I agree with the "ladder" metaphor, but it's also a *distribution*, like the income distribution graph: some people need $100K dwellings, some $300K, some $900K. You have to build at every point in the distribution, to it's needs. Maybe we need 100,000 cheap and 200,000 mid-price - that's what should be built.
The free market normally does exactly this! You get the right number of small and large cars, big and small TV sets. When the free market is broken (and OMG, it clearly is), you have to fake up its effects by finding out how many dwellings of different sizes and conveniences, etc, are needed, and then just do those numbers by fiat.
Or, at least, we have to come as close to that as we can, as a functional free market would.
I agree with the "ladder" metaphor, but it's also a *distribution*, like the income distribution graph: some people need $100K dwellings, some $300K, some $900K. You have to build at every point in the distribution, to it's needs. Maybe we need 100,000 cheap and 200,000 mid-price - that's what should be built.
The free market normally does exactly this! You get the right number of small and large cars, big and small TV sets. When the free market is broken (and OMG, it clearly is), you have to fake up its effects by finding out how many dwellings of different sizes and conveniences, etc, are needed, and then just do those numbers by fiat.
Or, at least, we have to come as close to that as we can, as a functional free market would.