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That's the ever-repeating story of the disconnect between economics and politics. From an economic optimization standpoint it's pretty obvious what needs to hap

That's the ever-repeating story of the disconnect between economics and politics. From an economic optimization standpoint it's pretty obvious what needs to happen, but those things will be painful for a subset of citizens, which means less votes for the next election, which means no politicians want to do it. That's not just the case for housing, but a whole range of regulations, many of which only still exist because removing them will lead to voters becoming upset about short-term changes, even though it may benefit the economy in the long run.

notch656c 4y ago
Yeah it's kind of depressing because at least a few key points the vast majority seem to agree on but it's just totally untenable to implement. There are a lot of choices nations can make that serve as a sort of one way valve with no going back and I fear this could be one of them. Another example of a bad mistake we made was our voting system which assures two parties, and that can never be undone because the parties will never vote to alter the representation system in a way to suicide their own parties. I've pretty much resigned myself my game plan is to suck all the capital I can out of the united states and then play the same game somewhere else where I can be the big bad foreign investor buying housing.
- ikekkdcjkfke 4y ago
  Then what is stopping the market from working? If housing is so profitable, then why isn't it popping up housing at a higher rate? If anything is stopping this then it should be deemed anti-competitive mechanisms and deemed illegal. For capitalism to work anti-competitive behaviours need to be regulated. Just like racism can be systematic, anti-competitism can also be systematic and illegal.
  - notch656c 4y ago
    I'm a little lost. Not because I think you've said somethin wrong because I'm not sure what you're replying to. Can you quote what you're responding to?
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  > I've pretty much resigned myself my game plan is to suck all the capital I can out of the united states and then play the same game somewhere else where I can be the big bad foreign investor buying housing. This is absolutely beautiful showcase of the core issue here, and HN is definitely not above it - if you own, you are happy to see your (potentially only ever) investment to gradually rise in price (or often more like matching inflation) and all is good within limits of reality. You don't care about some social justice or poor people yelling. If you are on the other side, then all is bad, social injustice, we should rehaul whole system because owning my fucking big house is a basic human right given by some Geneva convention (writing this from same Geneva right now). There is no middle ground apparently. Mankind is selfish, simple as that, and absolutely nobody is above that, its just a basic human trait in same way as having 2 hands. I've done few (happy to say now) rather small investments in stuff like stocks, crypto etc. They all bombed in medium term although were stellar short term, crypto probably long term. No way I am ever pouring money into that casino again, and most people don't even have my level of knowledge of those topics. Housing is something most people reasonably grok, can understand + and -, cashflows and maintenance required, etc. Plus you can actually live there. You would have to make owning properties in general absolutely horrible for people to not invest in it, if they can. Ie here in Switzerland there are various punishments for owning, ie imputed tax on potential rent even for your primary residence, and people still buy whatever is available. And with earth population growing higher and higher, while everybody wants to live in the rich cities or very close to them, the policies would have to be very draconical to reverse the trend. Now which politician, regardless of country, would ever do that to their voters.
bayindirh 4y ago
From my experience, looking solely from economic point of view leads to extreme optimization on wrong aspects. Yes, we might move to smaller homes in much denser housing models to increase housing. With that perspective, we can just build glorified chicken coops for humans too, however no one would like to live that cramped. Optimization for economic indicators tend to erode the things humans enjoy. High quality goods? Too expensive to produce and lasts too long to be economically viable. Low-density neighborhoods with nice, open spaces? Inefficient land use, long commutes, etc. In return, when a person wants to enjoy life, it becomes impossible, because enjoyment becomes economically not optimal (or viable). The current system is a trade-off between comfort and economic indicators. There can be other ways, I think. Maybe increasing working from home to reduce commute where possible, moving work to neighborhoods instead of moving people to work, etc. I do not know dynamics of USA very well in this regard, but it looks like this situation is the result of "money first" philosophy (i.e. strong capitalism), instead of being human first. When people see people as "expendable workforce", they can normalize "putting" people into glorified chicken coops.
- notch656c 4y ago
  The bizarre thing it isn't even capitalism/money first. The housing system in the USA is far from the optimal free-market capitalistic structure. It revolves around a people first approach of the right people controlling the regulations, the permitting office, and tyranny of more comfortable majority. If you let brute-force raw capitalism run roughshod I would build a japanese style capsule megavault and trick a bunch of college kids into thinking it's the cool thing, selling them each 100% ownership of their personal pod for $X. I could probably buy a shitty old warehouse and fill it with these capsules and you could own your own fucking capsule in a coop for maybe ten grand and aside from whatever services your coop votes to buy you wouldn't owe jack to a landlord.
  - glass3 4y ago
    Make it a bunch of young professionals with money and you create a vibrant service industry around your vault. Could HN pull this off and seed such a vault? Once there is one successful vault, people will copy it and the housing crisis could be a thing of the past. Where would be a good place to start such a vault?
nine_k 4y ago
Why are there fewer voters who would vote for denser housing for themselves while inflicting some pain on NIMBYs, than the NIMBY voters? I suspect two things. One is that NIMBYs are often more well-off and can inflict more pain on the politician who would oppose them than would be the gain from the pro-density crowd support. Another, sadder, is that enough of those who complain about housing not being affordable would like to become NIMBYs themselves, but can't yet afford that.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  For local rules it's also because you need to live there to vote.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Why are there fewer voters who would vote for denser housing for themselves while inflicting some pain on NIMBYs, than the NIMBY voters? Because wealth predicts propensity to vote. (Also, to the extent decisions are made locally, the people that would live in area but are excluded by housing affordability don’t get a vote. In fact, often a major reasons for the NIMBY policies isn't financial, but keeping the outsiders outside. For instance, when you've got a nice segregated community created by overtly racist policies that you are no longer allowed to employ, the main way to slow the erosion of what you worked so hard to achieve is to make it hard for new people to move in.)
  - JeremyNT 4y ago
    > Because wealth predicts propensity to vote. And to elaborate on this, real estate owners already have "skin in the game." They fully understand the negative impact of a policy that is obviously meant to reduce the value of their investment and vote/lobby against it. For the non-real-estate owners, it's way less obvious why they should mobilize or care. It's tough to get terribly excited about economic policy that is intended to gradually improve the housing problem by making it less attractive for the capital class to horde their assets forever. These effects are longer term and nebulous/uncertain for somebody who needs somewhere to live NOW.

notch656c 4y ago

Yeah it's kind of depressing because at least a few key points the vast majority seem to agree on but it's just totally untenable to implement. There are a lot of choices nations can make that serve as a sort of one way valve with no going back and I fear this could be one of them. Another example of a bad mistake we made was our voting system which assures two parties, and that can never be undone because the parties will never vote to alter the representation system in a way to suicide their own parties. I've pretty much resigned myself my game plan is to suck all the capital I can out of the united states and then play the same game somewhere else where I can be the big bad foreign investor buying housing.

ikekkdcjkfke 4y ago
Then what is stopping the market from working? If housing is so profitable, then why isn't it popping up housing at a higher rate? If anything is stopping this then it should be deemed anti-competitive mechanisms and deemed illegal. For capitalism to work anti-competitive behaviours need to be regulated. Just like racism can be systematic, anti-competitism can also be systematic and illegal.
- notch656c 4y ago
  I'm a little lost. Not because I think you've said somethin wrong because I'm not sure what you're replying to. Can you quote what you're responding to?
saiya-jin 4y ago
> I've pretty much resigned myself my game plan is to suck all the capital I can out of the united states and then play the same game somewhere else where I can be the big bad foreign investor buying housing. This is absolutely beautiful showcase of the core issue here, and HN is definitely not above it - if you own, you are happy to see your (potentially only ever) investment to gradually rise in price (or often more like matching inflation) and all is good within limits of reality. You don't care about some social justice or poor people yelling. If you are on the other side, then all is bad, social injustice, we should rehaul whole system because owning my fucking big house is a basic human right given by some Geneva convention (writing this from same Geneva right now). There is no middle ground apparently. Mankind is selfish, simple as that, and absolutely nobody is above that, its just a basic human trait in same way as having 2 hands. I've done few (happy to say now) rather small investments in stuff like stocks, crypto etc. They all bombed in medium term although were stellar short term, crypto probably long term. No way I am ever pouring money into that casino again, and most people don't even have my level of knowledge of those topics. Housing is something most people reasonably grok, can understand + and -, cashflows and maintenance required, etc. Plus you can actually live there. You would have to make owning properties in general absolutely horrible for people to not invest in it, if they can. Ie here in Switzerland there are various punishments for owning, ie imputed tax on potential rent even for your primary residence, and people still buy whatever is available. And with earth population growing higher and higher, while everybody wants to live in the rich cities or very close to them, the policies would have to be very draconical to reverse the trend. Now which politician, regardless of country, would ever do that to their voters.

bayindirh 4y ago

From my experience, looking solely from economic point of view leads to extreme optimization on wrong aspects. Yes, we might move to smaller homes in much denser housing models to increase housing. With that perspective, we can just build glorified chicken coops for humans too, however no one would like to live that cramped. Optimization for economic indicators tend to erode the things humans enjoy. High quality goods? Too expensive to produce and lasts too long to be economically viable. Low-density neighborhoods with nice, open spaces? Inefficient land use, long commutes, etc. In return, when a person wants to enjoy life, it becomes impossible, because enjoyment becomes economically not optimal (or viable). The current system is a trade-off between comfort and economic indicators. There can be other ways, I think. Maybe increasing working from home to reduce commute where possible, moving work to neighborhoods instead of moving people to work, etc. I do not know dynamics of USA very well in this regard, but it looks like this situation is the result of "money first" philosophy (i.e. strong capitalism), instead of being human first. When people see people as "expendable workforce", they can normalize "putting" people into glorified chicken coops.

notch656c 4y ago
The bizarre thing it isn't even capitalism/money first. The housing system in the USA is far from the optimal free-market capitalistic structure. It revolves around a people first approach of the right people controlling the regulations, the permitting office, and tyranny of more comfortable majority. If you let brute-force raw capitalism run roughshod I would build a japanese style capsule megavault and trick a bunch of college kids into thinking it's the cool thing, selling them each 100% ownership of their personal pod for $X. I could probably buy a shitty old warehouse and fill it with these capsules and you could own your own fucking capsule in a coop for maybe ten grand and aside from whatever services your coop votes to buy you wouldn't owe jack to a landlord.
- glass3 4y ago
  Make it a bunch of young professionals with money and you create a vibrant service industry around your vault. Could HN pull this off and seed such a vault? Once there is one successful vault, people will copy it and the housing crisis could be a thing of the past. Where would be a good place to start such a vault?

nine_k 4y ago

Why are there fewer voters who would vote for denser housing for themselves while inflicting some pain on NIMBYs, than the NIMBY voters? I suspect two things. One is that NIMBYs are often more well-off and can inflict more pain on the politician who would oppose them than would be the gain from the pro-density crowd support. Another, sadder, is that enough of those who complain about housing not being affordable would like to become NIMBYs themselves, but can't yet afford that.

CalRobert 4y ago
For local rules it's also because you need to live there to vote.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Why are there fewer voters who would vote for denser housing for themselves while inflicting some pain on NIMBYs, than the NIMBY voters? Because wealth predicts propensity to vote. (Also, to the extent decisions are made locally, the people that would live in area but are excluded by housing affordability don’t get a vote. In fact, often a major reasons for the NIMBY policies isn't financial, but keeping the outsiders outside. For instance, when you've got a nice segregated community created by overtly racist policies that you are no longer allowed to employ, the main way to slow the erosion of what you worked so hard to achieve is to make it hard for new people to move in.)
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  > Because wealth predicts propensity to vote. And to elaborate on this, real estate owners already have "skin in the game." They fully understand the negative impact of a policy that is obviously meant to reduce the value of their investment and vote/lobby against it. For the non-real-estate owners, it's way less obvious why they should mobilize or care. It's tough to get terribly excited about economic policy that is intended to gradually improve the housing problem by making it less attractive for the capital class to horde their assets forever. These effects are longer term and nebulous/uncertain for somebody who needs somewhere to live NOW.