Spyke

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What's a scam that's so normalized that we don't even realize it's a scam anymore?

Homes as wealth-creators.

Americans take it as received wisdom that homes are meant to generate income through higher valuations over time. We just assume home prices go up over time and if it's not actively increasing in value, the home was a failure.

Many other countries don't treat homes this way. They are dwellings, invest what you want to your liking, but it's not a retirement account.

This focus on wealth generation creates lots of perverse incentives, such as exclusionary zoning, building on lots that are overly large, and suburban sprawl. These don't reflect people's actual, desired form of housing but rather maximize wealth for homeowners at the expense of everyone else.

We have a completely warped view of housing that causes us to be preyed upon by real estate agents, landlords, HOAs and the like.

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the pipeline

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This is the angle I come at the issue from. Prohibitive zoning and perverse incentives for car use are skewing what the market would otherwise provide.

One of the few issues where free market liberals 🤝 socialists 🤝 libertarians

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