Comment is getting downvotes but agree. If you do not band together with like-minded individuals for your common good you will be outcompeted by other people who do.
Right, and the people that banded together to profit from this are the existing homeowners and landlords in Vancouver. The foreign investors are tiny in both numbers and political power compared to Vancouver landowners as a whole, and it really was existing landowners who profited, while flying a "preserve our great culture" flag by trying to not let new buildings be built.
The investors are the like-minded people who banded together to raise property values and benefit from it directly, while also exerting their will to keep new people out, or at least keep out everyone except the very wealthiest.
Calling this behavior "protective" of the city is tantamount to saying that the city is only for the investors.
> The foreign investors are tiny in both numbers and political power
The exact topic of this article: Small quantities of investors with different economic incentives can result in big effects.
> The investors are the like-minded people who banded together
I rather doubt that it was a concerted effort to band together. It's more akin to "curse of the commons": Each individual actor acting in their best interest results in emergent behavior.
The solution being pursued is to change the rules to dissuade certain behaviors that negatively impact the populace as a whole.
The effects of those small number of extra investors isn't huge however. In London it was 20% of the rise, but not most of it. It does fan flames, but there's got to be a spark to be fanned.
"Like-minded individuals" and people who share your citizenship are not the same.
By your logic, liberal silicon valley techies should band together to fire/cancel/censor conservatives who do not share their values. After all, like-minded people need to band together to out-compete the outsiders who think differently right?
>"Like-minded individuals" and people who share your citizenship are not the same.
Of all the people in the world the people geographically close to you and that share citizenship or nationality are the most likely to think like you or share goals that benefit both parties.
That is obviously categorically false, as evidenced by the political polarization within the US, as well as the large number of minority groups across the world (including in the US) who get persecuted by their own governments and fellow citizens.
Even if nationality is sometimes moderately correlated with the values you hold, when a stronger correlation exists, your alleged ideological commitment to forming in-groups and out-groups based on shared values should mean that people have the right (or even obligation) to discriminate based on non-nationality-based factors (e.g. liberals discriminating against conservatives in tech).
No, I said more likely to share, not will share. You can still disagree with your countrymen.
Nationality is correlated with the values you hold in the broadest sense. Easy example: a natural born citizen in the US is far less likely to believe in the validity of Sharia law than someone born in an Arab state.
In even more abstract terms, what is good for you is likely to be location dependent. People in Germany have different problems from people in the US or France, and those are different from African, Asian, and South American countries. There are of course common trends, but to pretend all of politics is some shared set of problems is ridiculous.
People discriminate based on traits all the time. Liberals in tech do discriminate against conservatives (or perceived conservatives) all the time. They are free to do so, most people don't see many things as something you can protect as a class.
I see this repeated elsewhere, and I don't understand it. I don't want to suggest that you're bigoted as this is getting alarmingly close to a culture war topic, and I recognize the difficulty in conveying that in person, much less over the internet, where "I don't mean to offend but..." is usually followed by something offensive. But I do want to understand your analysis of the game-theoretic conditions that you believe lead to smaller groups outcompeting larger groups.
Why would the most beneficial group of people that we want to band with be optimal when limited to a subset of the population, whether that's simply a random selection, or a potentially bigoted selection/identification mechanism like skin color, wealth, religious sect, family name, etc.?
I don't understand why a broader grouping (possibly global) of people wouldn't outcompete a smaller group, the larger group by definition has a larger capability...intra-group communication may be slightly more difficult with language barriers and cultural differences, and the relative contributions of sub-groups of members may differ based on their resources, but the sum total would still be greater.
It's not about bigotry, its that foreigners are detached from what is good for the people in the areas they're buying property in. The closer someone is, the more emotionally attached they'll be and the more that other successes (from reducing exploitation of people) will benefit them.
There's certainly a lack of caring there too. But they do have some financial incentives to put thought about the people in. It can hurt a personal brand when dealing with backlash against investment properties (and that can go on to affect associated corporate brands). It can also affect the investors if they mess up the economy of an area that had been contributing to their revenue.
I'm not trying to boil this down to "foreigners bad. locals good." But there are various factors that play in to how much one cares about their impact on others, with physical and political distance being two of them.
In the end the "foreigners" angle doesn't matter. If it were NYC billionaires buying up Seattle property and leaving it vacant the result would be the same: locals suffering at the hands of remote money.
It depends. If the problem is rich investors, who may very well be local, accusing foreigners for a problem that they themselves created, then it's xenophobia.
Yes! Community is an important concept that we are losing during mass media, globalization, secularization, Covid, etc. This is sad since our direct community was what we evolved to interact with, some 20-100 people near us. I am hoping for the day we can have large gatherings again so we can re establish communities.
This attitude is exactly what destroys communities while letting investors profit.
"Protecting" communities by excluding people means that the only people that get in are the wealthiest, and because exclusion is the baseline, every new wealthy person kicks out a less wealthy person.
The exclusion is an excuse to enforce austerity, the classic means of squeezing the less wealthy to the benefit of the more wealthy.
> "Protecting" communities by excluding people means that the only people that get in are the wealthiest,
But the manner in which the community is "protected" in this case is by excluding wealthy foreigners who swoop in and pay huge sums over asking, sight unseen, for properties. Not sure how that could be detrimental to someone who isn't wealthy.
I could understand this argument of putting neighbors first if Vancouver was as hostile to real estate investors from Toronto as they are towards real estate investors from China. Basing the level of hostility on the nationality of the investor seems wrong to me.
Investors from overseas can fuck off and buy something else. People who live in a city need housing, and it is completely within the rights of the city to restrict housing purchases to those who live there, or at least heavily dis incentivize it.
Seriously, "xenophobia towards investors" strikes me a bit like the Silicon Valley bit about comparing the plight of Billionaires to enemies of the third reich.
>Investors from overseas can fuck off and buy something else. People who live in a city need housing, and it is completely within the rights of the city to restrict housing purchases to those who live there, or at least heavily dis incentivize it.
You completely ignored the point I made. How is an investor from China buying real estate in Vancouver purely for investment purposes with no intention of having anyone live there any different than someone from Toronto doing it? Why is the former punished harsher than the latter?
The farther away the investor, the less stake they have in local success. In-country folks will be paying more taxes in-country, which affects things like social programs, infrastructure, and defense that contribute to a region.
But those people in country would be paying national taxes either way. It isn't like if Vancouver stops a rich person from Toronto investing in real estate that this person will leave their millions of dollars in a checking account instead. They will find some other way to invest their money.
If you are solely worried about the tax base, wouldn't bringing in foreign investors into real estate investing while letting domestic investors focus on some other investment vehicles lead to more tax revenue?
Perhaps. It's not hard to imagine that having additional competitors to local real estate with the result of driving up prices is not in the interest of the locals, who need places to live.
That one group has less stake and can be discouraged through legislation while another has some constitutional-like protections is not a compelling problem compared to the one in the paragraph above.
There are several reasons local communities may wish to restrict home purchases by outsiders. Xenophobia is one, but likely not a large contributor. Concerns over unsustainable realty prices may be another, or simply wishing to preserve a locked down community.
I'm making no judgment calls here, just pointing out that an easy, pat answer is not sufficient.
In Vancouver's case, I don't think there's a strong desire to maintain a locked down community -- at least, not among the voices who complain about run-away real estate prices.
What there are complaints about are foreign investors who bid up property prices but don't move to the city, at least not before retirement age.
This causes a huge disconnect between the price of land in an area, and the earning potential in that area. For people who hope to own land but don't already, it's always out of reach, because they aren't competing with their peers, and the wealthy pockets that are buying homes aren't customers of other local businesses. It's not quite the same as a cluster of unicorns driving up tech salaries to the point where teachers and nurses can't compete on the market. There are no unicorns based in Vancouver. It's hard to identify any career path, even doctor, rockstar engineer, or lawyer, that a high school graduate today could expect to follow while working in this city and be on track for home ownership when time comes to start a family. Assuming that the trend continues, that is. And if it corrects, then it's a question of who was unlucky enough to catch the knife -- because any young locals in the ownership market are going to be highly leveraged, there's no other way.
That might read like xenophobia, but actual immigrants who intend to live, work, and raise families here are generally warmly welcomed and appreciated no matter where they come from. There are some people who get their signals crossed but it's a small minority.
Not subject to the foreign buyer tax, yes; it's unclear that these taxes have actually solved the above issue though. For money laundering it's an acceptable cost of doing business; for others there are ways around it (hence the 20-year-old undergrads prepared to pay $1.4 million in cash that another commenter mentioned).
One is proactive assessment by a community, the other is blind bigotry against outsiders. The inclusion of bigotry as a deciding component is the key, IMHO.
One wants to proactively stop outsiders from joining their community. The other stops outsiders from joining their community using bigotry? Can you see why I'm confused?
No. I may be seeing an argument of semantic similarity, but the inclusion of bigotry is the defining factor of xenophobia. Closing down a community can be due to other drivers beyond fear of outsiders.
Investors bring in fresh money. The real "mystery" is why people aren't building more housing to take advantage of the demand. When you are starting a company the hardest problem by far is finding people who buy your products. In real estate it's exactly the opposite.
One way to think about this is that cash is plentiful in China, but a strong social/legal system that ensures long-term, low-risk investments is "plentiful" in Canada or the US.
In this sense, these foreign investors are taking advantage of a functional social/legal system that lowers risk, but in the cases documented nearby, they aren't giving back to ensure the longevity of the system. Indeed, their remotely-executed purchases increase its instability.
The term "xenophobia" is also a useful tool that is used by the government, the media, and individuals on social media to suppress the free discussion of very important matters.
The Government of Canada has the ability to published (anonymized) data (real estate sales correlated to the buyers historic income taxes/wealth, etc) that could eliminate most of the opaqueness of what is really going on in Canadian housing markets, but they do not, despite vowing to "get to the bottom of" the situation.
The media could point out that the Canadian Government has this ability but does not do it, but they do not, despite claiming to be trustworthy, unbiased reporters of the affairs that are important to the public.
As is often the case, what is actually true is unjustly (and "democratically") hidden from view of the public, coverage is provided (intentionally or not) by the media, and the end result is that the populace is split into various camps who then fight among themselves. Is this situation the actual "will of the people", as we are endlessly told is what Democracy (and nothing else) delivers? I believe there is a fairly substantial amount of evidence that it is not what people want, although that sort of topic seems a bit socially taboo, so all one can do is speculate.
