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There exists a market equilibrium (2 million regular cars, 300k luxury cars, in the Toyota analogy). You're proposing to construct a regulatory scheme to reach a different equilibrium. Why? What's wrong with the market equilibrium?



Toyota aren't constrained in how many cars they can make a year (well, more or less, and under normal circumstances), housing developers are much more constrained.

In a world (kind of like the one we live in right now...) where Toyota only had components to build 500k cars a year then they'll make 300k luxury cars and 200k regular cars and buying cheap low end cars becomes almost impossible.

If the market equilibrium in an unrestricted market is 2mil:300k, or roughly 6:1, regular to luxury cars then an argument could be made that regulations should be but in place to retain that market equilibrium even during a restricted market, assuming we believe it is important that everyone can own a car.


The restriction on the market is largely arbitrary - people “don’t wanna” let other people build apartments on land they own. The only real reason they do this is regulatory capture - if someone who owns land slows housing production on other people’s land, theirs is worth more.


You're proposing to construct a regulatory scheme to reach a different equilibrium. Why? What's wrong with the market equilibrium?

In the context of cars, arguably nothing.

In the original context of real estate, all kinds of things, because having somewhere to live is essential to quality of life and reserving more of the finite real estate available for development for a few luxury homes means a lot more regular homes that could house a lot more families can't be built there instead.




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