Housing and Market Forces

Our housing prices are subject to market forces.  Perhaps they shouldn’t be.

The US economy is basically a capitalist market system, where buyers and sellers participate in markets, and supply and demand, along with regulations and competition, determine prices.

There are, however, many important services that are protected from market forces, or totally withdrawn from the market.  Education, for example, is mostly performed by public schools, funded by taxes.

Likewise, poor people now receive Medicaid, and that’s somewhat buffered from market forces.  Even private insurance is a service to avoid directly interacting with market forces.

There are other services that aren’t in the market, or at least try not to be: firefighters, police, and the entire US military.  The governments, of course, are largely not interacting with the market frequently.

So, I think it’s feasible to have housing that’s not subject to too many market forces.