I disagree. It's just another housing bubble. That should be bleeding obvious from looking at the article's FRED chart. Scarcity was not suspended from 2007-2012 when the previous bubble collapsed and brought housing prices down to settle on long-term inflation as if the previous 10 years never even happened.
Blaming NIMBYism instead of loose debt looking for a safe haven is either a well-funded political agenda or mass hysteria of bloggers getting wound up on each others' articles.
I wonder what it sold for, besides the trinkets mentioned at the end. If they had hodled they could clear maybe a trillion on the open market today (which consists of sovereign states).
Highly enriched U-235 would also be a sound basis for a commodity-backed hard currency, though not quite as good as the US Dollar and the Ruble which are backed by Pu-239.
So you're saying that people should not be allowed to build log cabins because they don't contribute to your definition of acceptable housing stock? What if someone would prefer to live in a log cabin than commie block apartment? Is there any human freedom safe from such communistic arguments?
Regulations are not the primary reason for safety in vehicular design. I know you'll never believe that, however, it probably goes counter to your entire world view, so don't bother responding.
Whether you like it or not, there is dollar number on the value of a human life, and liability insurance (and vehicle design and regulation) revolves around it. Safety has diminishing returns and there is a market clearing point. Brush guards are just as dangerous as spikes, for instance, would you like to ban them? Or would you make a government form to apply for an exception if the brush guard is for an approved acceptable use by you for someone who has a license for their proper use off-road by someone with an acceptable economic reason fitting the social and economic calculations for the current five year plan determined by your Ministry of Truth?
Dude, it's a cabin. It's made out of logs. You should at least be able to opt-out. If you're concerned about resale value then you can pursue a NACHI seal of approval.
You should be free to drive a car with friggin spikes on the front, and the insurance industry should be free to charge you accordingly for the liability risk. That's freedom.
Then why can't you build a perfectly fine cabin on your own rural property without government inspectors coming around and micromanaging.
US/Canadian automobiles are also needlessly expensive, there are many awesome vehicles sold in Mexico etc., like the Hilux, and I don't see it as a conspiracy to keep poor people down, but an overabundance of caution from bureaucrats covering their ass and regulatory capture.
It's really hard to argue the libertarian point of view because you're always trying to point out the "unseen costs".
There is zero technical reason why housing can't be cheap as hell in this day and age. It's all due to government restrictions. And I'm not talking about shanty towns either - that's what you get when legal housing is too expensive to build!
Regulations such as zoning are enormous social experiments.
Experiments should have control groups! Where are the control group cities?
Why do experimental social regulations have to be universal? Would life without them be great? Would it be terrible? I doubt that mankind evolved to require so much micromanagement in all aspects of life.
Okay, buddy, we have this thing called the Internet now. It's a magical place where you can be anonymous and say whatever the fuck you want. The cat has left the bag.
All restrictive speech laws do now is push dissidents underground into radicalizing echochambers like 4chan, while at the same time rapidly expanding the scope of "dissident" to include anyone who says anything remotely offensive to anybody. Is that what you want?
The slope is slippery because, given enough time, lawyers are always be able to form a causal effect chain from human action A to undesirable outcome B.
I'm a fan of some, but it's a subjective thing, isn't it? Don't you think that maybe perhaps some of the "auction prices" and "appraisals" are a bit more "objective"? Can nobody on this website think outside the box?