{"id":49638,"date":"2014-12-09T07:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=49638"},"modified":"2014-12-07T12:24:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T18:24:02","slug":"mandated-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=49638","title":{"rendered":"Mandated Equality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two truisms at play in this story:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If someone has to mandate your equal outcome [*], then you probably really aren’t equal.<\/li>\n
  2. Economics 101: \u00a0Forcing people to pay more or less for a good or service than they naturally would will distort the market. \u00a0Force the price up, and you’ll get a black market. \u00a0Force the price down, and you’ll get less of the good or service.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    With that in mind, see if you can see both currents in this piece<\/a>, about developers in NYC and their reaction to being forced (as a condition of a bailout) to include “Market-Rate rentals” which are, in fact, well below the market rate.<\/p>\n

    A Queens luxury tower that was bailed out by the city is blocking the large terraces of a few affordable units so tenants above with tiny balconies don\u2019t get jealous, one resident claims.<\/p>\n

    Erin McFadzen chose her middle-income \u2014 and rent-stabilized \u2014 corner apartment at Long Island City\u2019s new Q41 building because of its wrap-around terrace.<\/p>\n

    But when she moved in, half of it was fenced off by what she calls a \u201cJurassic Park\u201d-style barricade.<\/p>\n

    The ugly 6-foot-high wire barrier also interferes with views from every window of her sixth-floor, $2,186-a-month pad.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe\u2019re caged in,\u201d McFadzen told The Post.<\/p>\n

    \u201cEvery time someone comes over, I have to explain why the fence is there .\u2009.\u2009. and tell them we\u2019re rent stabilized, like it\u2019s a badge I have to wear,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    And the tenants aren’t the only innumerate ones; the developers (read the story, for crying out loud) are just as bad.<\/p>\n

    The innumeracy washes over us in waves in this piece:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Rent Control\/Rent Subsidy (as well as the city’s systematic demonization of landlords, much as Minneapolis and Saint Paul are doing, although not nearly as effectively as NYC does – yet) is\u00a0exactly why\u00a0<\/em>it’s impossible to find an affordable apartment in NYC. \u00a0“If you make a good or service worth less than it would naturally be, there will be less of it”.<\/li>\n
    2. The city shouldn’t be bailing out failed developers – so the developers shouldn’t be complaining that the bailout comes with strings attached requiring them to include rentals for much lower rates than the market would ordinarily bear.<\/li>\n
    3. \n
      Real estate in New York being as much about image as value, the “low-income” tenants shouldn’t be surprised that the developers are doing\u00a0something\u00a0<\/em>to give the residents paying the\u00a0actual\u00a0<\/em>market rates\u00a0some\u00a0<\/em>sense that they’re getting something justifying the premium that they’re paying for the upscale places they’re renting. \u00a0And in that case, that means making the the full-rent balconies a better deal than the cut-rate ones. \u00a0Even just by the seemingly bitchy means they used.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      If governnment has to make you equal, you’re probably not.<\/p>\n

      [*] Civil rights legislation is, of course,\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>an example of this; civil rights and liberties are not given to us by a landlord, but by our creator. \u00a0Nobody can\u00a0justly\u00a0<\/em>take them away. \u00a0Housing is not a right – much less a specific class of housing for a specific price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Two truisms at play in this story: If someone has to mandate your equal outcome [*], then you probably really aren’t equal. Economics 101: \u00a0Forcing people to pay more or less for a good or service than they naturally would will distort the market. \u00a0Force the price up, and you’ll get a black market. \u00a0Force […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49640,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49638\/revisions\/49640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}