Thread

The End of a Fair Price: Dynamic Pricing and the Normalization of Gouging

95 points · 128 comments · paimapi

bbor · 1790706875 · focus · HN ↗
A yes, capitalism; a system that works perfectly as long as communication and data processing technology is innefficent enough to put a natural efficiency limit on all firms. Reminds me of the scandal around rental price "collusion", which ultimately was kinda just really effective software for doing stuff that would normally be fine.
*ETA:* And FWIW, the author here goes about as far towards that as they can -- a shoutout at the end! Anything else would be decried as biased, after all. Great article; shame it'll soon be downranked by the wonderful machines running this place :(
1. bix6 · 1790706940 · focus · HN ↗
  You mean like withholding units from the market to overcharge renters when there’s people sleeping on the streets? Totally fine.
  1. EA-3167 · 1790707781 · focus · HN ↗
    Are you under the mistaken impression that chronic homelessness is caused by lack of housing supply? It’s much more correlated with mental illness and addiction in people who can’t be forced into care, but still desperately need it.
    alphawhisky · 1790708765 · focus · HN ↗
    Are you under the mistaken impression that housing is not a human right? Do you protest your taxes being too high in response to this argument? They're much more correlated with the total number of children in 3rd world countries that got blown up in a given year. I can't force you to care, but you still desperately need it. Fiscally, it's asinine to talk about the costs associated with this if you refuse to care about the actual holes in the US's pocketbook.
    EA-3167 · 1790709284 · focus · HN ↗
    If you don’t want to respond honestly to my question that’s your right, but at least don’t get on a soapbox over it. This is HN not TikTok. You aren’t impressing anyone by avoiding the question with a deflecting rant.
    hyperlinerapp · 1790711510 · focus · HN ↗
    Is housing now a human right in liberal-land?
    I guess God needs to get going building a house for every baby!
    Call me when vanilla ice cream is a human right please!
    bbor · 1790709577 · focus · HN ↗
    Your empirical claims are extremely incorrect, but regardless this whole discussion will be shut down. Shame -- it really was a good article :(
    EA-3167 · 1790709979 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/the-intersection-of-homelessness-and-mental-illness" rel="nofollow">https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/the-intersection-of...
    <a href="https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/addiction-statistics-demographics/homeless" rel="nofollow">https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/addiction-s...
    <a href="https://www.samhsa.gov/communities/homelessness-programs-resources" rel="nofollow">https://www.samhsa.gov/communities/homelessness-programs-res...
    <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44302#_Toc437336722" rel="nofollow">https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44302#_Toc437336722
    It’s not exactly a cryptic relationship, and it implies the need for more than just housing, people need serious inpatient care or structures outpatient programs and those are hard to fund. It’s doubly challenging because of how the US mental health system changed in the 1980’s… very much for the worse.
    At least you didn’t assume I was arguing against housing.
    bbor · 1790710607 · focus · HN ↗
    ...did you just link to "American Addiction Centers" as proof that the root cause of homelessness in the US is drug addiction? I... I can't believe this is the level of rigor that justifies such horrible cruelty. Just mind boggling.
    EA-3167 · 1790711037 · focus · HN ↗
    I linked to multiple sources, why cherry-pick the one you deem the weakest?
    bbor · 1790712495 · focus · HN ↗
    With all politeness: because it shows beyond a doubt that you are arguing in bad faith, using post-hoc reasoning.
    EA-3167 · 1790717796 · focus · HN ↗
    You’re making a lot of wrong assumptions about my argument based on what appears to be an expectation that anything less than a tonal echo of you is a rejection of the concept of providing housing. All of this in an environment that explicitly instructs us to charitably interpret what others are saying.
    The internet is full of places to pick a dumb fight and declare your moral superiority, this doesn’t need to be one of those places.
    paimapi · 1790711026 · focus · HN ↗
    I love that you just Googled sources and didn't even read them
    your first source says verbatim: "One of the main causes of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing". it also doesn't link addiction or mental illness as a cause - it describes that the rates are higher in unhoused populations
    a brief thought experiment: if you were unhoused, living on the streets, barely enough money for food and water, your body exposed to the weather, knowing that society looks down on you at worst or ignores you at best, how would your mental health fare?
    well, according to your second source:
    > It can be more challenging for people who are homeless to stop using substances, because they may not have easy access to treatment, often have smaller social support networks, may have decreased motivation to quit drugs or alcohol, and may have other, higher priorities, such as finding housing or food
    it's almost like being unhoused itself causes cycles of addiction because at least the drugs take the pain away for a short stint?
    your third source similarly contradicts your initial claim:
    >For years, ending chronic homelessness was thought to be a multi-step process, with individuals receiving treatment for addictions and illnesses, perhaps while living in transitional or temporary housing, before being found capable of living on their own. However, the strategy for ending homelessness has changed, largely due to research pioneered by housing providers. Instead of requiring chronically homeless individuals to be "housing ready" by first addressing issues thought to underlie homelessness, the new strategy allows chronically homeless individuals to move into permanent supportive housing without preconditions.
    either find better sources or actually read the research you're citing, learn from them, and stop making unfounded and ludicrous claims you can't even back up
    EA-3167 · 1790711535 · focus · HN ↗
    All of that is true, and I don't deny any of it. I also don't think it's unreasonable to conclude based on my initial phrasing that I was somehow against housing. I'm not. I'm for housing the homeless *but also we need to do more unless you want their lives to continue to be hell*.
    I'm sorry, but the idea that having a place to sleep is enough to save a life is sorely mistaken. A third of chronically homeless people have at least a serious mental health issue and those don't go away. Likewise substance abuse is a hard thing to kick EVEN WITH A HOME. It's doubly so these days when drugs are routinely cut with fentanyl, designer drugs, and worse. A good friend of mine died three years ago very much homed, but almost totally unable to find meaningful, quality, and lasting treatment. In the end after a DECADE clean someone abused her, tricked her, and she was gone three months later.
    PUTTING PEOPLE UNDER A ROOF IS NOT ENOUGH.
    paimapi · 1790712600 · focus · HN ↗
    that's totally fair and I'm really sorry to hear that. wraparound services provided in-full is necessary and often a skipped thing that municipalities ignore and foist on ill-equipped and often-problematic religious institutions and things like AA (which is effectively also a Christian/deist indoctrination program)
    I'd love to live in a utopia where our money doesn't go to murdering hundreds of children in an elementary school in another country and instead provides fully funded and socialized longterm treatment programs for people who need it, with strict regulatory and auditing guidelines to prevent abuse and non-evidence-based practices
    it's a fucking shame how far we are from that ever becoming reality
    [deleted] · 1790714836 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]

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