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It encourages people to get out of the damn cities! There's a reason why it costs a king's ransom to rent a hovel in a city: finite space. Nothing you do -- no

It encourages people to get out of the damn cities! There's a reason why it costs a king's ransom to rent a hovel in a city: finite space. Nothing you do -- not density, not UBI, not anything -- can create unlimited space out of thin air. Fortunately, we've got plenty of space, just not in urban centers. We need to learn how to use space rather than let it use us.

nostrebored 6y ago
Cities are economically efficient. If your praise for UBI is that it reduces economic efficiency (reducing your ability to pay for UBI) then I think you're going off course.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  No, paying poor people to compete with each other for city space is not efficient. In terms of efficiency, it's about on par with stacking cash in a pile and burning it. City space is finite. We ration it for a reason. We could ration it differently, but we'd still have to ration it. Increasing density doesn't make it affordable to pack everyone in a single place (see: NY). Pretending the problem doesn't exist and throwing money at housing projects doesn't make it affordable to pack everyone in a single place (see: SF). The only way to make progress on the actual problem is to figure out how to deal better with being spread out.
  - eru 6y ago
    Increasing density helps a lot. The US mostly has lost the skills and will to do density. New York mostly stopped building enough to keep up with demand. Look at Asia to see how to tackle these problems better. Eg Singapore.
    - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
      I’ll wait until those land leases are up in Singapore.
      - eru 6y ago
        Yes, it's not completely clear whether they'll have the political stomach to actually go through with letting the leases lapse at the end of their life. It would probably have been better to use Land Value Taxes instead of relying on limited leases.
  - nostrebored 6y ago
    Man, I wonder what underlying housing policy New York and San Francisco have in common?
jnwatson 6y ago
While it is technically true, there's still plenty of vertical space. We've simply made it too hard to build new housing in US cities.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  That's technically true, but horizontal space can be parceled out somewhat independently, vertical space can't, and that's a big deal. You're right that it's a political stumbling block rather than a physical stumbling block, but city housing is expensive everywhere, so it seems appropriate to treat it as an empirical law rather than something that can just be hand-waived away. I'd support efforts to build vertically in a heartbeat, I just don't have high hopes for them.

nostrebored 6y ago

Cities are economically efficient. If your praise for UBI is that it reduces economic efficiency (reducing your ability to pay for UBI) then I think you're going off course.

jjoonathan 6y ago
No, paying poor people to compete with each other for city space is not efficient. In terms of efficiency, it's about on par with stacking cash in a pile and burning it. City space is finite. We ration it for a reason. We could ration it differently, but we'd still have to ration it. Increasing density doesn't make it affordable to pack everyone in a single place (see: NY). Pretending the problem doesn't exist and throwing money at housing projects doesn't make it affordable to pack everyone in a single place (see: SF). The only way to make progress on the actual problem is to figure out how to deal better with being spread out.
- eru 6y ago
  Increasing density helps a lot. The US mostly has lost the skills and will to do density. New York mostly stopped building enough to keep up with demand. Look at Asia to see how to tackle these problems better. Eg Singapore.
  - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
    I’ll wait until those land leases are up in Singapore.
    - eru 6y ago
      Yes, it's not completely clear whether they'll have the political stomach to actually go through with letting the leases lapse at the end of their life. It would probably have been better to use Land Value Taxes instead of relying on limited leases.
- nostrebored 6y ago
  Man, I wonder what underlying housing policy New York and San Francisco have in common?

jnwatson 6y ago

While it is technically true, there's still plenty of vertical space. We've simply made it too hard to build new housing in US cities.

jjoonathan 6y ago
That's technically true, but horizontal space can be parceled out somewhat independently, vertical space can't, and that's a big deal. You're right that it's a political stumbling block rather than a physical stumbling block, but city housing is expensive everywhere, so it seems appropriate to treat it as an empirical law rather than something that can just be hand-waived away. I'd support efforts to build vertically in a heartbeat, I just don't have high hopes for them.