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> … and the people who can't even afford to move there in the first place. There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. Can you

> … and the people who can't even afford to move there in the first place. There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. Can you articulate an ethical argument for why it’s a problem that not everyone can afford to move to the most desirable cities?

AlotOfReading 5y ago
Does this really need an argument? A primary mechanism for segregation and social inequity over the past century has been the exclusion of "undesirables" from spaces and the simultaneous, "coincidental" allocation of resources to those exclusionary spaces. It's impossible to have an informed discussion on this topic in the US without acknowledging that basic reality.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  Do you believe everyone has a right to housing in any place they might desire to live?
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    No, of course not. The point is that there's a more nuanced discussion to be had here about what these limits and rights ought to be.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      Doesn’t that answer my question, then? There’s nothing inherently wrong if not everyone can afford to live in desirable cities.
      - hetspookjee 5y ago
        I think the one you’re responding to seems to be in favour of a more nuanced view, rather where I read your argument as absolutes (everyone everywhere). So to some extend you both seem in agreement though the difference is the nuance.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - d4mi3n 5y ago
      Doesn’t that answer my question, then? There’s nothing inherently wrong if not everyone can afford to live in desirable cities. This comes off as a bad faith counter-argument. AlotOfReading has explicitly stated he believes there exist nuances of substance to this discussion. This response completely ignores his statements in favor of what may be a false dichotomy. teakettle42: How could one address AlotOfReading's concerns about exclusionary policy making and resource allocation? I'm of the thinking that it is fine to say one subscribes to the belief that one can't simply live where one chooses for a variety of reasons, but it's another thing to condone, implicitly or otherwise, that only certain classes of people may live in desirable areas. I feel doing so is antithetical to a society that values social mobility. What I _do_ feel is an under discussed thread of this topic are policies and practices that could be put in place to allow for a greater number of people to have an _opportunity_ to live in such areas. Low income housing, zoning changes, and tax incentives geared towards improving the socioeconomic diversity of an area are some approaches. Unfortunately, none of these things are possible without local political support or overarching legislation/policy requiring it--bringing us full circle to Manuel_D's original comment.
      - teakettle42 5y ago
        > Low income housing This is just a subsidy for employers; they can pay a less-than-living wage, keep the profits, and rely on tax-payer-subsidized housing programs to close the gap. > zoning changes This is a give-away to developers. Increases the entry costs for development beyond what anyone but huge real-estate investment firms can afford. They build out rental units, grow the permanent rental class, and extract rent from the population in perpetuity. > tax incentives geared towards improving the socioeconomic diversity of an area Why is socioeconomic diversity in coveted cities a desirable outcome, and specifically, why is it something the government should attempt to engineer using our tax dollars?
deleted 5y ago
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Manuel_D 5y ago
There's no inalienable right to not be cripplingly impoverished. But any ethical countries would try to ameliorate that condition. Is it ethical for a select few to grow enormously wealthy by driving up the cost of living for the many by deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need? People need jobs to live. They also need a roof over their heads. The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas, but the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets. Disincentivizing this sort of rent seeking behavior is precisely the kind of thing property taxes accomplish.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  > deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need There’s no housing shortage. There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable. People can and do live elsewhere, working local jobs or commuting. > The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas That’s just one of many problems of scale; the solution is not to keep scaling up. > … the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets. Nobody is obligated to destroy their own community to accommodate the interests of rent-seeking land developers and people who don’t live there.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    Yes, the solution is to keep scaling up. _No_ economy can _sustain_ American style suburban growth. Read about 'the growth ponzi scheme' [1] or watch a video https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://youtu.be/y_SXXTBypIg https://youtu.be/y_SXXTBypIg
  - dbspin 5y ago
    Just to address this from a non US standpoint. While I'm sympathetic toward both the desire to preserve the character and community of a neighbourhood and your antipathy towards rentiers - there absolutely is a housing crisis across Europe (and presumably in the US). Part of the reason is the lack of social housing provision, with most EU governments reducing or all together abandoning their post war commitments to low cost housing. Another reason is that, even in this era of remote work, the enormous majority of high paying jobs do require living in a large population centre. Perhaps the largest reason is the financialisation of housing as an asset class by hedge and other vulture funds. Italy alone seems to have kept the housing crisis / shortage localised to wealthy cities - and it is the only wealthy EU country to have done so. Germany, Ireland, France etc, all have rents and housing costs far higher than their median citizens capacity to comfortably pay, even in very remote and economically depressed areas. Italy by contrast charges high taxes on 2nd and 3rd properties, effectively blocking the aggregation of empty / underused housing stock. Which has resulted in rural areas and less populous cities being reasonably priced to live in. This is not the case anywhere else in Western Europe.
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diordiderot 5y ago
> There’s no inalienable right There are zero inalienable rights
closeparen 5y ago
America’s housing supply will grow. A policy that it grows only by sprawl is a policy of cruelty to everyone today and in the future who thrives best in an urban environment and isn’t super-rich. Urban environments can’t be stamped onto cornfields; they only occur when sparser environments become expensive. I don’t think there’s a right to live in any arbitrary expensive town. I do think there’s a right to have the expensive-town-to-city pipeline running somewhere at more than a trickle, so that urbanism is not impossible to access.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  > so that urbanism is not impossible to access. Urbanism in a desirable location is expensive, everywhere in the world. It’s an inescapable problem of scale. You’re free to live like a sardine in a dense city, but it will be expensive. You cannot avoid that.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - closeparen 5y ago
    Most of the world is not rich enough to live as sparsely as we do. The suburbs are a miracle of prosperity and technology - a car for every adult, the energy to run it, the infrastructure to drive it on. Most human settlements in the world are walkable because they have to be. Actually it is because car centric design was associated with wealth and status that the “backwards” old ways became prohibited. This inversion now, where walkable environments seem to be luxurious, is a legacy of that prohibition more than anything else.
geocar 5y ago
> There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. There's no right to anything that people don't stand together to say they have a right to. > Can you articulate an ethical argument for why it’s a problem that not everyone can afford to move to the most desirable cities? People shouldn't have to commute for hours so other people can live there because that impacts their health and opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If this is where the jobs are, there should be homes here as well.
- alex_sf 5y ago
  > There's no right to anything that people don't stand together to say they have a right to. This is ignoring the point: positive rights should not exist. They require taking rights from others, through violence, to enforce. > People shouldn't have to commute for hours so other people can live there because that impacts their health and opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness Ok. Then don't.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Okay then just die? I mean, it's an option, but a just society could easily do better. The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing. Positive rights for all do not require violence provided those who benefit from others not having simple rights will give up their excess for the greater good. The demos may need to use violence, but that's only because those who, by no greater virtue, have acquired wealth refuse to act justly and recognise the equal dignity of man.
    - alex_sf 5y ago
      > Okay then just die? Or work near where you can afford to live? If there aren't jobs that support living there, live somewhere else? You're presenting an absurd dichotomy. > The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing. No, they aren't. Wealth inequality is not a real problem. It's politicized jealousy. Wealth is not zero-sum, and someone having more than someone else is irrelevant. > Positive rights for all do not require violence provided those who benefit from others not having simple rights will give up their excess for the greater good. "Right" means it must be enforced. "provided .. will give up" means taking by that same force if they choose to not turn over what they own. Taking to support a right absolutely requires violence. > but that's only because those who, by no greater virtue, have acquired wealth refuse to act justly and recognise the equal dignity of man. Why should they? What is their obligation? You have undoubtedly acquired more wealth than a subsistence farmer in rural India: why do you refuse to act justly and recognize their equal dignity?
frisia 5y ago
> There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. I agree, that's why single family households should have a higher property tax and high density a lower one. Currently single family households are subsidized.[1] [1]: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment-dwellers-subsidize-suburban-homeowners https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment...
- nonford150 5y ago
  But property taxes are local. Raising them only supplies more revenue to the local area. For the US, also, one needs to take into account many states have limits on property tax rates and revenue raises in general, such as millage rates have to be fully balanced with spending, which in turn, has limits. Excess rate increases will simply make those areas less valuable, which will push people to even lower taxed areas, which, at least in the US, are even more rural areas, thereby increasing the concern for climate change and a reduction in population density.
helen___keller 5y ago
From a strictly ethics point of view, government in the general sense exists for its people and their well-being. I think this should be a fairly uncontroversial starting point. Now the question is whether one can show that the people are in a very general sense better off if a desirable city is affordable accessible compared to the alternative. I say “very general sense” because I want to avoid any argument that involves the minutiae of utilitarianism; it should be overwhelmingly in favor regardless of your exact ethical framework. With that in mind, my argument would be that [cities should be affordable] is the obvious ethical choice if and only if the city in question is designed / planned in a pro-social manner. Where pro-social is defined such that the addition of new people is positive. This should sound fairly tautological so let me give a few examples: Pro-social design: shops that rely on foot traffic are pro-social because adding more people (housing etc) to the immediate vicinity increases foot traffic Mass transportation is pro-social because as more people are added to a particular neighborhood, this justifies expansion of train lines, bus routes, etc Anti-social design: Shops that rely on car traffic are usually anti-social because (a) adding people to other neighborhoods can still increase traffic to the shop, (b) removing parking space to add housing is a net negative to the shop (as parking capacity dictates shopping throughout) Road systems are anti-social because adding more people to the system increases traffic at a nonlinear rate (ie: a road system at capacity decreases in throughput as more cars are added) In other words, cities designed like cities benefit from more people, and thus everyone benefits from lower housing prices. The kicker is, the United States doesn’t have a single city designed as a city. We have dense pro-social urban cores surrounded by anti-social suburbs and exurbs. In contrast to a place like Tokyo where literally every resident has a bus or train (or combination thereof) to get downtown, America has split between two designs, and progressing along one design hurts anyone living in the other. A noteworthy corollary is that if you live in a suburb or exurb (and are a homeowner protected from rent increases), property values going up to the moon are almost always positive, because your environment is anti-social in the first place. While in the city core it’s more complicated, because your property value going up raises your net worth but harms the pro-social environment around you.

AlotOfReading 5y ago

Does this really need an argument? A primary mechanism for segregation and social inequity over the past century has been the exclusion of "undesirables" from spaces and the simultaneous, "coincidental" allocation of resources to those exclusionary spaces. It's impossible to have an informed discussion on this topic in the US without acknowledging that basic reality.

teakettle42 5y ago
Do you believe everyone has a right to housing in any place they might desire to live?
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  No, of course not. The point is that there's a more nuanced discussion to be had here about what these limits and rights ought to be.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    Doesn’t that answer my question, then? There’s nothing inherently wrong if not everyone can afford to live in desirable cities.
    - hetspookjee 5y ago
      I think the one you’re responding to seems to be in favour of a more nuanced view, rather where I read your argument as absolutes (everyone everywhere). So to some extend you both seem in agreement though the difference is the nuance.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - d4mi3n 5y ago
    Doesn’t that answer my question, then? There’s nothing inherently wrong if not everyone can afford to live in desirable cities. This comes off as a bad faith counter-argument. AlotOfReading has explicitly stated he believes there exist nuances of substance to this discussion. This response completely ignores his statements in favor of what may be a false dichotomy. teakettle42: How could one address AlotOfReading's concerns about exclusionary policy making and resource allocation? I'm of the thinking that it is fine to say one subscribes to the belief that one can't simply live where one chooses for a variety of reasons, but it's another thing to condone, implicitly or otherwise, that only certain classes of people may live in desirable areas. I feel doing so is antithetical to a society that values social mobility. What I _do_ feel is an under discussed thread of this topic are policies and practices that could be put in place to allow for a greater number of people to have an _opportunity_ to live in such areas. Low income housing, zoning changes, and tax incentives geared towards improving the socioeconomic diversity of an area are some approaches. Unfortunately, none of these things are possible without local political support or overarching legislation/policy requiring it--bringing us full circle to Manuel_D's original comment.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      > Low income housing This is just a subsidy for employers; they can pay a less-than-living wage, keep the profits, and rely on tax-payer-subsidized housing programs to close the gap. > zoning changes This is a give-away to developers. Increases the entry costs for development beyond what anyone but huge real-estate investment firms can afford. They build out rental units, grow the permanent rental class, and extract rent from the population in perpetuity. > tax incentives geared towards improving the socioeconomic diversity of an area Why is socioeconomic diversity in coveted cities a desirable outcome, and specifically, why is it something the government should attempt to engineer using our tax dollars?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Manuel_D 5y ago

There's no inalienable right to not be cripplingly impoverished. But any ethical countries would try to ameliorate that condition. Is it ethical for a select few to grow enormously wealthy by driving up the cost of living for the many by deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need? People need jobs to live. They also need a roof over their heads. The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas, but the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets. Disincentivizing this sort of rent seeking behavior is precisely the kind of thing property taxes accomplish.

teakettle42 5y ago
> deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need There’s no housing shortage. There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable. People can and do live elsewhere, working local jobs or commuting. > The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas That’s just one of many problems of scale; the solution is not to keep scaling up. > … the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets. Nobody is obligated to destroy their own community to accommodate the interests of rent-seeking land developers and people who don’t live there.
- diordiderot 5y ago
  Yes, the solution is to keep scaling up. _No_ economy can _sustain_ American style suburban growth. Read about 'the growth ponzi scheme' [1] or watch a video https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://youtu.be/y_SXXTBypIg https://youtu.be/y_SXXTBypIg
- dbspin 5y ago
  Just to address this from a non US standpoint. While I'm sympathetic toward both the desire to preserve the character and community of a neighbourhood and your antipathy towards rentiers - there absolutely is a housing crisis across Europe (and presumably in the US). Part of the reason is the lack of social housing provision, with most EU governments reducing or all together abandoning their post war commitments to low cost housing. Another reason is that, even in this era of remote work, the enormous majority of high paying jobs do require living in a large population centre. Perhaps the largest reason is the financialisation of housing as an asset class by hedge and other vulture funds. Italy alone seems to have kept the housing crisis / shortage localised to wealthy cities - and it is the only wealthy EU country to have done so. Germany, Ireland, France etc, all have rents and housing costs far higher than their median citizens capacity to comfortably pay, even in very remote and economically depressed areas. Italy by contrast charges high taxes on 2nd and 3rd properties, effectively blocking the aggregation of empty / underused housing stock. Which has resulted in rural areas and less populous cities being reasonably priced to live in. This is not the case anywhere else in Western Europe.

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deleted 5y ago
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diordiderot 5y ago

> There’s no inalienable right There are zero inalienable rights

closeparen 5y ago

America’s housing supply will grow. A policy that it grows only by sprawl is a policy of cruelty to everyone today and in the future who thrives best in an urban environment and isn’t super-rich. Urban environments can’t be stamped onto cornfields; they only occur when sparser environments become expensive. I don’t think there’s a right to live in any arbitrary expensive town. I do think there’s a right to have the expensive-town-to-city pipeline running somewhere at more than a trickle, so that urbanism is not impossible to access.

teakettle42 5y ago
> so that urbanism is not impossible to access. Urbanism in a desirable location is expensive, everywhere in the world. It’s an inescapable problem of scale. You’re free to live like a sardine in a dense city, but it will be expensive. You cannot avoid that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 5y ago
  Most of the world is not rich enough to live as sparsely as we do. The suburbs are a miracle of prosperity and technology - a car for every adult, the energy to run it, the infrastructure to drive it on. Most human settlements in the world are walkable because they have to be. Actually it is because car centric design was associated with wealth and status that the “backwards” old ways became prohibited. This inversion now, where walkable environments seem to be luxurious, is a legacy of that prohibition more than anything else.

geocar 5y ago

> There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. There's no right to anything that people don't stand together to say they have a right to. > Can you articulate an ethical argument for why it’s a problem that not everyone can afford to move to the most desirable cities? People shouldn't have to commute for hours so other people can live there because that impacts their health and opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If this is where the jobs are, there should be homes here as well.

alex_sf 5y ago
> There's no right to anything that people don't stand together to say they have a right to. This is ignoring the point: positive rights should not exist. They require taking rights from others, through violence, to enforce. > People shouldn't have to commute for hours so other people can live there because that impacts their health and opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness Ok. Then don't.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Okay then just die? I mean, it's an option, but a just society could easily do better. The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing. Positive rights for all do not require violence provided those who benefit from others not having simple rights will give up their excess for the greater good. The demos may need to use violence, but that's only because those who, by no greater virtue, have acquired wealth refuse to act justly and recognise the equal dignity of man.
  - alex_sf 5y ago
    > Okay then just die? Or work near where you can afford to live? If there aren't jobs that support living there, live somewhere else? You're presenting an absurd dichotomy. > The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing. No, they aren't. Wealth inequality is not a real problem. It's politicized jealousy. Wealth is not zero-sum, and someone having more than someone else is irrelevant. > Positive rights for all do not require violence provided those who benefit from others not having simple rights will give up their excess for the greater good. "Right" means it must be enforced. "provided .. will give up" means taking by that same force if they choose to not turn over what they own. Taking to support a right absolutely requires violence. > but that's only because those who, by no greater virtue, have acquired wealth refuse to act justly and recognise the equal dignity of man. Why should they? What is their obligation? You have undoubtedly acquired more wealth than a subsistence farmer in rural India: why do you refuse to act justly and recognize their equal dignity?

frisia 5y ago

> There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. I agree, that's why single family households should have a higher property tax and high density a lower one. Currently single family households are subsidized.[1] [1]: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment-dwellers-subsidize-suburban-homeowners https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment...

nonford150 5y ago
But property taxes are local. Raising them only supplies more revenue to the local area. For the US, also, one needs to take into account many states have limits on property tax rates and revenue raises in general, such as millage rates have to be fully balanced with spending, which in turn, has limits. Excess rate increases will simply make those areas less valuable, which will push people to even lower taxed areas, which, at least in the US, are even more rural areas, thereby increasing the concern for climate change and a reduction in population density.

helen___keller 5y ago

From a strictly ethics point of view, government in the general sense exists for its people and their well-being. I think this should be a fairly uncontroversial starting point. Now the question is whether one can show that the people are in a very general sense better off if a desirable city is affordable accessible compared to the alternative. I say “very general sense” because I want to avoid any argument that involves the minutiae of utilitarianism; it should be overwhelmingly in favor regardless of your exact ethical framework. With that in mind, my argument would be that [cities should be affordable] is the obvious ethical choice if and only if the city in question is designed / planned in a pro-social manner. Where pro-social is defined such that the addition of new people is positive. This should sound fairly tautological so let me give a few examples: Pro-social design: shops that rely on foot traffic are pro-social because adding more people (housing etc) to the immediate vicinity increases foot traffic Mass transportation is pro-social because as more people are added to a particular neighborhood, this justifies expansion of train lines, bus routes, etc Anti-social design: Shops that rely on car traffic are usually anti-social because (a) adding people to other neighborhoods can still increase traffic to the shop, (b) removing parking space to add housing is a net negative to the shop (as parking capacity dictates shopping throughout) Road systems are anti-social because adding more people to the system increases traffic at a nonlinear rate (ie: a road system at capacity decreases in throughput as more cars are added) In other words, cities designed like cities benefit from more people, and thus everyone benefits from lower housing prices. The kicker is, the United States doesn’t have a single city designed as a city. We have dense pro-social urban cores surrounded by anti-social suburbs and exurbs. In contrast to a place like Tokyo where literally every resident has a bus or train (or combination thereof) to get downtown, America has split between two designs, and progressing along one design hurts anyone living in the other. A noteworthy corollary is that if you live in a suburb or exurb (and are a homeowner protected from rent increases), property values going up to the moon are almost always positive, because your environment is anti-social in the first place. While in the city core it’s more complicated, because your property value going up raises your net worth but harms the pro-social environment around you.