3 ms·

Except why is no one asking the question why so few places are desirable and doing something to alleviate it.

tjr225 4y ago
Most of the time it’s because you get to live in a city and then also get to drive an hour and go hiking/skiing in the mountains or go to the beach. It isn’t very complicated.
socialismisok 4y ago
Plenty of folks are, but if the thing you want to do about it is decommidify housing you get a whole lot of people saying, "that'll never work!" Without actually engaging with the ideas. Plenty of ideas and people trying out there, just not much interest from the every day person.
lmm 4y ago
Because housing policy is set up so that homeowners in desirable places are the ones who have control over whether more housing gets built there, and unsurprisingly they vote to enrich themselves at the cost of everyone else. The only way to fix it is to set planning rules strictly at the national level, but who's going to vote for that?
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  And - in all fairness - enriching yourself only is the side-effect, the major other output being "there now is a (more) desirable place". People want to live at increasingly more desirable places, and that is true even more so for people who cannot afford to: If such desirability was no object in their quest, Detroit would be full of people, the Bay Area wouldn't have so many issues with housing, and housing prices would be a non-issue. If the alternative is "everywhere sucks equally", which is the likely outcome of a national-level central planning, I doubt you will find many takers.
  - lmm 4y ago
    I live somewhere with national-level planning rules and it's brilliant (indeed it's the most populous metropolitan area in the world, and I don't think that's coincidence).
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      Without going too deep in Japanese real estate planning laws, iirc most I am aware of are more a "national guideline" and are frequently overridden by prefectures and cities. That's hardly on the level of actual national-planning, communist-style 5-year-plans.
- prottog 4y ago
  > The only way to fix it is to set planning rules strictly at the national level You don't even need centralized planning. Just implement a proper land value tax [0] so that the desirability of a plot of land has to be commensurately paid for by the owner. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

Most of the time it’s because you get to live in a city and then also get to drive an hour and go hiking/skiing in the mountains or go to the beach. It isn’t very complicated.

socialismisok 4y ago

Plenty of folks are, but if the thing you want to do about it is decommidify housing you get a whole lot of people saying, "that'll never work!" Without actually engaging with the ideas. Plenty of ideas and people trying out there, just not much interest from the every day person.

lmm 4y ago

Because housing policy is set up so that homeowners in desirable places are the ones who have control over whether more housing gets built there, and unsurprisingly they vote to enrich themselves at the cost of everyone else. The only way to fix it is to set planning rules strictly at the national level, but who's going to vote for that?

DocTomoe 4y ago
And - in all fairness - enriching yourself only is the side-effect, the major other output being "there now is a (more) desirable place". People want to live at increasingly more desirable places, and that is true even more so for people who cannot afford to: If such desirability was no object in their quest, Detroit would be full of people, the Bay Area wouldn't have so many issues with housing, and housing prices would be a non-issue. If the alternative is "everywhere sucks equally", which is the likely outcome of a national-level central planning, I doubt you will find many takers.
- lmm 4y ago
  I live somewhere with national-level planning rules and it's brilliant (indeed it's the most populous metropolitan area in the world, and I don't think that's coincidence).
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    Without going too deep in Japanese real estate planning laws, iirc most I am aware of are more a "national guideline" and are frequently overridden by prefectures and cities. That's hardly on the level of actual national-planning, communist-style 5-year-plans.
prottog 4y ago
> The only way to fix it is to set planning rules strictly at the national level You don't even need centralized planning. Just implement a proper land value tax [0] so that the desirability of a plot of land has to be commensurately paid for by the owner. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax