> Some governments around the world did incentivise and even footed the bill for building public housing
I am not referring to building public housing. I am saying the government should build housing as if it were a for-profit company. Take those profits, and re-invest into building even _more_ housing. Don't try to sell to those in need, sell to those who are speculating on real estate and increase supply at the same time.
In the US no one trusts the government anymore and instead they want the private sector to do everything. But the private sector only cares about profit.
It’s also a good way to ensure companies can milk the government of money and then the head of those companies can lobby the government to keep things how they are so they continue to get that government money.
I believe the main issue with many US government projects is that they _don't_ care about profit. If they did, maybe we could have public transportation as good as that of Hong Kong[0]. This idea that pursuing profits as a public entity is not productive when it could benefit society as a whole does more harm than good.
Profit is inherently waste. It is value that is taken out of an enterprise and doesn't contribute to improving the product of the enterprise.
If there is surplus value it should stay in the enterprise and be used to improve the enterprise by improving processes or improving the lives of workers. Failing that it should be returned to the customers through lower prices.
One good thing about government services is they're more efficient because they don't have this value being extracted by uninvolved parties. That means they're able to provide better service or lower prices with the value that would've been sucked out by profit takers.
> If there is surplus value it should stay in the enterprise and be used to improve the enterprise
Profit is surplus value. The opposite of waste. Forcing it back into the place it originated versus letting it transport to the most-useful thing it can do is how you get sclerotic feudalism. Had we adhered to this philosophy during the Industrial Revolution, we would have just kept farming.
You seem to be a little confused about the nature of profit. If investors didn't expect to take out future profits then they obviously wouldn't put in the capital necessary to start the enterprise in the first place.
A lot of the value in government services tends to be extracted by public employee unions. Politicians make excessive commitments around wages, pensions, and job security in order to buy union votes and maintain labor peace. Then the politicians move on and future taxpayers are left holding the bag.
I'm afraid you're the one that's confused. Profit is defined economically as revenue minus expenses, and so the grandfather post's first sentence is correct.
What grandfather is suggesting is something like an ESOP, co-op, or etc. There are a long history of these kinds of organizations, and they thrive in free-market economies--unfortunately, nobody really lives in one of those anymore.
It is telling that you say public employee unions "extract value" by demanding the pensions/job protections that should by rights belong to everyone (and often did, in the past). Conversely, private corporations "extract value" from the labor marker by struggling to provide any job security, any retirement, or even anything resembling a living wage.
Just which sector is failing to be profitable, here?
You're welcome to start an employee owned co-op and build homes or whatever. It's completely legal and no one will stop you. There's nothing in our economic system that prevents them from working, but in practice they usually fail due to poor internal decision making. So I don't understand what you're complaining about or what point you're trying to make.
Telling voters that their tax money will be used to build housing to be sold to speculators will absolutely not work. Even if in the long-term that somehow could end up helping people, no one will vote for this absurdity.
You're asking for people to fund the infrastructure speculators thrive on with their money, on top of that you want to depress housing prices which another large cohort of society will vote against, politically your proposal doesn't make sense.
If you cared to read the Wikipedia entry I shared the approach the Swedish government took was to pay 2/3 of the new constructions and sell those houses to people who would pay them back in 30 years, it's not "public housing" as you assumed...
Aside from scale, it's pretty much the same thing but with the assumption that whoever is going to be buying is a friendly neighbor and not an evil speculator.
I am not referring to building public housing. I am saying the government should build housing as if it were a for-profit company. Take those profits, and re-invest into building even _more_ housing. Don't try to sell to those in need, sell to those who are speculating on real estate and increase supply at the same time.