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0 pointsmhb5mo ago0 comments

Why doesn't your explanation apply to every commodity? Gold, cocoa, mustard seed, electricity? These are also essential products subject to the influence of markets and market makers.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

ivewonyoung5mo ago· 2 in thread

> Gold, cocoa, mustard seed, electricity

I can easily live a full and meaningful life without owning gold, drinking cocoa or eating mustard. Those aren't essential and have decent substitutes.

Electricity is essential, just like housing and it's very highly regulated.

mhbOP5mo ago

That's overly reductive. I was hoping that the specific commodities weren't going to be the focus, but I guess that was naive.

If you're going to use "housing" as an umbrella for its substitutes, let me do the same. Instead of wheat, beef, pork, cocoa, sugar, etc, let's call that "food". So now food is as essential as housing. Why doesn't the housing complaint against speculators work for food speculators?

quantpunk5mo ago

The argument is either intellectually dishonest or you just really haven't thought this through very deep and are just puppeting this neoliberal bullshit.

We could start with I have traded wheat futures and could hedge with future contracts on all those commodities. You can't trade single family home derivatives in the same way because it is not the same.

This is unthinking market religion stupidity and the result is going to be a massive over correction towards socialism. You don't help free markets with this bullshit. You are helping to destroy them in the long run.

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yunwal5mo ago· 2 in thread

Just curious, where do you live that electricity is sold in an open market? Seems like a very strange setup.

danielmarkbruce5mo ago

Much of the US works this way, but individual consumers don't buy it that way. It's the level above that.

yunwal5mo ago

In other words it doesn’t work that way. The people who actually pay for the end product do not have the opportunity to apply market pressure by choosing a different source.

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postpawl5mo ago

You can substitute cocoa sources globally, but you can't substitute a house in Charlotte with one in Phoenix.

If cocoa prices spike, you buy less chocolate. If housing prices spike in your job market, your options are: pay more, endure a brutal commute, or uproot your life. The demand is far more inelastic.

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