Peter Thiel: To unshackle ourselves economically, start by attacking real estate \ stacker news ~econ

Peter Thiel: To unshackle ourselves economically, start by attacking real estate www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/01/john-gray-peter-thiel-discussion-post-modern-world

961 sats \ 12 comments \ @kr 11 Apr econ

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373 sats \ 1 reply \ @superstacker1 11 Apr

I doubt there is a real estate shortage in the U.S. considering that at least 15 percent of the housing stock is vacant and most properties are under utilized based on historical norms.

Houses are mostly viewed as a store of value and a hedge against inflation.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 11 Apr

There is no real estate shortage. There is a use mismatch the market is about to take care of - too much commercial - too little residential.

241 sats \ 2 replies \ @wopwopwopwop 11 Apr

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183 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 11 Apr

It sound like you might've understandably bailed out at the mention of wokeness under all of its political load. He mostly says that these problems simply need to be talked about more and doesn't prescribe a solution. Although, he does implicate housing prices.

BUILD MORE HOUSING

This is something that's said a lot but it seems like it treats a symptom rather the disease afaict. It doesn't help that it's often presented like a lawn sign. It has all the opaqueness of "woke." What's your favorite source article defending the slogan?

According to the census numbers we have nearly 20m more homes than we do households. So we have enough homes.

Could the issue instead be people using homes as investments? Could the issue be low interest rates being available to some classes of people, who turn around and buy multiple homes to store wealth or start short term rental side hustles?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 11 Apr

Keep in mind the costs.

Here is a great article on the cost to construct

#497373

153 sats \ 0 replies \ @halalmoney 11 Apr

‘ To unshackle ourselves economically, one should start by attacking the extraordinarily distorted real estate market. It’s very hard because you would destroy trillions of dollars in value in doing it, but the distortions have to give way at some point. Maybe it’s a technological fix.

… there perhaps may be some dim subliminal awareness among these politicians that solving them would involve big losses for somebody. ’

401 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 11 Apr

Peter absolutely cooks the mainstream zeitgeist and I love it.

I wouldn’t even go that far. Even iPhones distract you from the fact you’re in a hundred-year-old subway in London or New York, or the fact the environment hasn’t changed. I wouldn’t say there’s a fully intentional conspiracy, but the particular, narrow forms of technological progress that we’ve had in the last 50 years have made us oblivious to these things.

One particular example of science’s slide from early modern ambition into late modern torpor is the climate change debate. If one took climate change seriously, there are all kinds of progressive science things one could do. You could be pushing for the construction of hundreds of new nuclear reactors. You could be pushing for nuclear fusion. But in practice, we don’t lean into that. We’re instead told that we should ride bicycles. So much of science today has this Luddite feeling.

250 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 11 Apr

More.

PT: Well, certainly, the virtual world is the part of technology that has progressed the most. I keep thinking that you could do a lot more in these other areas. If I, again, come back to real estate, this seems the furthest from technological innovation. Admittedly, there are new building designs, you can build 100-story buildings that you could not build 20, 30 years ago. But if too much of the economy is anchored on things that are hard to improve or change, progress slows. So if the economy in the UK, and I’ll make these numbers up, is 50% real estate and 10% computers, then even if the 10% that is computers is somehow getting better and better, if 50% that is real estate is very stuck, that is going to be at best a slowly improving economy. If the most important thing isn’t changing, that creates all kinds of weird side effects and incentives.

JG: So the hyper-progressivism, the hyper-accelerationism that we are told that we have, by politicians and others, by Blair, for example…

PT: It does not show up in the per capita GDP numbers, it does not show up in incomes rising faster than rents. I just think the rebuttal is simply on the real estate side. And then we are told that people don’t want to live in houses anymore, they don’t want to have families, they’re super conscientious, they’d rather eat insects and not have children. At some point, it’s a parody of progressivism.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 11 Apr

Neither pure capitalism nor pure globalism work economically. To unshackle ourselves economically, one should start by attacking the extraordinarily distorted real estate market.

WTF! The real-estate is distorted. I was thinking to invest in it. My minds now changed.

Peter is a hacker of your own perspective about the world.

Stay away from him.... 🤣

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 11 Apr

Attack everything except Bitcoin until the world starts eating Bitcoin, sleeping on Bitcoin couch, having a Bitcoin house, everything Bitcoin.

Amazing world, I wish.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheWildHustle 12 Apr

We’re trying to unshackle ourselves from ourselves.

I’d probably recommend just removing cancerous 3rd parties.

40 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiracDelta 11 Apr outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.