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I see a lot of validity in this line of thought and agree with it in principle, but in practice it has led to a lot of problems in California. For one, Califor
by opportune 4y ago
I see a lot of validity in this line of thought and agree with it in principle, but in practice it has led to a lot of problems in California.
For one, California is split up into many smaller towns/cities in large metro areas, so each having their own policies leads to locally-optimal but regionally-suboptimal policies of trying to get as much commercial development as possible with as little residential development as possible. This is a direct contributor to gentrification (if you are “lucky” and able to soak up the commercial demand without increasing residential supply, you’ve created a mismatch between jobs and people in your area), ghettoisation (the people priced out of where they were before have to go somewhere), traffic (people have to commute into their jobs), and affordability (even the bad communities can’t increase housing much because they have the weakest tax base, plus all the restricted supply where jobs and taxes actually are).
The right solution to this problem is to recognize the whole local-optimization problem and make it so every municipality has to solve the problem at once, to prevent the adverse selection of solving the problem in only one municipality. Which is what the state of CA is doing.
This could also be addressed from the other side, which is a complete political non-starter, of trying to limit job growth. Obviously nobody wants to do that. But the problem by and large is not just that CA has a lot of low density communities that want to remain that way, but also that those low density communities are creating more jobs than they can house.
- thegrimmest 4y agoI agree with your premise. I just disagree that the use of authority is the solution here. I don't see any reason why the state needs to intervene. Just let the locally-optimal solutions (peacefully) compete and sort themselves out. Let there be winners and losers, and don't get in the way. Using authority to force cooperation is tyranny. We're not all on the same team. We're self-interested, in-group focused, animals and there's nothing wrong with that.
- opportune 4y agoThe locally-optimal solution is always to try to get as much commercial tax base as possible (since it increases the tax base without much increase in spending) and as little resident tax base as possible (since it increases spending). So I don’t really see how it will sort itself out. When you are a bunch of small, close by municipalities all operating in essentially the same economic context (job market, etc.) the regional issues always become someone else’s problem.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoFrom what perspective is that optimal at all? Certainly humans care about more in life than the tax revenue of their municipal government. I can't speak for you but that's not my goal in life
- opportune 4y agoPeople generally don’t try to block offices or retail the way they try to block housing. Many of the NIMBY concerns like having to build more schools don’t apply.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI think very little of nimbyism life looks like that. People don't want change by them
- janosett 4y ago> Using authority to force cooperation is tyranny. Wow, this is an odd definition of tyranny. The elected representatives of the people of our state wrote these laws. I personally think it's fair for us to make laws that apply across our state rather than having full autonomy at the city level.
- rootusrootus 4y agoShould it not be the federal government, then, that makes all the laws? Instead of autonomy at the state level?
- triceratops 4y ago> I just disagree that the use of authority is the solution here. Agreed. So why even allow the city to use its authority? Leave it to the property owner to decide.