And you actually think housing speculation doesn’t happen on a wide scale? Like… what? Again, have you heard people talk about economics before? You said you understood a good amount of it, but you’re denying that housing speculation is real?

Speculation happens, sure. I don’t buy that it drives things way out of equilibrium in the long run. As far as I can tell from a skim, neither do your sources.

And do you really think supply & demand isn’t taught as a law? We hear the phrase “the law of supply & demand” bandied about whenever anyone does any pop-economics. Do you seriously not encounter that?

I also hear about “Murphy’s law”, which is self-evidently not (literally) true in all cases. If you’re teaching an actual Econ 101-type course and you don’t mention market failure, you’re teaching it badly.

The 2008 recession was literally a housing speculation bubble.

Not exactly. A drop in housing prices triggered it IIRC, but the actual chain of dominoes played out on paper in financial instruments.

In an ideal market the big banks would have just been replaced with new ones who take less risks of that sort, but they were too big to fail. That’s definitely a problem, but I don’t really know enough to comment on what the fix should be intelligently; banking economics is on a whole other level.

Also, in Canada, your tradespeople are swamped but there are about 1.3 million empty houses.

The total shortfall is in the neighborhood of 3.5 million units.

There’s always some, just because people move unpredictably - a “frictional” amount. I’m sure someone somewhere is sitting on an empty house for no good reason, but they’re losing money, so I doubt it’s a lot by comparison to the frictional amount.

Homeless people aren’t let in for a really sad reason that has nothing to do with necessity: few voters care and nonprofits can’t raise enough money - or alternately donated space - without government help. A lot of those people have “high needs”, and are at risk of causing damage or just leaving a mess, so it’s not like it’s free to let them stay in a building until the next tenant shows up.

The lab politics doesn’t come from nowhere. Sciences advance in a way that is exploitable by capital. When someone discovers a new kind of technology usually it can be turned into a profit. Often the details are obscured by charlatans looking to make a quick buck - see any tech hype cycle for an example of this - but interfering with the scientific process is usually going to be detrimental to the aims of capitalists.

Capitalism is neither necessary nor sufficient for politics. Look at the USSR and all the various times they flip-flopped on whatever issue or person. Or Republican Spain and it’s many warring factions, if that’s more your idea of non-capitalism.

It’s true that some scientists are on the hook to say things convenient for a sponsor. The nice thing is that a valid observation will stand the test of time regardless of who makes it. Marx made a huge impact on social sciences, and you don’t have to agree with him on any particular thing (left or right wing - he was still a Victorian white man) to appreciate economics as a driver of history. The same goes for marginalism and friends.