I'm air cooling so I set -pl 450 so I'm not running them all at the full 600w

The point is, the bricks do not materialize out of thin air. The act of laying the bricks is not the only labor or capital involved in laying bricks.

So a person figuring out how to scale their homebuilding methodology by teaching others and providing the *capital* with which they can implement that methodology isn't worth anything to you? I can't imagine a society that could work without these features -- we'd all be re-learning best practices every generation because there'd be no incentive to scale up ideas that work.

People are more productive when they have tractors and seed and fertilizer and all the other requisite capital inputs for growing apples. In fact, one can hardly think of anything productive one can do with zero capital inputs.

You do not live on an island. There is trillions of dollars worth of both capital and labor at work underneath your every waking moment that supports your life. Your level of effort means nothing to anybody.

Starting a company that becomes worth $1M by creating $1M in value is a literally a capital gain of $1M for whoever owns that business.

Maybe the person who started that business wants to sell. 10 people buy $100k each in shares. Now they own the business. They hire a manager to grow the business and expand and create more value. Now the business is worth $2M. Those new investors created another $1M in value by hiring the right manager and making good decisions. This is another capital gain.

None of this is accidental or magical. Businesses that do well produce capital gains, and most businesses fail, and produce no capital gians.

Your labor alone without materials, without tools, or a farm, or a factory, is just you flailing your arms in the air and producing nothing. Capital is as valuable an input to production as labor. You cannot have one without the other.

It's so funny to see people on HN who have clearly overdosed on Marx but have never read Das Kapital, where even the man himself acknowledges the critical role capital plays in production.

Interestingly, my worst career experience was at a company with ~30 people. So you don't necessarily need size to produce bad results.

The purpose of paying for these reports is for executives to have someone else to blame when their idea doesn't work. It has nothing to do with the correctness of the content.

Why wouldn't they? They are locked in at a price that was frozen in time and can't increase. And there is a thriving black market for re-leased rent-controlled apartments. (black markets always occur when supply is artificially restricted).

You're posing a hypothetical that only happens in an alternate universe where the foundational ideas of economics and human behavior don't apply.

> A comparative shortage of rental properties and of landlords *could be very desirable*, as it implies more owner-occupiers.

Ok so 2/3rds of the way through your case you've already moved the goalposts. Here's a reality check for you: a dwelling is a dwelling, whether it is rented or owned. Rent control always and everywhere produces a shortage of dwellings. This hurts everyone.

Lower rent cannot be legislated any more than waterfront mansions for everyone can be legislated. It would be wonderful, if true. But it is not.

Price ceiling is the surest way in economics to create a shortage.