3 ms·

What the heck are you talking about? There is plenty of available space in the USA. It doesn’t have to be some crazy dog pile into desirable areas. Spread jobs

by davemp 9y ago

What the heck are you talking about? There is plenty of available space in the USA. It doesn’t have to be some crazy dog pile into desirable areas. Spread jobs and amenities out and we all don’t have to jam into a few cities or fight people off our lawns.

abritinthebay 9y ago
So what’s your plan for spreading those out? Because the former isn’t happening (or even practical in many areas) and the latter presents an order of magnitude more difficult logistics (ie, expense) that would balloon costs. It’s all well & good to say a solution but when that solution is a complete fantasy it’s hsrdky helping
0xB31B1B 9y ago
What you want is socialism for the rich. In a working land market, a group of 3 people could outbid a single person for property in your neighborhood and build a suitable dwelling for them that objectively is not disruptive to the community. You want to use government power to prevent these three families from buying the land and make sure only one of them can.
closeparen 9y ago
It’s not the Middle Ages anymore. People live off of communities and centers of economic activity, not the land. There being enough land to go around is irrelevant. Successful economic centers grow; failed ones shrink. Yes, there is cheap housing around economically crumbling places, but bricks and dirt don’t sustain life. Economies do. You could try to counteract economic centralization by restricting commercial development as aggressively as residential in growing places, but (as with housing) you’ll see all but the highest value businesses displaced. I don’t see how you could pull off decentralization without full-on central planning. Capitalism wants megacities, badly. To decentralize the economy, you need extreme policy interventions for every aspect of life and commerce. It might work, but what’s certainly not working is making the intervention only for housing.

by davemp 9y ago

abritinthebay 9y ago

So what’s your plan for spreading those out? Because the former isn’t happening (or even practical in many areas) and the latter presents an order of magnitude more difficult logistics (ie, expense) that would balloon costs. It’s all well & good to say a solution but when that solution is a complete fantasy it’s hsrdky helping

0xB31B1B 9y ago

What you want is socialism for the rich. In a working land market, a group of 3 people could outbid a single person for property in your neighborhood and build a suitable dwelling for them that objectively is not disruptive to the community. You want to use government power to prevent these three families from buying the land and make sure only one of them can.

closeparen 9y ago

It’s not the Middle Ages anymore. People live off of communities and centers of economic activity, not the land. There being enough land to go around is irrelevant. Successful economic centers grow; failed ones shrink. Yes, there is cheap housing around economically crumbling places, but bricks and dirt don’t sustain life. Economies do. You could try to counteract economic centralization by restricting commercial development as aggressively as residential in growing places, but (as with housing) you’ll see all but the highest value businesses displaced. I don’t see how you could pull off decentralization without full-on central planning. Capitalism wants megacities, badly. To decentralize the economy, you need extreme policy interventions for every aspect of life and commerce. It might work, but what’s certainly not working is making the intervention only for housing.