Holy shit that's blatantly cartel pricing.

That's for courts to decide, peasant!

Yeah...

True but every article about "AI" is really talking about something else.

You know AI is an algorithm?

It's probably ML.

a lot of AI is really just fancy statistics stuff. Years and years ago, I was doing an introductory lesson on some AI tools and the example given was predicting the price of rent or the price of a house. There's likely a mixture of the statistics part to predict and the algorithmic part to increase the amount and see if people bite.

It turns out, most will when everyone is using it bc being homeless kinda sucks.

There's a lot one side of the market can do with collusion to drive up prices.

For example, the housing supply available on the market right now often fluctuates over time - once someone has a long term tenancy, their price is locked in until the next legal opportunity to change the price. If there is a low season - fewer people living in an area, higher vacancy rate - in a competitive market, tenants often want a long term contract (if they are planning on staying), and the landlord who can offer that will win the contract. The landlord gets income during the low period, but forgo a higher rent they might get during a high period. Another landlord who tries to take a hardline policy of insisting tenants renew their contract during the high period would lose out - they would just miss out on rent entirely during the low period, likely making less than the other landlord.

Now if the landlords form a cartel during the low period, and it is not possible to lease a rental property long term, then the tenants have no choice but to be in a position to re-negotiate price during the high period. Landlords avoid having to choose between no revenue during the low period and higher during the high period, or a consistent lower rent - instead they get the lower rent during the low period (at a slightly lower occupancy rate, but shared across all the landlords) AND the higher rent during the high period.

The insanely unjust asymmetry of the "housing market" is why landlords exist in the first place.

It's very easy to gouge people if you violently control their basic needs for survival.

Housing is often a market failure, because construction does not respond dynamically to house prices due to some regulations and nimbys.

Wake me up when the fines overshadow the profits.

Between grocery prices and 12 different streaming services who keep upping their prices, we're getting gouged on the bread and circuses too.

Then people vote for the fascists, and things get even worse

It's no mystery and it's been happening forever... Attacks on the homeless, imprisonment, gated compounds, etc.