The idea is great in the same way the idea of a perpetual motion machine is great: I'd love to have a perpetual motion machine (or C++ modules), but it's just not realistic.
IMO, the modules standard should have aimed to only support headers with no inline code (including no templates). That would be a severe limitation, but at least maybe it might have solved the problem posed by protobuf soup (AFAIK the original motivation for modules) and had a chance of being a real thing.
It matters whether the margin is higher than other investment opportunities of similar scale and risk profile.
Already, the answer is very often no. In Austin, the answer will increasingly be no. That means people will not finance new construction, so if demand continues to grow it will outstrip supply and prices will go back up until the margin on new construction exceeds that of alternative investment opportunities of similar scale and risk profile.
I would expect the development of Austin to continue until market equilibrium and then pause. Decreasing margin does not mean equilibrium.
Obviously austin is not at equilibrium because we still have price data on developer activity and that would be near zero if developers couldn’t make returns given risk etc.
The problem here is that the market obviously does not have perfect information, limited mechanisms to coordinate, and significant lead time. It seems pretty much baked in at this point that many of the projects currently underway will complete into a negative market and (assuming Austin remains somewhat desirable) a whole lot of developers will be wiped out. This will stop development until prices rise again, probably back to a level where housing is quite expensive again relative to local wages.
Yes really, that deeper understanding is exactly what is meant when somebody says "the cost to build is lower than the price." If we're going to be pedantic, you're ignoring the huge amounts of uncertainty on costs that are inherent to any project, the amount of risk versus the expected profit.
And indeed that amount of uncertainty: will I be allowed to build eventually? How long will I have to pay interests on assets before I'm allowed to build? Can I actually build what's specified in code or will discretionary processes arbitrarily change what I'm allowed to do, 18 months into the project?
> Yes really, that deeper understanding is exactly what is meant when somebody says "the cost to build is lower than the price.
It demonstrably is not what people understand it to mean to "the cost to build is lower than the price." The cost to build can be well below the sale price and development still be a totally uninvestable activity.
Your explanation of fluctuations in supply and demand are not very revelatory. Everything being in flux at all times is kind of an elementary fact of life.
It's clearly not elementary if people here believe that you can just keep building until prices collapse, and people will still keep building.
The question is whether the market achieves equilibrium at a point where 1) developers can get financing to build profitably, and 2) units can be sold at a broadly attainable price to the local market.
The answer appears to be no because the cost of inputs is so high. No one here is talking about directly reducing the cost of inputs. They believe that instead developers will just continue to build units that they sell at a loss, or at least investors will continue to invest in construction that returns less than the S&P 500 or 10 Year Treasuries (they won't).
It's pretty tiring seeing so many people push the bounds of acceptable behavior. It's pretty simple: should someone in your chain of management discipline you for setting aside that cheese? If yes, you are engaging in corruption.
That action is basically stochastic theft from the grocery store, because you've altered the pricing of a possibly scarce good.
Using this example: a computer was an unlikely purchase for a lower-middle class person in the US, but it wasn't totally unattainable. Many people in the US probably did it, and some of them probably found some positive return on that investment.
That's not true of many "objectively" poor people in the world, who even if they could buy the computer, they might not have had access to electricity to run it.
What you're describing is know as an "assassination market". To my knowledge it's considered mostly a non-issue (It's talked about in good detail here https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq?open=...), because you could do a lot of the same stuff with the normal stock market. If you have advance knowledge that Iran is gonna be attacked, it's just as easy to trade on that info there via oil or similar, with the added downside that now no one else gains extra info about if Iran will be attacked or not, and anything more hyper-specific would just be illegal to bet on for normal law reasons.
I didn't read the link, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of assassination markets.
I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 13 with nightshade.
I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 13 with hemlock.
...
I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 15 by being stabbed to death in the back.
...
I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 17 with nightshade.
I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 17 with hemlock.
...
1,000,000 automatically generated bets omitted.
Since there can only be one assassination of Julius Caesar, the person ordering the hit only has to pay $1B, and only if the assassination succeeds.
Sure, people can bet some cash and attempt to get a cut of the assassin's money. Traditionally, you put that cash back into the pot, so (for all but the successful event) it goes to the assassin's pockets.
The first-order issue is that the assassin needs to bet a bunch of cash to out-bet the zero-information speculators. Some Roman trillionaire could bet $100K that the assassination would happen for each slot, drowning out the cash of the actual assassin. Of course, this would cost them $100B if placing bets are free, and there are a million scenarios.
The next big problem arises if people can watch for movements on a given position in real time. The market can fix that by running the feed on, say, a 1 hour delay. So, while they're sharpening their knives at the Senate, the Roman congress-critters can each put in a bet via cell phone.
Of course, then the (totally ethical, I'm sure) people running the assassination market could siphon money off by spying on the realtime feed. This tertiary problem is solved by making sure those people are generally well-known, giving them an incentive to not piss off assassins.
Is there a lower risk, lower interest option with the same capabilities (ability to use the money to pay others)?
Genuine question, I have no idea, but I didn't choose my bank based on interest rate. I can't pay bills or transfer money if it's cash under the mattress.
In the US, depositors are insured by the FDIC (Federal Depositors Insurance Fund) up to $250000 per institution. This doesn't apply to investment accounts, but would cover standard checking and savings accounts, even if they pay interest. The interest on those accounts is usually negligible at most banks, anyway - not even close to offsetting inflation.
Edited to add: not my area of expertise, but I did research it a couple years ago when I was acting as executor for the estate of a deceased person. So take what you will from that. I do notice banks usually have a sign up saying they are FDIC insured. I think it's required, but I don't know for sure. I suppose a shady investment firm could try to suggest they are an insured bank without actually saying so.
There is, it's called a narrow bank and it would probably pay more interest than normal banks. Unfortunately they have been mostly outlawed thanks to lobbying by the banking industry(see also the current lawsuits about usd stablecoins paying yield).
IMO, the modules standard should have aimed to only support headers with no inline code (including no templates). That would be a severe limitation, but at least maybe it might have solved the problem posed by protobuf soup (AFAIK the original motivation for modules) and had a chance of being a real thing.
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