Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixing on Rental Housing? (investopedia.com) 119
"Some corporate landlords collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices, often using algorithms and price-fixing software to do it."
That's a U.S. presidential candidate, speaking yesterday in North Carolina to warn that the practice "is anticompetitive, and it drives up costs. I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices."
Ironically, it's a problem caused by technology that's impacting some of America's major tech-industry cities. Investopedia reports: Harris proposed a slate of policies aimed at curbing the high cost of housing, which many economists have traced to a long-standing shortage. The affordability situation for both renters and first-time buyers took a turn for the worse starting in 2020 when home prices and rents rose sharply. Harris's plan called for the construction of 3 million new houses to close the gap between how many homes exist in the country, and how many are needed, with the aim of evening out supply and demand and putting downward pressure on prices. This would be accomplished by offering tax incentives to builders for constructing starter homes, by funding local construction, and by cutting bureaucratic red tape that slows down construction projects. Harris would also help buyers out directly, through the first-time buyer credit.
For renters, Harris said she would crack down on companies that own many apartments, who she said have "colluded" to raise rents using pricing algorithms. She also called for a law blocking large investors from buying houses to rent out, a practice she said was driving up prices by competing with individual private buyers. Harris's focus on corporate crackdowns extended to the food business, where she called for a "federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries," without going into specifics about what exact behavior the ban would target.
Investopedia reminds readers that the executive branch is just one of three branches of the U.S. government: Should Harris win the 2024 election and become president, her ideas are still not guaranteed to be implemented, since many would require the support of Congress. Lawmakers are currently divided with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats in control of the Senate.
That's a U.S. presidential candidate, speaking yesterday in North Carolina to warn that the practice "is anticompetitive, and it drives up costs. I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices."
Ironically, it's a problem caused by technology that's impacting some of America's major tech-industry cities. Investopedia reports: Harris proposed a slate of policies aimed at curbing the high cost of housing, which many economists have traced to a long-standing shortage. The affordability situation for both renters and first-time buyers took a turn for the worse starting in 2020 when home prices and rents rose sharply. Harris's plan called for the construction of 3 million new houses to close the gap between how many homes exist in the country, and how many are needed, with the aim of evening out supply and demand and putting downward pressure on prices. This would be accomplished by offering tax incentives to builders for constructing starter homes, by funding local construction, and by cutting bureaucratic red tape that slows down construction projects. Harris would also help buyers out directly, through the first-time buyer credit.
For renters, Harris said she would crack down on companies that own many apartments, who she said have "colluded" to raise rents using pricing algorithms. She also called for a law blocking large investors from buying houses to rent out, a practice she said was driving up prices by competing with individual private buyers. Harris's focus on corporate crackdowns extended to the food business, where she called for a "federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries," without going into specifics about what exact behavior the ban would target.
Investopedia reminds readers that the executive branch is just one of three branches of the U.S. government: Should Harris win the 2024 election and become president, her ideas are still not guaranteed to be implemented, since many would require the support of Congress. Lawmakers are currently divided with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats in control of the Senate.
Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixing? (Score:5, Insightful)
People may dislike a plan, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand the -1 Score for the above comment.
"Can" the US regulate algorithm based price fixing? I see no reason they shouldn't be able to. Unless you see a technical reason companies could just hide the act. Or people fail to see the obvious connection between it and a "cartel", which holds powers similar to a monopoly or oligopoly (both of which I doubt people truly think are safe, sane, or good for the rest of us).
"Should" is a different question all together.
And "can the president" is another detail. No, the president can not mandate a new law like that, unless they're in very specific situations. They can only pressure congress to create and approve it, then sign it into action. It's been a while so I'd suggest people just search online for the details of what the executive office CAN decide to do out of the blue, and on their own.
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Or people fail to see the obvious connection between it and a "cartel"
The markets are too segmented. There is no one landlord with sufficient supply to dictate the terms of the market. No Saudis of apartments who can threaten to drive the others out by dumping a huge supply and causing prices to collapse.
In my city, there is only one entity [seattle.gov] that has the power to restrict market supply and drive up prices. And they are not shy about using it.
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"No Saudis of apartments who can threaten to drive the others out by dumping a huge supply and causing prices to collapse."
What if you legalized homelessness so no one had to pay rent?
Re:People may dislike a plan, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
You haven't been paying attention to the housing market is US regions of 100,000+. Investment capital firms have been buying up huge swaths of, first, suburban apartment complexes, then city apartment buildings, and now 2-flats and single family homes across regions and consolidating them into "management companies". But unlike traditional management companies that would run grandma's 4-flat for her after grandpa passed away these entities are absolutely using algorithms to drive up prices, often by hold large quantities of apartments (and now houses) off the market until housing-seekers cry uncle and sign the higher rent contact. And they are operating in much smaller cities and towns than you would think.
You don't think that "We Buy Ugly Houses" company is local couples playing the fixup-and-flip game do you?
Re: People may dislike a plan, but... (Score:2)
You haven't been paying attention to the housing market is US regions of 100,000+. Investment capital firms have been buying up huge swaths of, first, suburban apartment complexes, then city apartment buildings, and now 2-flats and single family homes
Yes. But so many firms and REITs are involved that there is no significant concentration of ownership. On the other hand, this influx of capital is resulting in the construction of many new housing units*. Which is a good thing. Supply and demand dictate that this will drive prices down.
*Except for locations like Seattle. Where the socialist government wants to drive out private investors and become the monopoly landlord through a huge public housing program. Commie blocks for everyone!
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US antitrust laws were gutted by the Reagan Administration and other than a very few high profile cases are no longer enforced. In fact the Chicago School says that what benefits "consumers" (note carefully that word vs the word citizens) is allowing large corporations to merge in to mega-corporations because when they do that they lower prices for a few years. What happens after Year 3 is none of John Roberts' concern.
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The markets are too segmented. There is no one landlord with sufficient supply to dictate the terms of the market.
You have not been paying attention then:
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You have not been paying attention then:
To Slashdot dupes?
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And "can the president" is another detail. No, the president can not mandate a new law like that, unless they're in very specific situations. They can only pressure congress to create and approve it, then sign it into action. It's been a while so I'd suggest people just search online for the details of what the executive office CAN decide to do out of the blue, and on their own.
You are nit-picking. The president sets policy, as leader of their political party. As long as their party has the majority (or can negotiate cooperation from the opposition) they can get the laws made that they want made. It is not good for your career to oppose the policy platform that just elected your party's leader to power... so generally the party follows the lead of the president.
The details of the lawmaking process are that the president tells someone on staff to write up the law, tells congress
Re: People may dislike a plan, but... (Score:2)
The laws proposed need to pass constitutional muster, if you want something implemented in law that is against the constitution, you'll need to amend the constitution - a non-trivial exercise.
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true.. but unrelated to the topic under discussion.
There is no clause in the United States Constitution that says "Congress shall pass no law regulating algorithm based price fixing on rental housing."
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There is no clause in the United States Constitution that says "Congress shall pass no law regulating algorithm based price fixing on rental housing."
Yes there is. It's the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In order to get past the 10th Amendment, there needs to be a clause explicitly granting Congress the authority to legislate on the topic in question.
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It's far from a nitpick. The modern presidential MO is to ignore Congress and do whatever the hell you please with executive orders and then cross your fingers and hope the judicial system doesn't challenge you. Worst case, you get your law passed for many months until judicial scrutiny s
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I don't understand the -1 Score for the above comment.
Here on Slashdot, as on most places on the Internet these days, there are supporters of Trump and the fascists that seem to dominate the Republican Party these days, and they have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that the Democratic Party and it's supporters present, regardless of whether it'll be beneficial to all Americans or not. But they are not the only people on Slashdot, they are a minority, which is why that post is now moderated back into positive territory.
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"Can" the US regulate algorithm based price fixing? I see no reason they shouldn't be able to.
The Constitution sets "DEFAULT DENY" permissions on the Federal government for creating laws and regulations. The Constitution doesn't grant to Congress (and therefore the Congress can't delegate to the President) a general authority to regulate private commercial transactions. It also doesn't grant Congress authority to regulate on the matter of housing.
States, on the other hand, can, to the extent allowed by their own Constitutions.
The Interstate Commerce clause, as interpreted today (namely, the word "
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No, the president can not mandate a new law like that, unless they're in very specific situations. They can only pressure congress to create and approve it, then sign it into action.
The Recommendation clause in Article 2, Section 3 gives the president the right to make recommendations to Congress. This is not the same as introducing a new bill, but it goes beyond what a normal citizen can do.
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What about farmers colluding by using the same weather reports?
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Re: Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixi (Score:2)
We can put men on the Moon, but we can't draw any borders aroubd capitalism. Physics is way easier than idealogy or even semantics. (Christ are Americans ever confused about what communism is and is not)
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Don't the persistent paradoxes in physics (wave-particle duality, accounting for dark energy, etc.) mean that, logically, Trivialism is the best attitude?
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If you see the system like a online game server, many of the things end up being the equivalent to aimbots, and you probably should get rid of those if they make the whole thing pointless.
Re: Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fix (Score:2)
What if aimbots make me wealthy enough to buy lobbyists and plates at a campaign luncheon? Then the motivation to stop me becomes rather muted.
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YES!
If we can remove the ability of the so-called 'conservatives' (more like fascists,. really) to obstruct anything and everything that doens't smell like them. Get Republicans out of power in this country and many many things can begin to be repaired in this country.
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40% Troll
30% Overrated
30% Underrated
..and comes as no surprise to me whatsoever.
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Whether its CEOs at a conference having drinks at the bar later, or whether its an Internet company doing it, collusion has always been illegal - the sharing of pricing information between companies.
How they gather and share the information is cosmetic. The fact that they're doing it is the problem.
Aggregating and sharing of the information the information is illegal because it leads to destructive outcomes for consumers.
They've found a new way to do it. Same leopard, different spots.
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Does it make fiscal sense to spend ~100k/year (in my state) to "house" the homeless in jail?
And force companies to allow WFH. (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no reason we should be forced to live in certain areas, just to drive somewhere and work on a different computer than we have at home. Or from our laptop. Or from a workspace/rental. Or...
They've already admitted it was to have workers quit instead of needing to be fired (in part).
There are reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, I love work from home and I agree that it should be normalized in any industry where it is an option.
But saying "There is no reason we should be forced [to work from an office]" is not a good argument tactic, because it is simply wrong. There are, in fact, many reasons that motivate the push to return to office, including:
1. Ulterior motives (some people want to keep real estate values high in certain areas, keep consumer activity high there, etc).
2. Protection from scammer-employees (people who hire cheap foreigners to do their jobs so they can moonlight, or who slack off, etc.)
3. Desire to impose (it's an outright instinct among leaders, they feel the need to remind people who's boss by imposing minor unpleasantness upon them).
4. Belief in the value of collaboration (you can argue that this is a false belief, but you can't deny that many people believe it and it motivates this)
5. Poor management skills (some managers simply don't know how to manage a remote team, and so they believe it can't be done, and they push that belief everywhere they go. Grim reality is we need managers, and if most of them can't manage a remote team, then we need local teams for them to manage).
6. Extroversion (a LOT of people need to operate in groups with a lot of facetime to be happy, and they believe that they are helping you by forcing you to participate in this, and there is no convincing them otherwise).
7. Escape from household distraction (some people have families that are at home, and when they work from home that creates perpetual distraction for them. THey need there to be an office environment for them to go and focus, and so they need the work-from-office arrangement to be the default common arrangement (so that working from some sort of proxy office won't cost them a lot of money))
I am sure we can come up with others. And, there are arguments to be made against each of these reasons. But calling them "bad" reasons does not stop making them reasons. And claiming that these reasons do not exist will not convince anyone at all.
I DO think it is worth fighting the good fight, and continuing to push and continuing to negotiate for WFH perks and continuing to argue against these reasons....but I don't think we should pretend the reasons don't exist and take a dismissive attitude about them. That will only motivate others to dig in their heels, where we instead need to win hearts and minds.
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algorithm vs algorithm (Score:1)
Re:algorithm vs algorithm (Score:4, Informative)
Call it out. Come up with an algorithm that shows where prices were jacked up through collusion, publish the results and let people sue.
and include the algorithm company as part of the conspiracy; I'm sure they'd love to release all their data on who accessed it and how prices change. In some ways, it's like the old airlines price database and the FU fares; seems the US was able to deal with that. [justice.gov]
The US can't regulate anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Free market baby! Even if it kills us all. It's like a religion in the US.
So, no.
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Re:The US can't regulate anything (Score:4, Informative)
"Historically Republicans want less regulations and more free market..."
No, Republicans historically want less regulation and more exploitation. Free markets require regulation, they do not sustain themselves.
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To be fair, I think the article really means modern Republicans, as distinct from true, old-school "don't tread on me" conservatives.
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Re: The US can't regulate anything (Score:2)
Unless I want to publish a dangerous book about a child who has parents with different pronouns. Then they totally want to regulate that. Or if I want to wear a face mask in public on Long Island, NY. Then again, it is super important to regulate that too. Basically, everyone is a hypocrit and wants to make lots of laws to regulate one thing or another. Personal liberty is not the top issue of the two parties, at all.
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Republicans historically want less regulation and more exploitation. Free markets require regulation, they do not sustain themselves.
100% correct, especially these days, when the so-called 'Republican Party' should rightly be renamed the 'Fascist (pig) Party', having aligned themselves with the authoritarian philosophies of rulers like Putin, Maduro, and (cliche, I know) Hitler, among others, a Party that seeks to dismantle our representative democracy and substitute an authoritarian theocratic dictatorship in it's place, rolling back civil and even basic human rights, among other (Project 2025) things.
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Re:The US can't regulate anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Collusion is the opposite of a free market, and free market does not mean no regulation. It is "like" a religion, though.
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A religion by definition requires a supernatural belief. I would argue these free market capitalists are religious in that they believe in the absolute best benefits of "the invisible hand" of the market. If you think it's the best system, that is secular but to blindly have faith it's always magically best solution... that is religion.
If you believe in the prosperity gospel, where existing religion is hijacked in the same way kings did to blasphemously claim endorsement by a deity, then your sucker; your r
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"Free market fundamentalism" is flawed because it fails to account for companies competing outside the rules of business. Like colluding, seeking to influence lawmakers to suppress competitors, influencing advertising and media and central bankers.
Free market fundamentalists assume business only competes within the marketplace, not outside of it. Which is totally false.
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Price fixing is literally the opposite of a free market.
Indeed. And neither is letting Google, Amazon, Apple or Microsoft dominate and stifle the entire tech industry. And yet the US doesn't lift a finger because as soon as anybody hints at reining in the private sector, people start screaming communism like fucking morons and nothing gets done.
But anyway, I was being sarcastic: there is no free market in the US. What there is is giant corporation that are virtually above the law, dumping money on politicians hand over fist, who in turn do their bidding instead
Let's Start By not Allowing Foreigners... (Score:1, Insightful)
...to own US Houses/Land/Property. Many other countries do this, we should to. And a lot of those homes owned by foreign interests are left vacant.
2nd, let's build a wall and stop illegal immigration. Please note that I am NOT a rabid anti-immigration person. I am very very pro immigration. I just believe it should be done legally, so that the immigrants are not taken advantage of by a system designed to take advantage of their illegal status. Those illegal immigrants put pressure on the rental market bec
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2nd, let's build a wall and stop illegal immigration. Please note that I am NOT a rabid anti-immigration person.
Oh yeah, I'm totally convinced.
Say, should the walls have machine guns turrets mounted on em or will standard razor wire suffice?
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Say, should the walls have machine guns turrets mounted on em or will standard razor wire suffice?
Water cannons will do. Remote control. Or better yet, AI target acquisition and tracking.
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Got a lock on your front door?
Yes. What I don't have is a wall around my house.
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You have a door but no walls?
Are you Harvey Korman?
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I still don't quite understand this insistence of "a wall" like there doesnt already exist hundreds of mile of barriers along the souther border already. Nearly all of the California, Arizona and New Mexico border has some form of barrier. [newsweek.com]. The reason large parts of Texas aren't barriered is because of the Rio Grande, already harsh terrain, envrionmental concerns as well as the plain old fact that not a lot of crossings happen in those areas, thus why there were not barriers in the first place.
The #1 curr
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If you aren't anti immigration, does that mean you support setting up safe and legal routes into the US that people can use? And speeding up processing of applications, with maybe a legal maximum of 28 days for a decision like the EU has?
Anyway, it's primarily not foreigners that are the problem. It's US companies buying property to rent out, and landlords with multiple properties. Ban corporate ownership and limit it to one rental property per person.
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If you aren't anti immigration, does that mean you support setting up safe and legal routes into the US that people can use? And speeding up processing of applications, with maybe a legal maximum of 28 days for a decision like the EU has?
Hey, how is that working out in YOUR COUNTRY, the UK?
"Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye."
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It's not, we don't have any safe and legal routes at the moment. That's why we have a problem with people coming here on unsafe boats.
France offered to let us have an immigration processing centre over there. We should do that.
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If you aren't anti immigration, does that mean you support setting up safe and legal routes into the US that people can use? And speeding up processing of applications, with maybe a legal maximum of 28 days for a decision like the EU has?
Hey, how is that working out in YOUR COUNTRY, the UK?
Here's a thought for a 'safe and legal route into the US':
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Anyway, it's primarily not foreigners that are the problem. It's US companies buying property to rent out, and landlords with multiple properties. Ban corporate ownership and limit it to one rental property per person.
The home ownership percentage in the US is about 2/3. Do you really think half of all homeowners want to be landlords of a single rental unit, even if they could afford it?
Or, how many units will you allow in a single rental property?
Financialization of everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, maybe running them as government services may not be very efficient and there may be some waste, but the alternative is that investors skim of the top and the ROI ends up being even lower than before and service quality poorer.
Inevitably governments change, but the investor owner doesn't, and in the mix, oversight & regulation go for a toss. As a result people suffer and rich guys get richer
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That being said, at least if the greed is public, i.e. run by the government, you have a better chance of it being stopped or that money's usefulness to the bastard taking it being curtailed. When it's left to private industry, the greed often remains hidden and even when it's discovered those affected by it continue to suffer under it. Due to the private industry's unlimited
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The basic problem of not enough supply and too much demand is never solv
Re:Financialization...not a great idea...housing (Score:1)
Really, you want all housing to be public sector?
Investors will almost always allocate capital more efficiently than government. At least there is more transparency of motive, or do you think that all these congresspeople/senators become millionaires by first thinking of the greatest good?
Or that the states that have the most public control of housing have the best housing markets?
How about the cities with the most rent control have...?
Government definitely has a role here, but suggesting that government s
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Investors will almost always allocate capital more efficiently than government.
Then people can stop whining about all the money being put into AI because clearly investors are allocating capital efficiently.
Unless you meant when investors allocated money to that non-"woke" bank which went out of business in three months [businessinsider.com]. And guess what, those investors are now suing each other [wfaa.com] over their efficient allocation of capital. That's what you meant by "almost", right? Or did you mean all those companies which
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Really, you want all housing to be public sector?
I have a suggestion or two saved up for just this moment. One, the public sector has a role to play in housing, but it's using an empty home tax to produce funding for low and no income housing. Two, privately financing privately building housing is one thing, having homes be investments for people who have no intention of living there is another. This feeds back into point one.
Empty home tax details could vary, but the basic idea is if the owner doesn't live in it 51% of the year, tax the crap out of it. T
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if the owner doesn't live in it 51% of the year, tax the crap out of it.
I believe we sort of already do this. The percentage is 40%, but the landlord has to live in the house 40% of the time in the last 5 years to avoid capital gains tax if they sell the property. The rate of property tax increases are also uncapped in many states. For example, for homes in Texas, your property tax can only increase by 10% on your personal home and you get a homestead exemption, which is significant. On rental properties, your property taxes can increase 100% a year.
But here are a few potential
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If a landlord had to live in a house 51% of a time, all those people would be out of luck.
If the landlord had to pay the tax if they didn't live there, then they would sell the property for what the market would bear, and then someone else could afford to live there. The only person who loses is the person who wanted to profit from other people's basic need for housing without actually having to do anything, which I'm OK with.
You can also forego the tax on rental units so long as they are occupied. But mostly the rules should be different for multi-family residences (apartments and du+plexes.)
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If the landlord had to pay the tax if they didn't live there, then they would sell the property for what the market would bear
They already do have to pay the increased taxes when it comes to property tax. They only pay the capital gains tax at the time they realize the gain. I am assuming that is what you are referring to. If not, here is something else to consider.
All those people groups that I mentioned, want to live in houses but don't want to own them. Removing rental homes from the market, leaves them completely out of luck. If the properties are taxed, the properties are also not necessarily put on the market for sale. Lan
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The GP said "some things that should not be an investment". In short, legislation should prevent a policy of, as much greed as possible. That already happens with milk and bread, where profit is capped.
Too true: When US government donated $800 billion to the banks, that was government being inefficient. The government still donating $1 billion/year to Verizon/Sprint/AT&T, is inefficient.
Yes, super-PACs hide the people giving large donations because they want US government to to be inefficient.
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It seems like you recognize a problem but neither understand the root cause nor any appropriate solution.
A strong middle class is not threatened by an oligarchy. We don't need the government nationalizing every aspect of our lives to protect us from the rapidly accelerating greed of the wealthy. What we need is to reverse the gutting of the middle class that began with Reagan. We need to restore sane tax policies and reverse consolidation of corporate power. Restore regulations on media and eliminate th
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A strong middle class is not threatened by an oligarchy.
Tell that to Russia, or Argentina, or ...
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A strong middle class is not threatened by an oligarchy. We don't need the government nationalizing every aspect of our lives to protect us from the rapidly accelerating greed of the wealthy. What we need is to reverse the gutting of the middle class that began with Reagan.
How do you propose to do that without democracy?
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because more home ownership is better for everybody in the long run.
When America was at it's greatest, 1st time buyers had huge subsidies; but that wasn't all that made it great:
about 90% income tax at the top did a lot to prevent an imbalance of power. Corporate influence wasn't curtailed enough...modern propaganda engineered the decline. It's more important to balance the private forces vs the government than to balance government's own branches (and the media branch needs the right balance of regulatio
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This is because renting dwellings is a low margin business, so you need to charge what you can in order to afford maintenance and renovations over the years.
Bullshit. Unless you own one apartment, you make enough off your tenants to cover your taxes, sewer, and maintenance, and still make a good profit. Short of a tenant destroying your apartment, there is very little maintenance once things are set up. Painting walls every once in a while and replacing carpeting is neither labor nor cost intensive. Mow
There are way more costs than you think (Score:1)
Short of a tenant destroying your apartment, there is very little maintenance once things are set up. Painting walls every once in a while and replacing carpeting is neither labor nor cost intensive.
I own one rental townhome and that is simply not the case.
After my last tenant I had to spend about $20k between appliances, carpet, paint and various repairs. The previous tenant didn't even doing anything wrong, just stuff need updating after a while. If someone has been in there a few years it's almost for
Re: There are way more costs than you think (Score:2)
You should be charging enough to cover these expenses, whether it is the current tenant paying for his facility and appliances to be in good shape, or the next tenant paying for modern housing and the associated upkeep.
My last place was a hole, and I
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You should be charging enough to cover these expenses
Part of the reason I like to have a place to rent, is it's one place that is not set as high as a company with a lots of overhead would need to maintain a profit margin. And when I get a tenant I tried to raise prices on just a little, if at all, the entire time they are there. So that is some of how I am ending up a bit underwater.
But, all of the things that happened to be would be true of any other rental units. Modern fridges are really not good pas
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Just because something may be perceived as "beneficial" to one person doesn't make it "beneficial" to another. More harm is done by the price fixing driving up the rent prices overall, so they can afford to give a "lower" rate in cooler markets. The higher rates elsewhere will eventually make their way to the cooler market areas, so they'll make it up in the e
Just because you commit a crime on a computer (Score:2)
Price Discoverin in Markets (Score:2)
Price discovery is a key element of how markets work. Anything that prevents price discovery is inherently antagonistic to an efficient market. Prices should be public.
The ability of the modern internet to create a personalized reality for each individual who is browsing is the key enabling technology for this type of price fixing. Personally, I think that we should work on eliminating all the tracking that makes this type of price fixing possible.
One simple step would be to... (Score:2, Offtopic)
...prevent corporations and hedge funds from owning residential property
Algorithms Aren't the Main Problem (Score:2)
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You are exactly correct. Price collusion wouldn't work if there was more inventory on the market. Otherwise it would be easy to "cheat" in the collusion and undercut prices to ensure your inventory gets cleared first.
At the end of the day, this legislation would be impossible to prosecute. "Algorithm" sounds fancy, but as long as someone can create an Excel file with attributes like square footage, price, etc and sort by prices descending/ascending, then landlords can use technology to better price thei
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You don't have to regulate technology to deal with algorithm-based price fixing. The problem isn't that landlords are using technology to optimize prices, it's that they're using non-public information about prices from their competitors to do it. If they (or anything they used) didn't have access to that non-public information, nothing they're doing would be a problem because they still wouldn't know what their competitors were charging beyond what's publicly available and they'd still have to guess about
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Interest rates average out with inflation on a long enough timescale. Investment goes where the money is.
I'd give these as the fundamental causes :
- Wealth inequality
- Urban containment
- Unregulated short term rentals, but only in a few locations
The left lacks the ideological tools to end urban containment, the right will have to do that (like they are doing in Florida, "smart growth" is code for "live in the pod"). The right obviously won't handle wealth inequality, but unfortunately Harris is no AOC.
I think you mean 'facilitated' not 'caused' (Score:2)
Some corporate landlords collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices, often using algorithms and price-fixing software to do it."
That's a U.S. presidential candidate, speaking yesterday in North Carolina to warn that the practice "is anticompetitive, and it drives up costs. I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices."
Ironically, it's a problem caused by technology that's impacting some of America's major tech-industry cities.
Greed is the cause, technology is facilitating it...
Regulating doesn't mean banning (Score:2)
Anywhere decisions have to be made algorithms will be involved. Get over it.
Regulation should require the use to be above-board. Regulation should be done through Congress and not by unelected bureaucrats.
Algorithms should also be used to see if price fixing is being used.
Conservative Supreme Court (Score:1)
I have been fascinated to learn over the last 8 years that a "conservative" Supreme Court is one that overthrows precedents on which business, society, and US life have been based since the Theodore Roosevelt Administration - 115 years - and replaces them with hard Radical Right theories from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.
Rent-seeking (Score:2)
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Those properties aren't intrinsically becoming more valuable, if anything, they're deteriorating over time.
The value is exclusivity, in that the population is increasing, but the supply of houses is not increasing at the same speed. The rest of your post I agree with.
App privilege (Score:2)
People were so distracted by white privilege, they didn't notice the apps were getting special treatment. Robots rising up and enslaving us? Fuggedaboutit. The apps were there first. It's planet of the apps.
Look, it's simple. If it's illegal for people to get together and do it, it should be illegal for apps, bots, AI or whatever you want to call them to get together and do it.
The virtual smoke-filled chat room full of apps colluding to fix prices ought to be just as much subject to a raid as the same
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Collusion to fix prices IS illegal (Score:2)
It's already in the law
It doesn't matter HOW the collusion is accomplished, it's collusion
This is a replay of the "with a computer" patent "flash".
Now it's "with an algorithm"
Was a time that we thought of legal minds as sharp.
How did they get so dull?
already illegal (Score:2)
If it aint broke (Score:1)
Those prices are broken and they're gonna fix 'em!
I don't see you fixin' anything; you're just on SlashDot complaining.
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Just take all the money from people doing it. Trading places style. It works.
If you watched the movie, yes, it did work. Murphy's character went from a street charlatan to a well off member of society. He kicked people out of his place when all they did was waste his liquor and make a mess of things. He and Akroyd's character even foiled a (fictitious) plot to corner the orange juice market by bamboozling the Duke brothers and made other people, specifically Jamie Lee Curtis' character, rich through their actions. In other words, they spread the wealth around.
And you're complaini