In a price defined shortage, there are always alternatives, it's not so black and white:
- you can get a smaller apartment
- you can get a not so nice apartment, but with space
- you can get an apartment further away from points of interest, meaning it's cheaper but you have a longer commute
This is very similar to free market for groceries: in communism you don't get groceries on the shelves. You get them only if you are lucky enough to be around when a delivery is made.
In capitalism, some groceries might be more expensive, but you can always buy cheaper ones, or travel longer to buy from cheaper stores.
You talk about these options as if they are selection dilemmas rather than an optimization problem, and discussing trading time and effort for price as if time and effort are unlimited resources. If you're going to pretend time and effort are unlimited, why not pretend funds are, also?
time is not unlimited, where did I say that? But you can commute 1 hour away and get much cheaper rents in almost any location on Earth. You trade off one extra hour each way for some cash.
In a price defined shortage, there are always alternatives, it's not so black and white:
- you can get a smaller apartment
- you can get a not so nice apartment, but with space
- you can get an apartment further away from points of interest, meaning it's cheaper but you have a longer commute
This is very similar to free market for groceries: in communism you don't get groceries on the shelves. You get them only if you are lucky enough to be around when a delivery is made.
In capitalism, some groceries might be more expensive, but you can always buy cheaper ones, or travel longer to buy from cheaper stores.