alt Hacker Newsim not even disagreeing with you, but i hate that hn seems to have this penchant to point out that unreasonable assertions may still be true despite being ludicrous. can facts emerge from a hypocrite? yes of course, but prices are not affected by buying and holding a tiny supply, so given that reasonable axiom, it is reasonable to demand more comprehensive evidence.
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I don’t think it’s an unreasonable assertion in the first place. Just because they are holding a small portion of all houses doesn’t meant they can’t have a huge effect. The primary reason being that the portion of houses on sale is small as well. Another reason being they are huge institutions with tons of money, and thus can hold houses longer, buy houses are higher prices, influence related markets, etc.
> but i hate that hn seems to have this penchant to point out that unreasonable assertions may still be true despite being ludicrous
Topics like this are hard on HN because a lot of commenters hold a deep, passionate hatred of something: Wall Street, Big Tech, OSes they don't use, even the concept of private automobile ownership. Once they descend upon a thread they're not interested in facts, they just want to tell stories that support their villain narratives. When it starts to get illogical they don't want to back down because doing so feels like an attack on their deep-seated beliefs.
There are some completely illogical economic theories being pushed all through this comment section. It's kind of fascinating to see how bad some of them are. Someone tried to argue with me that cars could be produced for a couple thousand dollars if not for all the regulatory overhead we impose on them in the US. It's almost hard to fathom how someone could believe that without stopping for a moment to wonder why no other country is building these $2000 full featured automobiles without these supposed regulations that increase the price by an order of magnitude.