"Fair" in the good old American capitalist sense of the word. Money is supposed to be a proxy for desire here... The one that desires the room more gets it because they are willing to pay more for it. The reality is money isn't an equal proxy for desire. The poorer roomate can want the big room with every fibre of their being, but be casually outbid by a rich roommate with money to burn.
Edit: as expected, HN swings decidedly capitalistic and my comment has been downvoted.
Money isn't being used as a proxy for desire here; it's being used as a proxy for sacrifice. The person who is willing to sacrifice more for the room gets it, not the person who wants it more. Fair is being used in the sense that everybody ends up happy with the amount they sacrifice for the room that they end up getting, because at no point are you suggesting an amount that you're unwilling to pay.
So your comment is getting downvoted because it's wrong, not because HN is ruthlessly capitalistic.
Even when there isn't economic disparity between the two tenants, the amount of sacrifice represented by $100 may well be unequal.
Fortunately, this system involves everybody listing exactly how much they'd be willing to pay for each room so that nobody ends up sacrificing an amount that they're unhappy with for the room they end up living in. So even if they're sacrificing unequal amounts, they're getting a result they're happy with.
Fair in the sense that nobody is forced to pay more than they want to / can. Unfair in the sense that one person has more power than the other, almost definitely because of their family history, not because of anything they have done specifically to deserve that extra freedom and power.
My point is basically that our society allows an unjustly large economic disparity, and to call this a "fair" method of divvying up rent ignores that nothing involving money can be truly fair in our society.
So if you get the room you really want, why should another person get stuck paying more for a worse room? You might say that the landlord should just give the apartment to the people who want it the most, and only charge what they can afford to pay him. But the landlord isn't looking to maximize desire, he's looking for the most money.
So really, the reason the solution is to give more desirable things to people with more money, is that the owner of the desirable thing is looking to maximize money, not just match desire of the apartment with desire of your money. So he's trying to take the most money the rich person is willing to give and the most money the poorer person is willing to give.
In practice it's usually the tenants picking the rent split, not the landlord. Two friends move in, they agree that they'll split the rent roughly equally, but maybe the bigger room is worth an extra $50 or something. Often they'll just split the rent equally despite an obvious difference in objective quality between the rooms. This is because when it comes to family and friends, we often behave in anti-capitalist ways. This is why the idea of capitalism seems "cold" and "uncaring", because when it comes to those close to us we don't act strictly capitalistically.
Sure they decide among themselves what the split is. But I mean, if the richer person is willing to pay $750 for the better room and the poorer person is willing to pay up to $500 for either room, the best move for the landlord is to raise the rent overall!
Comments
"Fair" in the good old American capitalist sense of the word. Money is supposed to be a proxy for desire here... The one that desires the room more gets it because they are willing to pay more for it. The reality is money isn't an equal proxy for desire. The poorer roomate can want the big room with every fibre of their being, but be casually outbid by a rich roommate with money to burn.
Edit: as expected, HN swings decidedly capitalistic and my comment has been downvoted.
Money isn't being used as a proxy for desire here; it's being used as a proxy for sacrifice. The person who is willing to sacrifice more for the room gets it, not the person who wants it more. Fair is being used in the sense that everybody ends up happy with the amount they sacrifice for the room that they end up getting, because at no point are you suggesting an amount that you're unwilling to pay.
So your comment is getting downvoted because it's wrong, not because HN is ruthlessly capitalistic.
When there is an economic disparity between the two tenants, the amount of sacrifice represented by $100 is unequal
Even when there isn't economic disparity between the two tenants, the amount of sacrifice represented by $100 may well be unequal.
Fortunately, this system involves everybody listing exactly how much they'd be willing to pay for each room so that nobody ends up sacrificing an amount that they're unhappy with for the room they end up living in. So even if they're sacrificing unequal amounts, they're getting a result they're happy with.
Sounds fair to me.
Fair in the sense that nobody is forced to pay more than they want to / can. Unfair in the sense that one person has more power than the other, almost definitely because of their family history, not because of anything they have done specifically to deserve that extra freedom and power.
My point is basically that our society allows an unjustly large economic disparity, and to call this a "fair" method of divvying up rent ignores that nothing involving money can be truly fair in our society.
So if you get the room you really want, why should another person get stuck paying more for a worse room? You might say that the landlord should just give the apartment to the people who want it the most, and only charge what they can afford to pay him. But the landlord isn't looking to maximize desire, he's looking for the most money.
So really, the reason the solution is to give more desirable things to people with more money, is that the owner of the desirable thing is looking to maximize money, not just match desire of the apartment with desire of your money. So he's trying to take the most money the rich person is willing to give and the most money the poorer person is willing to give.
In practice it's usually the tenants picking the rent split, not the landlord. Two friends move in, they agree that they'll split the rent roughly equally, but maybe the bigger room is worth an extra $50 or something. Often they'll just split the rent equally despite an obvious difference in objective quality between the rooms. This is because when it comes to family and friends, we often behave in anti-capitalist ways. This is why the idea of capitalism seems "cold" and "uncaring", because when it comes to those close to us we don't act strictly capitalistically.
Sure they decide among themselves what the split is. But I mean, if the richer person is willing to pay $750 for the better room and the poorer person is willing to pay up to $500 for either room, the best move for the landlord is to raise the rent overall!