4 ms·

Many people think "idealistically" but sometimes forget to ground it in reality. People often don't realize that the "utopia" of the Soviet Union where everyon

by mc32 4y ago

Many people think "idealistically" but sometimes forget to ground it in reality. People often don't realize that the "utopia" of the Soviet Union where everyone got a guaranteed apartment, pay and a job, was in many ways behind Mexico for example (not to knock on Mexico) but in the USSR and the second world with it's then "UBI"-like system, people could afford less living space and food variety than your median person in Mexico. Often in second world economies, you were forced to live with strangers (not multi-gen families) in the same appt. You could not afford a second hand car and many luxuries were reserved for Politburo, Scientists and those in the nomenklatura. But some "thinkers" believe that if only SF and other big cities would build complexes like the USSR, except that they would look more like SoMa mid-rises than the more utilitarian Soviet Apt blocks we could fit and satisfy everyone who wants to live in SF and other large cities.

sophacles 4y ago
Imagine confusing a concept like UBI that uses tax dollars skimmed off a decentralized economy with a centralized planned economy. Even funnier when you are also comparing a democracy with an authoritarian strongman regime. You do you though.
- mc32 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - sophacles 4y ago
    Strange, I'm not Bernie. I don't know why you would try to gotcha my statements based on someone else's, different statements from decades ago. Would you mind telling me how some people talking 30-40 years ago has anything to do with me and my observation?
kingkawn 4y ago
Dear future anthropologists; a collection of empty American archetypes about soviet life, found naturally in the wild
- mc32 4y ago
  Yep sorry forgot to mention that was the good part in the tier one cities... Once you went out to the countryside and beyond the Urals, it actually got even more interesting.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
I have no idea what you're thinking. Across the world, people live happily (lots of them, anyway) in large scale apartment complexes. As long ago as the turn of the 20th century, people like Gaudi were already taking that a step further and designing beautiful apartment buildings: https://www.lapedrera.com/en/la-pedrera https://www.lapedrera.com/en/la-pedrera Notice how La Pedrera is surrounded by other less aesthetic yet still fully occupied apartment buildings? There are hundreds of cities worldwide filled with people living in relatively affordable non-single-family housing, nothing like the structures or experience of the Soviet Union. Building denser housing does not mean that we will be living in some soviet-era world. Why on earth would you think this?
kristjansson 4y ago
> you were forced to live with strangers You’re describing roommates? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want government mandated roommates either. OTOH lots of people are compelled to live with roommates in SF too, just by different forces.
- mc32 4y ago
  Kind of, but roommates are self-selecting and you _can_ opt to move out. In the USSR, it was very difficult to opt out. If you were part of the nomenklatura, you did have some other options such as private apartments --but that was a small minority of people.
vkou 4y ago
You're mixing two different eras in the USSR. Stalinist USSR forced strangers to live in the same apartment (or, alternatively, families living in what were essentially SRO units), because the impoverished, largely rural population was force-urbanized over a very brief time period, and the living space was simply not there to support this influx into the cities. And then that thing called 'World War II' happened, which sapped a decade of economic output on building guns, and rebuilding. It also killed ~15 million young men, and invalided many, many more. [1] Post-Stalin planning focused on solving this problem, through a massive build-out of single-family apartments. Non-relative roommates weren't much of a thing after that point. > But some "thinkers" believe that if only SF and other big cities would build complexes like the USSR, except that they would look more like SoMa mid-rises than the more utilitarian Soviet Apt blocks we could fit and satisfy everyone who wants to live in SF and other large cities. Given how much of an unmitigated disaster the current housing situation in SF/Seattle/etc is, buying out a hundred or so blocks and replacing them with Khrushchevkas would be an improvement for everyone[2] in the city. [1] I hear this sort of thing does wonders for construction productivity. [2] Except for people who paid 3 million dollars to buy the equivalent of a shed in the current insane housing market. Unfortunately, they have both political capital, and the desire to exercise it, and would rather see the city burn down around them, than lose the money they locked into their home.
- mc32 4y ago
  If you built 100 blocks worth of Khrushchevkas we're looking at 25,000 to 100,000 people. That could be a city on its own and does not have to be in SF proper. Funnily, Khrushchevkas were affectionally known as Khrushchev slums. The Singaporean take on this style of housing is anything but affordable coming in at ~500/sft -after gov't subsidies. Contrast that with ~150sft for most new housing in the US. Singapore proves it'd doable in a dense city, but it's cheaper to build outside cities and if you're going to house that many people you might as well build an altogether new low-cost city.
  - vkou 4y ago
    There's ~11,000 homeless people in King County right now. Getting them out of the park, the freeway onramp, the greenspace north of my apartment, the coffeehouse bench across the street from it, the doorway across the other street from it, and into shitty SRO[1] apartments would be a god-send. > Contrast that with ~150sft for most new housing in the US. You're telling me that we can build a brand-new, 600 SQFT apartment in Seattle for $90,000? I didn't realize solving the housing shortage was that simple! And I must be an utter idiot for paying ~$30,000/year in rent for a one-hundred-year-old, 800 SQFT one. [1] Or, if we really splurge[2], and build some Brezhnevkas, actual apartments. [2] Somehow an impoverished, paranoid, hopelessly corrupt, backwards-thinking communist country that spent half of its economic output on tanks and nuclear weapons managed to afford building them...

by mc32 4y ago

sophacles 4y ago

Imagine confusing a concept like UBI that uses tax dollars skimmed off a decentralized economy with a centralized planned economy. Even funnier when you are also comparing a democracy with an authoritarian strongman regime. You do you though.

mc32 4y ago
[flagged]
- sophacles 4y ago
  Strange, I'm not Bernie. I don't know why you would try to gotcha my statements based on someone else's, different statements from decades ago. Would you mind telling me how some people talking 30-40 years ago has anything to do with me and my observation?

kingkawn 4y ago

Dear future anthropologists; a collection of empty American archetypes about soviet life, found naturally in the wild

mc32 4y ago
Yep sorry forgot to mention that was the good part in the tier one cities... Once you went out to the countryside and beyond the Urals, it actually got even more interesting.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

I have no idea what you're thinking. Across the world, people live happily (lots of them, anyway) in large scale apartment complexes. As long ago as the turn of the 20th century, people like Gaudi were already taking that a step further and designing beautiful apartment buildings: https://www.lapedrera.com/en/la-pedrera https://www.lapedrera.com/en/la-pedrera Notice how La Pedrera is surrounded by other less aesthetic yet still fully occupied apartment buildings? There are hundreds of cities worldwide filled with people living in relatively affordable non-single-family housing, nothing like the structures or experience of the Soviet Union. Building denser housing does not mean that we will be living in some soviet-era world. Why on earth would you think this?

kristjansson 4y ago

> you were forced to live with strangers You’re describing roommates? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want government mandated roommates either. OTOH lots of people are compelled to live with roommates in SF too, just by different forces.

mc32 4y ago
Kind of, but roommates are self-selecting and you _can_ opt to move out. In the USSR, it was very difficult to opt out. If you were part of the nomenklatura, you did have some other options such as private apartments --but that was a small minority of people.

vkou 4y ago

You're mixing two different eras in the USSR. Stalinist USSR forced strangers to live in the same apartment (or, alternatively, families living in what were essentially SRO units), because the impoverished, largely rural population was force-urbanized over a very brief time period, and the living space was simply not there to support this influx into the cities. And then that thing called 'World War II' happened, which sapped a decade of economic output on building guns, and rebuilding. It also killed ~15 million young men, and invalided many, many more. [1] Post-Stalin planning focused on solving this problem, through a massive build-out of single-family apartments. Non-relative roommates weren't much of a thing after that point. > But some "thinkers" believe that if only SF and other big cities would build complexes like the USSR, except that they would look more like SoMa mid-rises than the more utilitarian Soviet Apt blocks we could fit and satisfy everyone who wants to live in SF and other large cities. Given how much of an unmitigated disaster the current housing situation in SF/Seattle/etc is, buying out a hundred or so blocks and replacing them with Khrushchevkas would be an improvement for everyone[2] in the city. [1] I hear this sort of thing does wonders for construction productivity. [2] Except for people who paid 3 million dollars to buy the equivalent of a shed in the current insane housing market. Unfortunately, they have both political capital, and the desire to exercise it, and would rather see the city burn down around them, than lose the money they locked into their home.

mc32 4y ago
If you built 100 blocks worth of Khrushchevkas we're looking at 25,000 to 100,000 people. That could be a city on its own and does not have to be in SF proper. Funnily, Khrushchevkas were affectionally known as Khrushchev slums. The Singaporean take on this style of housing is anything but affordable coming in at ~500/sft -after gov't subsidies. Contrast that with ~150sft for most new housing in the US. Singapore proves it'd doable in a dense city, but it's cheaper to build outside cities and if you're going to house that many people you might as well build an altogether new low-cost city.
- vkou 4y ago
  There's ~11,000 homeless people in King County right now. Getting them out of the park, the freeway onramp, the greenspace north of my apartment, the coffeehouse bench across the street from it, the doorway across the other street from it, and into shitty SRO[1] apartments would be a god-send. > Contrast that with ~150sft for most new housing in the US. You're telling me that we can build a brand-new, 600 SQFT apartment in Seattle for $90,000? I didn't realize solving the housing shortage was that simple! And I must be an utter idiot for paying ~$30,000/year in rent for a one-hundred-year-old, 800 SQFT one. [1] Or, if we really splurge[2], and build some Brezhnevkas, actual apartments. [2] Somehow an impoverished, paranoid, hopelessly corrupt, backwards-thinking communist country that spent half of its economic output on tanks and nuclear weapons managed to afford building them...