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To my sensibility, energy-wise, prices are cheap in exactly the wrong places where you want concentrated populations. People are rather expensive (in energy ter

To my sensibility, energy-wise, prices are cheap in exactly the wrong places where you want concentrated populations. People are rather expensive (in energy terms) to logistically serve and they are even more expensive to move around, so you want them near waterways and coasts, and more sparse in inland areas, making the inland areas serve functions that require lots of land, like food production and renewable energy production. We should be forcing low-density development residents and business to pay their own way on infrastructure build-outs around coastal and near-waterway metropolitan areas, and increasing population densities of the urban cores to around 25-30K per square mile on average, but the way the real estate business is structurally organized in the US and so tightly interwoven into our financial structures, there are very few ways I foresee how to accomplish that without excruciatingly high residential pricing, and all those ways are very uphill wars on powerful, entrenched economic interests.

brational 9y ago
If I read you correctly you're essentially suggesting that someone living in a low-cost of living area isn't paying enough for the shipped products they receive by way of major transport hubs? I'd argue that's slightly evened out by prices that don't fluctuate as much by location. ex: In my midwest city I own a 3br 1500 sqft house that cost 190k and my wife and I gross over 160k. In an SV or Seattle type area we could be double the income and 10x or more for same house so it seems like we're getting a sweet deal right? But plane tickets, automobiles, many smaller consumables, anything you can buy on amazon, higher priced hobby items (phones, road bike, etc), are relatively inelastic to location. So we pay a larger share of our income than if we lived in a high-income area. To a certain extent, fuel as well. I regularly travel to chicago, seattle, and intermittently to LA area and gas prices are only marginally higher than in my low tax red state. While not so static, the cost is a bit baked in there as it's a larger proportion of my income to fuel my car. That said, I'd have to put real numbers into this to see if my counter argument holds. You may be right that we underpay at a macro level and have some arbitrage. Your message just seemed to suggest it was obvious which I don't think is the case.
- yourapostasy 9y ago
  > ...you're essentially suggesting that someone living in a low-cost of living area isn't paying enough for the shipped products they receive by way of major transport hubs? Sorry, I'm not writing clearly enough. Inland areas should have fewer and smaller population centers, and what do exist, should be dense, if we were eyeing our position on the Kardashev and concerned about where our next big energy sources are coming from.

brational 9y ago

If I read you correctly you're essentially suggesting that someone living in a low-cost of living area isn't paying enough for the shipped products they receive by way of major transport hubs? I'd argue that's slightly evened out by prices that don't fluctuate as much by location. ex: In my midwest city I own a 3br 1500 sqft house that cost 190k and my wife and I gross over 160k. In an SV or Seattle type area we could be double the income and 10x or more for same house so it seems like we're getting a sweet deal right? But plane tickets, automobiles, many smaller consumables, anything you can buy on amazon, higher priced hobby items (phones, road bike, etc), are relatively inelastic to location. So we pay a larger share of our income than if we lived in a high-income area. To a certain extent, fuel as well. I regularly travel to chicago, seattle, and intermittently to LA area and gas prices are only marginally higher than in my low tax red state. While not so static, the cost is a bit baked in there as it's a larger proportion of my income to fuel my car. That said, I'd have to put real numbers into this to see if my counter argument holds. You may be right that we underpay at a macro level and have some arbitrage. Your message just seemed to suggest it was obvious which I don't think is the case.

yourapostasy 9y ago
> ...you're essentially suggesting that someone living in a low-cost of living area isn't paying enough for the shipped products they receive by way of major transport hubs? Sorry, I'm not writing clearly enough. Inland areas should have fewer and smaller population centers, and what do exist, should be dense, if we were eyeing our position on the Kardashev and concerned about where our next big energy sources are coming from.