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> You shouldn’t be able to make a tonne of money by just buying a house and sitting on it. But humans occupy physical space. Almost everyone would prefer more
by atweiden 5y ago
> You shouldn’t be able to make a tonne of money by just buying a house and sitting on it.
But humans occupy physical space. Almost everyone would prefer more privacy and space to less. Hence if the human population keeps growing, the price of having physical privacy and space will also keep growing. It’s just the bitter reality of it.
In addition, often times the architecture or established land use patterns of certain neighborhoods act as an upper limit on population density. It really grinds my gears when people advocate for essentially paving over these crucial neighborhood characteristics. This effectively destroys local culture in the name of “inclusivity”. Granted, there are definitely more neighborhoods without any unique character than not, and it’s hard to feel any sympathy for paving them over. But there are certainly quite a few neighborhoods globally that are quite special, and in these places inclusivity tends to be a tragedy of the commons scenario.
- mertd 5y agoHow do you define a neighborhood characteristic? Usually it's nothing but an arbitrary snapshot in time that some folks decided is ideal and should be frozen. Curiously it tends to correlate with the date they moved in to the said neighborhood.
- atweiden 5y ago> How do you define a neighborhood characteristic? Usually it's nothing but an arbitrary snapshot in time that some folks decided is ideal and should be frozen. Usually so, but sometimes not. What are the characteristics of Gion Kyoto, for example?
- 8note 5y agoI think that is to say that land needs to be taxed quite heavily. If you're taking up a lot of space, you're keeping important resources tied up in nothinh
- Tagbert 5y agoSounds like you want to significantly increase the price of housing to do…?
- BreakfastB0b 5y agoI'm definitely sympathetic to this argument, however, considered in the limit, it does become pretty absurd. How long do you want to maintain the character of the neighbourhood for? 10 years? 20? 50? 100? 500? 1000? 10,000? Such a 'character' may be a grotesque luxury that future generations simply cannot afford to keep around.
- atweiden 5y agoThen we’re essentially debating what the value is of preserving our ability to experience beauty. And what’s life without beauty?
- quantified 5y agoWhy the downvotes? This is a very useful viewpoint IMHO. The generations alive have clearly prioritized growth over many other factors. It’s hypocrisy to want to “keep the character of the neighborhood” and have more than the bare replacement number of children, since you’re creating a change in the demands on the neighborhood. Most writeups of population growth rates and the economy focus on the economic benefits of more children, not the quality of life for the future generations. Future generations will not miss a Monarch butterfly or any species of tortoise or rhino just like we don’t miss the passenger pigeon or herds of a million bison, or being able to see a Milky Way we’ve only heard about. They might, however, be a bit put off by the water quality we’ve left behind, and let’s face it, we’re not all going to see an unspoiled wilderness because there’s relatively little left. Night sky is already abuzz with satellites.