5 ms·

To save California, build more. Single family, multi family, whatever. Just more.

colechristensen 5y ago
Wouldn't California, and the rest of the country, be better off if quite a few people from across the spectrum left for other places? The wealth/talent/business concentration is really unnecessary, and with drought, fires, and other global warming concerns, it's actually not that nice there. The solution to a lot of the "housing problems" around the country isn't further concentration but decentralization.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  Sure. Let’s take the 2 trillion we spent on the Afghan war and instead build up a few more tech cities with high rise apartments, great public transit, new great universities and so on. I think the problem is that outside the government spending like that, private industry has a hard time getting sufficient funding to create a meaningful new center of innovation.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I can't speak to the rest of it, but concentration of populations is often extremely good for certain types of endeavors. Cities often have the surplus value available to support speculative and "non-productive" cultural output. The rapid mixing of ideas and cultures often helps a lot too. I'd argue that it's good for California to have all those people. It's pretty hard to argue that it isn't, based on the cultural, economic, and agricultural output of the state. Now whether or not it's good for the people in California is another matter altogether. And I say that as someone who recently left CA for another state.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  The issue is, you can have 21st-century high-tech free-market capitalism with low state intervention, or you can have decentralization of the population and economy. Pick only one.
ashtonkem 5y ago
There is an upper limit to how many single family homes you can build; transit costs eventually come to dominate and mean that more doesn't really help much.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  Sure, I do agree, but having some additional single family homes built wouldn’t be a terrible thing if we also built a million apartments.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    If we build that many apartments, we probably won't need any more single family homes. The ones that'll remain will probably balance out for those with the ability and willingness to pay for the luxury.

Wouldn't California, and the rest of the country, be better off if quite a few people from across the spectrum left for other places? The wealth/talent/business concentration is really unnecessary, and with drought, fires, and other global warming concerns, it's actually not that nice there. The solution to a lot of the "housing problems" around the country isn't further concentration but decentralization.

epicureanideal 5y ago
Sure. Let’s take the 2 trillion we spent on the Afghan war and instead build up a few more tech cities with high rise apartments, great public transit, new great universities and so on. I think the problem is that outside the government spending like that, private industry has a hard time getting sufficient funding to create a meaningful new center of innovation.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I can't speak to the rest of it, but concentration of populations is often extremely good for certain types of endeavors. Cities often have the surplus value available to support speculative and "non-productive" cultural output. The rapid mixing of ideas and cultures often helps a lot too. I'd argue that it's good for California to have all those people. It's pretty hard to argue that it isn't, based on the cultural, economic, and agricultural output of the state. Now whether or not it's good for the people in California is another matter altogether. And I say that as someone who recently left CA for another state.
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
The issue is, you can have 21st-century high-tech free-market capitalism with low state intervention, or you can have decentralization of the population and economy. Pick only one.

ashtonkem 5y ago

There is an upper limit to how many single family homes you can build; transit costs eventually come to dominate and mean that more doesn't really help much.

epicureanideal 5y ago
Sure, I do agree, but having some additional single family homes built wouldn’t be a terrible thing if we also built a million apartments.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  If we build that many apartments, we probably won't need any more single family homes. The ones that'll remain will probably balance out for those with the ability and willingness to pay for the luxury.