Americans have a tendency to respect those who are "self-made men."
This seems to include people whose fortunes have been made in real
estate. The latest example in the news is the outgoing governor of New
York, whose father, Bernard Spitzer, reportedly has a $500 million
portfolio of properties, most or all in NYC.
I have nothing against real estate developers in their role as
developers. They bring large amounts of money and multiple talents to
bear to create new modern buildings on sites previously occupied by
more modest buildings suitable to another decade or century. And when
they build they generally create the venues in which dozens, even
hundreds, of entrepreneurial visions can be made into reality, and
where thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of people can be employed
in a single building. Appropriate development of choice sites, served
by existing infrastructure such as NYC's elaborate transportation
system and things as prosaic as city water, sanitary sewers, stormwater
runoff, and all the other systems that are paid for by we-the-people:
schools, public safety, public health, libraries, courts, hospitals,
etc., means that specialized work can take in the center of the central
business district, conducted by people who come from a 360 degree
radius. It minimizes sprawl on the fringe, and makes the economy work
more smoothly.
But there are other facets of the real estate business that I think
are "opportunities for plunder" that should be restructured to serve
the common good instead of the private good. This involves a revision
of our notions of what is right, what is just, what is rightly private
property and what legitimately belongs to the commons.