Maybe so but none of those things replace the concept of a market, they are different ways to control a market, which is absolutely required and woefully neglected in many countries and many areas. But I don't understand the idea that markets themselves are the problem.

If you are a doctor and you want to practice medicine to get money to pay for fish, you are engaging with a market even if that market is single payer (ie the government).

If the single payer pays too little to get fish, you will start fishing instead of practicing medicine. If the single payer pays a lot the fishermen will start wondering why you get so much when they are the ones actually catching the fish. And they will increase the price of fish, forcing your one payer to pay more.

A very simplified view of things of course but my point is that it's still a market. I seriously can't imagine a mechanism better than a market so I was curious what the GP had in mind.

The problem with housing isn't markets, it's the lack of a proper market. The economic system in many countries is tied to mortgages in a way that various cogs in the financial machine can't under any circumstance allow housing to depreciate over time. Homeowners don't own their homes, they pay the banks. And the bank is valued based on the assets it has in the form of home loans.

So the value of homes has to go up. It's important for politicians, it's important for banks, it's important for existing homeowners. Which makes it a massive problem for non-homeowners.

If this was a proper market, houses would be built to meet demand. But as things are now, that would trigger a massive depression. We saw a glimpse of it in 2008.