Paradocracy

At record-low interest rates, the San Francisco Bay Area’s real estate market may have officially reached its inflection point. Properties in the Bay Area have seen losses of greater than 20% over the past year, while other metropolises are plateauing or following this trend. Indeed, if this price decline were the consequence of expanded supply or the ease of manufacturing new homes, this would be a sign of economic progress; however, this is not the case, as this price drop is the consequence of an artificial valuation rooted in a debt-frenzied, speculative marketplace with tepid material growth in productivity, ironically in a market wherein zoning laws, building restrictions (such as San Francisco’s law limiting the height of buildings to 40 feet), and a scarcity of building permits, have choked the Bay Area of the style of growth which would likely ensue to accommodate existing demand from the population who have elected to settle for all of the features of what Jim Cramer deri...

The notion is rampant that producers and businesspersons are responsible for the supply of their goods at a so-called and so-believed fair price.  What is a fair price after all? Is it not merely the supposition of a price which is only remotely convenient for the individual considering the product? Is it not merely the desired price for any given individual?  Of course, the producer and the businessperson are easy to vilify in the public eye, as he or she is recognizable as a person who has or who has been fortunate, and the reader or onlooker is hardly familiar with the background or daily routine of that individual.  However, the narrative of the supposed have-not  is gripping and moralistic in stature, and the passerby may easily envision a way in which this individual's perceived misfortune may be corrected by a nominal adjustment of freedom for those whose routine struggles are diluted by their obscurity or their inconspicuousness.  Nowhe...