4 ms·

There's nothing capitalist about zoning. What you are seeing is central planning in action.

• curun1r 10y ago
  Cities that are adding housing could enact taxes on residents who work outside of the city (or, more likely, exempt those that work in the city, are retired or self-/un-employed.) That would add a market force to both offset the cost of zoning residential over commercial as well as putting additional pressure on those cities that have not kept up with the demand for housing. It could even be sold as an environmental measure to discourage longer commutes. This wouldn't make sense for suburbs where jobs are limited, but for San Francisco, Oakland or another city that does have available jobs, it would. Because otherwise, cities like Mountain View build nothing but commercial, make tons of money and shirk their responsibility to house the people working in those commercial developments. In classic Libertarian fashion, you could argue we need only properly account for the externalities and the market will solve the problem. But when externalities are allowed to go unchecked, as is the case here, things get bad.
• ekianjo 10y ago
  I'd rather use the word "Free Market" than Capitalism. Capitalism can also exist in situations where you don't have a real Free Market, and Capitalism can lead to Monopolies of means of production and ownership. Free Market ideals go against Monopolies and centralization of power in general.
• muzz 10y ago
  "Central planning" meaning 100+ Bay Area cities acting independently?