in good repair – but as I noted before – this requires significant subsidies. But that is NOT all that it required – it also required FORCE.
And FORCE is not free. In a free market – all your regulations are unneeded.
All YOUR schemes require FORCE – and force is both inefficient and costly.
“you cannot commute from Cheyenne to a job on Wall Street.”
While atleast partly arguably true. That is also irrelevant.
You can workj for a company on Wall Street from Home – and despite demands from Goldman Sachs etc – they have had a massively difficult time gettimg people to return to Wall Street from Cheyene or elsewhere – because the CAN work from Cheyenne or Kansas,
and many have decided they like that.
But working from home is just ONE way the Free Market solves problems.
A beautiful example – and one little different from the Manhattan problem,
that people WANT fresh fruits and vegetables year round.
For 99.9999% of human existance that was impossible.
Today it is not merely possible, but it is barely more expensive than getting them when they are locally in season.
I am not going to detail how that was solved – among other things there is not a SINGLE solution but many different ones working together.
Further – though it is only in recently that you could get fresh fruit and vegetables year round, For most of human existance there were very few foods you could outside of the time they were growing. The major global core foods for most of human existence were those that could be stored one way or another for long periods of time.
I spent two weeks in China in 1998 – the food was incredible – Because pretty much everything was fresh – refridgeration was expensive and generally not available – so nearly everything I ate in China was alive a few hours before. That also meant that everythign that I ate had to live in very close proximity to humans in dense populations.
There is a reason the Flu comes to us from China.
Regardless, eating fresh foods at every meal year round is a very recent development.
But eating fruits and vegetables year round has been possible my entire life – because we have had affordable freezers and refrigeration But for most of my grandparents lives – you ate what could be preserved through the year – and that was typically not most fruits and vegetables.
But My grandparents did have Canning to preserve foods.
But even canning did not exist in the 18th century – or for 99.99% of human existance.
The point – one I repeat CONSTANTLY – because idiots like you just do not seem to grasp it,
is that the free market is the driver of rising standard of living – and it is rising standard of living that allows us to affordably have things that were not possible in the past.
It is the free market that ACTUALLY solves your problems like how to accommodate the demand for housing in Manhattan.
Just like it solves the problem of how to provide you with fresh fruit and vegetables every day.
Further – while it is the laws of supply and demand – high demand and low supply results in high prices, and high prices lead to increased supply
The laws of supply and demand DO allocate scarcity – but that is TEMPORARY – what they really do is ELIMINATE it.
Fresh fruit and vegetables are available to everyone today – because the demand exists and because the standard of living is high enough to afford them at high prices.
But the FACT is fresh fruit and vegetables do not cost much more out of season than in.
Why ? Because when increased demand and a willingness to pay, resulted in increased supply – PRICES WENT DOWN.
That is not unique to Fruits and vegetables – it is the story of EVERYTHING in the free market.
We have more of everything we want than ever before – and it costs less than it did in the past.
“Finally, your claim that real estate is ‘governed by ROI’ gets the math completely backward. ROI is a metric calculated after factoring in land costs; it doesn’t set the price. ”
ROFL
ROI is the SOLE reason that investments are made. PERIOD.
I did not buy and apartment building and THEN calculate my expenses, revenue, assets and liabilities and conclude – Oh Great – I am making a 5% return on my investment after inflation.
I and virtually every investor EVER calculated all the expenses liabilities, revenue and assets and IF AND ONLY IF the ROI justified the Risk we went forward with the investment.
“In fact, because Manhattan land is so physically scarce, it features some of the lowest immediate cash-flow ROI percentages (cap rates) in the country, because investors pay a premium just to hold a finite asset.”
False – first you KEEP making trhe same mistake over and over – People do NOT go into the business of renting apartments – it is NOT PROFITABLE. They go into the business of investing in REAL ESTATE. ROI on real estate investments is NOT calculated primarily on Cashflow.
I have told you over and over again – Cashflow for realestate investments is at best barely in the black and normally in the Red. YOU have noted that Trumps tax returns show that his real estate businesses on a cashflow basis – revenue – expenses, the way our taxes are calculuated is NEGATIVE.
That is the NORM everywhere.
In Real Estate investing the GOAL is to use the cashflow of the rental operation to pay the liability cost of the mortage.
This is cvalled LEVERAGE in investing – you want to Purchase the asset primarily with borrowed money, and use the cashflow of the use of the asset to slowly buy the asset from the lender. In addition you benefit from the assets appreciation.
In fact in many major markets – SF, SD, NYC, the appreciation is the largest component of the return.
Regardless while no real estate investor completely ignores cashflow – and in fact – cashflow problems can easily bankrupt you – or as YOU are noting in NYC lead to the confiscation of your asset – which is an investing disaster – especially if you still owe the Bank for the purchase. Further Most Real Estate investors ALWAYS owe the bank the lions share of the value of the asset.
I am 68 so I am NOT repeating the cycle on my properties.
But the NORM would be about 8 years ago I should have Refinanced all my properties – Cashed out. If I were to do this now – it would work like this:
I would refinance ALL my properties- Lets assume to make the numbers easy to understand – I have 1M in properties and 200K in debt. The bank will only let me refinance 80% of the value – so I could borrow 800K against 1M in assets, but I will have to pay off the 200K in liabilities. So I pocket 600K. But that is NOT what I do. With 600K in cash I can by an additional 3M in property – for a total of 4M in assets – which I now Owe the bank 3.2M for – and the rest is My equity – which is UNCHANGED. I have not increased my NET Equity one little bit, but I have increased my Debt Massively – that is called leveraging.
But now instead of 10 units – I own 40 units – My cashflow has increased by a factor of 4,
but my “profits” have not increased at all. I am still likely very close to in the red.
But Every single month the mortgage gets paid and I own a bit more of the properties.
In 10 years I will likely own more than 1/2 of 4M in assets – instead of 20%. Except it is NOT 4M in assets – it is likely no 8M in assets – because that is how much they have appreacited in 10 years – and I do not own 50% of that – I own nearly 80%
And guess what – at that time I AGAIN refinance – and now I go from 8M in property to 32M in property. Rinse and repeat.
I do not want to say that this is not hard work. Nor do I want to say that it is risk free.
Cashflow is a HUGE problem and becomes and even bigger problem the larger this gets.
If I go into the red on 5 units – I have to explain to my wife why I have to take $1000 out of out normal income to keep the apartments affloat – because of some major repair or because
tenants failed to pay rent.
At 4 times as many units – My full time Job – becomes making SURE that there are no cashflow problems – and as I said before Cashflow on Apartments dances on the razors edge. No bank will loan me money if my cashflow is consistently negative – and it always is close. Even institutional real estate companies with thousands of units – can not go to the bank for money if they are operating in the red.
But unless you are entirely Math impaired – my ROI has NOTHING to do with Cashflow.
ROUGHLY speaking I am getting between 10-15% ROI and that comes about 1/2 from the appreciation of the asset – and THAT you are not to count on – My property lost 50% of its value the year after I bought it – also known as the great recession. The other 50% of the ROI comes from leveraging the banks money to buy an asset that is far more expensive than I can afford.
I have NEVER heard a single real estate investor EVER talk about ROI with respect to Cashflow. There is little or no ROI on a revnue/expense basis – Cashflow in Real Estate.
I would also suggest that you think about the FACT that ROI is Return on INVESTMENT.
It is not Return on Revenue. It is not Return on Cashflow.
Without addressing the Capital Gains that are occuring – the appreciation fo the asset and the increase in ownership as the mortgage is paid – I have LOST money on my apartments, if institutional investors have managed to make SMALL profits – they are lucky.
Further – while this is the model used for ALL real Estate investing – which you Clearly do not understand – Please go to Amazon – there are Bazillions of books on real estate investing.
You can start here.
https://www.amazon.com/Real-Estate-Investing-Dummies-Tyson/dp/1118948211
Many businesses do NOT profit from Cashflow. Insurance has a slightly different model – but most insurance policies LOSE MONEY over the course of their existance.
Insurance companies make money by investing premiums until the have to liquidate the premiums to pay claims.
Walmart loses money on Many sales. There average profit on a sale is 1.5% But they Turn the entire store every 90 days – that means they make 1.5% every 90 days – or about 6%/year.
It is clear you know NOTHING about Real Estate investing,
Nothing about investing, Nothing about markets, Nothing about economics.
” Scarcity isn’t ‘just a factor’—it is the entire reason Manhattan real estate is expensive.”
No Demand is. If no one wanted to live in manhattan prices would plummet.
If you have actually read Ricardo – you did not understand him.
BTW – While Ricardo is a giant in economics – he was also a proponent of “the labor theory of value” – Adam Smith Danced arround that – but never really embraced it.
Ultimately classical economics rejected the labor theory of value – which Marx fixated on.
“Value is subjective”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYuHUdE_pys
This is of critical importance – the Free market depends on it.
ANY Non subjective system of values will result in a winner and a loser in EVERY economic exchange.
If you buy a burger from McDs for $1.
If that burger is OBJECTIVELY worth more than $1 – McDs is not going to sell it to you for $1.
If that Burger is OBJECTIVELY worth less than $1 – You are not going to buy it for $1.
All free exchange REQUIRES that both parties to the exchange are better off after the exchange than before – which means ANY zero sum scheme of Value – will result in no exchange taking place.
Ricardo is one of the Greats in Economics – but he got value Wrong,
and your citing him on Value establishes that you are clueless regarding economics – as well as economic history.
BTW – the above is not my opinion. Economics just does not work unless “value is subjective.”
A short response – since you will not likely read the longer one.
Ricardo is one of the greats of Early Classical Economics.
But he was absolutely wrong on value – as was pretty much everyone until the last half of the 19th century. One of the great Flaws in Marxism is that it builds on Ricardo’s labor theory of value – Adam Smith also danced closer to this but ultimately and correctly did not adopt it.
He cam CLOSE to getting value correct with
“All Money is a matter of beleif” – which is correct -and is the correct place to start to derive value.
The whole of theories of value in the 18th and early 19th centuries is junk economics.
The early French economists – again great in their time, rooted value in the agricultural productivity of land.
Early economists are like Early Physicists – full of flawed theories but still moving things forward. Adam Smith is amazing because though he Danced near some flawed theories – like the Labor Theory of value – and he did not reject it outright – he did not embrace it and you can find the roots to Subjective value in his work.
Ricardo is also famous for the theory of competive advantage – but even that is in Smith in a primative form.
GSX: ” You cannot satisfy the housing demand on a finite, 22-square-mile island like Manhattan by pointing to empty dirt in Wyoming, because you cannot commute from Cheyenne to a job on Wall Street.”
Actually, that was accomplished. Not Wyoming but the waterfront in Brooklyn, along with the means to cross the East River. Not only that, but one can get to Wall Street much quicker than from other parts of Manhattan. The pie got bigger. Why do you continue to exhibit your foolishness?
“Eminent domain requires the fair compensation of those whose property you take”
The Kelo decision wasn’t fair or proper in any way, including the compensation. That decision approved of the government weaponizing its power to generate private corporate profit at the expense of the original landowner. [In this type of venue, commercial property is worth more than private property, but the homeowner was paid the lower amount.]
S. Meyer: I remember when the Kelo decision came out. I was shocked.
I do believe if Alito had been on board at that time, it would have still been a 5-4 decision, but with the “5” going the other way.
He’s a Realestate Developer, why would you be surprised by that position? I would guarantee you that if one of his properties were being taken through imminent domain, he would leverage every single opportunity to maximize his profits. Fair market value, in my opinion the sale should include no taxation of the Owner or be paid by the taking entity as it is a forced sale.
Hilarious
A bunch of third worlders leave their tyrannical countries and escape to America, land of the free and home of the brave, only ending up in New York. Where a Socialist dictator wannabe gets elected Mayor and tries to turn the City into a Socialist dictatorship trampling the Constitution. The decaying Big Apple, where corruption freeshitz and unchecked taxation has taken its course leaving the City a giant mess.
Let it run its course and watch the carnage or have the Feds swoop in with Civil Rights lawsuits against a taking? I don’t think Mamdami will ever make it to a State Retirement!
Deport New York to Seattle…
Taxpayers are being told this is a “housing” plan, but if you zoom out and look at the system, it is doing something very different. The city is stepping in as the effective hiring company, using public money to contract with builders on the condition that they pay a politically set wage floor of 40 dollars an hour. That means every bid is forced to bake in higher labor costs, not because that produces more or safer units, but because the political goal is to redistribute income to a favored slice of workers and contractors.
In a genuinely competitive, results‑driven system, you would start by defining the goal: house as many people as possible in safe, code‑compliant units. Then you would award work to the lowest responsible bidder who can meet that standard. Here, they have quietly changed the goal. Now the system is designed to buy two things with the same pot of money: a fixed number of units and an above‑market wage structure. Arithmetic does the rest. For every dollar pushed into that mandated wage premium, there is a dollar that cannot go into building additional units. Fewer people get housed so that a politically chosen group can get higher pay.
Now place that on top of a regime that also claims the power to label owners “bad landlords” on elastic standards, and then seize and reassign their properties to “responsible stewards,” and you can see the deeper pattern. City Hall is engineering both sides of the equation: who loses assets and who gains income, not based on performance but on political designation. That is not a neutral housing policy. That is a redistribution and power‑concentration machine, wrapped in the language of compassion.
I’m glad you’re against politically favorable no-bid contracts. Who’s painting the reflecting pool? And whom did Noem hire for ads for $200 million? And seven thousand other examples. I bet you’re fuming about all that. Just curious.
Glad repairing the Reflecting Pool is the same as forced rent control, taking over other people’s property while giving it to “NON-PROFITS?” and spending billions and billions on properties that will live on in perpetuity in your little brain.
When you prevent a person from charging a free market rate for their property thereby making it impossible to keep it up and then take the same property from them it is an illegal taking, it is un-American and it is the opposite of the free market.
But to this deep thinker believes fixing the Reflecting Pool, unlike Obama’s Basketball Court, is the real crime.
Justice Kavanaugh said eviction moratoria are cool, so long as it’s only for a month or so until Congress votes for it. Same logic applies in NYC: Mayor Mamdani can issue a declaration for a month or a year until the city council catches up and authorizes takings as in Kelo.
You obviously have never ever worked in renovation or construction management. What BS.
The most efficient part of socialism is that they always have the solutions, even before they understand the problems. What they don’t quite get is that their brand of efficiency rarely implies success.
When I hear white supremacy is the justification for stealing property, whether it’s toothpaste in a CVS or an apartment building in NYC, I know it’s racism where white people are the target. Labeling it Socialism is an attempt to clean it up as policy. White guilt has been flourishing for decades. It’s time to wake up.
Some of the worse (worst landlords) is the city of NY.
Socialist and radical agenda absolutely, but this is going to be about the money. Follow the money trail and see who benefits.
Ding, ding, ding!
It is always billions going to “non-profits” (the most egregious misnomer in history) and NGOs, all run by allies of the person granting the contracts and always with money going back to the granting party. It can be the fire in CA, autism funs in MN or billions and billions of other dollars all going to Democrats.
I hope no one dares to laugh at this- it could be coming to a city or state near you! We moved from an extremely blue state (Ca) to a relatively “safe” red state- SC. The apathy of people here is frightening. We have millions of transplants moving in here and the natives here have a “can’t happen to us” attitude. Conservatives that move to red states from blue states, are the fiercest conservatives because they have had to scratch and claw for every inch they gain- which isn’t much. They finally get tired of banging their head against the wall and move.
Let’s stop sugar coating these actions with socially acceptable characterizations like, “Socialism.”
Confiscating assets and the government taking over the means of production is communism.
@Ken
Exact same experience for me. People need to wake up – the time for reticence is just gone. Yes, any place can flip, and easily. The damage can be so fast you’d miss it if you blink. And these days they are doing their damndest to make it very difficult if not impossible to reverse with their chicanery. Wake up! This is a very real threat.
Oh, and @Anonymous
Communists in China would be ashamed of this incompetence and grift
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people. As someone who has seen the “warmth of collectivism” first hand in the former Soviet Union, it is deja vue. And when it collapses, as it inevitably will, they will blame Trump, or “racism”, or climate change, or whatever.
Ro Khanna, the newest fake radical leftist, says the fires in CA are Trumps fault????
People live in run down building with the worse landlords because they can’t afford to pay much rent of have a history of not paying rent. That means the worst landlords have no money to fix buildings because or rent control, which also limits new units. So where is the money going to come from to fix up these buildings.
The building will be stolen. The plan to improve the buildings will fail. The land will eventually be sold to Mamdani backing developers and a lot of the money will end up in the Socialist mayor’s pockets. It’s not like we haven’t seen this before.